VALIDATING INTERACTIONS: HOW A SYSTEM OF LEARNERS, PEERS, AND POLICIES EXPLAINS FACULTY TEACHING NEEDS
Some institutions assess the professional development needs of teaching faculty by surveying their interests in teaching topics. In contrast, we sought an explanation of teaching needs that could inform a more comprehensive needs assessment addressing motivations for teaching, challenges from learners, preferred strategies to address challenges, and barriers to using them. We conducted three focus groups of faculty from a university and a feeder college. We found that faculty were motivated by validating interactions with learners and challenged by incoming cohorts with diverse attitudes and abilities. Faculty preferred to consult peers, experiment in class, and offload tasks, but they were undermined by poor communication, bureaucracy, risk management, and limited resources. Faculty persisted with existing approaches until they faced burnout. Female faculty disproportionately reported being motivated by learner impact and challenged by mixed ability classrooms and lack of time. Our model prompts institutions to define and explore faculty teaching needs in terms of validating interactions with learners that are enhanced or diminished by incoming cohorts, preferred strategies, and institutional barriers. As such, faculty development must address each of those multiple, interacting influences.
College and university faculty can be disciplinary experts who still lack the skills needed to meet emerging challenges from their learners, such as diverse ages, backgrounds, and expectations for learning (Opre et al., 2008); a lack of readiness for advanced study, a need for more systematic teaching and assessment (Elliott, 2014); or noncommittal attitudes akin to intellectual tourism (Sommers & Saltz, 2004).
Although some administrators impose formal training (Doll et al., 2018) or require the adoption of techniques such as problem-based learning (Al Shawwa et al., 2015), academic freedom may guarantee faculty the right to decide what and how to teach (Berrett, 2013). Such freedom may even have motivated faculty to enter their academic careers (Wergin, 2001, as cited in Burdick et al., 2015). As a result, development activities sponsored by institutions depend on faculty motivation to participate. Obtaining participation beyond a small group of regulars can be a major challenge (Sweet et al., 2017).
Low participation in development activities may relate to the use of top-down approaches to select topics, such as administrators relying on hunches and wish lists (Iqbal & Khan, 2011), lists of common “teaching errors” (Bouwma-Gearhart, 2012), trends such as student-centered learning (Al Shawwa et al., 2015), or concerns about student performance and course evaluations (Saunders & Ramirez, 2017). Even when developers choose pressing topics and develop peer-reviewed resources that attract external participants, they can still face hostility from internal faculty who are unconvinced of the topic's value (Doll et al., 2018). In contrast, bottom-up approaches to selecting topics use techniques such as needs assessment. Ideally, needs assessment would gather and analyze data to determine a desired level of teaching and learning, the actual performance of teachers, and reasons for the gaps between them (Sleezer et al., 2014). The magnitude of such gaps could then be ranked to create a list of priorities for development (Iqbal & Khan, 2011). Although needs assessments are used in industry to identify requirements for tools, training, incentives, feedback, and coordination (Sleezer et al., 2014), they are not commonly reported in faculty development literature (Hitch et al., 2018; Wilson, 2012).
Academic needs assessments that are reported commonly survey faculty to rate a series of topics. Without careful implementation, such surveys can create misleading data. Although some studies begin with exploratory interviews (Guo et al., 2009; Opre et al., 2008), include open-ended survey questions (Czerniawski et al., 2017), or check survey results with follow-up interviews (Lewis et al., 2011), others provide no way for faculty to describe their needs outside of ranking a set list of topics. Some studies base surveys on existing instruments (Behar-Horenstein, et al., 2014; Yousif et al., 2019) or lists of competencies (Adkoli et al., 2010), but others rely on idiosyncratic survey items that are subject to interpretation and difficult to compare across studies. Some studies ask respondents to rate each topic twice to establish gaps, such as asking for importance versus personal performance (Yousif et al., 2019) or current versus ideal skill (Shah et al., 2018); however, others request single ratings, which may only capture respondents' interests in pet topics rather than deficiencies in ability (Rocca, 2010). Although some studies check whether their volunteer respondents proportionally represent their institution (Hott & Tietjen-Smith, 2018), others do not, which means that a small group of respondents may overrepresent motivated demographics. In addition, the approach of reporting only average scores for each survey item mixes high- and low-needs groups, and obscures demographic differences. When such scores are close, such as 15 different needs whose average scores ranged between 3.22 to 3.90 on a 5-point scale (Al-Asfour & Young, 2017), their differences are difficult to interpret meaningfully to establish any priorities.
Even when studies collect data on needed skills, they may not investigate the motivations for faculty to participate in development. Although some studies ask about the perceived value of development activities for practice (Jiandani et al., 2015) or for promotions, or about barriers to participation such as lack of time or resources (Hott & Tietjen-Smith, 2018), or about preferred learning activities (Czerniawski et al., 2017) and people to learn with (Dengerink et al., 2015), others do not, which can result in valuable, peer-reviewed resources remaining unused by faculty (Doll et al., 2018).
To inform the development of more thorough needs assessments, we sought a more contextualized explanation of needs that emerged from faculty experiences of teaching and problem-solving rather than ratings of topics. To that end, we asked the following questions:
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What motivates faculty to value teaching and improvement?
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What challenges do faculty face from learners?
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What strategies do faculty prefer when addressing challenges?
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What barriers do faculty face when trying preferred strategies?
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Given their motivations and strategies, how do faculty cope with barriers?
LITERATURE REVIEW
In contrast with survey-based needs assessments that produce quantitative ratings of teaching topics, a more contextualized explanation of teaching needs emerged from faculty descriptions of teaching students and troubleshooting problems within their complex workplaces. To address the broader scope of data, we reviewed literature not only on traditional needs assessments but also on self-efficacy and sociocultural theories, which explain how practical experiences and social contexts not only create challenges and barriers but also shape individual motivations, troubleshooting strategies, and coping behaviors.
