HERDSA 1996: Hall and Parker - A strategic approach to providing support for sessional academic staff

A strategic approach to providing support for sessional academic staff

Susan Hall and Lesley Parker
Teaching Learning Group
Curtin University of Technology

The nature and conditions of work for casual academic staff have become matters of national concern for Australian universities. The importance of these matters is marked by the series of articles in the newspapers and in the journal of the National Tertiary Educators' Union (NTEU) during 1995. Furthermore, the topic has been given in-depth exposure in the recent international literature on higher education.
At Curtin, the Teaching Learning Group has addressed the problem through a year-long research and development project, A Strategic Approach to the Professional Development of Sessional Academic Staff. This was a pilot project conducted in six Schools (one from each of Curtin's six Divisions/Branches). The aims for the project were threefold: (a) to document and evaluate "best practices" in providing for on-going support and professional development of sessional academic staff; (b) to assist Schools with policies and procedures for professional development and support of sessional staff; and, (c) to develop a Resource Package to meet some of the expressed needs of sessional staff. The perspectives of both sessional (casual) and full-time academic staff were an integral part of the project. This paper reports on the outcomes in providing professional development and support for sessional staff and on the participatory research and development methodology used to achieve them.

Background to the project

In 1994 the Teaching Learning Group (TLG), Curtin University of Technology, received funding from the Commonwealth Staff Development Fund, to develop a strategic approach to the professional development of the University's part-time, sessional, academic staff. This resulted in the Part time and Sessional Academic Staff Development (PASASD) project which was undertaken as part of the TLG role in providing for academic staff development.

The intention to review and develop the provision of support for sessional academic staff was an expansive move within the TLG academic staff development program. Impetus to develop such an approach is, in part, based upon the knowledge that in 1993, Curtin University had utilised the skills of approximately 1000 academic staff employed on a sessional basis. However, like other universities throughout Australia, Curtin had in place no 'systematic staff development' for these part-time, 'green carders' (Parker, 1995 (a) p. 2). The apparent inertia surrounding the matter has received considerable attention from the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) throughout 1995 in a series of articles in the union journal, The Advocate. In response, the matter has also been given regular coverage in The Higher Education Supplement of The Australian newspaper. In more practical terms, in 1995 the NTEU lodged an award claim which is currently being processed.

The Curtin Project

Given the exploratory nature of the task and the vast variations in the use of sessional staff across the Curtin campuses, the PSASD project was undertaken as a pilot project involving one School/Branch from each of the six Divisions/Branches. The aims of the project were as follows:

To document and evaluate "best practices" in providing for on-going support and professional development of sessional academic staff;
To assist Schools with policies and procedures for professional development and support of sessional staff; and,
To develop a Resource Package to meet some of the expressed needs of sessional staff.

These three aims translated to the following five specific objectives:

To identify professional development needs for sessional academic staff in the six participating Schools/Branches;
To improve the professional development for sessional academic staff within the participating Schools/Branches;
To document and disseminate "best practice" in the provision of professional development within the six Schools/Branches;
To provide input to policies; and
To produce a resource package for sessional academic staff involved.

The project was conducted on a timeline from February to December 1995 and will conclude with the presentation of the report to the University Academic Board and with launching of the resource package for sessional staff in June, 1996.

In endeavouring to develop a strategic approach to the provision of support for sessional staff the implicit intentions were to identify the issues, raise awareness about them, attend to those that could be redressed immediately and produce a resource package for on-going support. The whole approach was informed by a literature review of issues and other initiative identified in the context of sessional staff in universities. The literature review indicated that Curtin is one of a small number of Australian universities which are in endeavouring to make in-roads on the provision of support for sessional staff. That the issue is not being more widely explored is perhaps due to the complexity and embeddedness of the ways in which sessional staff have traditionally been deployed in the higher education system.

Method

Emphasis on participatory method

Conducting a review and development project to increase support for a group of people who's professional circumstances meant that many of them were itinerant necessitated that special attention be given to reaching and maintaining contact with the group under focus. This, with the fact that the employment conditions of sessional staff in universities had already become an industrial issue at the national level, determined that a participatory and responsive approach (Parlett & Hamilton, 1972) to the review and development was required.

A fundamental premise of the project was that key stakeholders would be actively involved throughout and that data collection, review and development would be conducted cumulatively so that one round of development informed the next round in a grounded manner (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The particular participatory approach was designed so that wherever possible, ideas put forward were tested for their authenticity (Grundy & Kemmis, 1981) and viability before going forward to the next round of investigation and/or development.

