This study sought to understand reflection as a means to faculty engagement in continuing professional development (CPD). A mixed-method study was undertaken with faculty members in a Canadian higher education institution. Drawing on data from a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, the extent to which faculty members use reflection as a…

Administrative staff in higher and health professions education have been described as invisible and been characterized by what they are "not": non-academics, non-teachers, non-faculty and non-professionals. Staff appear as passive objects in literature and minimized in institutional reports. These characterizations contribute to the…

Background: For vocational and professional education to remain relevant, instructors need to keep developing themselves and their practices. Much of instructor learning happens on-the-job. Drawing on literature on teacher learning in the workplace, this article explores how structural and cultural conditions shape professional learning of…

"Crossing over to the dark side" is a popular reference to someone's decision to leave the supposed "good, pure, and honest" side of something to go to its "bad, evil, and suspicious" side. This idiom is typically used when an administrator moves into a faculty position or vice versa. While there is a plethora of…

Teachers often face pressures both from above and from below as they adhere to their supervisors' requirements and work with students who may be disengaged from the learning process. These interpersonal influences are argued to thwart instructors' teaching motivation and result in a more controlled teaching experience and a more controlling…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to develop a new framework for the burnout equation and to examine the relationships which exist among three key factors; teacher burnout, psychological well-being at work, and authentic leadership. Participants in the study included 335 Canadian teachers, 299 of which were from the province…

Drawing on qualitative data, this case study explores how the precarious employment status of college contract instructors in Canada pushes them to consider bypassing some policies and affects their well-being, both of which could negatively influence the quality of education. Since keeping abreast with internationalisation requires addressing…

This paper explores perceptions of work intensification around the world. Underpinning this analysis is C. Wright Mills' (1959) argument that many personal troubles are public issues, and the notion that a significant dimension of the privatisation of public education, a concern of public education advocates worldwide, is the ways in which school…

Fifty-two faculty at two Canadian universities were interviewed about the impact of work environment, role conflict, and work-life balance on career-related experiences and decisions to apply for promotion to full professor. Faculty described conflicts between their academic responsibilities of teaching, research, and service (including limited…

A wide range of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs provide important support for international students enrolled in Canadian post-secondary contexts. While there has been a recent uptick in academic interest and research surrounding EAP programs in Canada, there has been relatively little work focused on understanding the practitioners…

Teaching Focused Faculty (TFF) roles are growing across Canada and around the world, raising questions about how to understand the nature of faculty work and how faculty in non-traditional work distributions feel about their work. Our study is the first attempt to survey TFF members' work and job attitudes at large research intensive universities…

Using a sample of women natural sciences and engineering (NSE) faculty members from 13 Canadian universities, we investigated the impact of women academic leaders on women professors' perceptions of gender bias. Logistic regression analyses indicated that professors who perceived more workplace gender bias were more likely to feel that they needed…

The collection of papers presented in this issue of Critical Studies in Education adds to the expansive body of work on teachers and teaching. Collectively, the papers draw our attention to new ways the field is problematising the emerging and evolving conditions that shape the work, lives and identities of teachers. With this editorial…

This article is comprised of the results of a developmental evaluation inquiry into continuing professional development (CPD) at a college in Western Canada. Since 2015, despite having one of the most generous CPD budgets among all colleges in the region, the faculty participation rate in CPD has ranged between approximately 48% and 56%. Patton's…

Given contemporary attention to diversity and inclusion on Canadian university campuses, and given human rights protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, it is tempting to believe that marginalization is a thing of the past for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) academics. Our qualitative study (n = 8), focusing on…