Motivation to Value Teaching and Improvement
Needs assessments commonly ask faculty to rate teaching and technology needs (Phuong et al., 2018; Wilson, 2012) but may fail to explore the internal and external motivators that affect whether faculty will undertake development activities. Burdick et al. (2015) noted that administrators and faculty developers overestimate the power of external motivators. For instance, developers may offer continuing education credits (Doll et al., 2018), public recognition, and completion certificates for taking courses (Sweet et al., 2017) and yet face hostility from faculty if they feel a topic is unworthy of their time (Doll et al., 2018). Such external motivators may conflict with the intrinsic reasons that drew faculty into academic careers (Burdick et al., 2015).
In contrast, internal motivators include faculty's perception of the practical value of development activities to change attitudes or improve skills (Jiandani et al., 2015), or to further develop ability in topics in which they are already competent but have a strong interest (Rocca, 2010). For instance, faculty at small colleges prioritized attendance at events that offered personal growth, a fit with their schedule, and an interesting topic that would have a positive impact and extend their existing practice (Burdick et al., 2015).
Internal motivators to value and improve teaching have also been explained in terms of the interactions faculty have with learners that improve confidence and identity as teachers (Trautwein et al., 2015) or their self-efficacy in teaching, which is their beliefs about being able to accomplish desired outcomes (Morris et al., 2017). Successful interactions with learners, credible and specific feedback, positive emotions, and seeing role models overcome challenges can increase self-efficacy in teaching, which in turn relates to higher performance evaluations and commitment to teaching, use of more effective strategies, and less burnout (Morris et al., 2017).
Teaching Challenges
Faculty may be asked to self-diagnose needs from a list of teaching topics and then rate their developmental experiences based on personal satisfaction rather than impact on learners (Trautwein et al., 2015; Wilson, 2012). Such an approach reflects a tendency to study student learning or instructor teaching in isolation, without addressing how challenges arise from the way they interact (Ashwin, 2008). For instance, surveys may ask about the need for abstract, teaching-focused topics such as “teaching and learning skills” (Yousif et al., 2019) or project-based learning (Güneri et al., 2017). Surveys may label challenges in terms of student failure, such as “motivating students,” “dealing with difficult students,” or “challenging students' misconceptions” (Güneri et al., 2017, p. 77), or struggling with students with diverse abilities (Czerniawski et al., 2017; Hott & Tietjen-Smith, 2018).
Self-reported ratings from faculty may not capture needs that arise from interactions with learners and administrators within a community. For instance, faculty and learners for an online course disagreed on the effectiveness of tools used for course announcements and the goals and techniques used for facilitating online discussions (Lewis et al., 2011). Faculty, learners, and administrators may also disagree on expected roles and responsibilities when admissions criteria are loosened or courses are moved into online versions, and faculty face classes of less-prepared learners (Price, 2020). In addition, needs may be constrained by the way that faculty define educational interactions. For instance, if focusing on improving learners' compliance with course requirements, writing faculty may seek ways to construct more explicit tasks, rubrics, and granular point systems; alternatively, if focusing on improving learners' connections to the practice and rewards of writing, writing faculty may seek ways to support collaborative grant-writing, feedback, and revisions in which students help community nonprofits secure funding (Price, 2020).
Preferred Strategies
To address their development needs, faculty may have preferred strategies. For instance, some studies report preferences for learning from peers, whether informally, such as through mentoring and classroom observation (Güneri et al., 2017; Hott & Tietjen-Smith, 2018), or formally, through orientations and simulated classes (Adkoli et al., 2010), demonstration videos with discussion (Güneri et al., 2017), discipline-specific training (Hott & Tietjen-Smith, 2018), or in-person workshops at conferences (Hahn & Lester, 2012). Preferences can differ based on gender or seniority, such as women or juniors preferring structured learning, versus men or seniors preferring informal conversations (Dengerink et al., 2015; Opre et al., 2008). Informal learning has been explained in terms of community of practice, in which people who share a common purpose learn through work, observation, and conversation with peers and advanced colleagues (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Snyder & Wenger, 2010). Similarly, Boelryk and Amundsen (2016) described a process of teaching change whereby instructors consulted peers about frustrations; explored solutions based on personal values and the characteristics of their classrooms; attempted changes while monitoring student reactions and institutional supports; and channeled positive experiences into further change.
Barriers to Strategies
To use their preferred strategies, faculty may face barriers such as a lack of time and resources, and competing priorities for career advancement. Lack of time is commonly reported in needs assessments and includes the need for time management skills (Güneri et al., 2017) to cope with competing career priorities such as research and publishing (Behar-Horenstein et al., 2014). Faculty may also lack resources, such as funding for teaching materials (Opre et al., 2008) or to conduct research on their own teaching practices.
Barriers may also arise from the nature of preferred strategies. For instance, faculty may be attracted to learning events but prioritize informal socializing (Houghton et al., 2015). Faculty may also be constrained by traditions in their own disciplines (Davis, 2012) and struggle to learn from colleagues with unfamiliar values and terminology. To learn across disciplines, community of practice theory suggests a need for brokers, who act as translators (Brown & Duguid, 2001), boundary objects, such as shared documents and models that facilitate interdisciplinary problem-solving (Carlile, 2002), and convenors, who arrange events to foster cross-disciplinary sharing (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2014).
Barriers can be systematically addressed by faculty developers. For instance, Amundsen and D'Amico (2019) convened workshops that connected participants across disciplines, offered resources through noncompetitive grants, and used grant applications as boundary objects in which teams collaboratively defined teaching challenges, proposed solutions, and outlined plans to collect and report results. In addition, tenure committees were lobbied to treat such activities as research for the purpose of career advancement (Amundsen & D'Amico, 2019).
Coping Behaviors
Prioritizing time for development requires a commitment to the practice of teaching, which may be explained in terms of shared values and social roles. For instance, faculty who value teaching and identify as part of the teaching community may commit to ongoing improvement and sharing of expertise within that community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). However, commitment to a role depends on its associated lifestyle and social status (Archer, 2000). For instance, faculty may reduce demands on their time by choosing faster but less effective assessment techniques (Sorenson & Bothell, 2004, as cited in Burdick et al., 2015). Faculty who identify as researchers rather than teachers may avoid developmental activities altogether (Amundsen & D'Amico, 2019). Even faculty who value teaching may shift their priorities when faced with changes in tenure and promotion criteria that require more research (Hott & Tietjen-Smith, 2018).
