Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lives and Careers in the American Research University

319 Pages·2009·1.23 MB·English

by  Anna Neumann

Professing to Learn
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Professing to Learn
Creating Tenured Lives and Careers
in the American Research University
AnnA neumAnn
The Johns Hopkins university Press
Baltimore
© 2009 The Johns Hopkins university Press
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in the united States of America on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins university Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
neumann, Anna.
Professing to learn : creating tenured lives and careers in the American research university / Anna
neumann.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBn-13: 978-0-8018-9131-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBn-10: 0-8018-9131-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. College teachers—Vocational guidance—united States. 2. Scholars—Vocational guidance—united
States. 3. College teachers—Tenure—united States. I. Title.
LB1778.2.n478 2009
378.1´2—dc22 2008027264
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Chapter 2 includes revised versions of two previously published articles: Anna neumann, “Professing
Passion: emotion in the Scholarship of Professors in Research universities,” American Educational
Research Journal 43, no. 3 (2006): 381–424; and “To Glimpse Beauty and Awaken meaning:
Scholarly Learning as Aesthetic experience,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 39, no. 4 (2005): 68–88.
© 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the university of Illinois. used with permission of the university of
Illinois Press.
Chapter 4 includes revised material from an article previously published as: Anna neumann and Aimee
LaPointe Terosky, “To Give and to Receive: Recently Tenured Professors’ experiences of Service in
major Research universities,” Journal of Higher Education 78, no. 3 (2007): 282–310. © 2007 The
Ohio State university. Reprinted with permission.
Appendix C is a revised version of a paper previously published as: Anna neumann, “Observations:
Taking Seriously the Topic of Learning in Studies of Faculty Work and Careers,” in Advancing Faculty
Learning through Interdisciplinary Collaboration, edited by elizabeth G. Creamer and Lisa Lattuca,
63–83, in new Directions for Teaching and Learning series, no. 102, marilla D. Svinicki, editor-in-
chief, and R. eugene Rice, consulting editor (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).
Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact
Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or
contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Into the middle: mapping the early Post-Tenure Career in the
Research university 16
2 The Heart of the matter: Passionate Thought and Scholarly
Learning 43
3 mindwork: What and How Professors Strive to Learn 74
4 Location: Where Professors Pursue Their Scholarly
Learning 103
5 Becoming Strategic: Recently Tenured university Professors as
Agents of Scholarly Learning, with Kimberley B. Pereira 137
6 Organizing to Learn: What universities Provide for Professors’
Scholarly Learning 172
7 The middle Remapped: Toward an ecology of Learning in the
early Post-Tenure Career 218
Appendix A: Study Designs and Background Data 233
Appendix B: Interview Protocols and Consent Forms for the
Four Universities Project 243
Appendix C: Framework: university Professors’ Scholarly Learning 255
notes 269
Bibliography 287
Index 301
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acknowledgments
This volume refects my own learning with and among others. my ex-
perience would not have been as deep, rich, or varied without the many
individuals and communities whose contributions mark every page. I am
indebted to all.
First and foremost, I express profound gratitude to the forty newly
tenured scholars participating in the Four Universities Project and the
thirty-eight in the People’s State University Project for the time, thought,
and trust they gave me. They, more than anyone else, taught me what it
means to learn and to be a learner in a major American research univer-
sity. my thanks as well to the eight university administrators and senior
faculty leaders who oriented me to the campus cultures; to the top-level
university offcers who welcomed me onto their campuses; and to the
several “institutional contact persons” who helped me acquire faculty
lists and related campus data.
I also am very grateful to those who funded this work, thereby making
it possible for me to bring it into being. The Four Universities Project was
generously supported, over three years, by the major Grants Program of
the Spencer Foundation. Although I thank the many fne individuals at
the foundation who had a role in the project, I single out former president
Patricia Albjerg Graham and senior program offcer Catherine Lacey for
the confdence they expressed over many years. A most special thanks to
Lauren Jones Young, senior program offcer, for incomparable thought-
fulness, intellectual inspiration, and friendship. The earlier People’s State
University Project was funded by a series of small grants from the College
