Teaching Performance,Service,and Scholarship: The Rewarding of U.S. Media and Communication Faculty Members’ Teaching in Tenure and Promotion Documents

Abstract

University reward systems (i.e., tenure and promotion standards) can shape educators’ behaviors and dedication to teaching. This study contributes to knowledge by conceptually mapping teaching evaluation standards through a thematic analysis of U.S. tenure and promotion documents from media- and communication-centric departments. The results revealed that evaluation criteria coalesced around three areas: (a) teaching performance, (b) teaching service, and (c) scholarship of teaching and learning. Performance was the most formalized teaching evaluation approach, while scholarship of teaching, a distinct area, was much less present. Conceptual and empirical clarification associated with the scholarship of teaching and learning is presented.

Keywords

reward systems tenure and promotion scholarship of teaching and learning student evaluations of teaching teaching excellence peer review student mentoring

The tenure and promotion system reflects how faculty members contribute to the teaching, research, and service missions of both the unit and the university. These standards can affect how journalism and mass communication educators allocate time to teaching because meeting particular metrics are critical in earning tenure and promotion. It should be noted, however, assessment of teaching effectiveness is a contested and cloudy space (Cohen, 1997; Kreber & Cranton, 2000). Panici (1999) stated that “it appears that the assessment of journalism and mass communication teaching is an ambiguous and non-systematic process” based on an evaluation of survey data collected from department heads (p. 70). This study on tenure and promotion documents may shed some light on what components and criteria represent teaching evaluation standards. Teaching is a primary motivator to work in university academic settings (Austin & Rice, 1998). People seek to have an impact, and they believe they can visibly witness their impact through the teaching of students. In fact, Weaver and Wilhoit (1988) reported most journalism and mass communication faculty members stated that teaching trumped interest in research with faculty members at doctoral-granting institutions stating support for that leaning to a lesser extent. Tenure and promotion documents were conceptually mapped to determine what categories were used when assessing media and communication faculty member’s quality of teaching. This study was accomplished through a thematic analysis of 69 tenure and promotion documents from research-intensive universities in the United States.

Literature Review

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Ernest Boyer’s (1990) work is often cited as the catalyst for recognizing teaching as a form of scholarship. Academe previously interpreted scholarship only as traditional research prior to his proposal to expand the meaning of scholarship to include teaching. His work suggested elevating teaching to be of equal status to research. Peer-reviewed research, however, is the benchmark employed to evaluate candidates at research institutions (Fedler & Counts, 1982; Marshall & Rothgeb, 2011). Youn and Price (2009) found that universities became more interested in seeking status leading to the rewarding of research productivity rather than teaching due to declining enrollments of undergraduate students beginning in the late 1970s. This enrollment decline fueled a tighter job market in the 1980s, which resulted in candidates not earning tenure based solely on excellent teaching or service. Teaching, as a result, falls lower on administrators’ rankings in comparison to research when evaluating faculty members (Fedler & Counts, 1982; Marshall & Rothgeb, 2011). In fact, Schweitzer (1989) stated that candidates “ignore research and publication at their peril” (p. 48). Renewed engagement and interest in teaching reemerged in the 2000s, however, thanks to Boyer (Burnap et al., 2010).

Boyer put forth the notion that teaching as scholarship takes place when scholars inform themselves about the practice of teaching, but researchers are still working to articulate the scholarship of teaching concept (Kreber & Cranton, 2000). The scholarship of teaching, similar to research, requires ongoing self-learning, critical inquiry about student learning, and demonstration of teaching advancement. Scholarly teaching can involve conducting research on teaching, reflecting critically on one’s practice, demonstrating that teaching is being guided by relevant literature, and disseminating teaching knowledge with a community of discipline (Cohen et al., 2000; Richlin & Cox, 2004; Schweitzer, 1989; Trigwell et al., 2000).