METHODOLOGY
To develop an explanation of teaching needs that addressed individual motivations, strategies, and coping, as well as contextual challenges and barriers, we based our study on faculty experiences with teaching and professional development. This section explains how we chose our method, recruited participants, collected and analyzed data, and ensured credibility and trustworthiness.
Choice of Research Method
To study faculty experiences with teaching and professional development, we used qualitative methods, which explore complex, ill-defined phenomena using small samples of experiences to build models suitable for wider testing (Creswell, 2012). To gather numerous experiences from a variety of participants and allow them to react to each other's statements, we used focus groups, which are structured interviews of multiple participants who respond individually and to each other (Williams & Katz, 2001).
Participants
To ensure that our explanation represented differences in faculty disciplines, seniority, and kinds of institutions, we used purposeful sampling. After securing ethics approvals, we identified full-time teaching faculty across all disciplines at one comprehensive university in Canada and one Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel (CÉGEP), which is a college that prepares high school students for university or technical vocations (SRAM, 2019). We emailed an invitation to every seventh name on departmental listings and advertised on institutional teaching websites.
Data Collection
To collect faculty experiences, we held three focus groups with a mix of university and CÉGEP participants. We recorded the audio and took notes. We asked what participants liked most about teaching, their greatest teaching challenges, their preferred sources for assistance, and their desired supports and recognition. For each question, we first asked each participant to respond individually. After everyone contributed, we asked participants for reactions or follow-up comments. We did not prompt the group to establish consensus on any question.
Analysis Procedure
To develop an explanation of teaching needs that emerged from our participants' experiences, we used a systematic grounded theory approach, which comprises three phases (Creswell, 2012): (a) open coding to label statements based on main ideas and then grouping those labels into themes; (b) axial coding to fit themes into a framework of core phenomenon, causes affecting the phenomenon, strategies used by participants, conditions affecting strategies, and resulting consequences; and (c) selective coding to present the emerging theory as a model.
To implement analysis, we transcribed the focus groups and open-coded each statement based on its main idea. Next, we grouped open codes that supported an emerging conceptual theme. For instance, statements about teaching experiences that were coded as “energy,” “renewal,” or “validation” shared a conceptual theme of “motivational interactions.” We then fitted the conceptual themes into the axial coding structure to show how they interacted to explain teaching needs. Finally, we described each conceptual theme using patterns and quotations from the data.
To evaluate and refine the model, we tested the emerging themes against the original full transcripts. We measured the strength of each theme by counting how many participants made statements for each of its component codes. For each code, a participant was counted once, regardless of how many statements they made with that code.
Due to the small sample size, we could only differentiate results based on type of institution and gender, and we only noted gender differences of three or more people. We measured those differences at the level of conceptual theme, such that participants were only counted once per theme rather than once per component code.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
To ensure credibility and trustworthiness, we used triangulation of sources and analysis. We recruited participants from multiple institutions and disciplinary populations. We used multiple observers within three separate focus groups. The observers took contemporaneous notes and conducted preliminary thematic coding. Those observers were provided with the separately developed grounded theory analysis in order to review and validate its coding process and findings.
RESULTS
In this section, we describe our participants, then answer each research question by presenting conceptual themes emerging from the data. Each theme is defined by the coded concepts that support it and is illustrated by quotes from participants. At the end, we relate the themes to a model that explains teaching needs.
Participants
Our 23 participants included 18 university faculty and 5 from the CÉGEP feeder institution that prepared high school students for university, all from a range of disciplines and ranks, as shown in Table 1. Twelve participants were women and 11 were men. Differences between university and CÉGEP participants are noted in the Results section.
What Motivates Faculty To Value Teaching and Improvement?
Participants were asked what they liked most about teaching, as well as about their desired recognitions for pursuing improvement. The results from the two questions overlapped, which led to refining the first research question to address them both as motivation. The questions produced 54 statements about experiencing validating interactions. The four types of interactions (shown in Figure 1) were motivational interactions with learners (n = 18), being supported as an autonomous disciplinary expert (n = 15), being able to justify the course (n = 11), and experiencing learning impact (n = 10). Experiencing learning impact was the only motivation theme with a gender difference of three or more people (67% women).
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 2; 10.56811/PIQ-20-0058
Motivational Interactions
I like the interaction with the students, the energy in the classroom.
Validating interactions included 18 mentions of motivational interactions that provided validation, energy, or renewal. First, eight statements described how interactions with engaged students validated instructors' chosen disciplines. Validation related to a drive “to get them passionate about the topic that I teach… . Some of them pursue it later on as a career.” Validation also related to long-term value: “the most common piece of feedback was it's the most valuable course they ever took.” At a more immediate level, validation related to engagement in class material: “they stay back after the quiz and discuss for two hours … that turns me on.” In contrast, a lack of interactions affected validation. A librarian who taught infrequently noted, “The work we do in our office is very important, obviously, but when you don't interact as often with the students … it's less obvious.”
Second, five statements related to instructors experiencing motivating energy, such as “I like the energy … when the room is buzzing.” Another participant contrasted teaching with previous work: “I just didn't like the mundane, everyday kind of routines, and the thing I like about teaching is just being with other people, the interaction.” Energy was difficult to maintain over long classes, and one participant noted, “It's really hard sometimes to get them to talk.” Energy could also be negative, with one participant noting “[a] negative atmosphere in the class because they think you're being unnecessarily tough,” and another describing an increasing tension when students received negative feedback.
Finally, five statements from university participants described how student questions triggered disciplinary renewal. One participant said, “I like to be surprised … it's challenging and makes you learn.” Another noted, “Different viewpoints make me go back to the subject and go deeper and update a little more.” A third said, “Each group has its own dynamics … you're going over the same material, in a sense, but you're making it new … that's what makes the job nonmonotonous.”
Supported Autonomy
Teaching is sort of like your own private kingdom.
What I really enjoy is how I'm in charge of basically everything in my classroom.
