Higher education faculty members are engaged in the communication of their work; however, the criteria for faculty evaluation have not been reassessed in light of changes in what faculty do. In November 2013, AERA released the report: Rethinking Faculty Evaluation: AERA Report and Recommendations on Evaluating Education Research, Scholarship, and Teaching in Postsecondary Education. 

About the Report:
This AERA report offers research-based guidelines for rethinking how to evaluate research, scholarship, and teaching by tenure-line faculty in the field of education, whether for hiring, annual evaluations, tenure and promotion, or post-tenure review. The guidelines are meant as a starting point rather than a one-size-fits-all solution; institutions along the spectrum from research intensive to teaching focused will find their own proper balance.

Background:
Higher education in the United States is undergoing major structural change, and education faculties are hardly immune. The recession, coupled with a longterm decline in state funding, has led many colleges and universities to aggressively seek new revenue through funded research. Other changes include the growth in part-time and non-tenure-track faculty. These transformations have important repercussions for faculty use of time and for the types of outcomes faculty are expected to report every year to university administrators.

The push for external funding, in conjunction with institutional pursuit of greater prestige, has increased the pressure on education faculty at many four-year institutions of all types to conduct research and produce scholarship, often at the cost of time spent on teaching and service. Many and perhaps most institutions now count teaching quality among the criteria for making personnel decisions.

Read or Download the Report (PDF)
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