Mary C. Wright 
Always at Odds? [PDF ebook] 
Creating Alignment between Faculty and Administrative Values

In surveys, research university faculty often report that they value teaching more than their departments do. This incongruence holds implications for job satisfaction, stress, time spent on teaching, organizational continuity, and even student evaluations. Using an interactionist view of organizations, Mary C. Wright examines the reasons for this lack of agreement between the individual’s values and perceptions of organizational leaders’ views. She also examines departments in which there is a consensus about the value of teaching, specifically how formal policies, social networks around teaching, and chair leadership can offer an alternative work environment, or a culture of congruence around instruction. The practices and organizational arrangements of these departments offer lessons for administrators, faculty, and faculty developers who wish to create universities conducive to instructional enhancement. Because this book features extensive case studies of science departments, it also holds implications for those interested in constructing productive work environments and enhancing student learning in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.

Table of Content

Tables

Acknowledgments



1. Introduction



2. Benefits of Instructional Congruence



3. ‘It’s Like Bad Taste’: How Interpretive Person-Organization Fit



4. Social Networks as Building Blocks for Congruence: Faculty That Chalk Together Talk Together



5. How Chairs Build Instructional Communities: Big Pictures Versus Big Impacts



6. Sharing the Value of Teaching: Ways to Build a Culture of Congruence



Appendix A: Faculty Semi-Structured Interview Instrument

Appendix B: Chair Semi-Structured Interview Instrument



Notes

References

Index

About the author

Mary C. Wright is Instructional Consultant at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan.