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The purpose of this paper is to analyze author and methodological characteristics in top-tier publications in higher education. As the importance of research in the professoriate continues to grow and faculty face ratcheted-up expectations for prestige in their research, such data are important contextually and historically.

This descriptive study examines 587 articles within four top-tier higher education research journals from 2008 to 2012. Data were open coded and analyzed with a research team, resulting in an intercoder reliability of 0.96.

Results show most authors are assistant professors, overwhelmingly received PhD’s from very high research institutions (Carnegie classification), and currently work in similar institutions. Five degree-granting institutions accounted for 29.0 percent of publications in top-tier journals. Additionally, quantitative research accounted for 60.6 percent of published articles, with regression as the most commonly used analytic technique (34.7 percent).

This study examined only higher education faculty and institutions based in the USA as well as first authors.

These results are meant to provide baseline data for top-tier journals within higher education and might inform conversations about methodological acceptability, respectability of qualitative research, graduate education research requirements, journal editor trainings, and tenure and promotion criteria.

This paper provides an update to previous studies that examined publications in higher education within the last three decades. In addition, this study examines author characteristics, which previous studies have mostly excluded. This study offers empirical data to inform conversations about the state of research in top-tier publications within higher education.

The number of open access repositories (OARs) has been growing globally, but faculty members have been reluctant to embrace OAR and submit their work. While there are studies that looked at sociotechnical factors that affect faculty participation in OARs, this study aims to explore how the individual characteristics of faculty might impact faculty willingness to deposit their work in an OAR.

The survey was distributed to all faculty at a large public university in the USA who were identified as having their primary job responsibilities in teaching and research. This study used a correlational analysis between faculty individual characteristics (i.e. age, rank, status and academic discipline) and their willingness to deposit their work.

The findings show that there is a difference in faculty familiarity with open access (OA) principles and faculty awareness of OA policy based on individual characteristics. Furthermore, these individual characteristics have a significant impact on faculty willingness to participate in OARs. While this study reveals a significant correlation between the faculty intent to deposit and the respondent’s academic discipline, rank and status, there are other factors that affect faculty intent to participate in OAR, such as familiarity with OA principles and awareness of institution’s OA Policy.

There were no significant responses from the Colleges of Science or Health and Public Service and, therefore, did not yield any statistically significant results. Measuring the university’s promotion system was outside the scope of this research.

Results of this research can provide insight on how individual characteristics of faculty might impact their willingness to embrace OA publishing in general and OARs in particular.

The findings from this research will be a valuable source of information for librarians and OA staff in developing more effective outreach programs to increase faculty participation in OA and OARs.

This study reveals that individual faculty traits do have an impact on faculty willingness to participate in OARs. The academic discipline was found to make the most significant difference in faculty intent to deposit their work in an OAR. However, due to the ever-changing landscape of OA publishing and the ongoing outreach efforts by librarians, the faculty members’ perception and participation in OARs is likely to evolve.

The purpose of this paper is to consider trust as an important relational source in schools by exploring whether trust lowers teacher burnout. The authors examine how trust relationships with different school parties such as the principal relate to distinct dimensions of teacher burnout. The authors further analyze whether school-level trust additionally influences burnout. In doing this, the authors account for other teacher and school characteristics.

The authors use quantitative data gathered during the 2008-2009 school year from 673 teachers across 58 elementary schools in Flanders (i.e. the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium). Because teacher and school characteristics are simultaneously related to burnout, multilevel modeling is applied.

Trust can act as a buffer against teacher burnout. Teachers’ trust in students demonstrates the strongest association with burnout compared to trust in principals or colleagues. Exploring relationships of trust in distinct school parties with different burnout dimensions yield interesting additional insights such as the specific importance of teacher-principal trust for teachers’ emotional exhaustion. Burnout is further an individual teacher matter to which school-level factors are mainly unrelated.

Principals fulfill an important role in inhibiting emotional exhaustion among teachers. They are advised to create a school atmosphere that is conducive for different kinds of trust relationships to develop. Actions to strengthen trust and inhibit teacher burnout are necessary, although further qualitative and longitudinal research is desirable.

