Assessing Faculty Perspectives on Rewards and Incentives for Community-Engaged Teaching, Research, and Scholarship: Findings from a Multi-National Exploratory Study
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Assessing Faculty Perspectives on Rewards and Incentives for Community-Engaged Teaching, Research, and Scholarship: Findings from a Multi-National Exploratory Study
1. Assessing Faculty Perspectives
on Rewards and Incentives for
Community-Engaged Teaching,
Research, and Scholarship:
Findings from a
Multi-national
Exploratory Study
Amy Newcomb Rowe, Talloires Network
Trang Vuong, Talloires Network and Hanoi Architectural University
IARSLCE Conference, November 18 2015
2. Presentation
1. The Problem and Gap
2. The Talloires Network
3. Survey: Method and Findings
4. Next Steps
5. Looking Forward
2
3. Carnegie Community Engagement Classification:
Do institutional policies for promotion and tenure
reward and incentivize CES?
How does the institution categorize CES?
How is CE related to the retention and success of
underserved students?
Our research aligns with these questions.
3
Why this Topic?
4. Problem
Engaged work is often discounted.
“reforms change the input to and process of
promotion and tenure, not the outcomes” (O’Meara,
2005)
moderate support (Nokes et al., 2013)
not enough support and even harm one’s profile
as a ‘proper’ academic; lip service as the rhetoric
of higher education policy (Watermeyer & Lewis, 2014;
Butt, 2015; Havergal, 2015).
4
5. Gap
Engaged scholars often expect greater
acknowledgement and support (Goldberg-Freeman et
al., 2010; Kennedy, Vogel, Goldberg-Freeman, Kass, & Farfel,
2009; Nyden, 2003)
Sparseness of literature on faculty perspectives
(Gelmon, Ryan, Blanchard, & Seifer, 2012)
Little information on faculty perspectives at non-U.S.
institutions is available for analysis
Existing: O’Meara, Eatman, & Petersen; Annette, 2010; Hartley,
Winter, Ii, Muirhead, & Harkavy, 2005; Muirhead & Graham,
2002; Muirhead & Woolcock, 2008; Favish & McMillan, 2009;
Smout, 2005; Hazelkorn & Ward, 2012; Saltmarsh, Giles, Ward, &
Buglione, 2009; Rice, 2006.
5
7. Who
Are
We?
Talloires Network, an international coalition
committed to strengthening the civic roles and
social responsibilities of higher education
350 universities and institutions in 75 countries.
7
8. Talloires Network Projects
Supporting Carnegie Classification with Campus
Engage, Ireland
Launching Faculty Support Grants in Africa
Contributing to changes in the global university
rankings assessment
Awarding prizes for global engagement
programs with the MacJannet Prize
Support Regional Network Leaders.
8
9. Multi-national Exploratory
Study: Pilot Survey
How do faculty members perceive the support of
their respective institutions for their engaged work,
in light of institutional policies, procedures and
practices?
9
10. Method
Study participants: 14 universities; 11 countries
Instrument: March 2015; Qualtrics, 17-item web-
based survey in English, French, and Spanish
Data collection: 38 respondents after 4 weeks
10
Respondents are considered “engaged faculty and staff”.
14. Diverse Respondents
Natural sciences (mathematics,
computer science, parasitology, agro-
ecology, neurophysiology, statistics…)
Social sciences and humanities
(sociology, psychology, theatre, culture,
economics…)
Professions (medicine, nursing,
dentistry, obstetrics and gynecology,
public health, education, management,
business, finance, marketing,
architecture, human resource,
entrepreneurship…).
14
15. Findings
Agree
“seen as innovators”
“involved in some of the university’s most interesting
work”
“widely respected for conducting research that
addresses important societal issues”
“often praised in their academic unit”
Disagree
“often relegated to marginalized roles”
“considered to be generally less productive”.
15
18. Statistic Tests
Null hypothesis: There is no relationship between
the demographic & background information of
respondents and their perception on rewards
and incentives for the engaged work
Criterion for rejecting: p < 0.05
18
19. Independent Variables:
1. Age (<40, 40-55. >55)
2. Gender
3. Region (Africa/Asia/Oceania/North America/South America)
4. Discipline (natural sciences/social sciences and
humanities/professions)
5. Title (teaching staff/administrators and researchers)
6. Institution type (public/private)
7. Work type (part time/full time)
19
20. Dependent Variables:
Opinions on
1. Statements about engaged faculty: No relationship
2. The greatest authority for determining rewards:
Potential relationships
3. The work that is most rewarded: Potential relationships
4. Work is considered most important: Potential
relationships
5. The existence of written policies: Potential
relationships.