The scholarship of teaching requires more clarification regarding its properties. Leadership will face challenges in rewarding it if scholars do not collectively agree on how to assess it. The definition of scholarship can serve as a guide in conceptualizing how teaching qualifies as scholarship. Scholars mostly agree on the definition of scholarship: (a) knowledge and results should be publicly disseminated; (b) be peer reviewed; (c) created with a clear methodological process and/or broke new ground/innovative; (d) involved discipline-related expertise; and (e) contributed to knowledge beyond an individual context (Diamond, 2002; Diamond & Adam, 1995). Teaching approaches that involve a discovery; innovatively solve a particular problem; or engage with students in an original way should be acknowledged as scholarship of teaching. The treatment of teaching as an object of study necessitates that faculty members critically think about student learning, experiment with teaching approaches, and seek training opportunities to improve how they reach students through their teaching (Dunwoody, 2003; Kreber & Cranton, 2000). Ideally, teaching scholarship should then be made public through presentations or peer-reviewed publications so that other educators can apply that knowledge to their own teaching and cultivate a knowledge community around teaching (Shulman, 1999; Trigwell et al., 2000).

The scholarship of teaching should also include educators assessing whether their own teaching strategies and procedures optimize students’ learning, skill acquisition, and critical thinking (Dunwoody, 2003; Kreber & Cranton, 2000). Reflection on practice led Hutchings (1996) and other scholars to refer to it as the scholarship of teaching [and learning]. Scholarly learning encompasses ongoing inquiry to encourage educators to continue learning about the practice of teaching. Scholarship of teaching and learning was defined as “problem posing about an issue of teaching or learning, study of the problem through methods appropriate to the disciplinary epistemologies, applications of results to practice, communication of results, self-reflection, and peer review” (Cambridge, 2001, p. 8). Faculty members can demonstrate that they are curious about how students learn by methodologically documenting their own practices, making informed decisions about their teaching practices based on literature, and sharing evidence that links one’s teaching practices with student learning outcomes (Kreber, 2003). The scholarship of teaching and learning means that educators are constantly reinterpreting and applying new knowledge and innovations to their own teaching, while also addressing departmental norms, assumptions, and values surrounding their teaching cultures. Scholars could employ self-reflection and document efforts including how they overcame challenges, learned through problem-solving, and adjusted their teaching strategies including demonstrating how research informed these modifications in a personal essay or teaching statement. Ideally, this teaching document would be reviewed not only during the tenure and promotion stage but also during annual and peer reviews.

Tenure and promotion documents in media and communication fields do not likely adequately acknowledge teaching as scholarship. Cohen (1997, 2000) examined whether journalism and mass communication doctoral programs created a culture of teaching and recognized teaching scholarship. He discovered that few doctoral students learned theoretically about teaching in a phone survey with a faculty member from 24 doctoral-granting institutions in the United States and a content analysis of syllabi and graduate program descriptions. Tenure and promotion documents should provide clues to what extent the scholarship of teaching and learning is valued.

Teaching Excellence

One major obstacle in evaluating teaching is that faculty members are unclear how to empirically assess it in comparison to the plethora of standards associated with traditional research scholarship. The majority of universities have relied on student evaluations of teaching since the 1970s to summarize the overall performance of faculty candidates’ teaching for the purposes of tenure and promotion. Student evaluation rating scores were previously used only for informational purposes to improve one’s teaching (Comm & Manthaisel, 1998). Educational scholars continue to deliberate whether teaching excellence should be classified under scholarship of teaching because markers of teaching quality are ill-defined and questionable (Kreber, 2003; Morehead & Shedd, 1996). Most scholars do not classify student ratings under scholarship of teaching because they question the validity of equating resulting data to student learning outcomes. Excellent teachers conceptually differ from expert teachers who are teaching scholars, but both groups of people are needed within academia and some educators can be both (Kreber, 2002a; Kreber & Cranton, 2000).

Excellence in teaching and the scholarship of teaching are indeed different and rewarded in their own right. By equating the one with the other to “make teaching count” in academe, we may inadvertently downplay the important work done by those of our colleagues who have taken the risk of pursuing the scholarship of teaching within their discipline. (Kreber, 2002b, p. 19)

Academe, however, emphasizes teaching performance over candidates’ reflection and intellectual growth associated with teaching (Kreber, 2002, 2003; Richlin, 2001). Student evaluations of teaching, introduced in the 1920s, are the primary mechanism used to assess students’ perceptions of the class structure and journalism and mass communication educator’s performance, followed by peer reviews of faculty candidates’ teaching (Bode, 1994; Cohen, 1997). Student evaluations of teaching are an important evaluative component that give students a voice. Students believe that their input can be used to improve instructor teaching and class content student agreement exists across student responses concerning the evaluation of a course (Chen & Hoshower, 2003; Marsh, 1987). Faculty members, however, tend to view student evaluations unfavorably because they do not perceive them as useful (Burnap et al., 2010).