of education and central administration of michigan State university
and by a sabbatical fellowship at the university of michigan’s Center for
education of Women and Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
my thanks to Charles Thompson, Robert Floden, and mary Kennedy at
michigan State university and to Carol Hollenshead and Abigail Stewart
at the university of michigan for this direct support and for many help-
ful conversations. my writing of this book, as the culmination of a long
line of my scholarly work, was made possible by a generous Dean’s Grant
for Tenured Faculty Research at Teachers College, Columbia university.
I extend great appreciation also to Jacqueline Wehmueller, executive edi-
tor at the Johns Hopkins university Press, for her faith in this work and
for incomparable writing advice. Special thanks as well to the “blind”
peer reviewers whose comments enriched this book. Although I have
benefted in many ways from these many sources of support, I claim full
responsibility for the content and quality of this work, including the data
presented, statements made, and views expressed. All quirks or errors are
purely my own.
This volume draws broadly and deeply from my ten years on the fac-
ulty of the College of education at michigan State university (mSu),
especially from my participation in a community of scholars of educa-
tional psychology (learning and development) and teacher education. I
credit my learning—about learning itself, about teaching, and about in-
tellectual lives and careers—to my work with many mSu colleagues who
lived so much of what they professed. my personal thanks to Penelope
L. Peterson, who introduced me to the intrigues of subject matter learn-
ing; Steven Weiland, who opened doors to intellectual autobiography;
Suzanne Wilson, who inspired my work on learning in teaching; Debo-
rah Ball, for clarifying teaching’s contributions to countless professions;
David Labaree, for modeling excellence in all lines of faculty work; Lynn
Paine and Brian Delany, for upholding the value of critique; and not least,
Dick Prawat, for representing an incomparable blending of learning and
leadership. I thank Dick especially, along with Dean Carole Ames, for
letting me craft a space in which my learning could fourish.
Still more directly, I thank the following colleagues at Teachers Col-
lege and around the country for generous critiques that strengthened my
thinking and writing. estela Bensimon, Kevin Dougherty, Judith Glazer-
Raymo, Joseph Hermanowicz, Penelope Peterson, and Carolyn Riehl
read between four and eight chapters of an earlier draft and provided
insightful and helpful comments. Gregory Anderson, elizabeth Creamer,
Lori Custodero, David Hansen, Lisa Lattuca, Dan mcAdams, and Kerry-
Ann O’meara provided thoughtful reviews of discrete writings over the
years. my colleague Jane monroe has shown unceasing interest and en-
couragement. my friend maxine Greene was and is a source of unremit-
ting inspiration.
viii Acknowledgments
I also want to thank the amazing doctoral students at Teachers Col-
lege and mSu who assisted me in my research over the years. At mSu
Susan Blake, Porntip Chaichanapanich, Diane Hamm, and Yonghee Suh
served as project assistants, helping me get both projects off the ground.
At Teachers College macy Lenox and Aimee LaPointe Terosky, both re-
search assistants, made core contributions to my work, and I am grateful
to them both. macy’s synthetic talents made the fve campus descriptions
(chap. 6 and app. A) possible. Aimee’s intellectual fngerprints are on
almost every page of this volume; I will say more shortly about her con-
tribution to my work. my thanks, too, to Kimberley B. Pereira for assis-
tance in data analysis and helpful textual commentary; she is a coauthor
of chapter 5 on professors’ agency for scholarly learning. Kerry Char-
ron, Katie Conway, negar Farakish, Jennifer Hong-Silwany, Riva Kadar,
Frances magee, Anabella martinez, Tamsyn Phifer, and Julie Schell gave
freely of their ideas, creativity, and energy, reviewing drafts of the emerg-
ing work and sharing in the writing of several conference papers and
articles. The Four Universities Project would not have been possible with-
out the excellent administrative assistance I received from Lisa Payne, Jeff
Sun, and especially eda (Dolly) Sankar, along with outstanding interview
transcription from Karla Bellingar. my sincere appreciation to all.
I close with heartfelt thanks to those, some of whom I mentioned al-
ready, who have been closest to me and, by extension, to my work: Susan
Kraemer, for helping me understand distinctions between passion and
profession, learning and life; Aimee LaPointe Terosky, for “taking seri-
ously” the teaching and learning in which she so readily engages and
shares with others; Penelope Peterson, for promoting learning as a way to
live and for extending a friendship and colleagueship that informed this
book to its core; and Aaron Pallas, for sharing invaluable observations
about the life course and about the conduct of educational research, for
questioning me at every turn while communicating steadfast belief in me
and my work, for making me laugh when I most needed to, and for show-
ing me that love is what matters most of all.
Acknowledgments ix