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ERIC Number: EJ1285475
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 40
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0161-4681
EISSN: N/A
Thriving, Surviving, or Striving? A Part-Time Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Typology for the New Era of Faculty Work
Nelson Pryor, Kim
Teachers College Record, v122 n11 2020
Context: As instructional part-time, non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) come to constitute an increasing proportion of all teaching faculty in the United States, significant research has investigated the experiences and perspectives of these essential higher education workers. In past decades, a subset of this work has sought to typologize this heterogenous group by various characteristics including their professional attributes and motivations for teaching part-time. Yet these typologies evidence limited usefulness to the robust and current scholarly debate surrounding NTTF in higher education. Purpose: This article presents a novel typology of part-time NTTF for the new era of faculty work--an era marked by financial inequality. Thus, the proposed typology sorts these faculty, within the context of structural inequality, by their motivation to teach part-time and their financial dependence on this work. Research Design: This analytic essay synthesizes literature on the attributes, work experiences, perspectives, and motivations of part-time NTTF in order to critique existing part-time faculty typologies and present a novel classification system. Conclusions: The proposed typology advances three types of part-time NTTF: "thrivers"--those who work as teachers predominantly by preference; "survivors" --those who work as teachers predominantly out of financial need; and "strivers" --those who work as teachers because of a combination of preference and financial need. As proposed, the new typology enables a more complex understanding of part-time faculty's work experiences and better differentiates lines of future inquiry and practice for these essential professionals, many of whom are indispensable to, yet face inequitable working conditions within, the field of higher education.
Teachers College, Columbia University. P.O. Box 103, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027. Tel: 212-678-3774; Fax: 212-678-6619; e-mail: tcr@tc.edu; Web site: http://www.tcrecord.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A