The Academic Profession in Canada: Perceptions of Canadian University Faculty about Research and Teaching

Abstract

Previous scholarly attention to the experiences of faculty members has emphasized the contexts of US institutions, with minimal attention to the experiences of faculty members at Canadian universities. This paper presents the findings of the Canadian component of an international survey that was administered in 19 different jurisdictions to understand the perceptions of faculty members about the nature and scope of changes to academic work. As such, the paper explores the perceptions on research and teaching of full-time faculty members affiliated with Canadian universities. Overall, faculty members revealed that Canadian universities have strong, engaging, and vibrant research and teaching environments, yet there are also areas for improvement. Specifically, findings showed that faculty members perceived considerable autonomy with respect to research activities, despite the increasing need to secure external funding for research. Also, faculty expressed substantial commitment to teaching undergraduate students but a lack of clarity about some issues related to graduate teaching. The survey results provide an important baseline for future studies of Canadian universities and the working conditions of the professoriate in a time of rapid institutional and professional change.

The Post-tenure Apex: Unrewarding, Unproductive, Unhappy. Is Continuing Learning a Remedy for Mid-Career Misery?

“…Broadly, case study research was selected because it involves the in-depth study of one or more instances of a phenomenon in its real-life context that reflects the perspective of the participants involved in the phenomenon in a bounded context (Gall, Gall & Borg, 2006). The phenomenon being explored in this study was continuing education for experienced academics situated in a large Canadian medical doctoral university, which is classified as a research-intensive university in Canada (Gopaul, Jones, Weinrib, Metcalfe, Fisher, Gingras, & Rubenson, 2016). While the institution selected for this study can be considered as representative of other large, publicly funded, research intensive universities in North America, the rationale for collecting data from this particular university was ease of access to the participants, as well as access to continuing education offerings through the institution's teaching centre.…”

The Academic Profession in Canada

“…A total of 2,968 valid surveys (Table 2) were received, in both French (n=725) and English (n=2243), a response rate of 9.4%. providing a picture of the professoriate in a global context (Gopaul et al, 2016;Jones, Gopaul, et al, 2014;Jones, Weinrib, et al, 2012;Metcalfe, 2008;Metcalfe et al, 2016;Metcalfe & Padilla-González, 2013). (Saleh & Bista, 2017).…”

“…A mismatch between the expectations and the realities of faculty careers is frequently reported, with students identifying a disconnect between their training and their subsequent academic role (Anderson & Swazey, 1998;Austin, 2002;Golde & Dore, 2001). Scholarly activity within doctoral programs involves completing a dissertation and writing up publications, in preparation for faculty roles; however, although writing and publishing research is a major component, over 60% of faculty time is spent teaching, more than all other scholarly activity (Gopaul et al, 2016). Yet, many doctoral programs that are intended to be preparation for an academic career (Anderson, 2019;Austin, Jefferson 2002) offer little in the way of formal training in pedagogy (Altbach, 2007).…”

“…Doctoral students commonly report insufficient support from faculty and inadequate mentoring (Austin, 2002;Peltonen et al, 2017), including the necessity to "compete for faculty time and Brock Education 30 (2) attention" (Anderson & Swazey, 1998, p. 8). Reporting on the CAP survey, Gopaul et al (2016) found that just 18% of faculty described having institutionally mandated, regulatory mechanisms for the supervision of graduate students.…”

“…It appears that Canada is not immune to this issue; just 29% of respondents indicated receiving training in instructional skills or learning about teaching methods during their doctoral studies, which supports findings from previous research in which doctoral students reported feeling underprepared for the teaching element of the scholarly role (Walker et al, 2008). Despite the infrequency of formal training in pedagogy, research shows that teaching and related activities encompass the bulk of professorial activity (Gopaul et al, 2016).…”