20
21. Findings:
Potential relationships
Opinion on Influential Factor(s) p value
The greatest authority for
determining rewards
Work type (fulltime) 0.001**
The work that is most rewarded (only
significant relationships with
conducting research that leads to
publication)
Age (40 - 55) 0.001**
Gender (female) 0.000**
Discipline
(professions)
0.01
Title (teaching) 0.000**
Work is considered most important
(about raising the profile and/or
rankings of the university)
Institution type
(public)
0.042
21
22. 22Opinion on Influential Factor(s) p value
Existence of policies that reward
research that has societal impact
Region (Africa, South
America)
0.021
Discipline
(professions)
0.18
Work type (fulltime) 0.000**
Existence of policies that reward
teaching students to be active
citizens
Age (40 - 55) 0.23
Gender (female) 0.028
Discipline
(professions)
0.009**
Title (teaching) 0.015
Work type (fulltime) 0.020
Existence of policies that reward
public service beyond the institution
Age (40 - 55) 0.44
**: <0.01
23. Discussion
Nuances in language and culture in how
engaged scholarship is defined
A set of universal factors regarding
perceptions of and rewards for engaged
scholarship that transcend institutional and
cultural boundaries.
23
24. Discussion
Next generation of faculty approaches
engagement with a strong connection to the work
of diversity on campus.
24
25. Next Steps
1. Launch an effort of collecting the existing
policies from participating institutions and the
Talloires Network membership
2. Draft case studies
3. Draft second survey with specific questions
4. Learn how policies are implemented.
25
26. Looking Forward
What strategies or questions can we focus on for
next global faculty survey?
Recommend possible case studies for further
research?
Recommend contacts of engaged faculty at
non-U.S. institutions that would like to participate
in future studies?
26
The CCEC working group recently revised the 2015 application to include such questions as:...
Engaged work is often discounted and judged to be neither as “scholarly” nor as “rigorous” as more traditional forms of discipline-based scholarship.
We know from O’Meara’s research that “chances for individual success stay the same despite formal policy reforms, according to surveyed Chief Academic Officers.”
We also know from Kathleen Nokes and others, that a US-based survey with 59 faculty from 37 institutions received awards and moderate support for their work.
Another study of qualitative interviews with 40 early and mid-career scholars known for their engaged work from universities in the U.K, found that most complained about the
undesirable side-effects of engaged work;
the shortage of institutional acknowledgement, interest, incentives, and rewards;
the rareness of promotion; and
the fact that public engagement sometimes receives hollow words…
There is a huge gap between expectations of the engaged faculty and research about their perspective.
Also, there is gap between US and non-US resources: A number of scholars are observing faculty perceptions in western systems with an intense concentration on the U.S., but literature about the same topic on the international scale, particularly in the Global South, is not well-documented or available for analysis.
There is literature on higher education policies, institutional perspectives and programs, reward systems, faculty engagement, and faculty roles, yet very little on their perceptions at non-U.S. institutions.
Annette focuses exclusively on institutional perspective on promoting community engagement in higher education in the U.K
Looking at Australian higher education, Muirhead et al uses an international lens to compare policy programs and make suggestions to increase university community engagement
Favish from University of Cape Town focuses exclusively on South Africa higher education policy, and offers a comprehensive insider’s take on the structure of the South African faculty reward system and the rapid changes that have taken place there since the end of apartheid
Ward engages in a typological examination of faculty engagement and extends her analysis to include Irish institutions and higher education policy in the E.U.
Examining Athens, Berlin and Los Angeles, R. Eugene Rice advocates for the expansion of the role of faculty to include civic engagement and supports restructuring systems to reflect this
All in all, most writing points to national contexts and institutional policies related to engaged work, and some scrutinize the faculty role, but none specify the faculty attitude.
The resources and literature review often concentrate on the Global North while the Global South is obviously still a fertile realm about community-engaged scholarship for researchers to dig deeper.