The cyclical framework

The project began officially in February, 1995 with discussion at a regular meeting of the Academic Staff Development Associates (ASDAs) of the TLG. From their respective positions as both full-time teaching staff and part-time providers of professional development, the ASDAs were positioned to provide useful insights and contacts for the project. This began at the outset when they nominated the Schools/Branches which were to be invited to participate in the pilot project and provided some initial issues to be pursued in the questionnaire to sessional staff. The selected Schools/Branches were: Architecture Planning and Design; Business (Marketing 100); Nursing; Muresk Institute of Agriculture; Physical Science (Applied Physics); and, the Western Australian School of Mines (WASM).

In line with the participatory approach of the project, a 20-member Reference Group, comprising representatives from sessional staff in each of the six Schools/Branches, the Human Resource Directorate, the Academic Staff Association, the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Office, the Student Guild and the Teaching Learning Group (TLG) as well as the six ADSAs was set up. The Reference Group carried out a variety of functions which contributed to and sustained the participatory nature of the project.

Once the Schools/Branches had been selected and the Reference Group set up, the project was conducted in three cycles or rounds of data collection and development as follows:

Round One:
The first round consisted of interviews with the Heads of Schools. These interviews, conducted in April, 1995, were designed to ascertain the various circumstances in which sessional staff were employed and to seek the Heads' input to the items for inclusion in the questionnaire. The focus of these interviews was a drafted list of possible questionnaire items to which the Heads reacted by adding, deleting and giving suggestions about the way in which questions should be asked in their particular School/Branch context. The list of questions addressed the following topics:

Personal demographic details
Personal employment details
Roles and responsibilities
Resources
Facilities and accommodation
Professional development - induction to University teaching
Inclusion on staff
Recruitment and selection
Feedback on teaching
Teaching in relation to qualifications and professional experience
Other comments

The resulting draft questionnaire was then piloted at a professional development workshop for sessional staff within the School of Business. Because the nature and circumstances of sessional staff work varies somewhat between semesters and even within a semester, the information gathered in the questionnaire was used simply as an indication of how things could be at any given time.

Round Two:
In administering the questionnaire special attention was given to what had been described in the interviews as the transient work pattern of many of the sessional staff. It had been predicted that their irregular and often brief contact with the administration area of their work places was going to make it difficult to reach some of them and difficult to elicit a response. In view of this a pre-questionnaire letter was sent to inform sessional staff of the project and ask for their participation in the forthcoming questionnaire. The ASDAs undertook to despatch the letters in the most appropriate manner for their particular School/Branch.

Questionnaires were subsequently administered by various means. The highest response rates (75 - 100%) were reached in Schools/Branches where it was possible for the ASDAs to provide a personal touch to the process. Such 'personal touches' took the form of handing out the questionnaires and collecting them in person and 'tracking down' home and other work-place phone numbers of the sessional staff and arranging to mail the questionnaires to them. Overall, the questionnaire, which was distributed to five of the Schools/Branches in first semester and to one School in second semester had a response rate of 55%. In view of the anticipated difficulty in contacting sessional staff, this was considered a satisfactory response.

The preliminary analysis of the survey was discussed at the second meeting of the project's Reference Group held in July. At this meeting the Reference Group assisted in interpreting the findings and considering the implications in terms of the five project objectives (needs, reactions to expressed needs, policy input, identification of "best practices" and the resource package). On the basis of these findings and the input made from the Reference Group, questions were drawn up for the interviews with a sessional staff member from each of the six Schools/Branches and representatives from the campus-wide service providers.

Round Three:
By the third round of data collection and development, the focus was more acutely set on the needs of sessional staff, what could be done to address them, what policy issues might need to be addressed and examples of support provided to sessional staff which might be assessed as examples of "best practice" when compared to the literature. At this stage the issues and needs were as follows:

Incentives to engage in professional development
Recruitment procedures
Induction
Resources
Work facilities
Assistance with teaching development
Communication
Organisational climate
Policy matters (Hall & Slaney, 1995, pp. 29 -35)

These data and their implications were discussed at the third reference group meeting in August. In general, sessional staff felt that there was little incentive for them to engage in professional development, because they felt no sense of belonging to the University. Likewise, the procedures by which they had been recruited, although varied, did not engender a sense of belonging. Induction processes were non-existent except in the case of one School which ran an induction program each semester.

Overall, sessional staff did not look for resources for teaching within the University but they did express a need for better facilities such as office space, telephones, use of library cards between teaching weeks and provision of parking for itinerant staff who needed to come and go often.

