Educational Excellence Criteria in the Promotion Process of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Members at Selected World Universities: A Comparative Study with Iran

Document Type : case study

Authors

1 PhD in Management of Information Technology, Research Fellow in National Research Institute for Science Policy (NRISP) Tehran, Iran

2 PhD in Science and Technology Policy, Faculty Member at the National Research Institute for Science Policy (NRISP), Tehran, Iran

3 Professor of Information Technology Management, Tarbiat Modares university, Tehran, Iran,

Abstract

One of the challenges of the recent years in the process of promoting humanities and social science faculty members is the definition of general criteria in the regulations for all disciplines and the lack of specific criteria for these sciences. This issue has led to the evaluation of the faculty members of this field with criteria that are not appropriate and by ignoring some of the achievements specific to these fields, it causes the discouragement of this group of faculty members. The purpose of this research is to investigate the educational criteria for the promotion of professors in selected universities in the world, focusing on humanities and social sciences, and comparing it with Iran's promotion regulations. In this regard, based on the Times global ranking, geographical distribution, and availability of information, twenty universities were selected for comparative study, and then, various sources were examined to obtain the guidelines for the promotion of professors in these universities. The selected universities all have fields of humanities and social sciences, and their geographic distribution includes the United States of America, Europe, Scandinavia, and Australia. After studying the promotion guidelines in these universities, the educational criteria considered by them for the promotion of professors at different levels were extracted and after review and coding, they were divided into four categories: "activities related to the classroom", "activities related to the supervision/supervision of students", "Activities related to the training of colleagues" and "activities related to the production of educational content" were divided. Finally, by comparing this regulation with Iran's promotion regulation, it was found that from the results of the present research, three categories of approaches including criteria, examples and approaches can be taken to improve Iran's promotion regulation in the educational dimension for humanities and social sciences. Using qualitative criteria against quantitative criteria, defining the role of coaching as one of the activities of the subcategory of education, helping to train and evaluate colleagues, strengthening the position of educational activities compared to research activities, and observing the principle of equality in education are among these approaches.

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Main Subjects

References

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