Online Adjunct Faculty Perceptions of Professional Development to Support Personal and Professional Academic Growth During COVID-19

Objective: The purpose of this study was to understand what online adjunct faculty value as support services, specifically professional development opportunities, provided by their respective higher education institutions. Method: This qualitative narrative inquiry study centered on exploring perceptions and experiences of online adjunct faculty members from higher education institutions and their experiences and expectations of professional development (PD), prior to and during COVID-19. Results: The study resulted in the identification of possible improvements and enhancements to existing PD content that would further support faculty personal development, mental health, wellbeing, and academic growth. Conclusions: This study reminds us that there are numerous variables, including unforeseen crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that need to be considered when developing, implementing, and presenting PD for online adjunct faculty professional and personal growth. Because faculty want to be listened to and heard, the PD development and implementation process needs to be interactive to support online adjunct faculty, regardless of whether the university is for-profit or not-for-profit. Implication for Practice: The results based on online adjunct faculty experiences could lead to updating professional development opportunities employed in different higher education institutions to promote faculty self-actualization and ultimately, student success.

Gleaning the Fields of Higher Education: Exercises of an Adjunct Self and Instructional Precaritization

The use of adjunct faculty in higher education has become a widely discussed labor practice. The voices of adjuncts are largely absent in this inquiry and advocacy, an absence which wrongly suggests adjuncts a lack voice or of agency. In the first part of this piece, I argue that adjuncts should contribute to their field of inquiry to destabilize the notions of contingent instructional workers as mere classroom proctors, in need of others’ advocacy. In the second part, I relate episodes of adjuncts disregarded and embraced on their campuses. Stemming from years of teaching in higher education and adjunct organizing, this piece is written from an adjunct perspective, exploring the disregard and embrace adjuncts encounter in their institutional lives. Following Foucault's exercises of the self as part of a philosophical life, I call the academic productions of adjuncts “gleaning,” an exercise taken on by professors that enacts a philosophical project in the face of de-professionalization and precaritization. This critical and ethical intervention counterbalances managerial practices that dismiss adjunct labor and normalize the process of dismissal. Adjunct gleaning, I conclude, may never transform the two-tiered instructional system, though their cultural and intellectual production will hamper efforts to dismiss adjuncts’ presence and catalog them as agents of precarious survival.

The Voices of the New Majority of Professors: The Adjuncts Speak

The results of this phenomenological study reveal the attitudes of adjunct college and university professors in the U.S. toward grade inflation. The 23 participants encompassed a range of ages, experience levels, geographic areas, education levels, and races. Semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions are used to explore 23 adjunct’s lived experiences with grade inflation. Three research questions directed the study: What experiences have adjunct faculty members working in a four-year college or university had with grade inflation? How do adjunct faculty members working in a four-year college or university perceive grade inflation? How do adjunct faculty members working a four-year college or university interpret their experiences with grade inflation? Findings substantiated that adjuncts have definite ideas about how to curb grade inflation, including increased training, increased resources, and use of rubrics. We concluded these results are useful for aiding college administrators in determining what the new majority, or adjuncts, believe should change in the area of grade inflation and future researchers should do further qualitative and quantitative research on grade inflation and adjuncts. Key words: Adjunct, grades, grade inflation, higher education, new majority