The Determination of Faculty Members’ Perceptions and Knowledge of the Teacher-Scholar Model at a Primarily Teaching Institution

Louis S Nadelson,Robin Calland,Elizabeth Sharp,Kristin Santos,Carlos Baldo,Carmine R Grieco,Ed Bonan-Hamada,Nancy Banman,Suzanne Owens,Christine Noel

doi:10.5296/ire.v7i1.13921

Abstract

The teacher-scholar model was created in recognition of the expectations that university faculty members will engage in both high-quality teaching and scholarship. The adoption of the teacher-scholar model at universities has been mixed. Our exploratory case study investigation took place at a primarily teaching university in which the model was recently embraced. We wanted to empirically document the faculty members’ knowledge, perceptions, preparation, and engagement in the teacher-scholar model. Our results indicate that the faculty members held constrained levels of knowledge of the model, were neutral in their perceptions of model, had a range of preparation to productively engage in the model, and they tended to take an array of approaches for engaging in the model. We also found positive relationships among perceptions of the teacher-scholar model, knowledge of the model, faculty member engagement in scholarship, and the duration of employment in higher education. Our findings suggest that there is a need for long-term professional development focused on the teacher-scholar model at universities where the model is being adopted.

Highlights

Faculty members at universities are commonly expected to divide their workload between scholarship, teaching, and service
We found that the more the faculty members have engaged in scholarship and had been in higher education longer were more likely to hold positive perceptions of the model and had higher levels of knowledge of the teacher-scholar model
We found very few responses that indicated that the faculty members held a comprehensive view of scholarship, as few could share more than just a couple of the elements that define scholarship

Summary

Introduction

Faculty members at universities are commonly expected to divide their workload between scholarship, teaching, and service. Dedication to all of these facets is necessary to achieve the mission of universities to educate, explore, and provide support to the academic community Both teaching-intensive and research-intensive institutions are imbalanced in their attention to the three primary facets of the university mission. The faculty members at universities focused on research or scholarship are typically hired because they are active and successful scholars. The expectation for research focused faculty members is that they be highly productive and widely recognized scholars and adequate at teaching. To meet all aspects of the university mission at research focused universities typically requires the faculty members to be effortful in shifting some of their attention from scholarship to focus more on teaching and student learning. Models have been created to enhance the scholarly activities of faculty members at PUIs such as the teacher-scholar model (Boyer, 1990)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion