Faculty at work: Focus on teaching

Abstract

Within the framework of cognitive motivation theory, selected personal and environmental motivational variables for faculty in English, chemistry, and psychology from community colleges, comprehensive colleges and universities, and research universities were regressed against faculty allocation of work effort given to teaching. The data came from a 1988 national survey. Gender ( sociodemographic ); quality of graduate school attended, career age, and rank ( career ); self-competence, self-efficacy, institutional commitment, personal interest in teaching, and percent time preferred to give to teaching ( self-valuations ); and institutional preference, consensus and support, and colleague commitment to teaching ( perception of the environment ) were entered into regressions. R 2 were generally strong (.86 for community college chemists) and significant. For all institutional types, self-valuation and perception of the environment motivators significantly accounted for the explained variance whereas sociodemographic and career variables did not.