Feixas / Åkerlind / Ion Development and Socialization of Academics

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-7431-5451-3
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 268 Seiten

This special issue addresses the development and socialization of academics at the early stages of their careers. Through the contributed papers, the reader has the chance to reflect on a multiplicity of aspects affecting entrance into the academic profession: from strategies and methods for introducing academics to institutional values and dynamics, training in the first phases of academic development and agents involved in this process, to the obstacles and challenges socialization implies. The wide variety of topics addressed in this issue demonstrates that the academic profession is complex and that socialization represents an important step in academics' professional life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Feixas, Mònica

Åkerlind, Gerlese

Ion, Georgeta

Stes, Ann

Leseproben

1 Teaching portfolios and the development of new university teachers

The teaching portfolio, that is, a structured collection of artefacts created across contexts and over time with the ultimate goal of advancing one’s expertise in teaching has been demonstrated to promote reflection on academic practices (SELDIN, 1997). Reflection, moreover, has been acknowledged as important in the induction of novice academics and doctoral students into the academic profession (MCALPINE, WESTON, BERTHIAUME, FAIRBANK-ROCH & OWEN, 2004). This entrance or integration into the academic community is supported by various institutional practices, including academic development programmes and activities which have been lauded for their contribution to the development of a repertoire of teaching skills (FEIXAS & EULER, 2013), to changing conceptions and approaches to teaching and learning, and to adoption of the student learning approach (GIBBS & COFFEY, 2004).

Previous research on the development of conceptions of university teaching (FOX, 1983; KUGEL, 1993) and a related field of inquiry into academics’ professional development (ÅKERLIND, 2005) also supports the claim that reflection is crucial for any development of university teachers. The general assumption of all this work, shared with other domains of teacher education, is that successful reflection is a transformative process that best proceeds with conscious self-monitoring of professional growth (JÄRVINEN & KOHONEN, 1995). Reflection, as FREESE (1999) defines it, based on LOUGHRAN (1995) and SCHÖN (1983), is thus “the process of making sense of one’s experiences by deliberately and actively examining one’s thoughts and actions to arrive at new ways of understanding oneself as a teacher” (p. 898).

Further, research has also shown that the teaching portfolio helps to facilitate this type of reflection (JÄRVINEN & KOHONEN, 1995). Online teaching portfolios, like their off-line counterparts, provide scaffolding for reflection and offer even more flexibility for integrating and updating a broad variety of portfolio artefacts in several media types (e.g. audio, video, text, graphics) (ONER & ADADAN, 2011). Nevertheless, there is the distinct possibility that teaching portfolios, online or offline, follow an instrumentalist rationale and are simply used as justification for already existing teaching practices. Reflection in that case becomes egocentric, unchallenged and self-limiting (MACLAREN, 2005), and may lead to practices of performativity. Performativity, in this context, is understood as inauthentic behaviour of teachers necessitated by pressures of an external educational policy context that employs judgements, comparisons, and displays as means of control, attrition and change (BALL, 2003).

Opposed to this, a scholarly approach that may result in a profound understanding and development of one’s teaching is grounded in “authenticity” (CRANTON & CARUSETTA, 2004a, p. 288) and “academic professionalism” (KREBER, 2013, p. 61). Authenticity in teaching refers to self-awareness and self-understanding developed through reflection, that is, the “open, questioning, mindful, consideration of how we think about ourselves and our teaching” (CRANTON & CARUSETTA, 2004b, p. 21). Similarly, academic professionalism is characterised by critical reflection on various aspects (such as policies, practices, processes) and purposes of university teaching and learning, “with the goal of arriving at shared ideals, or horizons of significance, according to which academic teachers develop their identities and orient their practices” (p. 61).

This orientation is also shaped by teachers’ conceptions of teaching portfolios, which vary according to the motivations for creating them (DE RIJDT, TIQUET, DOCHY & DEVOLDER, 2006)3. In other words, teachers’ motivation is also reflected in their portfolio work: whether they are responding to external demands, or are reflecting on teaching and the development of authenticity in teaching. TILLEMA & SMITH (2000) view the internal drive, such as self-reflection and the often externally motivated ambition for promotion or employment as the two extreme ends on the continuum of the conceptions that surface in the creation of teaching portfolios.

