Faculty careers and work lives

About this book

This volume reviews and synthesizes recent research on faculty demographics, appointment types, work life, and reward systems, as well as major theoretical perspectives useful to researchers who study faculty work, careers, and professional development. In doing so, it advances and challenges current dialogue on faculty careers, notably by exploring a "narrative of constraint" that underlies much contemporary research and reform in higher education. Although highlighting the valuable ways whereby the "narrative of constraint" has illuminated the myriad barriers that can, and too often do, inhibit faculty careers, the authors assert that the theme of "constraint" obscures possibility, learning, agency, and growth. In emphasizing constraint, many contemporary research and reform efforts overlook faculty striving for growth. This volume reintroduces growth as an important consideration in higher education discourses of policy and practice, and with attention to four of its key aspects: learning, agency, professional relationships, and commitments. The authors discuss current research on faculty demographics, appointments, work, reward systems, along with theories used in research, relative to these four aspects of growth. They also discuss how attention to faculty growth may open up new directions for policy, public communication, and future research on higher education faculty. -- P. 4 of cover.