Professors Behaving Badly: Faculty Misconduct in Graduate Education

by John M. Braxton, Eve M. Proper, Alan E. Bayer

Overview

• A faculty member publishes an article without offering coauthorship to a graduate assistant who has made a substantial conceptual or methodological contribution to the article.
• A professor does not permit graduate students to express viewpoints different from her own.
• A graduate student close to finishing his dissertation cannot reach his traveling advisor, a circumstance that jeopardizes his degree.
This book discusses these and other examples of faculty misconduct—and how to avoid them.

Using data collected through faculty surveys, the authors describe behaviors associated with graduate teaching which are considered inappropriate and in violation of good teaching practices. They derive a normative structure that consists of five inviolable and eight admonitory proscriptive criteria to help graduate faculty make informed and acceptable professional choices.

The authors discuss the various ways in which faculty members acquire the norms of teaching and mentoring, including the graduate school socialization process, role models, disciplinary codes of ethics, and scholarship about the professoriate and professional performance. Analyzing the rich data gleaned from the faculty surveys, they track how these norms are understood and interpreted across academic disciplines and are influenced by such factors as gender, citizenship, age, academic rank, tenure, research activity, and administrative experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421402192
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2011
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John M. Braxton is a professor of higher education at Vanderbilt University. He is a coauthor of Professors Behaving Badly: Faculty Misconduct in Graduate Education.

Eve Proper is an assistant professor of management at LIM College in New York City.

Alan E. Bayer is a professor emeritus of sociology at Virginia Tech and director emeritus and founder of the Virginia Tech Center for Survey Research. He is a coeditor of Faculty and Student Classroom Improprieties and coauthor of Faculty Misconduct in Collegiate Teaching, the latter also published by Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

List of Tables ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction. The Critical Role of Norms in Graduate Education 1

1 Incidents of Faculty Improprieties in Graduate Training 12

2 Study Design 23

3 The Normative Structure of Graduate Education 34

4 Norm Espousal by Institutional Type and Academic Discipline 55

5 Personal Attributes and Norm Espousal 66

6 Norm Espousal and Faculty Professional Attainments and Involvement 79

7 Core Norms, Differentiated Norms, and Key Differentiating Factors 99

8 Graduate School Socialization and the Internalization of the Norms of Graduate Study 116

9 The Support of Graduate Teaching Norms by Supporting Organizations 137

10 Further Perspectives on the Internalization of the Norms of Graduate Teaching and Mentoring 150

11 Conclusions and Recommendations for Research, Policy, and Practice 159

Appendix A The Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Behaviors Inventory 183

Appendix B Means and Standard Deviations for Behaviors Included in the Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Behaviors Inventory (GTMBI) 197

Appendix C Respondent Bias Assessment 206

References 209

Index 217

Editorial Reviews

Tools for monitoring and evaluating the behavior of graduate teachers are also provided, in this practical, serious-minded reference and resource that no campus administrator or supervisor should be without.
—James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review

An important book that plows through long-neglected territory.
—University Business

Thoughtfully conceived, carefully executed, well written, cautiously interpreted.
—Contemporary Sociology

The authors posit nine types of conduct that they view as examples of misconduct and seven inviolable norms that they find in existence in the broad field of instructional service . . . A serious and useful study of a new field.
—Change

From the Publisher

Thoughtfully conceived, carefully executed, well written, cautiously interpreted.

Contemporary Sociology

Tools for monitoring and evaluating the behavior of graduate teachers are also provided, in this practical, serious-minded reference and resource that no campus administrator or supervisor should be without.

Midwest Book Review - James A. Cox

An important book that plows through long-neglected territory.

University Business

The authors posit nine types of conduct that they view as examples of misconduct and seven inviolable norms that they find in existence in the broad field of instructional service . . . A serious and useful study of a new field.

Change

Tools for monitoring and evaluating the behavior of graduate teachers are also provided, in this practical, serious-minded reference and resource that no campus administrator or supervisor should be without.

— James A. Cox

Midwest Book Review