Academic promotion packages: crafting connotative frames

Abstract

Among the challenges of navigating the promotion and tenure (P&T) process is the need to describe one’s career using the language of P&T expectations, while also framing that language to reflect the unique work involved in health professions education (HPE) scholarship. Drawing on the distinction between denotative and connotative meanings of words, we describe how the language of P&T standards can hold different meanings depending on how they are contextualized in the HPE field and the communities therein. To illustrate, we describe our experiences of adapting the language of ‘teaching’ to the expectations of the P&T committee while also reflecting the non-traditional ‘teaching’ we do in HPE. We also share three practical tips for navigating the P&T process: (1) find a local mentor, (2) craft the story of your expertise, and (3) seek feedback from your local stakeholders on the connotative story you have crafted.

Development and validation of a health profession education-focused scholarly mentorship assessment tool

“…This mentoring is often explicitly listed in HPES research scientists’ job descriptions as a significant contribution to their teaching workload (i. e., scholarly mentorship is often incorporated within the teaching expectations in faculty job descriptions, subsumed along with educational activities such as offering faculty development workshops, classroom instruction, and/or workplace-based teaching) [ 4 ]. Unfortunately, while informally recognized as teaching, scholarly mentorship is not often formally recognized as such by promotion and tenure committees [ 5 ].…”

“…The gap between what is required of HPES research scientists and what is recognized for promotion and tenure is problematic. Without formal recognition of the educational support offered in these scholarly mentorship collaborations, HPES research scientists are structurally disincentivized from engaging in this work [ 5 ]. Recognizing the scholarly mentorship provided by HPE research scientists requires a means for documenting and evaluating this work.…”

“…Our construct is the scholarly mentorship provided by HPES research scientists in research collaborations. To ensure compatibility across all three institutions and alignment with how promotion and tenure committees label scholarly mentorship as teaching , we chose to use the term teaching as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary to label our construct: “to inform, to train, to give instruction to, to impart knowledge, to show by way, to instruct.” This definition encompasses the scholarly mentorship activity of interest to us [ 5 ], and maps across job descriptions and promotion criteria for HPES research scientists across our three institutions.…”

“…The tool we developed—the Scholarly Teaching in Health Professions Education (STHPE) assessment tool—is an evidence-informed means for enumerating, assessing, and offering feedback on the scholarly mentorship offered by HPES research scientists. Knowing that different HPES stakeholders viewed the scholarly mentorship offered by HPES research scientists in varying ways [ 5 ], we developed the STHPE assessment tool through ongoing consultation with multiple stakeholder groups. We suggest that the STHPE has been appropriately vetted for use by HPES research scientists as a means of legitimizing the scholarly mentorship work we do.…”

Research environments: can the cloud supplement bricks and mortar?

“…Research is similarly part of the digital environment because individuals use digital spaces to support research collaboration. Interestingly, in bricks and mortar HPESUs, research, service and teaching frequently blend together in individual activities: a research project is also teaching when a junior colleague is mentored into the research process, and also service when the object of research is an aspect of the education curriculum . It seems that this blending is also happening in HPE's digital spaces.…”