COLLEGE TEACHING AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF INSTITUTIONAL AND DISCIPLINARY CULTURES AND FACULTY IDENTITIES

Abstract

Despite an understanding amongst scholars for several decades that research must explore the contexts and cultures of institutions and disciplines if efforts to improve faculty teaching are to be successful, much of the interrelationships between these two cultures and faculty identities were little explored. In this exploratory study, I addressed this gap in the literature by applying a cultural framework of faculty teaching and using a cross-classified multilevel design, with approximately 30,000 faculty from 322 U.S. institutions and 121 academic disciplines who participated in the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE). I concluded that a) disciplines are far more important than institutions in explaining faculty teaching practices related to deep approaches to learning and collaborative learning; b) while institutional and disciplinary cultures do appear to interact, the interactions are limited in scope; and, c) faculty identities interact with institutional and disciplinary cultures in limited yet meaningful, if non-systematic, ways. These findings supported multiple implications for research and practice and suggest ways that future research can dig deeper to better understand the scope and nature of the interactions between institutional and disciplinary cultures and faculty identities as they relate to faculty teaching practices. This exploratory study provides clear empirical evidence that examining faculty teaching through the lens of faculty cultures and using crossclassified multilevel designs offers a valuable way to connect and examine multiple aspects of the teaching-learning environment to better understand how faculty teach and what influences their teaching.