A network of networks, the TN is the largest international network focused particularly on university community engagement.
The TN, currently based at Tufts University, was established by a group of 29 presidents, vice-chancellors, and rectors in September 2005. In Talloires, France, they drafted and co-signed the Talloires Declaration on the Civic Roles and Social Responsibilities of Higher Education, and launched a network to support collaborative action. Today, it has 350 universities and institutions in 75 countries across all the continents.
Programs that directly participated in the pilot survey were selected based on their on-going participation and interaction with members of the network, and who are recipients of Talloires Network research and award programs. Thus, all respondents of our survey are considered engaged faculty members at their institutions. The three-year programs include: the Youth Economic Participation Initiative and the Regional Perspectives on University Civic Engagement.
Other Talloires Network programs that play a role in action research on faculty rewards and incentives, but did not participate in the pilot survey, are the University Education for Transformative Leadership in Africa Faculty Support Grants, and the Carnegie Classification pilot project with Campus Engage, Ireland, both launched in 2015.
In order to examine the problem of discounted engaged work and bridge the gap of information at non-U.S institutions, TN conducted a pilot faculty survey on a multinational scale.
Base on the theoretical foundation such as the work of O&apos;Meara (2006) and others in the described LR, our broad question of the survey is…
We defined engaged work as teaching, research and scholarship, such as service learning, community-based learning, volunteerism, applied research, and participatory action research.
(This definition is not identical to the one of New England Resource Center for Higher Education, but the meaning is similar and consistent.)
We, the TN staff, worked with liaisons /lee-ey-zawnz/ as key contacts at 14 member universities currently participating in our two continuous programmatic research in addition to the this faculty survey. (Youth Economic Development Initiative and Regional Perspectives on University Civic Engagement)
We asked each 14 liaison to provide the names and contacts of four engaged faculty members at their institution. Criteria for identifying the faculty members included:
mix of tenure /ten-yer/ track, pre-tenure and non-tenure track instructors;
even distribution of new and seasoned instructors,
male and female,
racial, ethnic and religious /ri-lij-uhs/ diversity;
and a selection from different disciplines.
2. We’re grateful to Dr. Carol Carrier and Dr. Andrew Furco (University of Minnesota /min-uh-soh-tuh/) and Dr. Lorlene Hoyt (Tufts University) for contributing to the creation and reviewing of the survey instrument in the preparation time in early January 2015. After peer review edits, we launched the official pilot survey in March 2015.
We used Qualtrics to create a 17-item web-based survey, and we had 3 versions in E, F, and S. A sample of E version can be found in the appendix of our paper.
We chose diverse types of questions:
mostly open-ended for background information,
multiple-choice and rank order for opinions about incentives and rewards,
and matrix table (Likert scale) for scales of agreement with statements about engaged faculty.
3. This diagram shows how our survey was distributed and then how data were collected. Most, if not all, respondents are considered engaged scholars.
Although the sample size is small, we did achieved a diverse pool.
The respondents come from various regions of the world: from the Global North (U.S. and Australia) - that is well-cited in literature - to the Global South (Burkina Faso, Egypt, Rwanda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Chile, Mexico, Malaysia, and Pakistan) – this is obviously still a fertile realm /relm/ about community-engaged scholarship for researchers to dig deeper.
One third of the respondents come from Africa, one third from South America, and one quarter from Asia.
We applied both observation and statistic tests to analyze the data. By observation, we can see that:
Nearly half of the respondents aged 40-55
And two thirds are female
Also, there is wide coverage across the sectors from NS, SS&H, to P. Moreover,
two thirds are associated with teaching positions,
half of them work in the public institutions,
and three quarters work on a full time basis.
Regarding the faculty perspective, we observed that there is consensus /kuh n-sen-suh s/ that the majority of respondents
agreed that engaged faculty in their university are….
And most of them disagree that such faculty are…
This is quite contradict to the LR we mentioned before, as the small population we are asking are the engaged faculty themselves. Since their identities are confidential, we cannot tell their profile, but we assume that they are probably successful scholars in their careers and their own institutions due to our recruitment process.
For this question, respondents can choose all that apply. Highest: applied research & learning.
