Faculty Members’ Understandings about Work Demands: Conditions and Pursuit of Productivity

Author(s):

Ariadna Lopez Damian(presenting / submitting)Virginia Montero Hernandez(presenting)Marie C. Martin John S. Levin

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 10 C, Faculty and Their Working Context

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

15:30-17:00

Room:

338. [Main]

Chair:

Aidan Seery

Contribution

Problem and Purpose

In spite of the multiple studies addressing the changing nature of the academic profession (e.g., Seddon & Levin, 2013), there is limited discussion about the ways in which academic productivity is defined and its effectiveness assessed. Current definitions and assessments of academic productivity are primarily based on institutional perspectives; faculty voices about what productivity involves and how it is and can be rewarded are excluded in the discussion.

Standardized measurements of productivity do not consider differences in faculty’s work by disciplinary field, gender, or career stage. Although academics are expected to participate in three main activities (research, teaching, and service) with equal levels of quality, there is lack of clarity over the ways in which institutional expectations for each activity match faculty’s’ concerns, goals, and projects. Additionally, there are “invisible activities” that faculty perform and consider part of their work but that are neither acknowledged nor rewarded.

Through this investigation, we explain the construction of academic productivity in higher education institutions by examining (a) faculty members’ understanding of productivity within the context of increasing work demands and (b) the ways in which faculty members’ understandings guide their pursuit of academic outcomes as part of their professional practice.

Theoretical perspective

We use a social psychology approach to understand the ways in which individuals’ personal constructs guide the development of certain forms of behavior (e.g., achievement and decision-making). Specifically, we rely on Dweck and associates’ work to understand the role that individuals’ implicit theories play in shaping social action (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995a; Schunk, 1995).

Implicit theories refer to cognitive resources (i.e., knowledge structures) that guide individuals’ perceptions, emotions, and actions (Anderson, 1995). An implicit theory is a domain-specific conceptual framework an individual holds as an alternate way of constructing their social reality (Dweck et al., 1995a; Schunk, 1995). Individuals’ assumptions (i.e., implicit theories) about specific domains can orient them cognitively to different types of understandings about their social reality and guide their reactions (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995b). Implicit theories create a meaning framework in which attributions occur. Socialization practices play a critical role in the construction of these theories (Anderson, 1995). Implicit theories tend to be poorly articulated or even unacknowledged or unknown; however, they are relatively stable and malleable (Dweck et al., 1995a).

Method

We use an interpretative methodological approach (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Narrative analysis enables us to explain faculty’s definitions and pursuit of academic productivity (Riessman, 2002). We view narratives as a particular communicative style in which specific episodes are chosen and conveyed to provide order to enacted practices. Our interview sample consists of twenty full-time tenure track and tenured faculty members from eight departments in the natural and social sciences at a research intensive university and a comprehensive, teaching oriented, university in southern California. Faculty members who volunteered to participate in the study, both females and males, agreed to reflect on their academic practices. A larger number of associate and full professors were more willing than assistants to respond and participate. Semi-structured interviews were our main data sources (Rapley, 2001). We explored the following dimensions: personal and educational background, research specialization, challenges and achievements as academics, faculty members’ understanding of academic productivity, the relationship between academic productivity and faculty’s enactment of their academic functions (i.e., teaching, research, and service), differences between faculty’s personal understandings and institutional definitions of productivity, description of specific experiences that allowed faculty to view themselves as productive professionals, personal attributes and strategies through which faculty endeavored to become productive, and organizational structures and forms of social interaction that either facilitated or hindered the achievement of productivity. The analysis of data consisted of a set of interpretative and systematic strategies to answer the research questions (Crabtree & Miller, 1992). Based on our theoretical framework, we reviewed faculty’s narratives to identify their assumptions (i.e., implicit theories) about what productivity means and what kind of actions they need to perform to become productive as academics in either a comprehensive or research intensive university. We also analyzed narratives to identify the elements (i.e., concepts or ideas) that shaped faculty’s assumptions. Finally, we compared and contrasted different kinds of faculty’s assumptions to understand variations in faculty’s styles of pursuit of productivity. We explored the ways in which differences in faculty members’ assumptions led to differences in the implementations of strategies and goals to become productive. Both data reduction and the reorganization of data in more complex ways were developed through four basic analytical operations: codification, categorization, comparison, and integration (Flick, 2004). The enactment of analytical operations was assisted through the use of Atlas.ti and concept maps.