The quantification of teaching standards has advantages and disadvantages. Empirical indicators rating candidates reduce ambiguity by communicating the standards that faculty candidates need to meet because subjective and vague standards regarding how the candidates are evaluated can create stress among candidates (Klein & Bloom, 1992; Lindsey, 1999). One advantage of concrete evaluation measures is that they improve the fairness and logic of decisions made by academic leadership resulting in reappointment, tenure, and promotion decisions to be less likely based on values, candidate likability, or judgments (Fairweather, 2002). Clear evaluation metrics can put tenure and promotion candidates at greater ease because they know the benchmarks that they must achieve to earn tenure and promotion. Scores also make it easier for administration to compare faculty performance across a department or school. Signaling theory is one useful explanation in understanding why summative teaching scores have gained traction in academia (Panici, 1999). Quantitative summaries enable parties unfamiliar with their area of teaching to competently evaluate them. Concrete achievements enable directors and chairs to legitimatize and distinguish the faculty members’ work to leadership inside and outside of a unit to people who are unfamiliar with the candidate’s teaching expertise.

A reductionist approach to evaluating performance, however, may also lead teachers to adjust their behaviors to meet those metric requirements that may or may not be in the best interest of serving students. Teaching standards should be investigated regarding their appropriateness and whether they serve student learning outcomes. Concern exists that instructors inflate students’ grades or adjust their personality in hopes of getting higher evaluation scores. For example, journalism students are more likely to rate educators higher because of their personalities or if they entertain them even though students might have not learned much from the course (Martinson, 2000; Martinson & Ryan, 1981). This research is supported by research outside of communication and media. Carpenter et al. (2020) found that students perceived instructors were more effective when teachers were enthusiastic and delivered well-polished lectures.

Statistical summaries may be a representation of the instructor rather than course content. Numerous studies have questioned their validity in assessing teaching effectiveness because students can be negatively biased against females, international instructors, and people of color, while being more positive toward white, male, and younger instructors (e.g., Chávez & Mitchell, 2020; Hornstein, 2017; Kogan et al., 2010; Mitchell & Martin, 2018; Murray et al., 2020; Reid, 2010). In journalism and communication research, female instructors were rated higher than male ones and another study found that males rated male instructors higher and female students rated female teachers higher (Lueck et al., 1993). Besides the potential for bias, negative evaluations can be mentally injurious leading some faculty to adopt coping strategies following reading them (Bode, 1994). Female faculty are more likely than male faculty members to feel unhappiness, and faculty members can experience sadness and anger leading to feelings of doubt and helplessness following the reading of them (Carmack & LeFebvre, 2019; Kogan et al., 2010).

Faculty members perceive department chairs as the most influential person in assessing their teaching effectiveness, partially, because they are the ones most likely to conduct annual reviews of faculty and advise faculty members throughout the tenure process (Cohen, 1997; Lueck et al., 1993). In a survey of 70 Association of Journalism and Mass Communication department heads, respondents felt that administration relied too heavily on them, yet the findings showed that 63% reported that student evaluations were the top required form of evaluation with 32% stating that the purpose of the evaluations were solely for tenure, promotion, and contract renewal purposes (Panici, 1999). The impact of teaching evaluations on tenure and promotion decisions is unclear. Summative scores were found to be rarely addressed in annual reviews unless scores were low (Iqbal, 2013). In a survey of 393 political science departmental chairs in the United States, Marshall and Rothgeb (2011) found the only significant contributors to denial of tenure related to the area of teaching was whether faculty members created courses or taught required departmental courses, but student evaluations and peer reviews did not have a significant impact on denial of tenure.

