Administrative Know-how Plays Bigger Role as Professors
BY JAY P. GOLDMAN/School Administrator, November 2020

Universities’ educational leadership programs increasingly rely on full-time clinical professors and adjunct faculty from the school leadership ranks to deliver instruction, growing from 1 percent of the professoriate to nearly 16 percent, according to the most recent research in this field.

The clinical faculty, sometimes known as professors of practice, hold considerably more experience in school and district administration than their tenure-line faculty colleagues. One study reported that 84 percent of clinical faculty members had worked as building-level or district-level administrators compared to 63 percent of tenure-track professors.

Researchers said the school and district administrators have been recruited to be content generalists, responsible for teaching university courses in leadership and the principalship, and they are assigned less commonly to more specialized classes in school law or organizational theory.

Clinical faculty members are much more likely than tenure-track professors to consider their primary responsibilities to be teaching and advising students and engaging in field-based activities.

In addition, university programs reported they are relying increasingly on school administrators to serve as adjunct instructors. One study said the typical department of educational leadership increased the number of adjuncts it employed from 3.0 to 4.67 over a recent 14-year period. Fiscal constraints facing universities are expected to lead to even greater use of both adjuncts and clinical faculty, who tend to make lower salaries than those on tenure tracks, one study said.

The research on the professoriate in educational leadership is based on two nationwide research surveys of leadership preparation programs and faculty. Both were conducted in 2008, the most recent studies in the U.S., according to Donald Hackmann, director of the School of Education at Iowa State University who was lead author on the three most recent studies:

»“Characteristics of Tenure-Line Faculty in Leadership Preparation Programs: An Analysis of Academic Preparation and Administrative Experience” by Donald G. Hackmann, Joel R. Malin and Martha M. McCarthy,  Journal of Research on Leadership Education, August 2017

»“Clinical Faculty in Educational Leadership Programs: a Growing Force” by Donald G. Hackmann and Martha M. McCarthy, Planning and Changing, Vol. 42, No. 3/4, 2011

»“What Constitutes a Critical Mass? An Investigation of Faculty Staffing Patterns in Educational Leadership Programs” by Donald G. Hackmann and Martha M. McCarthy, Journal of Research on Leadership Education, April 2013

JAY GOLDMAN is editor of School Administrator magazine. Twitter: @jpgoldman