Faculty's implicit theories of academic work

grantor: University of TorontoThis study investigated how faculty at Canadian universities conceptualize their various professorial roles. These conceptualizations were considered their implicit theories of academic work. Implicit theories were explored using Kelly's (1955) theory of personal constructs. The theory suggests that experience is a function of people's self-constructed knowledge. Two groups of faculty were considered, those that qualify as experienced, and those that are less experienced. The research followed Kelly's (1955) repertory grid technique. The elements in the grid were activities representative of what faculty do, and the constructs were interpretations faculty use to discriminate among these activities. Both elements and constructs were determined by faculty in research phases one to three. In the final research phase, the standardized repertory grid was administered to a total of 88 faculty. Each grid was analyzed individually. The two groups were then compared using both inferential as well as non-inferential measures. Three research questions were explored: first, do experienced faculty, as compared to less experienced faculty, hold more complex implicit theories of academic work; second, do the implicit theories of experienced faculty show a higher level of integration of the teaching function; and third, are there dimensions of academic work underlying these implicit theories that are different from the traditional division into research, teaching and service, and are these dimensions different for the two groups. In order to address the first and second research question, t-tests for independent groups were conducted. Significant differences were found on some variables, suggesting that experienced faculty have a more integrated view of academic work. The third research question was explored using descriptive statistics. The data from both groups were first aggregated to form a consensus grid for each group. Each of the two resulting grids was then subjected to a principal component factor analysis. The two group grids differed in terms of number and interpretation of factors, and variance accounted for by the first factor. Both groups conceptualized academic work differently from the literature. Experienced faculty seemed to perceive a link between learning about one's discipline, learning about teaching, and collaboration, suggesting the need for a reconceptualization of scholarship. While the two groups, overall, agreed in terms of the relative importance of the activities, they agreed the most on the research items and disagreed the most on the teaching items.Ph.D