Research Question

The literature review suggested the scholarship of teaching and teaching performance are two categories of evaluation. Teaching performance (i.e., student evaluations of teaching, peer reviews) is expected to emerge as a frequent category in tenure and promotion documents based on the review of media and communication literature. The theoretical contribution is the conceptual development of the teaching evaluation standards construct and the practical contribution is the identification of what media and communication value in terms of teaching including providing guidance for those interested in refining their tenure and promotion documents.

RQ1: What concepts represent teaching evaluation standards in tenure and promotion documents?

Method

This study’s overarching goal was to determine what academe values in terms of teaching by assessing the teaching evaluation standards used to evaluate faculty members in communication- and media-related disciplines at research-intensive institutions. Research universities may privilege research over teaching, but they are also more likely to include diverse standards, communicate specific standards, and reward nontraditional forms of scholarship output than master’s and undergraduate institutions in the United States and Canada (Alperin et al., 2020). The sampling frame consisted of Research 1 universities (n = 49) and the list of institutions from the National Communication Association doctoral program guide list (n = 53) located in the United States. However, seven of these universities did not have communication or media-related departments or schools. The final total list for the sampling frame was 95 U.S. universities and 260 identified media or communication-related departments. Each university in the sampling frame was sent at least three emails and phoned at least two times requesting their tenure and promotion documents. If no response, documents were searched for via a search engine. The final list of universities included 54 universities (57% response rate) and 69 tenure and promotion documents (27% response rate) with communication (n = 21) and journalism (n = 20) being the largest represented departments. Those with creation date years (n = 61) ranged from 1996 to 2019 with 36.1% last updated between 2015 and 2019 and 37.7% between 2010 and 2014. The majority were 4-year highly research active public institutions (79.6%), followed 4-year highly research active private research institutions (20.4%) with an average enrollment size of 33,251 students (Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, n.d.). Several departmental representatives responded that they did not feel comfortable sharing their documents. In comparison to journalism departments, communication departments were more likely mention teaching evaluations (95% [communication] vs. 80% [journalism]) and a teaching award (67% vs. 45%); less likely to mention textbooks (38% vs. 55%); but were similar in their mentions of peer reviews (67% vs. 65%) and course development (62% vs. 70%) in their documents.

The tenure and promotion documents were reviewed by the categories presented in the literature (i.e., teaching as scholarship, student evaluations of teaching, peer reviews). Thematic elements, patterns identified through the scholars’ observation of the data in relation to the research question associated with teaching expectations, were investigated (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Document content was grouped and regrouped based on increasing levels of abstractions. The author read the documents, took notes, examined whether the concepts stemming literature proved valid, reread the documents for additional themes associated with teaching expectations (teaching service was found to be a concept), and then quotes were categorized under concepts. The subcategories under the concepts were kept if they coalesced around major concepts (teaching service, scholarship of teaching, teaching performance), and they meet a content threshold of 15% to qualify for inclusion (Bartunek et al., 2006). Other lesser mentioned indicators that did not inform the development of abstract concepts were excluded (see Table 1 for criteria that fell under the 15% threshold). A narrative was drafted based on the cited information. Another faculty researcher read the paper and verified the theme interpretations.

Table 1.

Teaching Evaluation Criteria in Media and Communication Tenure and Promotion Documents.

Teaching evaluation criteria	n = 69
Student evaluation scores	87.1%
Peer observation reports	63.8%
Student advising	58.1%
Course or curriculum development	56.5%
Student committees	43.5%
Teaching award	43.5%
Student mentoring	39.1%
Student textbooks	34.8%
Independent study supervision	30.4%
Teaching innovation	29.1%
Student support letters	29.1%
Professional development	23.2%
Pedagogical research	17.4%
Teaching philosophy	15.9%
Exit interviews	10.1%
Self-reflection	8.7%
Internship supervision	8.7%
Student awards	7.2%

Results—Teaching Evaluation Standards

RQ1 asked what conceptual areas academia relies on when evaluating faculty members’ teaching. Overall, the results revealed three areas that conceptually represent what leadership values in terms of teaching standards: (a) teaching performance, (b) teaching service, and (c) the scholarship of teaching and learning. Teaching performance was frequently mentioned as a way to evaluate faculty candidates, while scholarship of teaching and learning was present to a much lesser extent.