Validating interactions included 15 mentions of preferring to be supported as autonomous disciplinary experts rather than being recognized or credentialed as teachers. One participant said, “[the] best recognition is to see that the students know something from you,” and another noted, “It's the resources, to me, more than the recognition… . I've found plenty of recognition in my field.” Two participants rejected credentialing in favor of ongoing teaching consultations, such as, “Okay, I'm about to try it now. Can you come in and just see how I'm doing?” Similarly, another requested “some constant touch rather than just take a certificate and we are done.” Some participants accepted that extrinsic recognition might “show that you've done the work,” or give part-time faculty “a little edge,” but it was also criticized as conforming “to an external qualifying body” and “increasingly burdening” young academics seeking jobs.
Justifying the Course
Sometimes students look at you and say, “Okay, why are we even learning about this?”
Validating interactions included 11 mentions of being able to justify the usefulness of a course. Usefulness included relevance to the future, such as “I think this is my responsibility as their instructor to show … this is the foundation of what you want to use in the future,” or “[this is] enhancing their capabilities to solve problems that were unknown to them before.” Usefulness also included relevance to the present, such as “getting students to see the relationship between this material, that's historically unfamiliar to them, and their lives today,” or “help[ing] them see how the skills … can be transferred to their other courses.” For instance, one participant tailored her physics courses to more everyday concerns. Part of justifying a course was noted in two mentions of explaining the consequences of giving up, such as “they should know what they're losing if they're not participating.” Similarly, one participant enlisted alumni to deliver dire warnings in class: “You may not like to learn more, but by the time you go to a job … they ask you to solve this or you get fired.”
Learning Impact
When explaining the concept, or you're having them do something and they get it—that to me is the most incredible feeling.
Finally, validating interactions included statements about experiencing learning impact, reported by more female (n = 6, 67%) than male (n = 3) participants. Learning impact included six mentions of dramatic realizations, such as “What I like the most is when I realize my students “ ‘got it'—you can see it in their face,” with similar comments noting “you see their face light up,” and “that spark in their eyes.” Impact also included three mentions of broadening student thinking, such as “opening a little door to a world they haven't seen,” and developing “more thoughtful adults or engaged citizens.” Finally, impact included one mention of student confidence: “Students may have for whatever reason doubted themselves for a long time… . I'm there to turn this around.”
What Challenges Do Faculty Face From Learners?
Participants were asked about their biggest teaching challenges, which resulted in 28 statements about incoming student cohorts. Cohorts demonstrated heterogeneous ability (n = 16) and transactional attitudes (n = 6). At the university, these challenges were amplified by growing class sizes (n = 6). Heterogeneous ability was the only challenge theme with a gender difference of three or more people (64% women), which was similar in magnitude to the difference reported for experiencing motivation from learning impact (67% women).
Heterogeneous Ability and Energy
This great heterogeneity with regard to motivation, but also knowledge level, where they're coming from, what they're expecting.
Incoming cohorts challenged faculty with a wide range of abilities and attitudes, which were reported by more female (n = 9, 64%) than male (n = 5) participants. Eight statements addressed the difficulty of handling those differences, such as “there is a big spectrum of students' level and preparedness … the one who feels it's a bit slow is already taking the [text] message … the one who feels you're going fast is also giving up.” Another participant noted a wide range of motivation, “from people that are super motivated that you wish you could work with in a very intense way and help them learn, to students who seem … quite disinterested.” Participants wondered how to address their low performers: “If they don't have proper backgrounds to suit this, how do you bring them on board and get them interested and motivated so that they don't give up?”
Some issues related to basic preparedness (n = 5), such as “students whose language skills are just so weak” and “students who are so unprepared.” To address these unmet prerequisites, some participants took on extended roles: “I had to become the mother of some of them—the mother with discipline.” Another noted, “My biggest challenge with these kids is to teach them how to learn… . I don't know why I've decided that this is my responsibility.” Other issues arose from ability-related needs, such as autistic students struggling with certain concepts, or deaf students frustrated with captions on YouTube.
Differences in incoming ability also related to institutional breakdowns (n = 3), such as instructors of prerequisites failing to ensure that their students have “the principles on which the rest of the module, or rest of the program, builds,” and departments coping with budget cuts by placing graduate and undergraduate students in the same classes.
Transactional Attitudes
I am paying—why should I do more work? I am buying something!
University participants complained about students' transactional attitudes (n = 6). One participant said that students treated education “like buying a product from a store.” Another said, “Most of them have this feeling that ‘I am here from five to eight, I'm putting some money in the university… . I should get this grade by the end of the course,' ” because they are “looking more towards future [job] prospects than the learning.” One participant noted attempts at bargaining: “They'll say to me in kind of hidden words that, ‘Give me a good mark and I'll give you a good evaluation.' ” A transactional attitude meant that students “don't want to be challenged” and “it's hard to get them to question what they think they know in a way that is not demoralizing… . I find them to be very in a rush, or they want to be reassured.” Another participant noted, “It's just hard to get them to take a risk, to accept that they'll probably be changed by whatever they're hearing.” As a result, one participant perceived selfishness: “How do we deal with the fact of somebody who's not very generous… . I mean contributing, investing oneself?”
Growing Class Sizes Amplified Challenges
The sheer number, the sheer numbers of them, the sheer numbers.
Finally, growing class sizes amplified challenges for university participants (n = 6). One participant stated, “When we started … 50 was a big class. Now the minimum class I have is 90 students.” Participants noted challenges in scaling appropriate assessments: “Sixty grad students in one class—we are supposed to define projects for them, and who wants to actually observe all these projects? Students are not satisfied, and the instructor is not satisfied.” Another participant noted, “I don't believe in multiple choice exams for programming because they have to show you can write code … but on the other hand … there's 250 students.”
What Strategies Do Faculty Prefer When Addressing Challenges?
To address challenges from incoming cohorts, faculty described strategies of seeking relatable colleagues (n = 24), experimenting in classrooms (n = 5), and offloading work (n = 5).
Relatable Colleagues
I talk to colleagues if they have been through a similar experience.
When seeking assistance, participants preferred to hear from colleagues (n = 24). Four participants expressed interest in peer evaluations because students lack “the foresight to know whether this was a worthwhile teaching experience.” However, a participant in such a program admitted that few wished to participate. Instead, participants sought insight from colleagues who shared their teaching challenge and one or more of the characteristics shown in Figure 2: academic domain (n = 7), locale (n = 6), novelty (n = 5), and institution type (n = 2).
