Title: Faculty Development: Teaching Staff Needs, Knowledge and Priorities
Abstract: ABSTRACT The challenges of a rapidly changing society are acutely felt in many domains including higher education, and strongly persuade the universities to focus on the quality of their faculty and to offer them appropriate opportunities for professional development. But, the efficiency of any institutional faculty development program really increases if it addresses the specific needs, knowledge and priorities expressed by the teaching staff. Therefore, the present study shows the results of a survey on faculty development needs assessment, conducted in 4 Romanian universities. The findings show differences in the professional development needs perceived by different subgroups of faculty. Early career teaching members are more oriented towards teaching skills improvement and development plans, while tenured faculty are rather interested in their research skills development. Besides this, faculty members from social science departments tend to give a higher rate for teaching development strategies than their colleagues in science fields. The study highlights that the content of the faculty development programs must be adapted to the specific needs of the faculty subgroups, according to their professional goals, their career trajectory level, teaching experience, or their specialization department. KEYWORDS: quality assurance in higher education, teaching staff needs, faculty professional development. The dynamic and radical changes that characterize the contemporary society are vividly revealed in higher education as well. Therefore modern universities emphasise the need for well-trained teaching staff and, implicitly, for a culture of quality teaching. Following the rather worldwide phenomenon of educational expansion (Eurostat, 2007), during the last two decades, the Romanian higher educational system tripled its total number of students (Romanian Statistical Yearbook, 2005). The expansion of higher education gives rise to more sustained efforts in lecture/seminar delivery as compared to the elitist teaching (Boyer, 1990). Working with larger groups of students and meeting the learning needs of a growing variety of learners, with different background, experience, age (Keller, 2001), and expectations, require faculty members with well developed teaching competencies. In order to meet the objectives related to the enhancement of the quality of teaching in higher education, there is the need for individual or institutional initiatives focused on the instructional improvement. Reviewing the literature, Menges and Austin (2001) identify five categories of methods or programs implemented within universities, which contribute to the development of faculty professionals: (1) Individual developmental strategies (critical reflection upon self performance, portfolio preparation, teaching diary method, conducting research); (2) Strategies which involve regular feedback from students, interpretation and management of the results; (3) Strategies involving fellow academic staff (mentoring programs, peer-reviews); (4) Institution coordinated programs (experience exchange, workshops, seminars, sabbatical year, centres for teaching and learning); (5) Programs promoted by external qualified persons, such as teaching associations. The content of the professional development programs and the competencies they address depend on several factors, such as the specific needs of the teaching staff, the needs of the students, the educational paradigm, the mission and orientation of the university. Referring to the evolution of professional programs along time within the United States area, Gaff and Simpson (1994) showed that in the early 20th century the development programs aimed to support the faculty members in becoming experts in a certain discipline. According to this purpose, universities established the sabbatical leave, and encouraged faculty to get involved in research programs, or to participate at professional conferences. …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 6
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