1. Teaching Performance

Student (87.1%) and peer evaluations (63.8%) were the most often mentioned materials used to evaluate teaching performance inside the classroom (see Table 1). Most documents required the reporting of scores summarizing students’ perceptions of their performance in a class setting.

A document containing a summary of ratings for all undergraduate and graduate courses taught across the prior three years (average scores on five subscales) (#17).

However, only 10.1% (n = 7) mentioned a requirement of a specific minimum teaching score or rating to earn tenure and promotion.

For all courses with enrollment under 100 students taught since initial appointment, aggregate scores averaging 2.5 or less for each “composite profile factor . . .” Higher than minimal expected average aggregate scores will prompt the review committee to independently seek further evidence in evaluating teaching quality (#18).

Peer review reports most often involve a superior evaluating teacher communication competence by assessing classroom behaviors such as classroom management, lecture preparation, and delivery skills during a single class during a semester (Rubin & Feezel, 1985). Media and communication institutions valued the practice of formally observing the performance of tenure candidates through peer evaluations: “Each candidate must offer recent peer review evaluations from at least two faculty members who have observed two different courses (where applicable, these should be one undergraduate and one graduate course) (#72).” Panici (1999) found in a survey of 70 journalism and mass communication department heads that 40% required them, and this study found that they were mentioned in 63% of documents. Some documents, however, stated that peer observations were supplemental to teaching scores and faculty members could request an evaluation only if they wanted to add one to their portfolio.

Review of teaching must be based on a careful reading of the teaching evaluations, but may also draw on other evidence the candidate wishes to submit (observation by visitors, letters from faculty the candidate has team-taught with, etc.) as may be appropriate. This voluntary evidence would include evidence from team-teaching, from being observed in the classroom by colleagues, from videotapes of classes, or other collaborative activities. While such activities are not mandatory, the faculty member may choose to present evidence derived from them to the faculty member conducting the annual review or to the committee (#2)

Peer review is the process by which an individual’s peers can evaluate a full range of teaching activities. Most usually it involves class visitation. Peer review shall consider a range of teaching activities, including, but not limited to, the development of materials such as case studies and class assignments, advising, research collaboration, and graduate student mentoring (#28).

2. Teaching Service

A critical component in evaluation was the mentoring and advising of students. The next grouping under teaching evaluation standards appears to be service to teaching though advising students (58.1%), serving on student committees (43.5%), and mentoring students (39.1%). The documents recognized their “involvement with mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students” (#55). The most common recommended approach was to request candidates to list advisees to demonstrate that they worked with students.

Evidence of excellent student advising through the successful direction and completion of M.A. theses, publishable papers, and undergraduate honors projects (#42).

Mentoring of graduate students is an important part of our role and we would expect to have participation in graduate student committees and evidence of the successful advising of master’s degree students to completion as part of the dossier (#6).

A list of graduate students and post-docs mentored (past and present), showing each person’s next career position if available (#28).

3. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Teaching Expertise)

Boyer (1990) referred to teaching as scholarship because ideally academia would encourage reflection and support the treatment of it as an object of study. The results showed the scholarship of teaching was mentioned to a lesser extent in media and communication tenure and promotion documents. Course or curriculum development (56.5%), student textbooks (34.7%), teaching innovation (29.1%), professional development (23.2%), peer-reviewed research on teaching (17.4%), and teaching philosophies (15.9%) reflected efforts of faculty members improving their competencies and helping others with their mastery of teaching. Course development consisted of the “development of new courses and revision/updating of existing courses, indicating a non-stagnant attitude toward the teaching area” (#1).

Richlin (2001) argued that proposing and documenting the effectiveness of an innovation that advances theory, processes, or approaches related to teaching should be considered. An individual who adopted teaching experiments or technological tools was recognized as being innovative.

Provide evidence of innovation in teaching (e.g., new courses or formats, contributions to departmental or university courses and curricular planning activities) (#57).

Pedagogical innovation, including the incorporation of new technologies and approaches to learning and assessment (#11).

