Surviving Higher Learning: Microinvalidations of Black Junior Faculty in Higher Education

The issue of aging faculty in higher education

This paper presents a critical overview of the sociological research on Black women's experiences as graduate students and faculty in higher education, with a focus on research since 1995. In interaction with the social inequalities of race and class, how are Black women faculty and graduate student’s experiences with sexism, racism, and classism reproduced within the institution of higher education? What kinds of policies have been implemented to address these problems? What changes, if any, have there been in the experiences of black women faculty and graduate students over time? How do Black women scholars fare in relation to their white and male counterparts in higher education? What suggestions do findings provide toward more equitable work experiences for Black women faculty and graduate students in higher education?

Background: With the global pandemic, higher education has experienced unparalleled changes with abrupt transitions to remote and online learning. Faculty are working to provide continuity of teaching and support to students whose lives have been disrupted; therefore, faculty are finding themselves managing distressed students with a wide range of issues, while also managing their own intrapersonal stress. Consequently, faculty may experience feelings of being psychologically overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted.Aim: This article informs faculty in higher education on the concept of compassion fatigue along with the symptoms, warning signs, and risk factors. In addition, protective factors, including self-care plans and coping strategies are addressed.Methods: A comprehensive review of the literature on compassion fatigue was conducted including the application of the construct to teaching and education. The literature review illuminates the use of compassion fatigue, originating from the scientific disciplines of counseling and traumatology, within an emerging line of research findings occurring amongst educators prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.Results: The literature demonstrates that compassion fatigue as a prospective, intrapersonal condition may potentially affect some faculty in higher education, and the proposed conceptual application of the construct to teaching and education can assist with acknowledging and understanding an important aspect of faculty mental health.Conclusions: Given the crisis surrounding the pandemic, it's essential for faculty to be aware of compassion fatigue in order to mitigate potential intrapersonal psychological and emotional consequences. Elucidating the symptoms and implications of compassion fatigue for faculty in higher education is part of a broader, overlooked issue on faculty mental health and wellness.

After a half decade of struggle since the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., what is the current state of diversity among faculty in higher education? Have the numbers of diverse faculty increased? Do diverse faculty members feel accepted and successful? How are diverse faculty members faring in their various roles in higher education? The special issue editors have completed the pilot study of a larger survey that queries the state of diverse faculty in higher education in the United States. Investigation included the areas of belonging (if and how a sense of belonging is developed), professional respect (how colleagues regard achievements), and the role of cultural broker (if and how functioning as a cultural broker influences peers, administrators, and/or diverse students). In addition to the results of the preliminary survey reported by the survey authors, diverse faculty members, both foreign-born and native-born, from various universities in the U. S. have added their personal experiences of struggle and triumph in the field of higher education.

Introduction: Workplace well-being is essential for professionals’ health and satisfaction, influencing organizational success. Among lecturers, including nursing faculty in higher education, high demands and publication pressure compromise well-being, with high levels of emotional exhaustion identified. Promoting well-being is crucial for student success, professional performance, and healthy academic environments. Therefore, it is essential for institutions to integrate development programs that include well-being promotion strategies, recognizing the workplace as a strategic setting for health and disease prevention, thereby improving teaching quality and professional satisfaction. Objectives: To map scientific evidence on the psychological well-being of higher education faculty. Methodology: Scoping review protocol based on Joanna Briggs Institute and PRISMA-ScR®. Research conducted in August 2025 using the descriptors “psychological well-being", “mental health”, “emotional well-being", “life satisfaction”, “burnout”, “stress”, “resilience”, “nursing faculty”, “nursing professors”, “nursing educators”, “academic staff”, “higher education”, “university” and “college” in MEDLINE Complete® (via PubMed®), SCOPUS®, CINAHL Complete®, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews®, MedicLatina® (via EBSCOhost®), and Consensus®. Studies on the psychological well-being of nursing faculty in higher education, in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, available in free full text, were considered. Selection will be done in Rayyan® by two independent reviewers, with a third reviewer resolving disagreements. Data will be organized in tables by the authors. Registered in Open Science Framework® (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/N7YHP). Conclusion: This scoping review will map the available evidence on the psychological well-being of nursing faculty in higher education, highlighting key constructs, risk and protective factors, and knowledge gaps to support future research and institutional strategies.

