The aim of this small-scale study was to examine the phenomenon of "stuckness" (Kanter, 1979) in ways that would inform and direct efforts to maintain and reinforce community college faculty effectiveness. Focus was on full-time faculty who had been teaching ten or more years in the same community college. The sample (N = 27) was drawn from five member institutions of the Massachusetts Regional Community College System.
Using a survey instrument, an interview schedule, and a validated measure of job satisfaction (Wood, 1973), the investigator tested two basic hypotheses: (1) that the psycho-social conditions of stuckness and its extreme opposite, generativity, are present among senior community college faculty; and (2) that stuck and generative faculty, respectively, have in common distinct clusters of characteristics. The data revealed six variables of particular significance in characterizing the psycho-social state of an instructor--overall job satisfaction, attitude toward students, time spent on campus each week, satisfaction derived from teaching, current feeling about having entered teaching, and having (or not having) a student-oriented five-year plan.
An unanticipated outcome was the identification of a third distinct category, "insulated," related to the developmental stage of "levelling off" (Hall and Nougaim, 1968). Insulated faculty report overall job satisfaction but do not manifest other characteristics associated with the generative cluster.
Conclusions instructive to institutional efforts to maintain, renew, and reinforce faculty effectiveness were: (1) Generativity would appear to be, at least to a degree, impervious to the absence of hygiene factors. (2) Similarly, stuckness is an internalized condition of minor frequency that appears unrelated to external factors. (3) Because insulated faculty comprise the largest group and appear to be influenced more than other groups by hygiene factors, they represent the most promising target group for institutional intervention. (4) Formal programs of staff development have little impact on senior faculty, continuing involvement in professional development being an effect of generativity, not a cause.
The researcher recommends replication of the study using a sample large enough to permit testing for statistical significance, as well as a similar study of less senior faculty. He suggests that linguistic analysis may also be used for identifying psycho-social states of faculty.
