One thing Danielle had discovered in all the recruiting, interviewing, and hiring she’d done for faculty positions: you never really knew how the candidate, once hired, would perform. You could do all the vetting you wanted. You could have the strongest conviction that the candidate you’d just hired was the perfect one to fill the role. And you could assign the new hire the best faculty mentor. Yet as the school year wore on, you’d soon discover that the candidate didn’t know how to help students learn or the other essentials a faculty role entailed. Danielle finally decided that the teaching role is simply too specialized on the one hand and requires such disparate skills on the other hand that the teaching gift was always in the demonstration, never really in the qualifications or resume.
Role
The role of a school’s faculty is to deliver instruction. Yet given the mysterious nature of learning, instruction isn’t exactly a deliverable. It is not as if an instructor can show up, measure out the magic water, and ensure that students imbibe. Individual students, groups of students, subjects, classrooms, and other conditions present so many variables that sound instruction has more to do with constantly adjusting resources, methods, and approaches to trigger the desired results. Instruction is not engineering the magic ride, administering the magic pill, or firing the magic bullet. The role of a school’s faculty is thus more to stay constantly abreast of student needs, interests, and challenges, and instructional resources, options, and designs, to coax out of the greatest number of students the best possible performance. A school’s faculty members must try in the most collegial and collaborative fashion to produce a symphony every term and every year, when the score is constantly changing. Appreciate the challenge that your school’s faculty members face and the constant creativity and commitment that effective instruction takes.
Types
Schools may employ several types of instructors. At the higher-education level, colleges and universities tend to employ both full-time faculty members teaching core required courses and part-time adjunct faculty members teaching elective courses. Full-time instructors may be either tenured or on a track toward tenure, where they have security from job termination, or non-tenure track, where they are generally employed at the school’s will with no job security but with employment benefits. Schools employ adjunct faculty at will without benefits. At the elementary and secondary school level, schools employ both full-time teachers and part-time substitute teachers. They also employ teaching staff members who divide their duties between classroom and specialized instruction, student support, and other administrative services. Full-time public school teachers tend to work under negotiated labor agreements with job security and benefits. Part-timers are generally at will with no benefits. Private school teachers may work on annual contracts with the expectation, but no promise, of renewal.
Economics
To manage their budgets responsibly and be able to respond to enrollment declines and other budget pressure, schools must carefully manage their faculty hiring and usage. The more adjunct and part-time instructors a school can employ to cover instructional needs, the lower the labor costs and greater the budget flexibility. Accreditors, though, understand these school economic incentives and so may enforce standards limiting adjunct and part-time instructor usage, while requiring full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty members to teach core required courses. School administrators must manage this dynamic adroitly. They cannot simply hire excess full-time faculty members to cover all teaching needs, without increasing labor costs and reducing budget flexibility. Too many full-time faculty members can lead to budget crises and morale-dampening insecurity around the prospect for layoffs due to necessary reductions in force.
Characteristics
Schools thrive when they employ skilled, committed, and effective instructors of good character. Because they have constant contact with large numbers of students who are generally younger and may be vulnerable to manipulation by authority figures, instructors must be of impeccable moral character relating to student safety and security. Instructors should also have a mastery of their subject fields, with the capability to inspire student field interest. Instructors also need at least a basic understanding of learning, instructional methods, and assessment, to be able to diagnose student learning challenges and meet student learning needs. Schools do well when their instructors are also collegial and collaborative, mission committed, capable of close supervision and direction, and good team players. School leaders, program directors, department heads, and faculty colleagues may all interview candidates. Candidates may also meet with students for the evaluators to hear student impressions and make a teaching demonstration. Hiring is often probationary for a term or similar period to ensure appropriate fit.
Teaching
The primary duty of faculty members is to show up on time, prepared to teach the classes for which administrators schedule them. Full-time instructors may have substantial discretion over teaching methods and may also develop their own course content and syllabus. But they must also stick to the course description and instruct in the course content and skills that academic standards and benchmarks designate. Part-time and adjunct instructors may have to teach under a syllabus that the school supplies, using materials, lesson plans, and instructional methods that full-time faculty members or departments direct. Instructors may invest substantial time and effort in preparing course and assessment designs for each new course assigned. Thus, schools must generally allow instructors time to develop new designs, materials, and assessments for new assignments, respecting the time and effort involved. Put another way, instructors tend to favor repeating courses rather than taking on new assignments because of the time and effort involved, and to preserve the mastery that they may feel they have obtained in their traditional assignments.
Service
Schools typically expect full-time faculty members to provide other school service in addition to teaching assigned classes. At the lower levels, that service may involve lunchroom and playground supervision, coaching sports, directing dramatic productions, and supervising homerooms and study halls. In higher education, school service may involve student advising, supervising student internships, assisting with graduate placement, participating in department meetings, mentoring adjunct faculty, and serving on tenure, curriculum, grade-appeals, and student-discipline committees. Schools do well when their faculty members take on school service with the creativity, regularity, reliability, and energy that the work deserves.