Progress toward equitable gender representation among faculty in higher education has been “glacial” since the early 1970s (Glazer-Raymo, 1999; Lomperis, 1990; Trower & Chait, 2002). Women, who now make up a majority of undergraduate degree earners and approximately 46% of Ph.D. earners nationwide (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2003), rarely make up more than 30% of faculty at Research Extensive universities. Although the total number of tenure-track women faculty in higher education has increased steadily for the past 35 years, this increase and women’s advancement through faculty ranks are described as excruciatingly slow (Valian, 1999).

In the field of international human resource management, a widely held assumption identifies expatriation as a completely enriching experience which provides employees with knowledge of high value and contributes to enhancing general management capacity [ 24 ]. This research investigates the effect of expatriation on knowledge transfer as a driver for innovation and performance. The study uses the case of international faculty in a higher education institution to shed light on the interplay between sharing international experiences, facilitating knowledge transfer, and generating value. Following a thorough literature review, research on knowledge transfer processes within the education sector remains limited. We still have little guidance on the mechanisms enabling knowledge transfer inside universities, particularly when promoting faculty mobility or hiring international faculty and researchers. This research adopts a single case study method while using Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, an international higher education institution, as a context of investigation. The study involved international faculty from the schools of engineering, business, and humanities and also Moroccan faculty who received their education abroad to explore the processes of experience and knowledge sharing among diverse workforce and how such processes could lead to creating a space for knowledge transfer that enables in turn better innovation and performance. The findings of this research show the limited knowledge transfer dynamics inside internationally-oriented higher education institutions and demonstrate the importance of adopting human resource development practices as facilitating mechanisms to support knowledge transfer while involving and benefitting various stakeholders. The study suggests different developmental venues for universities to support knowledge transfer from international faculty including teamwork, training and faculty orientation, collaborative research projects, resources and incentives, and industry-oriented educational and consulting programs. This research has the potential to lay the foundations of a theoretical framework integrating knowledge transfer and value generation dynamics within the context of higher education.

This study was undertaken to determine the effects of stress on faculty in higher education teaching online classes. Few studies have been conducted to examine the impact of stress on faculty in online higher education. An anonymous survey of faculty was conducted at an online institution of higher learning to determine how prevalent stress was in their jobs, how stress impacted performance and morale, and what the symptoms were. The findings showed 67.6% of the 100 participants who completed the survey identified either a very high or high level of stress. The biggest stressors included time constraints, technical issues, and large class sizes. The top symptoms identified included sleep disturbances, impatience, tense, tight muscles, irritability, and the feeling of being overwhelmed. Recommendations were made to alleviate stress including physical activity, constructive self-talk, relaxation exercises, meditation, networking, quick and effective coping skills, and techniques for saying “no.” A certain amount of stress is desirable, but when stress is not addressed, it can lead to burnout, poor performance, and low morale.

This study investigates how eight higher education (HE) faculties located in Japan perceive and implement Global Citizenship Education (GCE) as a critically oriented pedagogy in the online course ‘Perspectives on Global Citizenship Education’. The main instruments of the study were questionnaires and interviews. The data collected were scrutinised with the use of the grounded theory and constant comparative method. Four notions of GCE surfaced from the data. According to the HE faculty, a critically oriented GCE should: (a) develop students’ empathetic identification, (b) cultivate students’ critical agency, (c) foster students’ self-confidence and inclusive mindset and (d) encourage students’ community participation. Building on the findings, this article concludes by advancing a proposal for a critical pedagogical framework for GCE online teaching and learning in Japanese HE.

Interprofessional collaboration in higher learning education is widely acclaimed as a critical prerequisite to achieving greater quality and coherence in the facilitation of teaching and learning. The COVID-19 pandemic not only presented higher education with challenges but also allowed all academics to rethink the assumptions about teaching and learning strategies that promote student engagement and academic success across the faculties. Interprofessional reflection is important because it provides opportunities for innovation and new teaching-learning strategies that meet the current climate of higher learning, which promotes student engagement and academic success. The aim is to explore and synthesise literature regarding effective teaching and learning strategies that encourage student engagement and academic success across faculties in higher education. Arksey and O'Malley's five-stage framework served as the basis for the scoping review adopted by the review. Three databases were searched for sources: CINHAL, Scopus, and Medline. Only English full-text written articles across various research designs published between 2016-2023 were part of the inclusion criteria for the review. As a result, four themes emerged: the use of technology as a teaching and learning modality, work-integrated learning for theory practice integration, university teacher-centric approach, and student-centric approach. In conclusion, across faculties, there is a focus on integrating technology in the teaching and learning process, using various pedagogies to meet the needs of different students. Moreover, there is a need to encourage educators to adopt a growth mindset, involving students actively in the learning process. This approach will encourage students to develop critical thinking, become self-directed learners, and fully engage within their academic communities.

