Experiences of Educational Leadership Faculty in the First Year of the Professoriate: A Phenomenological Study

The researchers purpose of this study was to describe and explore the experiences of educational leadership faculty in the first year of the professoriate. A qualitative, phenomenological methodology was used to illuminate the lived experiences of these new faculty members. Research instrumentation and data collection consisted of three separate instruments used in three phases. First was a focus group interview given to three new educational leadership faculty from a regional university campus located in the Southeastern part of the United States. The second instrument was an individual, in-depth interview with the three new professors. The third and final instrument was individual in-depth, interviews with three other faculty members in the same department known as key informants. This secondary population was made up of two were junior educational leadership professors and their department chair. The researcher recorded the interviews and analyzed the data into meaningful units exposing differences and commonalities, or essences. The educational leadership faculty were chosen through convenience sampling. Of the six participants, five were Caucasian, one was African, four were male and two were female. The researcher assured the participants that their identities would remain confidential; therefore, each participant was given a pseudonym. Major findings from this study included (1) demographically, most of the educational leadership professors at this university were from the ethnic majority, white, male, older in age, former school teachers and administrators and not tenured, (2) there was no formal mentoring program for new professors yet the new faculty were involved with informal mentoring, (3) the educational leadership professors felt pressure to produce research but were frustrated with the lack of support and time to spend on such endeavors, (4) the new faculty experienced stress from the sheer enormity of the job and/or time constraints and two new professors reported stress from a change in status from school district VIP to novice professor, (5) the new faculty little instruction on what they needed to know and be able to do as educational leadership professors and graduate teachers, and (6) the new faculty experienced a transcendent collegiality, a unique intra- collegiality shared with each other and espoused to be instrumental to their first year success.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education in Education Administration (Ed.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation (open access)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development

Year dc:date.available

2007

Author dc:creator

• Tresey, Patricia Sims

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lucindia Chance
• Terry Diamanduros

• ETD
• Educational leadership
• Higher education
• Phenomenology
• New faculty
• Professoriate
• Mentoring
• Stress
• Collegiality
• Diversity
• Education

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/296

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-1296