Paths to the Professoriate: Strategies for Enriching the Preparation of Future Faculty (The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series) - Hardcover

Wulff; Austin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787966347 ISBN 13: 9780787966348

Verlag: John Wiley & Sons, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Paths to the Professoriate offers all those involved in higher education―everyone from administrators to scholars to graduate students―a much-needed resource that brings together major research, the most important developments in practice, and informed analysis on improving graduate education and preparing the future faculty. This important book includes chapters from some of the best-known researchers, practitioners, and scholars working to prepare the faculty of the future.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Donald H. Wulff is director of the Center for Instructional Development and Research and assistant dean in the graduate school at the University of Washington. He is past president of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD).
Ann E. Austin is professor of higher education, adult, and lifelong education at Michigan State University. She was identified as one of forty Young Leaders of the Academy by Change magazine and is a recent past-president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE).

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It has been estimated that in the next ten years, about half of the current higher education faculty will retire. How can we best prepare the next generation of faculty members to fill this tremendous gap in our educational system?

Paths to the Professoriate offers all those involved in higher education–everyone from administrators to scholars to graduate students–a much-needed resource that brings together major research, the most important developments in practice, and informed analysis on improving graduate education and preparing the future faculty. This important book includes chapters from some of the best-known researchers, practitioners, and scholars working to prepare the faculty of the future.

In one volume, the authors offer a synthesis of what has been learned about the challenges and concerns in graduate education as preparation for faculty careers, highlight the various projects and approaches for improving graduate education, and identify strategies for institutional leaders, department chairs, faculty advisors, and graduate students. Paths to the Professoriate:

• Presents important reasons for considering ways to improve the preparation of the next generation of faculty
• Describes research studies concerning the graduate school experience
• Highlights illustrative examples of innovative programs and projects
• Provides a synthesis of key lessons from the research and projects addressing the preparation of future faculty

This solidly research-based book covers such vital topics as: the lack of systematic developmentally organized preparation for those aspiring to teaching careers in higher education; graduate students’ perceptions of their graduate experiences and their preparation for faculty work; particular challenges confronting Black doctoral students; reasons students leave doctoral study; programs to prepare graduate students for roles as teaching scholars and engaged citizens; strategies to help graduate students and faculty members identify mutual goals and resolve conflicts; and much more.

Paths to the Professoriate offers all those concerned with the fate of higher education a valuable resource for the future.

Paths to the Professoriate offers all those involved in higher education-everyone from administrators to scholars to graduate students-a much-needed resource that brings together major research, the most important developments in practice, and informed analysis on improving graduate education and preparing the future faculty. This important book includes chapters from some of the best-known researchers, practitioners, and scholars working to prepare the faculty of the future.

In one volume, the authors offer a synthesis of what has been learned about the challenges and concerns in graduate education as preparation for faculty careers, highlight the various projects and approaches for improving graduate education, and identify strategies for institutional leaders, department chairs, faculty advisors, and graduate students. Paths to the Professoriate:

• Presents important reasons for considering ways to improve the preparation of the next generation of faculty
• Describes research studies concerning the graduate school experience
• Highlights illustrative examples of innovative programs and projects
• Provides a synthesis of key lessons from the research and projects addressing the preparation of future faculty

This solidly research-based book covers such vital topics as: the lack of systematic developmentally organized preparation for those aspiring to teaching careers in higher education; graduate students' perceptions of their graduate experiences and their preparation for faculty work; particular challenges confronting Black doctoral students; reasons students leave doctoral study; programs to prepare graduate students for roles as teaching scholars and engaged citizens; strategies to help graduate students and faculty members identify mutual goals and resolve conflicts; and much more.

Paths to the Professoriate offers all those concerned with the fate of higher education a valuable resource for the future.

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Paths to the Professoriate

Strategies for Enriching the Preparation of Future FacultyBy Donald H. Wulff Ann E. Austin

Jossey-Bass

Copyright © 2004 Donald H. Wulff
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7879-6634-8

Chapter One

The Challenge to Prepare the Next Generation of Faculty

Ann E. Austin, Donald H. Wulff

Improving graduate education, and specifically, strengthening the preparation process for future faculty, has become a significant issue in higher education, of importance to a wide-ranging group of stakeholders. In fact, the growing interest in graduate education and the preparation of the future professoriate has been evident over the past decade and a half in an array of conferences, institutional programs, initiatives by professional organizations, funded research, and print and Web material. A quick review of such recent literature, programs, and research shows that, clearly, there is a movement afoot to address the challenges of preparing the next generation of faculty.

This volume provides a summary and synthesis of key information about this movement. Although there are valuable resources in the research literature and publications describing the activities of various associations, institutions, and organizations, there has been no comprehensive effort to bring those pieces together. This volume fills that gap by gathering in one place ideas from major research studies and action projects that have focused, over the past dozen years or so, on improving graduate education and preparing the future professoriate.