Development of new and innovative courses, preparation of creative teaching materials or instructional strategies, and/or exceptional contributions to the school’s instructional program, including those in nontraditional modes such as distance learning, correspondence and independent study, and extramural courses (#13).

As a conceptual framework, the scholarship of teaching and learning encompasses the rewarding of faculty who are adult learners of teaching (Hutchings, 1996). Professional development can include improvement of teaching, service, and research knowledge. Based on observations, the rewarding of it emphasized teaching. Professional development is important to learn about new innovations, skills, professional topics, and teaching techniques. Documentation should include a list of attended training events and certifications and also reflect how training contributed to the curriculum and courses. Most of the documents that requested such information requested a list.

A faculty member’s efforts to improve teaching may also be evidence by active participation in teaching workshops and conferences as well as self-instruction in new and emerging teaching tools (#51).

Effectiveness in teaching may be enhanced by the candidate’s participation in teaching enrichment programs and training workshops (#73).

Efforts to enhance teaching through work in professional positions or through participation in seminars, workshops and campus teaching-improvement programs (#14).

The scholarship of teaching also involves observing students and collecting data to assess student learning outcomes and motivation. Pedagogical research reflects building bodies of knowledge around student learning. Research on teaching included the listing of presentations and peer-reviewed publications related to teaching.

Teaching-related activity can sometimes be evaluated as scholarly work if it can be documented and peer-reviewed and if it makes use of a high level of expertise related to the discipline or interdisciplinary field. Its quality can be shown if it breaks new ground, has significant impact on a scholarly field, or is the foundation for the work of others (#28).

Publication of textbooks, peer-reviewed research regarding pedagogy, and other teaching-focused publications (#35).

A teaching philosophy is a statement about the values and beliefs that hypothetically guide one’s teaching behaviors. The request of the goal-driven statement was present in 16% of the documents.

A statement of the candidate's teaching philosophy and self-evaluation. This statement should not only recount the candidate's teaching history, it should also describe the approach to teaching adopted by the candidate and the ways in which his/her thinking about teaching is manifested in the design of courses and in the classroom itself (#8).

Teaching portfolio (a narrative in which candidates describe their teaching philosophy, goals, and strategies) (#18).

The faculty member reflects on his or her teaching philosophy or goals, and/or by the submission of teaching portfolios that provide faculty with the forum to place their work in context, much as faculty share their programs of research and creative activity, in order to facilitate peer review. The formation of a teaching portfolio allows the individual faculty member to: 1) explain the nature of the various teaching tasks assigned and undertaken; 2) describe the means chosen to achieve those goals; 3) provide evidence that the goals have been achieved; 4) state how one intends to teach more effectively in the future; and 5) write a statement about teaching philosophy (#24).

Self-reflection did not meet the required threshold to be included in the results with 8.7% of the documents requesting it. A teaching philosophy, however, does not focus on learning from one’s past practices including pedagogical decisions and critically thinking about the impact of one’s teaching. The quotes were presented as a suggestion for departments to consider for future inclusion.

Reflection on course evolution in response to feedback, professional development activities, and/or experimentation with instructional methodologies or assessments (#43)

Self-evaluation and reflections on courses the candidate has taught (new teaching materials, restructuring of syllabi, teaching innovations, shifts in classroom priorities, etc.) (#42)

The personal statement should contain…a discussion of the candidate's teaching experience, with an overview of the candidate's goals, a review of successes and failures, reflections on these experiences, and thoughts of what lies ahead (#54).

Discussion and Conclusion

Career incentives should align with the mission and values of the department and university. This research was intended to encourage reflection among academics whether their tenure and promotion standards encourage quality teaching and whether criteria encourage the improvement of teaching because the literature review suggested that much remains in adequately rewarding the practice of teaching. This research presents a conceptual framework that may enable media and communication departments to identify some properties of quality and impactful teaching.