Expected Outcomes

Findings Faculty members’ assumptions (i.e., implicit theories) about productivity developed on the basis of their personal goals, social interests, and professional concerns. Differences in faculty members’ understanding led to different strategies to build themselves as productive professionals. We identified three pathways for the definition and achievement of productivity: the pursuit of effectiveness (to reach traditional productivity indicators established by institutions), the pursuit of expertise (to gain originality and specialization with traditional and nontraditional indicators), and the pursuit of advocacy (to facilitate individual and community empowerment). Additionally, we identified two strategic orientations in the pursuit of productivity: a) collaboration as an instrumental condition to achieve individual advancement (assisted self-centered orientation) and b) collaboration as means and product (collaborative-orientation). Faculty members identified money and time as critical resources to pursue productivity. Money was necessary to guarantee research equipment, travel, and salaries. Effective time management was fundamental to become highly productive. Availability of funding was influenced by institutional type and program area, while ability to manage time effectively was influenced by academic rank and family structure. Conclusions Academic rank and gender mediated faculty members’ understandings of and pursuit of productivity. Assistant professors focused on the pursuit of effectiveness to guarantee job security and stability. Associate professors focused on the pursuit of effectiveness and expertise to consolidate their academic career. Full professors focused on the pursuit of expertise and advocacy . Although rank was a variable that influenced the selection of pathways for productivity significantly, we found exceptional cases in which rank was not a predictor of the kind of pathway a faculty member chose to pursue (e.g., a full professor pursued effectiveness). Additionally, women were more likely to gravitate towards the pursuit of expertise, advocacy, and social service, as well as to affiliate with collaborative strategies of productivity than their male colleagues.

References

Anderson, C. A. (1995). Implicit theories in broad perspective. Psychological Inquiry, 6(4), 286- 290. Crabtree, B. F., & Miller, W. L. (1992). Doing qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA Sage Publications, Inc. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). The discipline and practice of qualitative research In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 1-32). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Dweck, C. S., Chiu, C.-y., & Hong, Y.-y. (1995a). Implicit theories and their role in judgments and reactions: a world from two perspectives. Psychological Inquiry, 6(4), 267-285. Dweck, C. S., Chiu, C.-y., & Hong, Y.-y. (1995b). Implicit theories: elaboration and extension of the model source. Psychological Inquiry, 6(4), 322-333. Flick, U. (2004). Introducción a la investigación cualitativa (P. Manzano, Trans.). Madrid: Morata. Rapley, T. J. (2001). The art(fulness) of open-ended interviewing: some considerations on analysing interviews. Qualitative Research, 1(3), 303-323. Riessman, C. (2002). Analysis of personal narratives. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research: Context and method (pp. 695-710). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Schunk, D. H. (1995). Implicit theories and achievement behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 6(4), 311-314. Schuster, J. H., & Finkelstein, M. J. (2006). The American faculty: The restructuring of academic work and careers. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Seddon T., & Levin, J. S. (Eds.) World yearbook of education 2013. Educators, professionalism and politics: Global transitions, national spaces, and professional projects. London: Routledge.

Author Information

Ariadna Lopez Damian (presenting / submitting)

Universitiy of California, Riverside

Graduate School of Education

Riverside

Virginia Montero Hernandez (presenting)

California State University, Stanislaus

Advanced Studies

Turlock

Marie C. Martin

Universitiy of California, Riverside, United States of America

John S. Levin