The Occupational Science of Women Faculty Work: A

Qualitative Approach
Christine Privott, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky, USA

Abstract: Contemporary studies that have looked at women faculty work have been mixed in their
findings about the relationship between gender and job satisfaction. Interdisciplinary, qualitative
measures of women faculty job satisfaction, within a context of rehabilitation science and social science
constructs of occupation, are critical to understanding women faculty experiences. Set in the context
of Kielhofner’s model of human occupation, this paper seeks to determine important aspects of women
faculty work that have not been studied. These characteristics are women’s internal drive to act, the
effect of habits and routines, and the physical skills needed to perform. Six full-time women faculty
from one western U.S. Carnegie VL2 institution of higher education were observed and interviewed
in-depth over the course of one academic semester using ethnographic data collection techniques.
Five of the women represent diverse academic divisions within the college and the sixth participant
is a full-time online educator. The data were analyzed using content and domain analysis. The results
indicate the women faculty value the act of teaching above all other academic activities and purposefully
choose not to engage in leadership activities other than at the departmental level. The women make
choices that are shaped predominantly by the volitional aspects of teaching students, rather than at-
taching meaning to their own habits, routines, and physical performance skills that would set them
apart from other faculty.

Keywords: Occupational Science, Women, Gender, Faculty, Higher Education

W
OMEN COMPRISE APPROXIMATELY one-half of all workers within
United States postsecondary education (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009), and
faculty in community colleges constitute one-third of the total faculty workforce
(Levin 2005). Most studies of women faculty job satisfaction have concentrated
on university women perceptions of faculty work. Few contemporary studies have focused
on the daily experiences of women faculty in community colleges (Clark, 1998; Opp, 2002;
Townsend, 1998). Set in the occupational science context of Kielhofner’s (1985) model of
human occupation (MOHO), this paper renders important aspects of women faculty job
satisfaction that have not been studied. These characteristics are women’s internal drive to
act, the effect of habits and routines, and the skills needed to perform in a college setting.
Empirical studies exploring the application of MOHO evolved from the rehabilitation
discipline of occupational therapy, which uses occupation, or purposeful activity, as treatment
interventions (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2006). The connection between
occupation and health is fundamental to the successful functioning of individuals. Beginning
in the 1980s, scholars began to further explore why people engage in occupation (Clark et.
al., 1990; Hocking, 2000; Larson, 2003; Lunt, 1997; Yerxa et. al., 1989; Zemke and Clark,
1996). This paper is grounded in the belief that MOHO complements qualitative inquiry:

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Volume 6, Issue 5, 2012, http://www.SocialSciences-Journal.com, ISSN 1833-1882
© Common Ground, Christine Privott, All Rights Reserved, Permissions:
[email protected]
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

An understanding of women faculty allows us to find meaning in how they construct their
reality and perceive their occupation.

Review of Literature
In the past, studies of community college women faculty job satisfaction have focused on
quantitative measures of personality variables and attitudes towards working conditions.
Faculty demonstrated both satisfaction and dissatisfaction with specific instructional and
non-instructional job responsibilities and working conditions (ASHE-ERIC, 1988). Hill
(1983) found that job satisfaction derives from teaching in one’s discipline and mentoring
students. Milosheff (1990) concluded that men and women faculty experience job satisfaction
differently; however, the variable of gender was not statistically significant in predicting job
satisfaction. Townsend (1998) suggests that for women faculty, employment in community
colleges enables them to achieve personal and professional fulfillment.
Contemporarily, it is generally accepted that faculty have faced intense difficulty trying
to balance work and family roles, and most later studies explore the tenure process as one
of the most common and accepted measures of faculty academic success and job satisfaction.
I do not intend to present the concept of tenure as a primary variable of women faculty work;
however, the following study demonstrates tenure as one measure of women faculty job
satisfaction in the community college workplace. Fugate’s (2000) study found that the factors
attracting faculty to community college teaching were based on the tenure process. Fugate’s
research indicated that tenure was a burden that came with teaching at a four-year institution
and community college faculty could avoid the traditional tenure process by focusing on the
teaching and mentoring role, since few community colleges require research or publication.
It is significant that few qualitative studies exploring the complexity of women faculty
work, much less job satisfaction, in community colleges exists. In the context of higher
education, this paper offers a broad and integrative view of human occupation that has been
missed by scholars to date.

