Jay R. Dee

Assessing Dispositions toward Cultural Diversity among Preservice Teachers.

Teacher education interventions designed to help individuals acquire understandings and skills needed to work effectively with culturally diverse student populations may not have significant impact unless teachers as learners are willing to explore beyond the familiar comfort zone of the majority cultural status quo. The purpose of this study was to assess preservice teachers’ attitudes toward cultural diversity prior to their entry into multicultural education courses at an urban university. Respondents indicated strong support for implementing diversity issues in the classroom, and high levels of agreement with equity beliefs and the social value of diversity. They did not agree that assimilation to the dominant culture was a requisite for student success.

Structural antecedents and psychological correlates of teacher empowerment

Empowered teachers participate in critical decisions that directly affect teaching and learning. Empowering work environments may enhance professionalism, facilitate teacher leadership, improve the quality of work life, and enable effective implementation of school reform. Process‐based views of empowerment suggest associations between school organizational structures and teacher empowerment, while psychological perspectives on empowerment suggest potential relationships between the phenomenon and cognitive and affective outcomes. Empowerment is considered in terms of teams and teamwork in schools, and relationships between empowerment and commitment to the school are examined.

Organizational Commitment of Teachers in Urban Schools: Examining the Effects of Team Structures

This study examines the effects of four team-based structures on the organizational commitment of elementary teachers in an urban school district. The study model focuses on organizational commitment and includes three intervening, endogenous variables: teacher empowerment, school communication, and work autonomy. Team teaching had both direct and indirect effects on commitment to the school. Curriculum teamwork, governance teamwork, and community-relations teamwork each contributed indirectly to higher levels of teacher commitment. Research results suggest the need for organizational designs and procedures that reinforce teacher identification with and involvement in the school organization.

TURNOVER INTENT IN AN URBAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE: STRATEGIES FOR FACULTY RETENTION

High rates of faculty turnover can be costly to the reputation of an institution and to the quality of instruction. Community colleges may expect high rates of faculty turnover as an aging workforce retires. Other sources of attrition, however, can be attributed to organizational characteristics and the structural properties of faculty work. This study examined non-retirement turnover intent in an urban community college. Specifically, the study utilized an expectancy theory framework to explore the relationship between turnover intent and faculty perceptions of autonomy, organizational support for innovation, and collegial communication. The study population included all full-time faculty members employed by an urban community college in the southeastern U.S. Survey responses from 66% (N = 149) of the invited population revealed that organizational support for innovation had the strongest effect on turnover intent. Faculty who reported higher levels of support for innovation were less likely to indicate intentions to leave. Findings suggest that community colleges can target innovation and organizational change as vehicles for enhancing faculty retention rates. Change initiatives related to curriculum, governance, and faculty development can be designed in ways that facilitate faculty commitment to the institution.

Understanding Academic Work in a Changing Institutional Environment

In this chapter, we explore the shifting nature of academic work at European and US research universities. Our analyses reveal four trends. First, despite significant differences in higher education governance, institutional environments have led to a shift away from the “integrated scholar” model toward structurally differentiated academic roles. Second, the priorities of external funding agencies influence the types of research performed in the United States and Europe, leading faculty to use diverse strategies to preserve their autonomy and address externally-defined research agendas. Third, in Europe, the quantification of research outputs has become a common trend whereas in the United States, publish-or-perish logics define the academic hierarchy of disciplines and institutions. Fourth, faculty identity is increasingly shaped by the institutional context such as the norms of academic capitalism, especially in the United States. The study revealed that research would benefit from employing innovative theoretical frameworks that explain changes in academic work.

Conflict management strategies of principals in site‐based managed schools

Site‐based management depends on collaboration and teamwork among teachers, administrators, and parents. Collaborative decision making in educational systems is frequently characterized by conflict and disagreement, given differing perspectives and opinions among participants, and differing interests in the status quo. School principals, charged with facilitator roles in locally managed schools, are challenged to address resulting conflicts in ways that yield functional synergies and constructive outcomes which enable schools to respond to community needs. The purpose of this study is to develop a profile of preferred conflict management behaviors and strategies of a sample of principals in a large, urban school district who work in site‐based managed schools. Results reflect these principals’ preference for solution‐oriented conflict strategies. Findings are discussed in terms of the changing leadership responsibilities of principals in site‐based managed schools.