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 2; 10.56811/PIQ-20-0058
Shared academic domain
Seven participants sought colleagues within their academic domain, and conferences were a key source: “Our chemistry conferences have special symposia dedicated to teaching… . It's good to hear other peoples' experience, what they've tried, how it worked.” Contacts from conferences continued for one instructor: “I do reach out to colleagues when they're teaching similar stuff or if I've talked to them at a conference and they bring up an idea that strikes me a couple months later.” Such external contacts became a rich resource for another participant: “We have a great network across Canada… . I can call them and ask them, ‘Oh, remember that workshop you gave, would you mind sharing your PowerPoint or sharing your exercises?' and the answer is invariably yes.” Such a network provided other career supports, such as “we're fairly open, we'll toss our dossiers and grant apps and syllabi back and forth.”
Shared locale
Six participants noted the role of local peers, with half able to secure their help. One participant said, “Our offices are next to each other and when they're around we chat, and if I have a challenging student, I go talk to the coordinator.” Another preferred to “talk to experienced colleagues and those who have most probably faced the same challenges that I have,” and suggested that such knowledge should be captured with exit interviews of departing instructors. However, three participants had to cope when locals were unavailable, with one noting, “I actually rarely reach out to colleagues in my own faculty… . We're not terribly supportive … so I reach out to colleagues elsewhere.” Another relied on social media: “I've ended up with a Facebook full of other PhDs… . You can just tap into the top minds.”
Shared novelty
When faced with novel challenges, five participants looked outside their locale, institution, and domain. One stated, “I email my colleagues and … I find we are all looking for some help.” Another said that existing resources might address “a problem that existed, let's say a few years ago… . I don't find much, how to cope with a very current generation.” In such cases, one participant noted that “just hearing people talk about their classrooms broadens my spectrum of things … not necessarily teaching the same thing, but people who have been through the same experience.” Another participant resonated with the experiences of a professor in a different domain: “I have experienced it too… . So I changed my way of teaching … because I realized that part of what he said is true.”
Shared type of institution
Finally, two CÉGEP participants sought colleagues who worked in similar organizations. One said, “You gotta cater everything … to our universe, I mean, our CÉGEP-age students.” Another stated, “Often, you're going to find American users. It's either going to be high school level or university level. It's kind of hard to find that in-between level.”
Classroom Experimentation
I'm the kind of person who will try all kinds of different things in the classroom… . What excites me is to see the students reacting to something, and that something really works.
In addition to seeking collegial input, five university participants preferred classroom experimentation. One participant stated, “When I'm in a classroom with students where there's a challenge, I find that a really exciting moment because … that makes me get very creative.” Two participants embraced tinkering as part of their identity, such as “I'm a kind of experimental person. I use different types of IT-based techniques in order to see how students actually react.” However, participants noted that experimentation is limited by time: “We do it by ourselves… . I find it takes time to do that,” and implied a need to accept risk: “I trust my experience, somehow, and if I'm going to fail, I'll just explain that I'm trying this, I might not succeed; help me.”
Offloading Work
We're supposed to be able to handle all these things but sometimes it'd be nice … if, “Okay, I guess we want this done—can you do it?”
In addition to consultations and experimentation, five participants offloaded work to address time and resource constraints. For instance, one participant suggested hiring teaching assistants (TAs) “to circulate and be an extender” within large classes. However, TAs could be inexperienced, in which case one participant noted, “I have to teach [the TA] besides my class,” and TA funding may be limited, with one instructor having to pay from her own pocket. Alternatively, one participant offloaded technology training to “people who can give workshops… . I'll pay $25 or something, get them to teach the thing, or make the students take the workshop.”
What Barriers Do Faculty Face When Trying Preferred Strategies?
Although participants preferred consulting, experimenting, and offloading to address their challenges, they described contextual barriers such as poor communication (n = 10), lack of coordination (n = 5), institutional bureaucracy (n = 3), and risk management (n = 3). In addition, participants reported a lack of time (n = 13) and resources (n = 9). Limited time was the only theme with a gender difference of three or more people (78% women).
Poor Communication
I was just kind of thrown into this teaching environment… . I still don't know what's available to me.
Participants noted problems with discovering helpful peers or resources (n = 10). Six participants complained that it was difficult to find helpful people, such as “I still don't know everybody's names, and with this building it's very difficult to meet each other.” Another noted, “I knock at so many doors, but nobody was ahead of me… . I learned [a technology] on my own, but it takes forever.” A third explained, “It would be nice if there was a little bit more sharing … whether it's certain things that work in one CÉGEP setting, or someone else's.” One participant wished he could identify peers who excelled in teaching evaluations, and he was disappointed that the information wasn't shared. In addition, four participants expressed frustration about their ignorance of available resources, with one stating, “We are not even aware of what exists, so we can't even ask for it.”
Lack of Coordination
What did they learn, what was their syllabus, what was the expectation in their classrooms?
Although university participants were challenged by the class sizes and abilities of incoming students, they lacked coordination with feeder schools, colleagues, and administrators to establish common expectations (n = 5). Two participants relied on their own children for information, with one saying “that helped me understand what my students were prepared to do and what was going to strike them as a totally bizarre request.” One participant noted that colleagues who taught prerequisite courses “sometimes don't cover what they're supposed to cover, so I'm left holding the bag.” Another complained that administrators treated faculty as “work horses” who should simply adapt to increasing class sizes.
Bureaucracy
Poorly implemented processes hamper our ability to create novel educational opportunities.
Three university participants complained about bureaucracy. One instructor noted, “It takes multiple months to get a reimbursement.” He couldn't hire students without long delays and electronic forms that crashed his computer. He noted that experimental courses experienced multiyear delays such that “your experiment is no longer useful.” Another participant noted the frustrating opacity of decision-making for his online course: “We were on track to do 2,000 students a year… . The support given to us was reduced from year to year” and then the course was cancelled “for unexplained reasons.” Similarly, he had suggested innovations based on feedback from students and employers but “nothing happened” and “everyone has a different opinion … as to what the procedure is.”
Risk Management
I got pulled aside by senior faculty … [who] told me to knock it off because there are liability issues.
