Scholarship in the professoriate: A comparative study of official work loads and perceptions of work loads among faculty in six academic disciplines in selected state colleges and universities.

摘要

Faculty members in higher education settings are involved in a number of different activities which constitute workloads: teaching, research, institutional and community service. Because of intangible structures of most faculty workdays, there have been difficulties in comparing disciplines. This differing structure of time and assignments has eluded standardization and quantification.; University faculty members sense that differences exist in faculty workloads. The purpose of this study was to find: (a) to what degree faculty perceptions of workloads--outside and inside the classroom--were consistent with official ones and (b) to determine how workloads compare across disciplines and universities.; Survey research methodology was used to obtain estimates about the population of interest. A modified systematic sampling technique was used to select 8 comprehensive institutions. Six academic disciplines were chosen from each institution included in the study: (1) Fine Arts, (2) English, (3) Business, (4) Teacher Education, (5) Psychology, and (6) Sciences. A total of 702 surveys were mailed to faculty with a 39% usable response rate. Modified surveys from 8 institutional research directors supplemented the data obtained from the entire sample. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSSx) was used to analyze the close-ended responses. Open-ended responses were analyzed using content analysis using themes as organizing units.; The responses from the participants and from institutional research directors indicated there is considerable difference in some official workloads. Also, differences between disciplines were found when faculty perceptions were analyzed. Further, there is reason to believe that excessive workloads negatively impact the quality of teaching and faculty morale.; Recommendations include: (1) workloads of faculty should be equalized across disciplines within each university, and (2)faculty workloads should be reduced to enhance teaching quality. Continuing investigations of the workload issue of university and college faculty are warranted due to the significant influence which workload has had on faculty members and their teaching.