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ERIC Number: EJ1455687
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0022-1546
EISSN: EISSN-1538-4640
Faculty Hiring: Exercising Professional Jurisdiction over Epistemic Matters
Leslie D. Gonzales; Naseeb K. Bhangal; Chastity Stokes; Jesenia Rosales
Journal of Higher Education, v96 n1 p28-53 2025
Faculty members are entrusted with great power to decide who deserves space within the academic profession. Given that the profession's central mission is knowledge production, such decisions inevitably concern epistemic matters, and specifically, what constitutes legitimate knowledge. From this perspective, faculty hiring is not only a matter of inviting new scholars into the academy but an opportunity to welcome new, creative knowledge, or perhaps knowledge that unsettles what has been taken-for-granted. Through interviews with 33 research university professors, we explored how search committees approached epistemic matters throughout the hiring process. Our analysis surfaced three distinct approaches. Defensive committees acted as if their primary task was safeguarding their discipline and department from disruptive epistemic contributions. Inclusive committees foregrounded local community, especially students' learning interests, and welcomed innovative even disruptive epistemic contributions. Conflictive committees displayed both tendencies, but ultimately favored scholars whose epistemic contributions would not disrupt the department or discipline. Across all three approaches, participants described how committees relied on conventions that generated both epistemic and demographic exclusion.
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A