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There is a shortage of qualified community college technical instructors in new and emerging technologies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the barriers that may affect the decision of semiconductor specialists to teach part-time at community colleges. The desired outcome is to enable community colleges to increase the pool of part-time faculty from the semiconductor industry. This study identified four primary barriers that could affect an individual's decision to teach: (a) interest in teaching, (b) self-efficacy, (c) awareness of teaching opportunities, and (d) faculty development. As community colleges seek to fill the increasing demand for part-time technical instructors, industry seeks to increase its ranks of technical employees. A survey of technical specialists from the semiconductor industry showed high levels of professional experience, interest in teaching, and various experiences in teaching. An important finding of this study, however, was the overwhelming lack of awareness (83%, n=76) of teaching opportunities at community colleges. If community colleges are to increase their pool of part-time technical faculty, it is necessary for technical specialists to be aware that part-time teaching positions are available. If industry is to fill its growing need for qualified technical specialists, it should be willing to share some of the talent of its best employees with the community. / Graduation date: 1997

The purpose of this study was to determine whether participation in an instructional module on procedures for individualizing instruction produced results different from those produced by a traditional education approach with respect to the performance, attitude, self-concept, and dogmatism of special education student teachers. The findings were (1) there was no significant difference between the experimental and comparison groups with respect to teaching-performance; (2) the experimental group's mean self-evaluation teaching-performance score was significantly different in a negative direction than the mean self-evaluation teaching-performance score for the comparison group; (3) both groups had positive correlations between teaching-performance scores and self-evaluation scores, but the experimental group had a significantly higher correlation; (4) there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the comparison group with respect to change in attitudes; (5) there was no significant difference between the experimental and comparison groups with respect to the degree of change in self-concept, and (6) there was no significant difference between the experimental and comparison groups with respect to degree of change in dogmatism.

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Though professional development interventions are widespread in higher education, administrators often do not formally assess their effectiveness, particularly in relation to teacher self-efficacy. The purposes of this study were to determine if any statistically significant difference existed between the self-efficacy scores of adjunct faculty participants in a community college’s professional development program and nonparticipants and to identify the variables with a statistically significant relationship with self-efficacy. A modified version of the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) was administered to 21 adjunct faculty participants in Lone Star College’s Adjunct Certification Program (ACP) and 312 adjunct faculty not currently participating in the program. A demographic questionnaire development by the researcher was also administered. Independent variables of the demographic questionnaire included gender, ethnicity, age, K-12 teaching experience, highest degree earned, subject taught, years of college teaching experience, and number of courses taught each semester. Paired t-test results indicated statistically significant differences in Efficacy in Instructional Strategies for adjunct participants in the ACP program. No significant differences were found for Efficacy in Student Engagement and Efficacy in Classroom Management. Multiple regression analyses indicated that gender has a statistically significant relationship to Efficacy Instructional Strategies. A statistically significant relationship was found for race for Efficacy in Classroom Management. Finally, analysis also indicated a positive relationship between race and gender for Efficacy in Student Engagement. No other statistically significant relationships were found across the other demographic variables. Findings of this study revealed that the ACP increased teacher self-efficacy across two of the three dimensions of the TSES indicating that the professional development intervention had a positive effect on the efficacy of its participants. The present study contributes to the research on teacher self-efficacy, adjunct faculty and professional development interventions.

This study is an investigation of the personality characteristics of the Most and least effective teachers in three church-related universities in a central West Texas city. A student evaluation of instruction form was utilized to allow students in the three universities to rate teacher effectiveness in the classroom. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Isabel Briggs-Myers, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 4th ed., Princeton, Educational Testing Service, 1973) was administered to those teachers who were rated both as most effective and least effective by 5,153 students. The use of this instrument, which provides a personality profile that is indicative of dominant personality characteristics (extrovert-introvert; sensing-intuitive; thinking-feeling, judging-perceptive), allows for measurement (by upper and lower quartile scores) of the differences between the personality characteristics of the most and least effective teachers in this sample.