Research Faculty Professional Identity and Teaching Professional Development in a Research I University: An Interview Study

• In Event: Teacher Identity and Motivation: Concepts, Research Designs, and Empirical Examples

Abstract

Objectives
Increased emphasis on teaching quality and advancing instructional technologies are continuously changing the nature of faculty members’ jobs and enhancing the tension between research and teaching in the faculty member’s professional identity (PI). Since PI shapes interpretations of experiences, decision-making, and action, gaining insight into how faculty members in research universities form their professional identities could inform interventions intended to promote adaptation and success to the increasingly dynamic and demanding research faculty role. The objective of the current study was to investigate the PI processes of research faculty members who participated in a teaching professional development (PD) program.

Theoretical Framework
We employed the Dynamic Systems Model of Role-Identity (DSMRI) (Kaplan, Garner & Semo, 2015), described in the introductory presentation to this session, as the theoretical framework to guide this study.

Methods and Data
A multiple case study approach (Yin, 2009) was applied with a purposive sample (Creswell, 2009) of eight faculty members from a large, urban, research university, who differed in discipline (medicine, communications, computer science, English, law, environmental science, horticulture, architecture, and political science), gender (6 females, 2 males), and years of teaching experience (7 – 30 years). Participants were interviewed using a narrative approach (Weiss, 1994), following their participation in an elective teacher PD. Two researchers independently coded the interviews along the DSMRI components and their relations, compared interpretations, discussed discrepancies, wrote case summaries, and conducted case comparisons to arrive at insight regarding the faculty’s PI.

Findings
Case comparisons indicated similarities in the professors’ beliefs, purposes and goals, and action possibilities, yet also differences in emphases within these three components. All participants expressed student-centered beliefs about learning and teaching. However, each professor highlighted different aspects of these beliefs (e.g., importance of study skills, students learning from each other). Similarly, all the participants shared the constructivist purpose of making learning relevant, yet emphasized somewhat different goals within this purpose (e.g., engaging students from different backgrounds vs. moving students along developmental stages). Interestingly, the eight professors shared few dimensions of their self-perceptions (e.g., one struggled to relate to examples outside of her discipline, another was anxious about particular strategies). These variations might explain some differences in instructional decision-making among the eight participants.

Scholarly Significance
Given the increasing emphasis on quality of teaching in higher education, it is crucial to gain a better understanding of how faculty members make instructional choices in the classroom. This study supports the use of a systems model to capture the dynamic and interrelated nature of the components that comprise research faculty members’ PI. Viewing PI as a system of interrelated psychological processes addresses some challenges highlighted in the small body of faculty identity literature, and serves as a potential guide for future research and the design of PD programs for research faculty.

Authors

• Annette Roche Ponnock, Temple University

• Jessica Mansbach, Michigan State University

• Melissa St. Pierre, Community College of Philadelphia