Three university participants noted that risk management by their institution impeded experimentation. One participant who needed specialized software said, “We cannot install anything on our own PC… . When they're ready, they will come and do it.” Other participants were prevented from using plagiarism tools, which have been criticized as a presumption of guilt and violation of student copyright. One noted, “I can't possibly detect plagiarism without any kind of tool,” and another said, “We're not allowed to use this stuff even if we pay for it.” He further noted being discouraged from experiential learning due to liability concerns.
Limited Time
To resolve one of my challenges, I guess I go to my colleagues… . But again, there's not enough of that free time … everyone is so busy.
Although participants had preferred strategies to address their challenges, many complained about a lack of time to use them, which was reported by more female (n = 7, 78%) than male (n = 2) participants. First, a lack of time constrained consultations (n = 4). One participant said, “They have an active learning community. They meet every two weeks. As a teacher, I never have time to go.” Another agreed: “We've tried quite a few times … community of practices… . And it's very hard to get people to come out.” Second, lack of time constrained experimentation (n = 2): “We don't have enough time to really devote to changing, updating unless someone has … been given some release time.” Similarly, another participant noted, “We have to learn everything on our own,” and even after attending a workshop, “It was zipping by so fast… . I think I just need to … just work with it.” A lack of time was exacerbated by competing priorities (n = 7). For instance, one participant was overwhelmed by time-consuming assessments: “I'm marking 250 exams, okay, so I don't have the time to go to these kinds of things.” Another participant noted institutional priorities for conducting research: “If we truly want to be a research institution, let's be honest about it… . We'll teach because it keeps the lights on.” Another participant suggested reformulating teaching activities as research projects to enhance their priority. Finally, one participant said that the end of a school year provided time to reflect, but “everybody's burnt by then, and some people just are thinking summer holidays and want to go.”
Limited Resources
There should be funding to different departments for doing innovations in teaching.
Participants reported a lack of resources to support experimentation and offloading (n = 9). Five participants complained about facilities and assistance. Some reported that their facilities were overcrowded, and “the technology in the classroom itself doesn't always work.” In additionally, budget cuts resulted in “less hours and less number of TAs being offered,” as well as higher workloads. Four participants sought funding for innovation, such as “teaching-oriented awards and grants you can apply for internally … because the paperwork is less onerous than applying for a government grant.”
Given Their Motivations and Strategies, How Do Faculty Cope With Barriers?
I used to evaluate twice, each composition … and now I am thinking, what I am going to do, because I am all alone?
Faced with teaching challenges and barriers to their preferred strategies, eight participants described coping by persisting or retreating. Five university participants focused on how growing class sizes undermined desired assessments. One said, “It can be overwhelming at times because I want to give them as much feedback as I can but it's not always possible, because there's the turnaround time as well.” Another participant, responsible for 2,000 online students, noted, “You can't just say ‘good work.' It's gotta be, ‘you did this right, you didn't do that right, your grade would've been higher if—'.” One participant admitted, “I've given up trying to do intensive writing in my courses because they're large courses,” and another contemplated permanent retreat: “I owe it to them to really test their understanding, their mastery of the topics, but there's also this thing known as self-preservation… . I'm actually considering retiring.”
In addition, three participants described how distracting technology undermined classroom interactions. Although a librarian accepted it as “part of reality,” others retreated from change: “I know I'm so far behind, and I do ban the cellphones.” Another agreed, adding, “I haven't been able to find the resources to help me start experimenting.”
Emerging Model To Inform the Exploration of Teaching Needs
A model of teaching needs (shown in Figure 3) emerged when we axial-coded our conceptual themes into the categories of systematic grounded theory. The theme of validating interactions emerged as our central phenomenon because it was the most frequent theme, and all other themes related to it to form a logical explanation of teaching needs (Creswell, 2012). For instance, student attitudes and abilities were the cause of our central phenomenon because they increased or decreased validating interactions. In addition, the strategies that faculty used for professional development aimed to increase validating interactions, but they were impeded by contextual barriers in the workplace. As a result, faculty coped by retaining existing practices until they became untenable.
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 2; 10.56811/PIQ-20-0058
DISCUSSION
To situate our emerging model of teaching needs, we related it to explanations provided in the literature.
Validating Interactions Motivate Faculty
The emerging model explains faculty motivation for teaching and improvement based on positive interactions with learners. Faculty valued learners' demonstrations of interest, curiosity, learning, and appreciation of the discipline, which prompted some university faculty to deepen their own commitment with further study. Such renewal was not mentioned by CÉGEP faculty, which may be explained by their role as teachers rather than as researchers contributing to a discipline. Faculty rejected external recognitions of teaching in favor of receiving assistance in generating more internally motivating interactions. Taken together, the motivations for teaching and improvement validated a faculty member's choice of discipline and their ability to induct new members into that discipline. Our model prompts further study of why twice as many female faculty (n = 6) as male faculty (n = 3) mentioned learning impact.
Our model supports literature that emphasizes internal motivations for faculty development (Burdick et al., 2015; Doll et al., 2018). Although our model supports explanations of motivation in terms of positive self-efficacy (Morris et al., 2017), we note that validating interactions were related to learners embracing a discipline. As such, faculty may value their ability to induct new members into their discipline rather than generic teaching skills. Such an explanation supports community of practice theory, in which senior members of a discipline encourage participation and commitment by new members through practice-related interactions (Lave & Wenger, 1991). As such, the motivation to improve teaching may depend on how well it helps faculty overcome the challenges of inducting learners into their discipline.
Conflicting Expectations Trigger Challenges With Learners
The emerging model explains teaching challenges in terms of negative interactions with learners' abilities and attitudes. Faculty were frustrated by learners' variation in ability and motivation to engage in the discipline, which interfered with validating interactions. Our model prompts further study of why almost twice as many female faculty (n = 9) as male faculty (n = 5) reported challenges from heterogeneous ability, and whether the difference is explained by the similar proportion of female faculty who valued learning impact to motivate their teaching.