Of the matters concerning assistance with teaching development the strongest request was for feedback on teaching. This was simply put by one tutor who said, I'd like to know whether anyone thinks I am doing a good job. There is a connection to be made between this issue and the expressed need for better communication about matters within the Departments and Schools. Similarly, most saw a need for better organisational climates wherein they could get assistance to understand how things worked in their respective workplaces. Other matters were directed at policies, or more specifically, the lack of them. these are listed later within the recommendations from the project. Data for examples of "best practice" were also collected. While the case sketches of these examples as not been completed at this point in time, they will appear in the final report.

While the interviews were being conducted the literature review was continued and items for the resource package were tentatively collected. The third round of data collection was completed with the follow-up interviews with the Heads of School/Branches and interviews with full-time academic staff. Here the interviewees reacted to the cumulative list of expressed needs, suggestions for responding to them, policy ideas, accounts of practice in supporting sessional staff and items for the resource package. By the end of the third round of data collection and development the data had been categorised into the following lists:

Expressed needs (support needed for sessional staff)
Suggested ways of meeting those needs.
Examples of practice in providing support for sessional staff (to be compared with the literature to ascertain examples of "Best Practice").
Recommended input to policies.
Items for the resource package
Other issues

Furthermore, through the cumulative process described, most of the items in these lists had also been tested as to whether they were authentic (resonating the views of the stakeholders), needed and/or viable. The final report of the package and the resource package will incorporate the reactions made to the drafts from the reference group and from sessional staff representing the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) target groups.

Clearly, this cyclical and participatory framework relied heavily on the key stakeholders, particularly the ASDAs and the Reference Group, whose roles have been described elsewhere (Hall & Slaney, 1995).

Issues identified during the project

Table 1 summarises the major issues identified during the PSASD project.

Table 1: Professional support for sessional academic staff:
Expressed needs and suggested ways of responding

Expressed Needs Suggested Ways of Responding

Responses incurring little or no cost to Schools/Branches

To feel included in Schools - better relations with administrative staff, contact with academic staff and to be kept informed of University events and issues. "Buddy system" within Departments/Areas
Unit controllers to consciously take up this role.

Provision of teaching materials and equipment - explore why many don't use or need audio-visual equipment. Pass on information to TLAC Working Party.

Incentives for employers to promote professional development and for part-time sessional staff to engage in it. Greater attention to the nature and quality of the work performed by sessional staff.

Better access to printed communications. School and University manuals, advertisements about professional development - eg. in Bulletin, email, staff common rooms - to be made more accessible to sessional staff.

Library cards and continuous access through semester breaks. Library could provide a standard letter which sessional staff can have signed by Head of Department authorising access during specified non-teaching periods.

Assistance in occupational safety matters - reduction in carrying heavy loads over long distances. See allocation of parking bays, below.

Feedback on teaching. Professional development on ascertain and using feedback on teaching. Available from TLG - Reflective Teaching Sessions and in-School workshops.
Annual self-review process - professional development discussions with Unit Controllers or Heads of Departments/sections.

A place to use as a part-time work station. Where shared office space is unavailable a minimum allocation of one joint room for part-time sessional staff, wherein:

manuals, Bulletins and notices etc. can be made accessible
a computer and printer can be available with internet and email facilities
the new Sessional Academic Staff Resource Package can be available for reading and/or sections can be photocopied.

Available parking when required to teach for short sessions and be elsewhere for next job soon afterwards (see also carrying heavy loads over long distances) Allocate a small area of each parking bay to sessional staff who have to come and go in a short time space.

Some of the issues raised through the project, such as provision of library access, communication within workplaces, induction programs and others have been converted to outcomes during the various phases of the project's development. Other issues are being formulated as recommendations for policies to go before the University Academic Board.

Outcomes

The outcomes of the PSASD project to date are:

