Perceptions of full-time faculty members at selected Texas public community-junior colleges regarding faculty development goals and practices

Abstract

The present state of faculty development, as revealed in the literature, seems to suggest several directions for productive investigation.

A major deficiency seems to revolve around the lack of a more detailed exploration of the faculty point of view concerning faculty development. Where faculty perceptions have been consulted in previous studies, the approach generally has been one of arriving at conclusions said to be representative of "faculty," as if faculty members represented a homogenous group with a common set of needs for professional development. A variation on this approach has been that of comparing the "faculty" point of view with perceptions of other groups in the educational or institutional community. The present study, then, is concerned with the faculty point of view, and with looking beyond perceptions of the total group to examine differences among smaller groups of faculty members, as broken down by various classifications.