This chapter first examines factors that together have contributed to the growing interest in improving graduate education. Employers, leaders of foundations and government agencies, graduate deans, and doctoral students have added their voices to a call for examining the quality of the graduate experience and its success in preparing students for their future roles as professionals. Then, the chapter turns to the specific interest of this book-graduate education as preparation for an academic career. We make a case for why it is critical at this moment in the history of American higher education to ensure that graduate education is appropriately preparing students who are pursuing paths to the professoriate. In this chapter, we hope to convince readers of the importance of considering strategies for enriching the preparation of future faculty.

Factors Contributing to Interest in Improving Graduate Education

We have identified four of the main factors contributing to the increased recent focus on graduate education: the teaching assistant role, the academic labor market, graduate student attrition rates, and researchers' interest in expanding conceptions of faculty career stages.

The Teaching Assistant Role

Although interest in strengthening graduate education as preparation for a faculty career has gained considerable momentum in the past two decades, signs of concern appeared much earlier. After World War II, when universities increased their emphasis on research productivity and scientific excellence, concerns emerged about both the amount of instruction left to teaching assistants, particularly in introductory courses, and the preparation of teaching assistants for providing quality education when their own education was so heavily focused on preparing them as top-flight researchers. Chase (1970) captured this concern about teaching assistants: "There is a growing awareness-spreading from within academia to interested groups outside-that there are many serious problems associated with the utilization of graduate teaching assistants in contemporary American higher education" (p. 2). Another comment during this period was even more succinct: "It is sometimes wryly noted that college teaching is the only profession requiring no formal training of its practitioners" (Nowlis, Clark, & Rock, 1968, p. iii).

In the spirit of these remarks, over the past two decades the public at large has expressed greater interest in the nature and quality of the undergraduate learning experience as well as the outcomes of that experience. Such public interest, evident in newspapers and legislatures, has contributed to growing attention on the part of university administrators to the quality of teaching provided by teaching assistants who work with large numbers of undergraduate classes.

In response to such concerns, beginning in the 1970s and continuing into the 1980s and 1990s, universities developed increasingly credible programs for preparing graduate students to teach. Originally, such programs focused primarily on initial training designed to prepare those graduate students who had immediate roles as teaching assistants (TAs). Then, over time, many institutions and departments began providing graduate teaching assistants with ongoing training that reflected the recognition that they needed different kinds of information and preparation at different times in their development as teachers.

As faculty developers and TA supervisors gave more attention to preparing teaching assistants, The Pew Charitable Trusts helped build a cross-institutional dialogue about these issues by sponsoring several national conferences on the training and employment of teaching assistants, the first occurring in 1986. Some of these conferences resulted in published proceedings (Chism & Warner, 1987; Lewis, 1993; Nyquist, Abbott, Wulff, & Sprague, 1991). During that same period, the Journal of Graduate Teaching Assistant Development, published by New Forums Press, was initiated and complete volumes were written specifically on the issues of TA preparation (for example, Allen & Rueter, 1990; Andrews, 1985; Marincovich, Prostko, & Stout, 1998; Nyquist, Abbott, & Wulff, 1989; Nyquist & Wulff, 1996). Simultaneously, various researchers (among them, Abbott, Wulff, & Szego, 1989; Darling & Dewey, 1989; Nyquist & Sprague, 1992, 1998; Sprague & Nyquist, 1989, 1991; Staton & Darling, 1989) also turned their attention to questions of teaching assistant development, thus contributing to an emerging research base to guide professional practice.

The network of faculty developers, TA supervisors and trainers, foundation leaders, and researchers interested in teaching assistant training and development has been a major factor in the movement to improve the graduate experience, and specifically to prepare graduate students appropriately as future faculty. Indeed, once institutions had initial and ongoing training for TAs in place, they had a base from which to expand efforts to prepare graduate students for their future careers as teachers, not only for their immediate assignments as TAs. In addition, teaching assistant conferences that were held every other year in the late 1980s and early 1990s are now incorporated into discussions and presentations about TA development specifically and preparing future faculty more broadly at many disciplinary and professional conferences.

Labor Market Issues

Besides the growing interest in TA preparation on many campuses, job market issues also emerged as a factor in graduate education. Interest in critiquing and reforming graduate education in the 1990s was likely stimulated by observations, grounded in the tight academic labor market of the 1980s and 1990s, that many doctoral graduates were not being hired into faculty positions. Faculty members and administrative leaders in universities, as well as leaders of scholarly associations and national agencies and foundations, considered what skills and abilities graduate students should master and what kinds of positions they should be prepared to take. Several important reports contributed to an emerging national discussion among relevant stakeholders-including both employers and leaders of government agencies, higher education associations, and foundations-with interests in graduate education. In particular, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy published what was called the "COSEPUP Report" (1995), the Association of American Universities published the report of the Committee on Graduate Education (1998), and the National Science Board published a report on science and engineering graduate and postdoctoral education (1997). Then, in 2000, as part of the Re-envisioning the Ph.D. Project sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Nyquist and Woodford published their report entitled Re-envisioning the Ph.D.: What Concerns Do We Have? This report was based on their interviews with stakeholders involved in graduate education, including employers of recent Ph.D. graduates.