Faculty were also frustrated by learner attitudes that treated education as a product. Faculty expected a commitment from learners to learn how things work, contribute to others' learning, take risks, and reflect on themselves. Such a commitment would reflect choices that faculty reported for themselves, such as seeking validating interactions in their discipline, rejecting teaching credentials, and prioritizing time-consuming assessments over personal development. Our model prompts further study of how the challenge of transactional attitudes in learners might be addressed by the motivational ability of faculty to justify their course and bridge the gap between student and faculty levels of disciplinary commitment.
Issues with diverse abilities and transactional attitudes were magnified by growing class sizes, because faculty struggled to provide meaningful assessments and feedback. Taken together, heterogeneous ability, transactional attitudes, and growing class sizes undermined the expectations faculty had for experiencing validating interactions with learners that were meaningful within their discipline.
Our model supports needs assessment literature that highlights challenges from low motivation and diverse abilities in students. Although our model also supports explanations of teaching challenge based on interactions with learners that lower self-efficacy (Morris et al., 2017), our participants focused on the failure of students to demonstrate commitment to a discipline. Such an explanation supports sociocultural literature that addresses commitment to a practice or social role. For instance, faculty have experiences, role models, and disciplinary identity that inspire them to commit to research and practice in their community, and to protect their standards of competence (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In addition, faculty may prioritize a more rewarded or respected role of expert within a discipline rather than “teacher” (Archer, 2000). In contrast, novice learners who lack such reasons for commitment may engage peripherally with a discipline (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and focus on more relatable transactions of exchanging effort for credentials to pursue a desired lifestyle and social status (Archer, 2000). Addressing such challenges with learners requires faculty to use strategies for professional development.
Preferred Strategies Require Interactions and Offloading
The emerging model explains preferred strategies for resolving challenges in terms of relatable sources, hands-on experimentation, and delegating tasks. Faculty preferred to seek informal assistance from colleagues who shared their discipline, locale, novel challenge, or kind of institution, and were thus more likely to know what would succeed within a faculty member's practice. Faculty preferred hands-on experimentation, which allowed them to experience the reactions of their learners, such as changes in validating interactions. To reduce competing demands on their time, faculty offloaded simpler tasks to others, such as teaching assistants or contractors.
Our model supports needs assessment literature that highlights preferences for informal and discipline-specific learning, but not the differences based on gender or seniority reported by Opre et al. (2008) and Dengerink et al. (2015). Our model highlights a preference for classroom experimentation, which was not addressed in needs assessments but does support Boelryk and Amundsen's (2016) model of teaching change. Although the preference for classroom experimentation supports explanations of teaching motivation based on improving self-efficacy (Morris et al., 2017), our participants also noted the importance of informal learning from relatable colleagues rather than teaching experts. Such an explanation supports sociocultural literature in which people who share a common purpose, language, and values learn through practice and dialogue with peers (Lave & Wenger, 1991). As such, preferred strategies may relate less to mastery of teaching methods and more to engagement with peers who solved similar challenges of inducting learners into their discipline while facing similar barriers.
Barriers Arise When Policies Conflict With Motivations and Strategies
The emerging model explains barriers in terms of institutional processes and policies that undermine motivation and preferred strategies. Although university faculty were motivated by validating interactions, their institution accepted large classes of learners who were unprepared for advanced study in English. Although faculty preferred to learn from relatable peers, their institution lacked orientations to available people and resources. University faculty also lacked coordination with colleagues who worked at feeder institutions, or who taught prerequisites, and who would be familiar with the capacity and expectations of incoming learners. University faculty preferred to experiment in their classes, but some departments obscured decision-making about course changes, centralized control over computers, or discouraged off-campus learning. Finally, university faculty preferred to offload tasks, but some departments reduced funding and increased bureaucracy for hiring teaching assistants. Lack of time was disproportionately reported by female faculty, which may be explained by the disproportionate amount of unpaid work that women undertake for family and community (Richardson, 2012).
Our model supports needs assessment literature that highlights lack of time as a barrier to engaging in development. In addition, our participants noted institutional barriers to connecting and coordinating with colleagues and experimenting in classrooms. Such an explanation supports sociocultural theories, which examine teaching as an interaction of faculty with students subject to constraints in their institution (Ashwin, 2008), as well as performance improvement models that examine how institutional policies and failures undermine individual performance (Wilmoth et al., 2002). As such, our model supports literature that explicitly addresses these barriers. For instance, workshops can connect faculty with interdisciplinary peers, save time by guiding hands-on problem-solving with consultants, expose participants to each others' solutions, and supplement resources with minigrants (Amundsen & D'Amico, 2019; deNoyelles et al., 2012). Our model also expands contextual needs to include coordination with feeder schools and departmental colleagues who teach prerequisites, and assistance with discovering resources, negotiating class sizes, navigating bureaucratic processes, and managing innovations to allay institutional concerns about liability and risk. Such approaches could help faculty move beyond coping with barriers to overcoming them.
Coping Relies on Persisting Until Overwhelmed
The emerging model explains coping in terms of frustrated persistence and giving up. For instance, faculty noted attempts to maintain meaningful interactions with learners in the face of distracting phones and laptops in class, with some resorting to banning the technologies. Faculty also noted attempts to maintain assessments and feedback for learners that would be meaningful in the discipline despite growing class sizes and reduced assistance. As a result, some faculty sacrificed professional development due to lack of time or energy, or persisted with overwhelming workloads until they abandoned a teaching approach, or contemplated retirement.
Although our model supports literature that describes how faculty amplify existing pedagogies to cope with learner challenges (Price, 2020), our respondents also noted personal sacrifices as part of their efforts. Such an explanation supports sociocultural literature that incorporates the maintenance of meaningful standards as part of the commitment to a discipline (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In addition, the change in commitment when faculty found their assessments or job increasingly untenable supports literature that describes how people modify or abandon roles when associated lifestyles and rewards no longer meet their needs (Archer, 2000).
CONCLUSIONS
To inform the development of more thorough needs assessments, we sought a contextualized explanation of teaching needs that incorporated individual, social, and contextual influences. Such an explanation would benefit not just academic faculty but also other disciplinary experts who engage in educational interactions. This section describes the implications of our study, its limitations, and future research.
