Ed.D. Dissertation Research StrategyPresentationThird Annual Leadership SymposiumSt. John’s UniversitySaturday March 28, 2015

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF FACULTY PARTICIPATION IN FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

DR. PATRICK BLESSINGER

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY

QUEENS, NEW YORK

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Research Strategy and Approach•Define Topic of Research Interest and Discuss with Mentor

•Review Literature on Topic and Identify Knowledge Gap

•Define Research Questions Relative to Knowledge Gap

•Select Research Methodology Appropriate to Answering Questions

•Develop Research Project Proposal and Get IRB Approval

•Implement Research Project and Write-up Results

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Purpose and Goal of Study•The dissertation: 124 pages total length; 71 pages in the body.

•The main purpose of the study was to examine faculty participation in FLCs by utilizing a phenomenological research strategy to determine the nature of participants’ lived experiences in FLCs in higher education.

•The main goal of a phenomenological study is to describe the lived experiences of the participants and the personal meaning-making processes they experience from the participants’ first-person perspective.

•This research investigation collected detailed and extensive narrative data from three highly experienced FLC participants and instructional leaders to gain a deeper insight into what makes FLCs effective based on their experiential knowledge with FLCs and their personal meaning-making understanding of their experiences with FLCs.

•The main aim of FLCs is to improve student learning by developing more effective pedagogical practices and knowledge.

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Overview of LiteratureAccording to Welkener, Hall, & Grilliot, 2012; McDonald, Nagy, Star, Burch, Cox, & Margetts, 2012; Searby, Ivankova, & Shores, 2009, key outcomes of FLCs:

•Allow faculty to move more quickly through the stages of intellectual and social development in the area of teaching and learning.

•Improve faculty-student interactions and improve student learning.

•Allow faculty to gain a greater sensitivity to and respect for multiple perspectives and cultures through its interdisciplinary and collaborative nature.

•Allow faculty to make greater and more meaningful civic contributions than those who have not been in the program.

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Overview of Literature•Hord (1997, 2009) analyzed over ten years’ worth of data on FLCs and concluded the ultimate purpose of an educational institution is to facilitate and produce learning.

•Vescio, Ross, & Adams (2008) examined six studies on FLCs and concluded that FLCs can have a significant positive impact on teaching and learning.

•Roberts (2010) study revealed that teacher collaboration and shared teacher experiences are important factors to increasing student achievement.

•Cox (2009) argues that FLC outcomes are highly stable, quickly realized, and long-lasting.

•Richlin & Essington (2004) identified 132 institutions of higher education that hosted 308 FLCs across the USA and Canada within the 2003-2004 time period. The study revealed that the primary goals of these FLCs included: increasing instructor interest and expertise in teaching, enhancing peer-to-peer faculty collaboration across disciplines, and enhancing student learning.

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Research Questions•This research study used an established research methodology known as interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA).

•This research investigation utilized the participants themselves as experts and key informants in the chosen phenomenon being analyzed.

•IPA based questions tend to be open rather than closed, tend to be exploratory rather than explanatory, tend to be process oriented rather than product oriented, tend to focus on meaning-making rather than explicit cause and effect, and tend to utilize inductive analysis rather than deductive analysis.

•Based on a review of the relevant literature and the research methodology used, this study attempted to answer the following research questions:• How do higher education faculty members perceive and describe their experience in participating in formal

faculty learning communities?

• How do higher education faculty members understand the personal meaning they experience in formal faculty leaning communities?

• Based on participants’ lived experiences and the personal meaning they ascribe to those experiences, what is their perceived impact of their participation in FLCs on their effectiveness as an educator?

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QuestionnaireQuestionnaire questions based on research questions

1. Can you please discuss your educational background, why you decided to become an educator, and how you arrived at your current role at your university?

2. How would you describe yourself as an educator (e.g., your educational philosophy and your views on teaching and learning) before your involvement with FLCs?

3. Can you please describe in some detail how you first became involved in Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) and what motivated you to get involved in FLCs?