Previous studies on teaching portfolios used by early-career academics have often been somewhat schematic in approach and manual-like, and rarely are based on empirical studies of the experiences of the academics. Thus, it is unclear whether reflection is actually accomplished or is simply urged in relation to novice academic teachers. Exceptions to this are a few auto-ethnographic accounts of development that mention the role of teaching portfolios (BLAIR & MONSKE, 2009), a study of actual portfolios of new lecturers at a UK institution (MCLEAN & BULLARD, 2000) and at an Austrian university (NEUBÖCK, 2013). There is a particular lack of systematic inquiry into how these developmental processes are actually experienced by new academics or doctoral students themselves. Hence, it becomes fundamental to study how such different conceptions or purposes of reflection may or may not apply in different institutional contexts.

2 Research context and methodological approach

This study focuses on the construction of reflective “academic professionalism” (KREBER, 2013, p. 61) through the creation of online teaching portfolios in the institutional context. In particular, we explore doctoral students’ conceptions (cf. PRATT, 1991) of online teaching portfolios, that is, how they define them for themselves and how academic professionalism is reflected in these conceptions. The following are the research questions:

• How do doctoral students conceptualise online teaching portfolios?
• How are these conceptions related to notions of academic professionalism?
• What are the implications for supporting novice academics?

The study took place at a research-intensive, highly international, graduate-only university in Budapest, Hungary. The university is accredited both in the United States and in Hungary; hence, it is American and European in terms of major policies and practices. Students and faculty come from nearly 100 countries and engage in interdisciplinary education in the social sciences and humanities. The language of instruction is exclusively English.

Doctoral students involved completed the University’s Certificate Programme for Excellence in Teaching in Higher Education, an academic development programme designed for doctoral students in the social sciences and humanities. Participation in this programme is voluntary. Completion takes an academic year. Doctoral students are prepared for university teaching through foundational courses in higher education pedagogy including more focused areas, such as classroom communication, teaching critical thinking, designing for student learning and technologysupported teaching strategies. The final programme artefact is an online teaching portfolio that documents doctoral students’ teaching philosophy, teaching materials and reflections on their development as novice teachers. Online teaching portfolios are created and archived in the university’s online portfolio platform provided by the Mahara system.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 doctoral student participants from the first three cohorts of the academic development programme. Interviews ranged from 30-45 minutes in length. All interviews were voluntary and underpinned by informed consent. The interviews were conducted in English.

Our choice of conducting interviews is embedded in the notion that interviewing research allows for surfacing, in a co-constructed discursive situation, the personal meanings and norms associated with an experience or practice (SEIDMAN, 2006). By semi-structured interviews we mean a process similar to that described by ALEXIADOU (2001, p. 52) as “an interview agenda shaped by the operationalization of the research questions, but retaining an open-ended, and flexible nature” in order to allow the participants to move the interview situation towards those aspects of their experience they see as the most relevant.

The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed in full. Two researchers conducted independent analysis. The analysis aimed for categories to emerge from the data using a grounded approach (GLASER & STRAUSS, 1967). A qualitative comparison took place; hence, the two coders compared, discussed and resolved their disagreements in order to improve the reliability of the coding. The analysis followed an iterative process (COFFEY & ATKINSON, 1996; CRESWELL & MILLER, 2000):

1. First reading and holistic analysis of the transcribed interviews.
2. Defining “chunks” of interview data that related to the specific research questions.
3. Identifying and naming the categories that seem to represent valid, bounded, and relevant conceptions of a portfolio.
4. Analysis of the internal components of those conceptions.
5. Cross-examination of the interconnections of these conceptions within the whole relevant interview material.

Conceptions thus identified have been separated below for analytical clarity, and not as a way of classifying and comparing individuals’ differences in thinking or orientation.

3 Results and discussion

Based on the qualitative analysis described above, we identified four main...