This paper offers a unique contribution by examining trust in different school parties as a relational buffer against teacher burnout. It indicates that principals can affect teacher burnout and prevent emotional exhaustion by nurturing trusting relationships in school.

The purpose of this paper is to explore which personal and contextual factors affect the use of Wikipedia as a teaching resource in higher education institutions.

This research question is approached by investigating faculty perceptions and attitudes in two large Spanish universities. For this purpose, a comprehensive empirical study has been employed, based on an online survey to faculty members and the inclusion of a decision-making model in the analysis.

Data provide evidence that a combination of cultural, social and subjective factors influences the decision to use Wikipedia. This decision is not only associated with lecturers’ individual characteristics, but mostly with surrounding influences. Teaching uses are more frequent when academics have close reference models and when they perceive that Wikipedia is being positively valued by their colleagues.

The present study provides a creative framework to analyze the main determining factors of Wikipedia usage by faculty. The inclusion of both internal and external factors in the decision process has proved to be a valuable novelty.

The study detects the main factors affecting the negative or reluctant attitude toward Wikipedia and provides some recommendations to overcome these barriers.

The study widens the scope of previous investigations supplying a new research framework and including, for the first time, a prominent online university in the analysis in order to discard the potential effects of digital and information illiteracy among students and faculty members.

Discussion is a staple in an academic classroom and remains at the apex of importance regarding student learning. It offers students an opportunity to have discourse around course material, other scholarly material, life experiences, etc. Discussion can lead to a deeper understanding of the subject matter and provide students and faculty exposure to perspectives that may challenge, validate, or reframe existing perspectives. Such discourse can also shatter existing perspectives and create opportunities for the development of new ones. The central role of faculty is to develop topics to be discussed and facilitate said discussions. Topics perceived as controversial (e.g., politics, human sexuality, religion, etc.) tend to produce the most lively and valuable discussions. Unfortunately, fears of retribution for engaging in such topics have commonly caused faculty to shy away from having such difficult dialogues. These fears persist even though the 1940 ­Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure position is to allow professors the opportunity to discuss challenging topics in the classroom (AAUP, n.d.). The current chapter addresses the challenge of protecting faculty who need the support of academic freedom in their classroom discussions. The authors approach this problem by discussing factors that leave faculty hesitant to engage in provocative classroom discussions such as the institution’s culture, faculty characteristics, rights of the faculty, and student population. Finally, the authors conclude with practical implications for how faculty hesitancy has the consequence of not promoting the critical thinking skills of students, which are required for today’s students who will become and who are already working professionals.

This paper aims to compare the psychometric properties of the Research Motivation Scale (RMS) from faculty in schools of education in American research universities to previous findings on this scale when administered to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty.

This study was an exploratory, quantitative study using survey research methods, and utilizing confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses and statistical tests of population differences.

Results indicate an adequate fit to a previously found three-factor structure. However, a new four-factor model, accounting for 47 per cent of the variance, was identified as a better fit: failure avoidance, intrinsic reward – satisfaction, intrinsic reward – joy and extrinsic reward. The overall reliability for the entire measure was 0.76. Intrinsic motivation and failure avoidance were rated statistically more important by education faculty than STEM faculty.

As an exploratory study and because of the chosen research approach, generalizations may be limited and further research in this area is recommended.

This study contributes to the literature on RMS with data from education faculty. Results support conceptual frameworks regarding faculty outcomes and professional growth, and suggest ways faculty may be encouraged to increase research productivity.

This paper includes implications for societal support for research institutions by modeling factors that affect faculty motivations to produce research and thereby increase institutional productivity.

This study builds on conceptual frameworks, explores the use of the RMS with education faculty and compares faculty motivation to conduct research across disciplines.

Adequacy of full-time faculty is a fundamental indicator used by US accreditors to ensure quality learning environments. This paper aims to explore institutional responses to one US regional accreditor to identify themes related to adequacy of faculty in support of institutional missions over a two-year period.

A qualitative design was used to examine eighteen institutional narratives. The research question was “What themes are identified by institutions to document adequacy of full-time faculty for compliance with accreditation?” The highest level of degree awarded was used to organize emergent themes from institutional narratives (e.g. associate, baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral level institutions).

