For those of you who may be interested, here is the link to the full version of the dissertation:
http://hdl.handle.net/1957/22036
Please feel free to let me know if you have questions or comments. It is my intention to use the themes shared during the presentation as the basis for a survey or questionnaire to be distributed more widely. The intent here is to see how these themes resonate with a broader audience regarding the phenomenon of faculty-to-faculty mentoring.
If you need copies of the PowerPoint notes used during the concurrent session on Thursday, please email me at dfindley@pcc.edu.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
UNM Mentoring Conference-Day 1
If one message were considered to be consistent across the presentations I saw at today's open sessions of the mentoring conference, that message would be "communication." Frameworks, deliverables, milestones, and good intentions mean nothing if program administrators do not clearly communicate their expectations about mentoring initiatives. There is also danger of confusion and failure if mentors and proteges fail to communicate openly, honestly, and in a timely manner.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Faculty-to-Faculty Mentoring in CTE: Why it matters
I often retell the story of why focusing on faculty-to-facutly mentoring in career and technical education (CTE) is of great personal importance. Here's the short version.
Upon assuming my first deanship, I was confronted with a situation in which a vacancy existing in one of the CTE programs in my division. The discipline and other particulars are not particularly relevant, but the reason for the vacancy is. In short, the highly-capable candidate, an individual who possessed much knowledge and who had enjoyed many years of success in the field as a practioner, felt a huge amoung of anxiety because he didn't understand how to teach, how to relate to students, or how to navigate the complex and foreign territory of the community college. For want of guidance and support, he was lost to us. He walked into the division office one bright and sunny fall morning, dropped his keys on the counter, and disappeared out the door. Not a good thing.
With the assistance of a member of the department's advisory committee, we were able to locate a seemingly-promising technician with extensive industry experience. Although this seemed eerily similar to the situation we'd just experienced, we needed an instructor, and such instructors tend to be in very short supply. He was capable enough concerning content area knowledge, but he didn't understand the college, failed to follow protocols and regulations, and ended up being fired because of behaviors that might have been okay in a shop environment but had absolutely no place in a community college environment where folks try extremely hard to avoid violating Federal civil rights laws. Beyond this I can't comment, but I can assure you it was not fun.
I started deaning literally the same month that I began work on my doctoral studies in community college leadership. My recent nightmare lingered in my mind as I made my way through Education and Work, the first course in the program. I suppose that it was at this point that I decided that there was something to the notion that faculty at the post-secondary level could benefit from some form of support, some sort of acculturation that would help them "learn the ropes" in the mysterious world of community college teaching. My personal journey had taken me from my early days in the K-12 business (10 years of middle school teaching) to seven years in small business and high-tech startups and on to adventures in the community college trade. I knew that folks needed to learn about how others think and learn, that not everyone approaches learning from the same perspective and with the same set of tools, and that learning how to teach would somehow enable instructors to more effectively facilitate learning for others. As I worked with six CTE programs and two transfer departments, watching people teach and learn and struggle and succeed, it became clear that there had to be an answer. And there was. Some departments informally linked experienced faculty with newbies in an effort to help them learn how things worked. These faculty seemed to adjust better and experienced fewer problems. I reflected on this in the context of my own long history of working with mentors, and the idea for my dissertation was born.
For those of you who are interested in my research, you can find the here at http://hdl.handle.net/1957/22036
. My future plans include additional qualitative work around the experiences of mentors and proteges, and a post-positivist approach to try and link the improvement in teaching with the achievement of student outcomes. It's fun and interesting work, and it matters. Please feel free to share your impressions, ideas, and questions.
Upon assuming my first deanship, I was confronted with a situation in which a vacancy existing in one of the CTE programs in my division. The discipline and other particulars are not particularly relevant, but the reason for the vacancy is. In short, the highly-capable candidate, an individual who possessed much knowledge and who had enjoyed many years of success in the field as a practioner, felt a huge amoung of anxiety because he didn't understand how to teach, how to relate to students, or how to navigate the complex and foreign territory of the community college. For want of guidance and support, he was lost to us. He walked into the division office one bright and sunny fall morning, dropped his keys on the counter, and disappeared out the door. Not a good thing.
With the assistance of a member of the department's advisory committee, we were able to locate a seemingly-promising technician with extensive industry experience. Although this seemed eerily similar to the situation we'd just experienced, we needed an instructor, and such instructors tend to be in very short supply. He was capable enough concerning content area knowledge, but he didn't understand the college, failed to follow protocols and regulations, and ended up being fired because of behaviors that might have been okay in a shop environment but had absolutely no place in a community college environment where folks try extremely hard to avoid violating Federal civil rights laws. Beyond this I can't comment, but I can assure you it was not fun.
I started deaning literally the same month that I began work on my doctoral studies in community college leadership. My recent nightmare lingered in my mind as I made my way through Education and Work, the first course in the program. I suppose that it was at this point that I decided that there was something to the notion that faculty at the post-secondary level could benefit from some form of support, some sort of acculturation that would help them "learn the ropes" in the mysterious world of community college teaching. My personal journey had taken me from my early days in the K-12 business (10 years of middle school teaching) to seven years in small business and high-tech startups and on to adventures in the community college trade. I knew that folks needed to learn about how others think and learn, that not everyone approaches learning from the same perspective and with the same set of tools, and that learning how to teach would somehow enable instructors to more effectively facilitate learning for others. As I worked with six CTE programs and two transfer departments, watching people teach and learn and struggle and succeed, it became clear that there had to be an answer. And there was. Some departments informally linked experienced faculty with newbies in an effort to help them learn how things worked. These faculty seemed to adjust better and experienced fewer problems. I reflected on this in the context of my own long history of working with mentors, and the idea for my dissertation was born.
For those of you who are interested in my research, you can find the here at http://hdl.handle.net/1957/22036
. My future plans include additional qualitative work around the experiences of mentors and proteges, and a post-positivist approach to try and link the improvement in teaching with the achievement of student outcomes. It's fun and interesting work, and it matters. Please feel free to share your impressions, ideas, and questions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)