Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

Winter 4-25-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice

Advisor

Robert Rose

Committee Member

Ralph J. Rich

Keywords

adjunct faculty, professional development, community colleges, interpretative phenomenological analysis, lived experience, Florida

Abstract

The heavy reliance on adjunct faculty has been a great benefit to institutions of higher education; however, it has also led to the problem of an undertrained and potentially untrained adjunct faculty workforce. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the teaching experiences of adjunct faculty at Florida colleges and to determine how their participation in orientation, mentoring, and professional development impacted their teaching efficacy. A further purpose of this study was to understand which factors helped improve teaching effectiveness. The research design for this study was an interpretative phenomenological analysis. This method was used to examine the lived experiences of adjunct faculty and how they make sense of their experiences. Two research questions were used to guide the study. The first research question was “How do adjunct faculty describe their teaching experiences?” The second research question was “What recommendations could be made to improve the effectiveness of the professional development experience to positively affect teaching effectiveness for adjunct faculty?” An online questionnaire was used to gather the data. The researcher relied on IPA guidelines to analyze the data. The findings showed that adjuncts describe their teaching experiences both positively and negatively. The findings also showed that adjuncts recommended a wide range of professional development activities to help improve teaching effectiveness.

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