Faculty Service and Professional Agency: Voices From Tenure Track Teachers

Universities in many countries, including China, have implemented the tenure track system as a management tool for excellence. In a tenure context, teacher commitment to faculty service, albeit underexplored, is subject to evaluation. The relationship between teacher professional agency, professional identity and faculty service remains an under-explored area in research on tenure-track teachers in the Chinese context. This study investigated tenure-track teachers’ professional agency with regard to faculty service, as manifested in influencing at work, developing work practices and negotiating professional identity. Data were elicited from tenure policy documents, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest an expansion of faculty service, encompassing six domains, namely, ‘discipline establishment’, ‘extracurricular contribution’, ‘scholarly participation’, ‘student affairs’, ‘performance appraisal’, and ‘publicity service’. In undertaking the faculty service, the ambiguous workload documents, combined with the top-down management style, the shifting power structure, and the public mythology, constitute structural constraints and system-wide maneuvering space that could impact teacher professional agency. In such circumstances, three identities, ‘a leadership investor’, ‘a dutiful scholar’, and ‘an indifferent employee’, are in fluid negotiation. This reveals a liquid commitment to faculty service, in which ‘stepping up’ or ‘walking away’ strategies emerge. Implications of the findings are also provided.