Professors as Clients for Instructional Development

Abstract

Although there is a large amount of activity and a sizeable literature in the area of instructional development, there has been relatively little research on faculty members, the clientele for improvement efforts. This paper highlights some characteristics of professors that are relevant to improvement activities. Professors are interested in, value, and work on their teaching; they think they teach rather well. However, they demonstrate a lack of sophistication in talking about teaching and the development of instruction. They focus primarily upon content rather than design or methodology. Teachers' views of what should be done to enhance instruction are discussed and contrasted with those of faculty developers. One conclusion is that faculty developers and faculty members may have very different views on how to go about improving instruction.

Scholarly Dimensions of Academics' Beliefs about Engineering Education

“…Rather, previous studies in higher education have treated beliefs about teaching generically, rather than focusing on the content-speci® city of teachers' beliefs or examining their beliefs about their disciplines or professions and the teaching`of their ® elds' (Fox, 1983;Menges & Rando, 1989 Prosser et al, 1994;Trigwell et al, 1994;Smith & Geis, 1996). In contrast, at the primary and secondary levels, there has been more attention paid to the disciplinary aspects of teachers' knowledge and beliefs (Calderhead, 1996;Shulman & Quinlan, 1996).…”

“…This tendency can create a gulf between the`educationalese' of higher education researchers and faculty development professionals and academics'`home' discipline. Many researchoriented (or practice-oriented) academics may avoid decontextualized discussions about generic teaching theories, strategies or approaches because they perceive them to be irrelevant to their core work (Jenkins, 1996;Smith & Geis, 1996). If faculty development professionals use academics' deep knowledge and interest in the disciplines as a legitimate starting point for instructional improvement programs, faculty who consider educational theory`irrelevant' might become more interested in participating.…”

Professional Development in Higher Education

“…But teaching to a high level of learning is often a struggle, because educators are frequently not knowledgeable about a variety of teaching strategies (Smith and Geis, 1996). In conjunction with this lack of adequate preparation in education, educators play multiple roles-teaching, research, and service-that pull at the little time they have to invest in their own learning (Davis, 1993).…”

15: Instructional Development: Relationships to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

“…Several writers have discussed models of, or the processes involved in, faculty or instructional development (Caffarella & Zinn, 1999;Emery, 1997;Licklider, Schnelker, & Fulton, 1997;Middendorf, 1998;Paulsen & Feldman, 1995;Robertson, 1999;Smith & Geis, 1996;Weimer, 1990). In one of the earliest of these, the authors describe a fivestep process focusing on individual instructors: 1) developing instructional awareness, 2) gathering information, 3) making choices about changes, 4) implementing the alterations, and 5) assessing the alterations.…”