A Study On American Faculty Development

The United States is developed on the basis of colonies, and only200years have passed since the appearance of the higher education of the United States, while which is developed to go beyond the birthplace of the modern university of higher education in Europe. It is the implementation of American faculty development activities and projects that play the key role to create a world-class faculty, to achieve a rapid development of high-quality within a very short time.At the same time of adapting to the requests of teachers, universities and the society, a characteristic, complete and effective implement system comes into being through exploration of various practices. Many successful experiences can be found in different aspects of the United States faculty development, for example, theories, operation modes, the form of activities, projects content and motivate protection mechanisms and so on."Development" is the concept of the American Faculty development practices, which has experienced an evolutionary process from the self-development, organizational development to overall development. At present, the American faculty development includes four elements: teaching development, professional development, personal development and organizational development. Teaching is the basic mission of the university teachers, and also the starting point of all-round development; professional development can help teachers to expand professional knowledge, and enrich the teaching contents; organizational development is useful to provide a good atmosphere and environment for teachers in teaching and research; and personal development concerns about teachers’ health and welfare, enhance teachers’quality of life. The integral of these four aspects of American faculty development system, which including various measures to improve the quality of teachers’ work and quality of life, has prompted teachers to grow.The evolution of American Faculty development has experienced different eras, for example, the scholar era, the teacher era, the developer era, the learner era and the Internet era. Its evolutary process fully proves that the American faculty development takes an very important part in improving the quality of American higher education, promoting the realization of personnel training in American Colleges and Universities, scientific research and social services functions. United States has no unified faculty development disciplines. Based on their own situations, all colleges and universities establish faculty development centre to independently carry out content-rich, diverse forms of teacher development activities, such as counseling, seminars, sabbaticals, teaching counseling, research funding, etc.; for different clients, it sets up different kinds of development projects, such as development of new teachers, mid-career development, tenure development; according to the differences of universities’ history, scale, teachers’requests and resources, there are various operation methods can be chosen, including a single campus-wide center, a multi-campus cooperation centre, special-purpose center, and departments of teacher development components of the other academic program) and so on.The booming of American Faculty Development practice is inseparable from internal and external protection factors of the American higher education. The professional organizational protection is provided by the development Center of the campus of University Teachers (Teaching), the management departments, off-campus professional associations, joint organizations and service companies in the U.S; the rich and diverse fiscal source of funding support is provide by the special budget of Colleges and Universities, government funding and developed society fund (IMF); the incentive protection is provided by strict appointment and appraisal system, a variety of material reward and spirit of incentives which encourage teachers to actively participate in faculty development.Affected by the decentralization of political and education systems as a distinctive feature of the pragmatic philosophy and a wide range of cultural factors, American faculty development emphasizes independently conduct, service, pragmatism and the diversification of activities.Nowadays, under the changing demands from scale expansion to quality improvement, the development of higher education in China faces the similar challenges with the United States colleges and universities. To draw lessons from American experience, the reform of teacher training system, the establishment and perfection of Chinese faculty development system are necessary initiatives to promote the quality of higher education. This dissertation combs the concept of American faculty development, its evolutionary process, component elements, implementation and protection mechanisms, summarizes the characteristics of American faculty development, analyzes the factors which can impact its development, like its philosophy, political, economic, cultural and internal management system and so on. On this basis, this dissertation makes a few suggestions on the reform of university teacher training system, and tries to explore the development of Chinese faculty development practice.