First, it is suggested to conduct both internal and external research using existing research as a guide on the benefits and limitations of student evaluations. Cohen (2003) stated “neither bubble sheets nor open-ended student questionnaires capture a faculty member’s professional pedagogical and curricular judgments, or course preparation, mentoring, tutoring, grading effort, and assessment reflection that take place outside of the classroom” (n.p.). An abandonment of teaching scores is not suggested as a start, but we need to begin evaluating those measures, assess how those measures on questionnaires are having an impact, and put forth additional criteria that more holistically represent the practice of teaching. Fedler (1996) stated, “good teaching is more difficult to measure” than research (p. 76). The assessment of teaching will continue to remain somewhat contentious and unclear until consensus exists regarding what constitutes evidence of good teaching (Cohen, 1997). Consensus, however, is not as likely in comparison to the evaluation of research and service because the evaluation of teaching is not to a great degree outsourced outside of a department. Journal reviewers, journal editors, university presses, external peer reviewers, award committees, and grant reviewers act as gatekeepers enabling tenure and promotion departmental committees and chairs to rely on cognitive shortcuts to assess a candidate. The evaluation of teaching, however, is departmentally carried out. This burden likely leads to a heavy reliance on quantitative summaries from students’ assessment of instructors’ teaching performance due to their ease and institutionalization.

Overall, student evaluation scores should not be the sole criterion when evaluating educator’s teaching (Martinson & Ryan, 1981). The American Sociological Association in addition to other professional associations outside of media and communication field have put forth statements calling for student evaluations of teaching to be part of an evidence-based holistic teaching evaluation approach because research shows that scores are weakly correlated with student learning and teaching effectiveness. They also recommended that student evaluations should be framed as seeking student feedback to improve their helpfulness for instructors and discourage responses that emphasize the likeability of the instructor by design. They should not also be used to “compare individual faculty members to each other or to a department average” because contextual factors can explain variations in score outcomes (American Sociological Association, 2019. p. 2; Morris, 2019). Leadership should critique each body of questions and assess whether they fuel a culture of bias as the diversity of faculty increases in academia (Becker & Stefanita, 2015; Rush et al., 2005). Course context is an aspect to record for each course to help leadership to detect response patterns. Contextual factors to consider include instructor gender and race, personality, lecturing style, rank, and grading leniency; class attributes (e.g., lecture-only, student interest, class workload, course difficulty, class size, online synchronous and asynchronous, requirement); and student college year (Bode, 1994; Centra, 1993; Hudson, 1989). Additional patterns to examine include the halo effect in which people approach a questionnaire from a gestalt perspective, which means that people (i.e., students) often do not differentiate the various categories such as course organization, teaching effectiveness, and instructor responsiveness (Feeley, 2002). Leadership should review whether responses are similar across all categories or whether variations across categories exist to determine questionnaire effectiveness.

Peer reviews of classroom teaching are a common practice based on these results. Faculty members support the use of summative peer reviews, but they question their value partially due to their episodic nature. A few weaknesses of this particular evaluation approach are that it creates anxiety because it takes place often during only one class period during an academic year limiting how well it measures their teaching competencies and how well reviews serve candidates in improving their teaching (Burnap et al., 2010; Iqbal, 2013; Lattuca, 2005; Yon et al., 2002). Three suggestions include: (a) video record candidates to reduce anxiety and use the videos to help instructors learn based on their own observations, (b) train faculty members who are conducting the peer review to ensure similar standards across peer reviewers, and (c) reward reviewers because the reviewing of a candidates’ course materials and their instruction takes time. Much research exists on how to conduct peer reviews. Worley et al.’s (2007) research on award-winning teachers, for example, may provide some observational guidance for peer reviewers on how to assess instructional communication competencies.

Candidates were often asked to list their advisees and mentees, but ways exist to communicate impact on students. Documentation of successful mentoring and advising outcomes include graduation, student awards, presentations, publications, job placement, or graduate school placement. In addition, unsolicited letters from students could also capture the qualitative impact of an instructor on their lives.

Higher education institutions influence scholars’ behaviors by rewarding particular accomplishments, while not recognizing other contributions. Departmental leaders may verbally express support for scholarship of teaching and learning, but it will not be widely practiced until it is acknowledged in tenure and promotion documents. This study provides formalized suggestions on how to reward it because Boyer (1990) and countless other scholars have argued that it should become more recognized. It treats teaching as a field of inquiry that should cultivate community around identifying effective ways of teaching students. This level of inquiry requires learning and reflecting about teaching processes, outcomes, and methods and designing courses and exercises that meet the needs of diverse learners.

