Defining and measuring faculty productivity are among the most central issues for quality and accountability in higher education today, and it is the subject this study seeks to illuminate. This study first examines how the productivity of faculty in the School of Education at a private university differ according to different faculty…

In this article, the author discusses how universities and the academics who work in them understand the relationship between teaching and research. In several countries, acknowledgement of the need to link teaching and research has led to the development of institutional strategies to achieve this goal. In South Africa, the linking of teaching…

A growing proportion of the nation's professors are at the same point in their career: still working, but with the end of their careers in sight. Their tendency to remain on the job as long as their work is enjoyable--or, during economic downturns, long enough to make sure they have enough money to live on in retirement--has led the professoriate…

This article sets out to explore how academics make sense of the current transformations of higher education and what kinds of academic identities are thereby constructed. Based on a narrative analysis of 42 interviews with Finnish academics, nine narratives are discerned, each providing a different answer as to what it means to be an academic in…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of a small group of Aboriginal neophyte teachers in Saskatchewan, Canada. Part of a larger study, this research used a mixed method approach for data collection in which 18 Aboriginal beginning teachers completed a survey (with Likert-scale items and open-ended questions) and an additional…

This mixed-methods research examined the relationships between burnout, as measured by the Counselor Burnout Inventory (CBI), demographic and organizational variables as indicated by literature, and the assignment of non-counseling duties, as measured by the School Counselors Activity Rating Scale (SCARS) with a national sample of professional…

This article analyses academic work and the academic workforce in the context of current dynamics and likely futures. It discusses the significance of academic work, reviews workforce characteristics, and analyses tensions and pressures. Prevailing conceptualisations, it is argued, do not reflect the current situation in which the profession finds…

Emphasis on 21st Century Skills development has increased expectations on teachers to take advantages of emerging technologies to support student learning. Yet it is not clear whether teachers are well equipped with the necessary skills, support, and positive attitudes toward integrating them in their practices. Even though student-centered…

The objective of this study was to reveal how the national economic recession has affected the nature and extent of support for tenure track librarians at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. The authors surveyed 43 ARL Deans and University Librarians to discover the criteria for achieving tenure and the current…

Our knowledge of research cultures in university education departments is still evolving, particularly in connection with the departments which have achieved a high ranking in the UK government's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), and also the conditions under which "knowledge workers" operate are under-researched, although this is…

The American Psychological Association and its divisions have developed various resources aimed at aiding early career psychologists (ECPs); yet, very little research has been conducted to assess the actual needs of this group. Specifically, research has not identified the needs and concerns of junior faculty engaged in classroom teaching. As…

This paper reports on the practice of buying-out teaching to create time for research. A study was carried out, at a regional university in Australia, with academics in receipt of research grant funds (and therefore with the means to buy out teaching), Heads of School, and the Deputy Vice Chancellors responsible respectively for research and for…

We investigated the hypothesis that interdisciplinarity is being explicitly taught behind the facade of traditional disciplines. We interviewed 14 academics (seven geographers and seven agricultural scientists) about their teaching in the inherently interdisciplinary field of natural resource management. Our teachers were generally well informed…

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in distance learning in higher education. Given this, it is extremely important to understand faculty attitudes about distance education, not only because they can vary widely, but also because it is the faculty, through their design and implementation of online courses, that will shape the…

The paper investigates difficulties involved in integrating online courses in academic colleges. Despite their growing prevalence in Israel and worldwide there are still no online courses offered as part of the learning process in many colleges. In order to identify factors for this phenomenon, a study was conducted to investigate the attitudes of…