4. Can you please describe in some detail what expectations, if any, you had about your first involvement in FLCs?

5. Based on your FLC experiences, can you describe some of the challenges and successes you have experienced during your participation with FLCs.

6. Can you please provide some specific examples of how your involvement in FLCs has changed, if at all, how you teach and how you interact with students and colleagues?

7. How would you describe yourself as an educator (e.g., your educational philosophy and your views on teaching and learning) after your involvement with FLCs?

8. Can you please share any other thoughts or feelings you have about FLCs and what FLCs mean to you?

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Research Design, Methods, and Data Analysis•This qualitative research design study used a phenomenological method to qualitatively analyze participants’ narrative data which was gathered from in-depth open-ended structured questionnaires.

•The participants responded to the same set of open-ended questions (to establish a baseline) which were recorded verbatim to maintain narrative accuracy to help increase the accuracy of the thematic coding and validity of the findings.

•To help get to the essential meaning (individual and shared) of the experiences, the researcher used thematic analysis to identify the core themes that emerged from the narrative data.

•The main reason for choosing IPA over other methodologies is because IPA is better aligned epistemologically with the research questions the researcher is trying to answer.

•IPA is grounded in three theoretical perspectives: phenomenology, hermeneutics, and idiography.

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Research Design, Methods, and Data Analysis (IPA methodology)The IPA methodology involves the following steps (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009, p. 79):

1. A detailed coding and analysis of the verbatim interview or questionnaire data;

2. Discovering emergent themes from within the data for each participant and across the data for all participants, including differences and similarities, and patterns across the entire data set;

3. Understanding of the accounts and personal meanings of the participants;

4. Development of an interpretive account by the researcher;

5. Abstraction and/or subsumption of the themes into super-ordinate themes;

6. Numeration of the codes, themes, and super-ordinate themes to determine their frequency as a rough gauge of the relative importance of each to the participant;

7. Development of a framework or principles that illustrates the relationships between the themes and super-ordinate themes;

8. Development of the research process that can be deciphered and understood by anyone.

9. The use of supervision (e.g., peer mentoring) and/or audit (e.g., member checking) of the study to increase validity and plausibility of the findings;

10. Moving between the parts and the whole (i.e., the hermeneutic circle) in the development of a full narrative with supporting narrative extracts of the data to support the argument made and the conclusions drawn;

11. Reflection by the researcher on the findings and their implications for further research.

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Sample and ParticipantsSelection Criteria for Research Participants

The participants fit the researcher’s criteria and they were found through referrals from experts in the topic area. A key assumption of IPA is: the more homogenous the participants, the more valid the findings are likely to be. A sample size of three participants is sufficient for IPA research studies (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009).

Participant

Extensive

Experience as

Educator

(> 30 Years)

Extensive

Experience as

Faculty

(> 15 Years)

Extensive

Participation in

FLCs

(> 10 Years)

Type of Institution

Employed at

(Large Coeducational

Research University)

Location of

Institution

Employed at

(USA)

1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

2 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

3 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

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Methods and ProceduresSampling Criteria and Data Collection Instrument

•IPA uses homogenous sampling which is a type of purposive sampling. A homogeneous sample is a sample where the units of analysis (e.g., participants) share the same or very similar characteristics (e.g., age, race, gender, experience, profession). The relevant homogeneous characteristics needed to help answer the research questions are experience and profession.

•A self-completed, structured, open-ended questionnaire was given to all participants to ensure all responded to the exact same list of questions. The questions, defined by the researcher, are based on the research questions.

•Thus, the aim of an IPA based questionnaire is to guide the participants to recall and reflect on their most meaningful experiences and use the questionnaire process to help bring to consciousness the common meaning those experience share.

•The validity of this qualitative research study is based on the four criteria defined by Lucy Yardley (2000): 1) sensitivity to context, 2) commitment and rigor, 3) transparency and coherence, and 4) impact and importance.