The concern was evident throughout these various reports that graduate education in its traditional form was not adequately fulfilling its responsibility to employers, not fully adapting to changing national needs, and not sufficiently preparing graduate students for the world in which they would work. Among the key themes that emerged in a number of the reports were calls for better preparation of graduate students for a range of professional career possibilities (both academic and other), more interdisciplinary work in graduate study, the inclusion of a greater diversity of students, and attention to the length of time required to complete doctoral work. In a frequently quoted sentence in their report entitled At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Doctoral Students Reveal About Doctoral Education, Golde and Dore (2001) summarized the results of their quantitative research on graduate students' views of their experience: "The data from this study show that in today's doctoral programs, there is a three-way mismatch between student goals, training, and actual careers" (p. 5). Nyquist, Austin, Sprague, and Wulff (2001) reached a similar conclusion in their qualitative study that followed graduate students over four years: "Graduate education does not match the needs and demands of the changing academy and broader society" (p. 5).

Graduate Student Attrition Rates

Another important issue fueling attention to what happens during graduate education has been the attrition rate from graduate school. Based on a thorough review of research, Lovitts (2001) noted that, since the early 1960s, the rate of attrition from doctoral programs in the United States has been estimated consistently at approximately 50 percent. Furthermore, she explained, the rate of attrition for women, while difficult to pin down, is even higher than the overall rate. Not surprisingly, such a high rate concerns academic leaders as well as others interested in the quality and impact of graduate education. Among the questions that arise are why students leave and whether the graduate experience could be changed in ways that would affect the attrition rate. In particular, higher education leaders, faculty, and researchers worry whether graduate students who are especially promising as future professors are choosing to stay or leave.

In response to such concerns and questions, researchers as well as deans and administrators in graduate programs are seeking ways to understand and address the high rate of student attrition. For example, Lovitts (2001) conducted a fascinating study that explored the reasons individuals depart from graduate school. A summary of some of the findings from that study is provided in Chapter Six. Noting such research on graduate attrition, Karen Klomparens, dean of the graduate school at Michigan State University and one of the authors in this volume, has focused on the conflicts experienced by graduate students that seem to arise fairly regularly and may contribute to decisions to leave. As illustrated by these authors who contributed to this volume, as the 1990s continued, concerns about dropout and its sources constituted one important factor contributing to the growing interest in research and programs designed to help improve the graduate experience.

Expanding Conceptions of Faculty Career Stages

The fourth factor pushing educators to reassess what was being done in graduate education was the increasing recognition of the graduate experience as a significant stage in preparation for a faculty career. Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing to the present, researchers of faculty work were realizing that the faculty career begins with the socialization process that occurs during the graduate experience. Previously, research on faculty development had conceptualized the start of the academic career as the first academic appointment. Influenced by theoretical literature on socialization, researchers such as Anderson and Seashore Louis (1991), Austin (2002a), Bess (1978), Golde and Dore (2001), Tierney and Rhoads (1994), and Weidman, Twale, and Stein (2001) turned to examination of the graduate experience as the initial career stage. Some of the research highlighted in this volume resulted in conclusions pertaining specifically to the role of graduate education as a socialization process. Of particular importance, some of this research on how graduate education functions as an initial career stage and a socialization experience has identified concerns that graduate students themselves have about the doctoral experience. Thus, a significant body of work is now available that provides theoretical perspectives and research-based findings to inform dialogues about graduate education, efforts to improve its quality, and strategies to prepare future faculty more effectively.

In sum, a number of reasons and factors percolated decades ago, gained momentum throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and continue into the present to make the issue of the quality of graduate education, and ideas to improve or reform it, topics of considerable interest to institutional administrators, faculty members, association and foundation leaders, employers, researchers, and graduate students themselves. Calls for reform in graduate education are coming from many directions.

Graduate Education as Preparation for Academic Careers

Although graduate education prepares students for many career options, this book focuses specifically on graduate education as preparation for academic careers. The preparation of the faculty of the future is one of the most significant responsibilities of universities, requiring the best efforts of faculty members and academic leaders. Higher education in the United States is undergoing major change, often described in terms such as "revolution," "reshaping," and "cultural change," making this responsibility particularly challenging. As Yolanda Moses, former president of the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) observed, the American higher education system is "in the throes of major transformational change" (2001, p. 7).

New faculty today are entering an academic workplace that is changing rapidly and dramatically. The forces affecting higher education are well-known: public skepticism and demands for accountability, the need for fiscal constraint, increasing public expectations for institutional involvement in economic development, the rise of the information society and new technologies, the increasing diversity of students, new kinds of educational institutions, and increasing emphasis on learning outcomes. Because of these pressures on higher education institutions and the changes within them, faculty members must be prepared with a range of abilities and skills. Although faculty members have long needed a number of these abilities and skills, the next generation of faculty must expand their preparation to include new areas of expertise in the context of the changes occurring in higher education (Austin, 2002b).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Paths to the Professoriateby Donald H. Wulff Ann E. Austin Copyright © 2004 by Donald H. Wulff. Excerpted by permission.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0787966347
• ISBN 13: 9780787966348
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 340