Linking Faculty to Organization Development and Change: Teaching4Learning@Unipd

Abstract

Faculty development is intricately connected with organization development and change. Most of the research on faculty development focuses on faculty teaching effectiveness and faculty personal and professional development. The instructor remains the only unit of analysis, with little attention given to the actions and strategies to develop the organization in order to foster excellent teaching while building strong communities of learning. Further, research on faculty development overlooks how to create a culture of innovation, fails to identify the impact of faculty development programs on the organization, and neglects the organizational implications of promoting teaching innovation. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that faculty development, and in particular the program Teaching4Learning@Unipd, could not be realized without a strong institutional commitment to develop and change and to invest money and energy in the innovation process. Faculty development in this sense can become a means and an opportunity to develop old and prestigious institutions like the University of Padova, involving all different actors at different levels of the organization: personally, and in group, through the building of faculty learning community (FLC) (Adams and Mix, AILACTE J 11:37–56; Cox, New Dir Teach Learn 97(97):5–23, 2004; Int J Acad Dev 1324(September):1–13, 2013; Stanley, Arts Educ Policy Rev 112(2):71–78, 2011). This chapter aims to address the following questions: What are the challenges of promoting faculty development at a big Italian university? How can faculty development impact organization development and change? Which strategic actions and practices most effectively promote change? What are future opportunities to develop research and practices linked to faculty and organization development?.