Faculty autonomy: Perspectives from Taiwan

Recent legislative initiatives indicate that long-standing traditions of centralized state control of higher education in Taiwan are being displaced by new arrangements emphasizing institutional autonomy. Autonomous institutions are assumed to be flexible and responsive, given their relative freedom from government control. Institutional autonomy is assumed to “trickle down” to organizational members, who are then empowered to devise unique solutions to solve particular problems. Asserted benefits of institutional autonomy may not accrue, however, where organizational members are unable to determine the structures and processes of their work. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between institutional autonomy and dimensions of faculty autonomy. Findings lend conditional support to the claim that faculty members work within the constraints of “regulated autonomy,” where their individual behaviors are delimited by government and management.

Knowledge sharing and organizational change in higher education

Purpose Organizational learning in higher education institutions depends upon the ability of managers and academics to maintain a flow of knowledge across the structural boundaries of the university. This paper aims to understand the boundary conditions that foster or impede the flow of knowledge during organizational change at a large public university. Design/methodology/approach Interview data were collected from 51 academics and 40 managers at the selected university. The analysis focused on two initiatives that managers sought to implement to improve organizational performance. Findings For one of these initiatives, managers engaged in knowledge transformation that enabled managers and academics to learn and collaborate across group boundaries. For the other initiative, managers relied on knowledge transfer practices, which failed to establish productive cross-boundary interactions to support organizational learning. Practical/implications When seeking to implement new initiatives to enhance institutional performance, university managers and academics can view organizational change as a learning process that involves creating and moving knowledge across organizational boundaries. Under conditions of change, the creation and movement of knowledge may require the development of new structures and the use of communications that have a high level of media richness. Originality/value This study provides one of the first empirical investigations of knowledge sharing dynamics during organizational change in a higher education setting.

Organizational learning in higher education institutions: theories, frameworks, and a potential research agenda

Organizational learning is a conceptually rich construct that can inform understandings of a wide range of organizational phenomena. The field of higher education, however, lacks a sufficient body of empirical research on organizational learning in colleges and universities. Moreover, the limited set of organizational learning publications in higher education is weighted heavily toward the functionalist paradigm. This lack of paradigm diversity can be problematic in terms of how the organizational learning construct is applied to practice. In the context of the corporatization of higher education, where the authority of central management has been strengthened, functionalist approaches to organizational learning can reinforce top-down power dynamics and exacerbate tensions between faculty and administrators. This chapter calls for higher education researchers not only to conduct more studies of organizational learning, but to do so from the vantage point of multiple research paradigms.

Social Communication Skills of Physical Therapist Students: An Initial Characterization

ABSTRACT: Successful physical therapy practitioners possess a range of interpersonal communication skills. The social communication skills of students enrolled in a graduate‐level program in physical therapy were assessed in an initial exploratory study. Students completed the Social Skills Inventory (SSI); a multidimensional instrument that measures levels of social skills development indicative of overall social competence. Social communication scores of study respondents placed them within the lower quartile of normative SSI scores reported for college students. More extensive work experience, related or unrelated to health care, showed some association with higher social skills scores. Students who were concerned about their communication abilities had lower SSI scores. Analyses of social skills by personal characteristics revealed significantly higher scores for male respondents on the social control dimension of the SSI. No other statistically significant differences in social skills were found where sex, age, year of enrollment in the graduate program, or reported level of studentstudent or student‐faculty interaction served as independent variables. Findings of this initial study suggest the need for more formal communication training that is professionally relevant, efficient, and designed to strengthen desired communication competencies. A modeling approach is suggested as potentially useful in physical therapy where communication training may be supplemental to intensive program requirements. Additional research is needed to generate a more extensive social communication student profile, better define elements of social communication skills most important in professional and referent interactions in the context of professional practice, and explore the range of appropriate skill‐building interventions considerate of training program resources and limitations.