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Thematic AnalysisSummary of Thematic Analysis Results: Top Shared Themes

•The narrative data was examined at several interpretive levels including descriptive analysis (e.g., literal description of events, experiences, objects), linguistic analysis (e.g., how language is used, metaphorical and symbolic language), and conceptual analysis (e.g., ideas, deeper meanings, existential reflections).

•Using the above process and concepts, the researcher coded the data and then discovered themes (i.e., clusters of meaning), super-ordinate themes (i.e., larger clusters of meaning) and principles that emerged from the data.

•Numeration helps to identify which themes are potentially most meaningful to the participants and helps give a qualitative assessment of the relative importance of each theme.

•Keywords and key phrases are contextual and must be interpreted within the context of how the word and phrase is used and intended by the participant.

Super-Ordinate

ThemesThemes

Leadership

Instructional Leadership

Faculty Development

Community Development

Learning

Higher Order Learning

Interdisciplinary Learning

Passion for Learning

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FindingsResearch Questions

•The findings suggest that a chief aim of FLCs is to transform faculty from isolated subject matter experts into collaborative instructional leaders.

•Question One. How do higher education faculty members perceive and describe their experience in participating in formal faculty learning communities? The participants showed a high degree of shared meaning that they attached to their experiences with FLCs. Their perceptions and descriptions of their experiences are remarkably similar.

•Question Two. How do higher education faculty members understand the personal meaning they experience in formal faculty leaning communities? The academic environment is part of a person’s wider lifeworld. Thus, faculty and students naturally seek meaning in their academic lives and seek activities and relationships that are meaningful to them.

•Question Three. Based on participants’ lived experiences and the personal meaning they ascribe to those experiences, what is their perceived impact of their participation on their effectiveness as an educators? Participants described several examples of how their participation in FLCs improved their overall effectiveness as educators and teachers.

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FindingsCore Principles for Effective FLCs

1. Effective FLCs utilize evidence and research based practices and principles.

2. Effective FLCs practice learning transfer (i.e., transferring what the faculty is learning in the FLC to what to student is learning in the classroom), creating a closed loop process of continual academic quality improvement.

3. Effective FLCs provide interdisciplinary, integrative, collaborative, and experiential learning activities for participants.

4. Effective FLCs provide meaningful peer recognition and peer validation of success.

5. Effective FLCs address the holistic cognitive, emotional, and social needs of participants.

6. Effective FLCs cultivate learning-centered teaching and active learning environments.

7. Effective FLCs transform faculty from isolated subject matter experts into collaborative instructional leaders.

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Conclusions and Discussion•The research findings indicate that, if properly designed and implemented, FLCs can provide a useful and effective vehicle for enhancing pedagogical expertise and student learning.

•The findings suggest that the most important qualities for FLCs are: a) focus on creating a collaborative and collegial culture of teaching that engages faculty across disciplines in a continual process of collective inquiry, and b) focus on continual improvement of student learning.

•The findings suggest that higher education institutions can benefit by setting up FLCs that are designed with the seven core principles for effective FLCs.

•In conclusion, the evidence presented in this study qualitatively validates the finding that the participants’ experiences with FLCs not only had a strong positive effect on their personal and professional development as educators but, more specifically, it also had a strong positive effect on the quality of their instructional practices.

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Implications for Future Research•The findings have implications for how higher education institutions are structured and the role faculty and students play in that formalized system of learning.

•The findings also imply that higher education is a multi-purpose field, rather than a uni-purpose field. Higher education serves multiple purposes, such as political (e.g., democratic), economic (e.g., career), social (e.g., relationships), and personal (e.g., well-being) purposes, and every instructor and student will emphasize those purposes that are most meaningful to him/her.

•Thus, the findings imply that higher education institutions must be broad in scope and flexible in meeting a diversity of needs and interests at multiple levels.

•The findings suggest that future research on this topic should be oriented towards investigating institutional structure, faculty roles, student roles, and the intersections of those three elements, relative to purpose and meaning at institutional, group, and individual levels.

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Ed.D. Dissertation

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS

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