The study identified five themes: definition of full-time faculty; variation in assessment measures used to demonstrate adequacy of full-time faculty; institutional characteristics and full-time faculty; responsibilities of full-time faculty; and relationship between full-time faculty and student learning outcomes. The findings showed that the institutions used multiple assessment measurements to demonstrate compliance.

The research design was limited to one US regional accreditation agency; therefore, the acceptable evidence related to adequacy of full-time faculty may differ among accrediting bodies, which would impact the institutional narrative and methods for demonstrating compliance. Second, some of the institutional groupings included only one or two narratives.

The finding of this study could have important implications for the research and practice of evaluating faculty in accreditation reviews.

There have been limited studies on accreditation narratives focused on the adequacy of full-time faculty. This study offers findings that may be of benefit to non-US and US higher education institutions in planning for faculty staffing patterns to support fulfillment of the institutional mission.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the relationship between college and university faculty collegiality, conceptualized as a set of prosocial behaviors, and job satisfaction.

A multi-level structural equation model was developed to examine the relationship between faculty collegiality and job satisfaction at the individual and institutional levels, the effects of gender and race/ethnicity, the effect of institutional type (i.e. research universities vs non-research universities), and whether institutional-level perceptions of faculty collegiality and job satisfaction influence perceptions of faculty collegiality and job satisfaction at the individual level.

Faculty collegiality was highly and significantly related to job satisfaction at the individual level (0.86) and at the institutional level (0.93). At the individual level, pretenured women faculty and faculty of color indicated significantly lower levels of collegiality. At the institutional level, pretenured faculty interactions with tenured faculty colleagues were positively and significantly related to individual-level perceptions of faculty collegiality.

Study limitations include self-report data that were dependent upon accurate responses from faculty participants, and cross-sectional data. Future analyses could extend study findings by examining the influence of faculty collegiality upon such outcomes as faculty productivity and retention in future multi-level analyses.

It is recommended that interventions be undertaken to embed prosocial behaviors into faculty research, teaching, and service activities, and to foster relationships between pretenured and tenured faculty members.

This paper underscores the importance of collecting nationally representative faculty data and conducting rigorous multi-level analyses to inform higher education policy and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to use an affordance approach to understand how university faculty use and value their workspace and respond to proposed spatial changes.

A mixed method survey was given to faculty in the college of engineering at a large public American university. Data were analyzed using an affordance lens.

The analysis indicates that the majority of engineering faculty highly value private offices and appears resistant to non-traditional workspace arrangements.

The authors performed the analysis with a relatively small sample (n=46).

University administrators need to communicate with faculty and take their opinions on spatial changes seriously. Changes to space may affect STEM faculty retention.

This paper could affect the quality of work life for university faculty.

The paper provide needed research on how faculty use and value their workspace while discussing the implications of alternative workspaces within the academy. Theoretically, the authors contribute to ongoing research on relationship between material and social aspects of organizational spaces.

Institutions of higher education face challenges of fiscal responsibility and their value proposition for students and other stakeholders they serve. Strategies used in business sectors, such as merger and acquisition, are being increasingly adopted by higher education governing boards, especially for public institutions and systems. The purpose of this paper is to guide policy decisions related to university mergers.

This paper focuses on the interplay between the pre-merger status of the institution, the individual faculty member's sense of belonging, and their commitment to the organization on levels of job-related stress, which has well-established negative impacts on individual and organizational performance. Using survey data collected at the same time post-merger from two different universities within the same state system, we explore regression models to identify similarities and differences between the faculty responses in terms of the impact of the merger on faculty stress.

Differences are found between the two universities in terms of faculty stress with faculty of one low status institution pre-merger having significantly higher stress post-merger. A case is presented for differences in stress based on a part on differences in how the mergers were managed at the system and university levels.

This research is instructive for higher education policy makers and university administrators as the institution of higher education continues this type of transformation.

This paper examines the impact of mergers on a university's single-most important asset, faculty. Comparative and timely faculty survey results from two related universities early post-merger provide valuable insights for leaders in higher education.