A growing number of first-generation undocu/DACAmented students are present on college campuses who come from various racial and ethnic groups. Research examining the educational experiences of first-generation undocu/DACAmented Black students has been largely absent despite their presence on college campuses. Universities are spaces that perpetuate epistemic injustice, yet how epistemic injustice impacts the lives of undocumented Black students is unexamined. This qualitative study explores how higher education faculty, staff, and administrators render undocumented Black students invisible as narrated through their stories. Findings suggest that undocumented Black students are hidden in plain sight and face identity-related challenges. This research sheds light on a population that is woefully understudied and alerts higher education and student affairs (HESA) faculty and professionals to the existence and realities of undocumented Black students.

Lesson study (LS) is a professional development practice that has mainly remained conducted by elementary, secondary, and preservice schoolteachers. However, in recent years, different studies have explored its practice among higher education (HE) faculty members. This article presents the first systematic review on LS among HE faculty members. Twenty-one studies published until December 2019 were analyzed. Among others, findings regarding reveal that (a) most of these studies are of U.S. origin and of linguistic and mathematics disciplines; (b) few faculty members participated in these studies; (c) most LS-related references used are not contextualized in HE; (d) beneficial outcomes of LS in the design of the lessons, the participants’ pedagogical knowledge and the participants’ approach to teaching; (e) mixed results regarding the participants’ reflection and collaboration, and (f) less positive outcomes about organizational issues when conducting LS. I discuss these results and present future research lines and limitations of this study.

Higher education (HE) faculty are increasingly teaching online. For many faculty, this represents a new instructional mode that comes with its own set of challenges but also with new instructional possibilities. One challenge is identifying innovative and effective active learning methods that academically engage online students. Along with other benefits, students learn more with instruction that includes active learning opportunities rather than simply passively attending, whether learning face-to-face or online. Fortunately, HE faculty have at their disposal numerous technology tools to increase active learning in their synchronous, asynchronous, and hybrid online courses. This technology presents several active learning technologies organized under these online instructional methods: content presentations, game-based and gamification activities, peer collaboration, and multimedia. Mostly, the technologies reviewed are free or relatively low-cost and easy to use, with some available within typical HE learning management systems.

Mentoring junior faculty in higher education is often thought of as an easy task that every tenured facultymember and college administrator thinks they can effectively do. Most tenured faculty think they knowthe "tricks of the trade" because they have successfully gone through the process themselves. Mostadministrators also think they know what to do because they have seen or gained "insight" from viewingthe successful and unsuccessful tenure applicants over the last few years. This "lived experience" oftenured faculty and administrators, however, may not be the current "lived experience" of junior faculty inhigher education today.

The use of AI tools for academic content creation and research in higher education is a complex process influenced by a range of personal and environmental factors. This is true, despite potential advantages. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence behavioural intentions regarding the use and subsequent adoption among faculty in higher education. The UTAUT2 (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2) served as the underlying theory in this research. Along with the variables proposed in the UTAUT2 framework, which include performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value and habit, AI anxiety was introduced as a novel predictor variable in the research framework. The sample consisted of 376 faculty members from higher education institutions across India. A hybrid PLS (partial least squares) structural equation modelling and ANN (artificial neural network) approach was utilised in this research. The results of this study posited that performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, facilitating conditions, and price value have a significant and positive effect on attitude towards the adoption of artificial intelligence tools among faculty in higher education. Furthermore, a positive attitude towards artificial intelligence tools significantly influences behavioural intention. Additionally, the hybrid assessment using PLS-SEM and ANN demonstrated similarity in predicting behavioural intentions through performance expectancy & facilitating conditions. This study contributes to the growing literature on AI, specifically in higher education and managerial practice.