Faculty types and effective teaching: A cautionary exploration of how faculty spend their time

Abstract

Most research on faculty time focuses on research productivity, leaving the time they spend on other activities largely unexplored. Time spent teaching is certainly as core to institutional missions as research and is more likely to shape students' experiences and learning. This large-scale, multi-institution study of over 16,000 full-time faculty examines how much time they spend on teaching, research, and service. Five distinct groups, based on time use, are described. Additionally, the relationships between the groupings and the use of effective educational practices are explored. Surprising results, such as teaching-heavy faculty scoring the lowest on measures of teaching effectiveness, raise questions about faculty roles and autonomy and what conditions inspire the use of best practices in teaching.