Existing research on teaching standards does not tend to investigate both the positive and negative impacts that standards have on learning outcomes (O’Meara, 2011), but it is up to each field to encourage the documentation of such impacts for fields to critically evaluate how standards support or hinder teaching. It would be interesting to examine whether findings are similar for faculty members working at teaching-intensive institutions or institutions outside the U.S. Future research also should seek public input to investigate whether existing or proposed definitions of teaching quality align with nonacademic’s perspectives such as professionals. Transparency and document sharing help academics develop criteria that are representative and fair. Openness also promotes deeper discussions about the roles of faculty members and the functions of universities. The limitations are clear in that this sample represents only research-intensive institutions in the United States willing to share their reappointment, tenure, and promotion documents. Institutional type (e.g., liberal arts, teaching, private, research), institutional interests, and university missions influence departments’ capacity to alter tenure and promotion standards (Chan & Burton, 1995). Justification, however, can also be tied to the higher-level missions of the university and department. Journalism department’s mission, for example, seek to educate the public and support democracy (Reese & Cohen, 2000).

Engaged teaching was not supported as an area of evaluation. Engaged teaching may fall under the teaching of scholarship if individual observations or academic research support that it leads to evidence of student engagement, motivation, performance, and learning outcomes. Engaged teaching involves applying abstract knowledge in a systematic way to address real-world problems in collaboration with or for a community or professional partner. Some communication and media scholars (Cohen, 2006; Waisbord, 2020) refer to it as public scholarship, and other communication scholars refer to it as engaged (Barge & Shockley-Zalabak, 2008; DeWine, 2005). Outside fields refer to it as engaged scholarship as well (Coon, 2010; Van de Ven, 2007). The production of scholarship that engages nonacademics provides students with the experience of learning how to view them as collaborators, teaches students how to root the logic behind their decisions based on research, and instills in them how to be effective citizens who can support democracy (Cohen, 2006). Reese and Cohen (2000) argued that journalism programs have drifted too far from their liberal arts and journalism professional missions of encouraging civic participation, educating the public, and solving problems through partnerships with journalism organizations and the public. Media and communication departments may want to reflect whether they are cultivating engaged citizens who act in the interest of the greater good for society. Teaching that encourages students to go outside of the classroom and serve real people in a community should be considered as teaching evaluation standard. Heasley and LaPointe Terosky (2020) provided evidence that engaged teaching influences student learning. Specifically, they identified that students learn how to apply theory to practice, understand people as assets rather than people in need of rescue, and understand how to confront power structures that constrain solution efforts. One such document alluded to the importance of cultivating students who work in service of a higher good including helping others with their knowledge.

Engaged teaching refers to pedagogical practices that typically take students outside the traditional classroom. Such teaching may include courses that help students engage with nonacademic communities, participate in service learning programs, or interact with public schools and government policymakers. To satisfy the criterion for “engaged teaching” and for engaged teaching to be considered in evaluations for reappointment, promotion and tenure, the faculty

member’s courses should include analytical and reflective components and carry academic credit. Such teaching should be evaluated by students, by academic peers, and also by individuals who participate in these courses from a position outside the University (#49).

This study hopes to serve as a conversational prompt within departments about the teaching responsibilities and functions of academics within media and communication departments. It is clear that work remains in appropriately rewarding teaching in tenure and promotion documents. This research seeks to assist leadership on how to support the practice of teaching on a holistic level through identification of these three teaching pillars.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author declared receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was made possible thanks to support from the Broadcast Education Association and the Council of Communication Associations.

ORCID iD

Serena Miller

Author Biography

Serena Miller is an associate professor of journalism innovations and a former associate editor for Journalism Studies. Her earliest research focused on media sociology, news content characteristics, and emerging media, especially research areas such as news quality, citizen journalism, and journalism education. Her quantitative and qualitative approaches addressed fundamental questions such as who should be classified as a journalist and what should be categorized as news. Today, her interests have evolved toward the sociology of knowledge, social science theory building, public engagement, and targeting concepts in need of conceptual and empirical specification.

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