Civic studies: 0 is an example of nuances in language and cultures. This is our mistake to use the terms that can provoke misunderstanding/disagreement.
(In VN, the word community is also preferred than civic in many context, from legal documents to public discourse)
Half of all respondents noted that written policies that reward research done with community members exist at their university.
What struck me most is that half of all respondents indicated that such policies are not taken seriously or do not exist.
Reasons can be:
Either lack of university policies, procedures, guidelines, or lack of knowledge from faculty members
O’Meara: External, cultural, and leadership factors
Difficulties in documenting existing policies and practices from institution to institution
We ran chi-square tests to answer the question: can demographic & background factors be predictors of how the respondents perceive community-engaged research and related policies?
These factors are….
After running 140 tests based on five research questions, we found that such demographic and background information are influential factors in their opinions about reward and incentives for the engaged work.
There are statistically significant relationships except the 1st one.
However, because of the nature of a pilot survey, the sample is pretty small (38), we need a larger size to confirm these potential relationships. We’re curious how they will definitely change when we conduct the broad survey.
It seems that work type is an influential predictor here (p value = 0.001): full time employees understand more deeply about their workplace structure and most of them believe that the greatest authority is the senior administration of their institution. (the senior administration of my university)
When asked about the work that is most rewarded, three highest votes went to conducting research that leads to publication (97%), conducting research that garners grants or other external resources (64%), and conducting high quality teaching of academic content (47%). Statistical tests show there are relationships between background information with only one of the types of work: conducting research that leads to publication. Respondents had a tendency to agree with the rewarding value of publication when they belong to one of the following categories: aged 40-55, female, working in professions, having teaching positions, and working fulltime.
Regarding what work is considered most important, there was no relationship between the background information and the answer yes or no to each statement about work importance by institution, except institution type and the statement about raising the profile and/or rankings of the university (p=0.042). Many respondents from public institutions think that raising the profile and/or rankings of the university is merely “somewhat important”, whereas private institutions have a stronger tendency to choose “important” and “strongly important”.
African and South American are stronger believers that such policy exist; faculty work in professions is also dominant in believing in the existence of this policy; work type is another predictor to confirm the previous conclusion that fulltime employees usually have deeper understanding about the workplace. They have stronger tendency either in saying yes or no to the existence of such policy in which saying yes is more often
respondents in the middle group (aged from 40 to 55) have stronger tendency either in saying yes or no to the existence of such policy; more women think that there is no written policies exist that reward teaching students to be active citizens; almost all respondents work in professions thinks that no written policies exist; faculty with teaching positions tend to think that no written policies exist more than ones with administrative or reaching positions; work type is predictor again to confirm the previous conclusion that fulltime employees usually have deeper understanding about the workplace. They have stronger tendency either in saying yes or no to the existence of such policy in which saying no is outweighed.
respondents in the middle group (aged from 40 to 55) have stronger tendency either in saying yes or no to the existence of such policy and naysaying is predominant
There are 2 main lessons learned during the creation, administration and collection of the survey.
1. Through our research, we seek to begin to explore the nuances in language and culture, as well as ascertain the extent to which faculty who conduct engaged scholarship share similar or different concerns across institutional and national contexts.
This has implications for how survey questions are asked and how individual might respond to the survey items.
2. Despite variations in definition among institutions..
1. Faculty and students.
2. In terms of limitation of this study, due to the small sample size of this pilot survey, we may not draw definite conclusions about global trends.
3. Understanding different perceptions among groups of faculty may inform future policy recommendations. A larger sample size is needed to confirm the potential relationships or reveal new patterns, and then suggest the policy change. The policies exist that reward research that has societal impact, for instance, may need to target more at faculty of some disciplines (natural and social sciences) and regions (Asia). Policies exist that reward teaching students to be active citizens, as another example, may need to target more at younger faculty (less than 40), teaching staff (versus administrators and researchers), and again, some groups of disciplines (natural and social sciences)
Culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse faculty express tendencies toward shaping their research agenda and academic careers with attention to social issues and community work, and are seeking academic homes that validate their scholarly identities.
A greater diversity of students also brings a greater diversity of learning styles and attention to how student learn as it relates to whether students persist and succeed academically.
General description of universities if asked; Profile 14 universities.
Photo credit: pictures belong to TN and TN members.
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