Scholarship
Colleges and universities also generally expect their full-time faculty members, particularly those on tenure track, to engage in substantial scholarship. In theory if not always in practice, institutions of higher education are knowledge-generating organizations. The clinical studies, laboratory experiments, and other empirical research colleges and universities perform, and the bodies of scholarship they develop, serve not only the schools but also industry, the professions, government, and society. Gaining tenure generally requires publishing scholarship. Publish or perish is the faculty mantra at the higher education level. Colleges and universities do well to designate faculty scholarship mentors and provide other accountability and support to help faculty members meet scholarship requirements. A strong program of faculty scholarship proves the faculty’s technical field knowledge, skill, and commitment. It can also inform and inspire students.
Support
Schools at all levels seek to provide adequate support for faculty members. At lower elementary levels, instructor support may focus on classroom aides to ensure appropriate behavioral management, reasonable class sizes, and balanced schedules with appropriate personal, sick-leave, and vacation days for self-care. At secondary school levels, instructor support may focus on technology support, librarian support, professional development time, student behavioral and disciplinary support, remedial student services for struggling students, and disability accommodations and services for special needs students, to ensure that instructors can attend responsibly to overall class needs. At higher-education levels, faculty support may involve grant support for research projects, an assigned library liaison, student teaching and research assistants, periodic sabbaticals to work on scholarship requirements, and expenses for conference travel and presentations. Schools have a number of ways to show their appreciation and respect for the efforts of their skilled faculty members. Faculty internal and external recognition with teaching awards and honorary chairs and titles can also help.
Development
Schools should budget and plan for the professional development of their faculty members. New faculty members in particular may have comprehensive and current field knowledge but lack knowledge of instructional methods, assessment methods and goals, and other important tasks and functions within a school. Experienced faculty members may conversely not be current in their teaching knowledge and skills, especially around technology use, assessment, and new or emerging forms of instruction. Assigning mentors to faculty members, forming faculty teams around teaching or field interests, bringing in speakers and trainers on developments in technology and education, and authorizing and paying for conference travel can all spur faculty development. Make professional development of faculty members a school priority. Assign responsibility for guiding professional development to an accountable faculty leader or faculty committee.
Evaluation
Schools should also have a systematic way of evaluating instructors, to recognize effective performance, communicate opportunities for improvement, and stimulate introspection and growth. Observation of teaching by the school leader or assigned department chairs is appropriate. A sensitive and insightful observer may afterward share comments while listening to the observed colleague’s own observations and questions. Schools at the elementary and secondary level may also adopt the practice of annual evaluations timed to the end of the school year. A common practice is for the school leader to share a self-evaluation form for the instructor to complete and supply to the school leader. The school leader may then meet with each instructor after the school year ends to share comments on the year and the self-evaluation form, and hear the instructor’s own comments, questions, interests, and concerns. At the higher-education level, colleges and universities commonly require or invite students to evaluate instructors anonymously, for instructor, department, or dean review. At the higher-education level, though, tenure systems tend to be the primary evaluation tool for retention and promotion of full-time faculty.
Adjuncts
Support and evaluation of adjunct, substitute, and other part-time faculty members can aid a school’s instructional program, too. In some schools, especially at the higher education level, adjunct and part-time faculty members may teach a significant percentage of a school’s overall curriculum. Weak and ineffective part-time instruction can undermine student confidence in, and the good outcomes of, a school’s instructional program. Adjunct faculty support could look like full-time faculty support, with assistance from teaching mentors, librarians, student teaching assistants, instructional designers, and technology staff. Professional development opportunities for adjunct faculty would not generally include conference travel but could include invitations to in-school training sessions and speaker presentations.
Governance
Schools should involve their faculty members in the shaping, guiding, and governance of the academic program. A school’s board governs the school in its mission, direction, and overall operation. Yet a school board may not necessarily include any educator members with substantial academic training and teaching experience. Even if the board did include experienced educators, a school properly relies on its faculty to govern the academic program itself, if not the overall direction or operation of the school. Faculty members may not necessarily influence the school’s selection of its leader or the school budget, mission, or vision. But faculty members appropriately influence and even guide and govern the shape, goals, and methods of the academic program, in which faculty members are presumptive experts. Accreditation standards may even require faculty governance of the curriculum and other academic program features. Don’t overlook drawing on your school’s faculty to guide and strengthen the academic program. Involve your school’s faculty in academic program governance.
Reflection
How would you rate the overall quality and effectiveness of your school’s faculty on a scale from one to ten? What institutional adjustments could increase your faculty rating, if made over time? Does your school have an effective process for recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and orienting highly qualified new faculty members? Does your school offer substantial professional-development opportunities to its faculty members? Does your school have an appropriate mix of full-time faculty members and part-time instructors? Do your school’s faculty members receive sufficient support services to properly execute their teaching, service, and scholarship obligations? Does your school’s leadership adequately involve faculty members in governing the school’s academic program?
Key Points
A school’s faculty members have the central role in mission success.
Schools employ full-time, part-time, adjunct, and tenured instructors.
Schools seek instructors with keen field knowledge and teaching skills.
Teaching assigned courses effectively is an instructor’s core duty.
Full-time faculty members also have school service obligations.
Tenure-track faculty in higher education have scholarship obligations.
Instructors benefit from school support in several forms.
Schools should budget and plan for faculty professional development.
Schools should not ignore support for adjunct and part-time faculty.
Schools should involve the faculty in governing the academic program.