Research And Analysis Of Faculty Professional Development In The USA

Teacher's knowledge and ability has direct impact on student's knowledge and behaviour. Faculty professional development (FPD) has been the forceful means for promoting the quality of university teaching and, improving students'accomplishment. FPD has been taken seriously for a long time in USA. It has experienced several stages since 1950's and1960's .The thesis tries to enrich theories of FPD in China and present some feasible suggestions for the faculty development practice by analyzing experiences and lessons of theories and practices of FPD in USA .The thesis consists of four parts:In Part I, a clear connotation of faculty professional development is made. The definition of FPD in this article involves the theories and practices helping the teacher improve its ability as a scholar and a teacher.In Part II, this work traces the historic evolution of USA's FPD. It states the practices of USA's FPD since the"sabbatical leave"in 1981 by investigating the background, priorities and measures of each stage.Part III, By taking the Yale University and the Cornell University as examples, the research introduces the USA FPD's practices. It concretely presents the diverse forms of USA FPD's practices, various subjects as well as the time, fund, technology and system provided by the organizers mainly from the development route and the organizational guarantee two aspects.Finally, this study assesses the USA FPD's practices and gives the suggestions in the practices of China's FPD.This thesis adopts the multidisciplinary cross visual angle and applies the study of adult education, psychology and Principles of Management to analyze the theory foundation of USA FPD's practices. And the research methods include document method, history method and comparison method ,etc.