2019 Annual Conference

Adult Development

Roundtable (45 minutes)

This session proposes a framework for reconceptualizing faculty development as faculty learning and professional development as an area within adult learning and development and along the continuum of lifelong learning in the professions.  After an overview of the framework, opportunities and challenges will be addressed related to organizational learning.

This session is for faculty and staff who plan, facilitate, participate in, and/or evaluate faculty development programs and who are interested in thinking about faculty development from the perspectives of both adult learning and development and organizational learning.

State historical examples of faculty development in the United States
Explain how faculty development can be reframed as faculty learning and professional development
Differentiate between organizational structures which impede and those which support faculty learning and professional development

Kegan’s (1994) proposal that adults are ill-prepared for the mental demands of modern life has come to fruition.  Higher-education faculty embody a multiplicity of roles in response to systematic demands (i.e., university, accreditation, professional discipline, society) as well as demands from themselves and other people (i.e., colleagues, staff, students).  While the term faculty development is found in publications and is prevalent in conversations in higher education, literature (Gaff & Simpson, 1994; Hafler et al., 2011; Leslie et al., 2013; Wang, 2017) in higher education lacks an agreed-upon definition of this phrase, and anecdotal narratives imply faculty development can be a catch-all term for all of the perceived needs of faculty and/or a synonym for teaching.  Additionally, there exist few published conceptual frameworks for faculty development (Cafarella & Zinn, 1999).  Reframing faculty development as faculty learning and professional development positions faculty as lively adult learners embedded within a learning organization (Senge, 2006) and within an ever-changing society.  A faculty-learner centered framework changes the dominant narrative from, “How can faculty be developed?” to, “Who are our faculty-learners, and how can they be supported in their professional learning and development?”  Opportunities and challenges of this framework will be addressed related to organizational learning.

A brief overview of the history of faculty development in higher education will be presented, and then a new mental model, or framework, for faculty development informed by the fields of adult learning and development and organizational learning will be shared.  This model positions faculty as adult learners within a learning organization and differentiates between faculty training and faculty learning.  Opportunities and challenges of designing, obtaining faculty buy-in, facilitating, and evaluating this framework will be presented.  Visuals and critical questions will be displayed via PowerPoint or handout as a way to support audience reflection and engagement with content.