Implications for Theory
The emerging model has implications for defining needs, monitoring their underlying influences, and making informed decisions. First, instead of focusing on individual deficits in teaching skills, needs can be defined as the bundle of skills, connections, and resources required to be able to (a) increase validating interactions with changing cohorts of learners; (b) learn from relatable peers, experiment in class, and offload tasks; and (c) coordinate with colleagues and navigate institutional barriers.
Second, the model describes interactions of influences that change over time, which requires ongoing monitoring rather than isolated surveys. Changing influences include incoming cohorts and new colleagues; policies that affect coordination and risk management; and the availability of relatable peers, time for experimentation, and resources for offloading.
Third, the model describes relationships of the influences, which requires a consideration of their interactions when deciding how to respond to needs. For instance, challenges for faculty depend in part on how their incoming cohorts were educated by predecessors.The solutions that faculty explore also depend in part on who is available as a relatable peer group and what experiences those people have had.
Fourth, the influences described by the model involve multiple disciplines and roles at a university and its feeder institutions, such as faculty, learners, peers inside and outside the institution, administrators, and support personnel. The model is expressed in plain English, highlights desired outcomes in terms of validating interactions, and shows how each role plays a part. As such, the model can function as a boundary object that enables cross-disciplinary discussion and problem-solving for teaching needs.
By expressing needs as multiple, interacting influences rather than isolated skill gaps, the model can also highlight demographic differences arising from those interactions. For instance, female faculty disproportionately reported three related issues: desiring the experience of seeing the impact of learning on students, being challenged by learners' mixed ability, and lacking time for professional development.
Implications for Practice
Our model offers practical implications for addressing faculty teaching needs.
Define Needs in Terms of Validating Interactions
The model prompts us to explore needs in terms of increasing validating interactions for faculty. This means improving opportunities to experience validation, energy, renewal, and student learning while being supported as an autonomous disciplinary expert. As such, professional development activities would be measured based on validating interactions with learners rather than satisfaction ratings from faculty. Such outcomes may require brief, ongoing consultations based on actual experiences rather than isolated seminars and workshops.
Facilitate Offloading With Required Resources
The model prompts us to manage time by offloading activities that do not contribute to validating interactions. For instance, faculty who focus on transmitting knowledge through classroom lectures may be offloading validating interactions with learners to their teaching assistants. In contrast, flipped classrooms shift lectures into preclass videos and dedicate class time to guiding learners through active problem-solving, supported by teaching assistants and personal technology that is used for problem-solving rather than distraction from a lecture. Offloading also requires helping faculty influence policies that affect funding for assistants, technology, and third-party resources. The model also prompts us to consider whether strategic offloading is a greater need for female faculty.
Define Implicit Expectations and Justify the Course
The model prompts us to address transactional attitudes in learners by examining how they conflict with the validating interactions desired by faculty. For instance, faculty may implicitly expect incoming students to be committed to in-depth learning, sharing with peers, and risk-taking. Such expectations could be explicitly defined as outcomes for a course, with assessments and activities designed to support them. University faculty could also explicitly justify their course to learners and describe the consequences of giving up, such as connecting course outcomes and activities to professional practices and desirable social roles for learners.
Coordinate Monitoring of Incoming Cohorts
The model prompts us to examine needs in terms of inputs and outputs for a validating learning experience. University faculty need to monitor and adapt to changes in incoming cohorts by coordinating with colleagues in feeder institutions and in their own departments. Coordination may be informal chats or formalized roles. Coordination could also increase the connections faculty have with relatable peers, which supports one of their preferred strategies for problem-solving.
Facilitate Connections With Relatable Peers
The model prompts us to support the preferred strategy of consulting with relatable peers by facilitating connections. Local peers and resources can be connected through orientations. Domain peers can be connected through hosting of and funding attendance at disciplinary conferences that include sessions on pedagogical challenges. Peers who share novel challenges can be convened through targeted, hands-on workshops where cross-disciplinary teams and showcases of peer work help participants rethink their traditional approaches. Peers who share an institutional type, such as CÉGEP, may benefit from any of these approaches if they are targeted to their needs.
Use a Model to Support Experimentation and Policy Change
The model prompts us to support the preferred strategy of experimentation by addressing multiple influences. For instance, experiments could seek ways not only to maximize validating interactions, but also to leverage preferred strategies, improve coordination with colleagues, reallocate resources, and address barriers such as institutional bureaucracy and risk management. Key personnel representing those issues could be integrated into hands-on workshops to ensure a cross-disciplinary approach.
Limitations and Future Research
Our study was limited by data collection, analysis, and sample size. During data collection, our focus group participants influenced each other's answers, but we did not address how interactions may have been affected by gender norms or lines of seniority in the room. During analysis, our use of systematic grounded theory imposed predefined categories to organize our model. Finally, our sample was small and diverse, which suited an exploratory study but did not provide enough participants in each discipline to analyze disciplinary differences. Our study did generate a model that is both usable and testable on a larger scale. Future research could use wide-scale quantitative measures such as surveys to test the influences and relationships outlined in the model. The model could also be tested as a practical tool to assess needs for a targeted group by addressing each of the influences and their relationships to each other. The model could also be used to explore systemic differences in needs based on gender and other demographic differences. Finally, the model could be used to design comprehensive development activities to test the impact of its systemic approach on teaching, learning, and administrative policy.
Four Kinds of Validating Interactions
Elements of a Relatable Teaching Challenge
Faculty were motivated to (1) experience validating interactions but were challenged by (2) students' transactional attitudes and mixed abilities. Faculty used (3) strategies of peer consultation, experimentation, and offloading, but were undermined by (4) poor communication, bureaucracy, and institutional risk management, as well as limited time and resources. To cope, faculty (5) persisted with familiar teaching and assessments until forced to retreat by frustration or burnout.
Contributor Notes
DAVID WILLIAM PRICE is a PhD candidate at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He has applied sociocultural systems analysis to the migration of university courses online, faculty development, and mid-life career transition. Email: dwprice@gmail.com
SAUL CARLINER is a Professor of Education at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His research includes the design of materials for learning and communication, and the management of groups who produce them. Email: saul.carliner@concordia.ca
MONICA LOPEZ is a Pedagogical Counsellor for the Office of Academic Development at Dawson College, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her professional and research interests are program design and evaluation and faculty development. Email: mlopez@dawsoncollege.qc.ca