Input to resource package. A resource package for sessional academic staff has been produced and piloted and it is due to be officially launched at Curtin University in June, 1996.
Input to the campus-wide induction program for general staff on the role that they play in supporting academic staff. Particular emphasis was given to the role of supporting sessional academic staff who regard the general staff as their first and sometimes only point of inquiry.
Input to review of the School of Nursing induction program for sessional staff. Data from the interviews and questionnaires in this project were used by the Head of School, the ASDA and other staff involved in designing the School's 1996 sessional staff induction program. This input has meant that many of the needs of the sessional staff in that School, which were expressed through this project, have been noted and attended to.
Input from the findings of this project has been requested by the Teaching and Learning Advisory Committee (TLAC) to inform initiatives in policy development relating to the quality of teaching at Curtin University. This will be done early in 1996.
Support for sessional staff is now being treated as a 'Quality' issue in at least three of the schools which piloted the project. Because of this, the project co-ordinator gave a presentation on this project to the Quality Committee within the School of Architecture and Planning. This was done in April 1995 at the request of the Head of School.
The Teaching Learning Group's advertising of professional development programs on teaching has specifically targeted sessional staff. The success of this strategy is evidenced by a corresponding increase in sessional staff attendance.
There have been specific expressions of the project having had a catalytic effect in Schools. For example one Head of School commented:
This discussion has been awareness raising for me. While we've been talking I've thought of two things which I will do very easily. I will make sure a copy of the Bulletin gets put in the part-time tutors' room and I will invite sessional staff to sit in on staff meetings. I realise that we may not get any who have the time to come but just making it open should be a start towards making them feel more included. Without this prompt I would have continued as part of the status quo.
On a similar note a sessional staff member from another of the Schools in the pilot project commented,
I do believe that our Head of School wants to improve things for sessional staff. Since this project has begun, communication with part-time staff has improved. For example, we have been asked to sign a contract, asked to participate in regular year - co-ordination meetings for all staff teaching third year students, asked to record our hours in a time book and received circulars about departmental events. These are all welcome initiatives.

Conclusion

The primary outcome of this project to date has been the successful production and piloting of the Resource Package for Sessional Academic Staff. Furthermore, the other listed outcomes represent significant progress in providing support for the sessional staff whose Schools/Branches participated in the pilot project. The following feedback from a sessional staff member who worked on the Reference Group supports this claim.

This study has identified some important shortcomings in support for sessional staff. Many of these have been/are being addressed and I have no doubt that the focus of attention resulting form the survey (project) will have a marked effect on the status of part-timers.

The changes which have been achieved as well as those to be recommended, will likely benefit all of the sessional staff at Curtin. Certainly, this would seem to be the case when the outcomes and recommendations are viewed in relation to the literature on the provision of support and professional development for sessional staff in universities. A final report on the project will be provided in June, 1996.

References

Hall, S. & Slaney, K., (1995). A Strategic Approach to the Support of Sessional Staff. Draft report to the Curtin University Academic Board, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia.

Parker, L. (1995a). THE PASASD PROJECT: Part-time and sessional academic staff development. Curtin University of Technology Teaching Learning Group, Perth, Western Australia.

Parker, L., Burgess, Y., Hall, S. and Radloff, A. (forthcoming). A devolved model of academic staff development in action. Contributions to Conference of Australian Higher Education Staff Developers, Fremantle, November.

Authors: Susan Hall and Lesley Parker, Teaching Learning Group, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia.

Please cite as: (1996). A strategic approach to providing support for sessional academic staff. Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Proceedings HERDSA Conference 1996. Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/halls3.html

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Created 23 Apr 2002. Last revision: 24 May 2002.
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Expressed Needs	Suggested Ways of Responding
Expressed Needs	Responses incurring little or no cost to Schools/Branches
To feel included in Schools - better relations with administrative staff, contact with academic staff and to be kept informed of University events and issues.	"Buddy system" within Departments/Areas Unit controllers to consciously take up this role.
Provision of teaching materials and equipment - explore why many don't use or need audio-visual equipment.	Pass on information to TLAC Working Party.
Incentives for employers to promote professional development and for part-time sessional staff to engage in it.	Greater attention to the nature and quality of the work performed by sessional staff.
Better access to printed communications.	School and University manuals, advertisements about professional development - eg. in Bulletin, email, staff common rooms - to be made more accessible to sessional staff.
Library cards and continuous access through semester breaks.	Library could provide a standard letter which sessional staff can have signed by Head of Department authorising access during specified non-teaching periods.
Assistance in occupational safety matters - reduction in carrying heavy loads over long distances.	See allocation of parking bays, below.
Feedback on teaching.	Professional development on ascertain and using feedback on teaching. Available from TLG - Reflective Teaching Sessions and in-School workshops. Annual self-review process - professional development discussions with Unit Controllers or Heads of Departments/sections.
A place to use as a part-time work station.	Where shared office space is unavailable a minimum allocation of one joint room for part-time sessional staff, wherein: manuals, Bulletins and notices etc. can be made accessible a computer and printer can be available with internet and email facilities the new Sessional Academic Staff Resource Package can be available for reading and/or sections can be photocopied.
Available parking when required to teach for short sessions and be elsewhere for next job soon afterwards (see also carrying heavy loads over long distances)	Allocate a small area of each parking bay to sessional staff who have to come and go in a short time space.