Conceptual Framework
Kielhofner (1985) sought to discover how individuals were motivated to choose to do things
that occupied their time. Intricately linked to this were the repetitive patterns of what people
did that made up everyday life. He conceptualized MOHO as an open system: the act of
doing is shaped by volition, habits, and performance - all of which are impacted at any point
you enter or exit the environment.
Volition is the biological need to act on the world and includes sub-elements of personal
causation, values, and interests. Personal causation is a person’s knowledge and beliefs about
their ability to have an effect on the world. Values are internalized images of what is good,
right, and important. Interests are what people like, such as objects, events, or other people
(Early, 2000). Habituation refers to the automatic patterning of behavior and includes sub-
elements of habits and internalized roles (Kielhofner, 2002). Habits are routines and actions
that are carried out often without apparent conscious decision. Internalized roles are acquired
images of a particular social or occupational identity (Early, 2000). Performance consists
of skills and the rules for using skills and is further organized into taxonomy of motor, process,
communication-interaction, and social interaction domains (Early, 2000).

38
 CHRISTINE PRIVOTT

The process by which man receives input from the environment and makes decisions to
act (output) is the basic philosophical tenet of MOHO. The diagram below illustrates this
input-throughput-output cycle. The throughput is explained by individuals’ interpretations
of their own volition, habituation, and performance capacity.

Figure 1: The Three Subsystems of the Model of Human Occupation

Figure 1. Definitions and relationship of the three subsystems of the Model of Human
Occupation. Adapted from Mental health concepts and techniques, 2nd ed., by M.B.
Early, Copyright 1993 by Raven Press, New York.

Purpose
In more recent years, occupational scientists have studied the workplace and the idea that
workers’ cultural and contextual lenses impact how individuals experience occupation.
Primeau (2000) examined existing data and captured the underlying process of how or why
work was divided in a certain way, and how gender played an important role in the analysis
of work. Hocking (2000) proposed a relationship between occupation and other phenomena,
such as health, quality of life, self-identity, and social structures and policies. Both Primeau
(2000) and Hocking (2000) suggest that what women faculty do in the workplace is significant
for how it impacts their perceptions of the meaning of their occupation.
The purpose of this research is to better understand the complexities of women’s work
within a shared culture as faculty in a community college. Set in the context of occupational
science theories, faculty work is defined by Kielhofner’s MOHO which views occupation
as organized internally by individuals’ motivation, routinized behavior, and patterns of skills
during performance.
Considering these findings, I pose the following questions:

• What is the nature of women faculty work in community colleges?

• What meaning do women faculty attach to their role in the academic workplace?
• Can the model of human occupation explain women faculty work?
• How do volition, habituation, and performance affect women faculty choices in their
academic workplace?

MOHO research to date has focused on the validation of the model’s concepts and assessments
in occupational therapy clinical practice. There is a significant gap in the application of
MOHO to individuals’ who experience health and well-being in the workplace.

39
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

Methods
This paper is organized around my 2007 ethnographic study of six, full-time women faculty
at a Carnegie VL2 (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2006) institution
in the southwestern United States. Using a feminist “school” of ethnography, I studied these
women’s faculty lives and their ability to make choices in the academic workplace. I used
within-culture, opportunistic sampling to locate key informants who represented five aca-
demic divisions:

• Applied and Advanced Technologies

• Arts and Letters
• Business, Industry and Public Safety
• Health Sciences
• Social Science and Education

Multiple non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted over

the course of a traditional academic semester. The following interview protocol was framed
by the key research questions:

• What affects choice and anticipation of doing things in the workplace?

• How do interests affect performance?
• What habits influence the patterns and routines of the workplace?
• Do roles influence routine?
• How do underlying physical or psychosocial factors affect performance?
• Do the physical spaces support or prevent successful performance?
• Does social group membership affect job performance?

Three methods of descriptive data analysis were performed: content, domain, and visual
picture [tree diagram] (Creswell, 1998, 158). Measures to address validity included using
observational protocols, transcribing audio-taped interviews, conducting thematic sampling,
and disseminating final results to all informants.
Limitations of the inquiry (not inclusive) were that data were gathered only at one public
VL2 institution and informants were homogenous for sex and job type. Ethical concerns,
such as what aspects of faculty work are considered private versus public, and the perception
of my role in advocating for women’s rights in the workplace were taken into account.

Results
Each woman represents a person who is doing or acting something. The hobbyist (Hh.),
who is a professor in the Division of Health Sciences, considers herself unburdened by
teaching because it is a hobby which ultimately allows her to pursue her teaching passions
in an unbridled manner. The producer (Pp.) vacillates between expressions of optimism and
pessimism when describing how she manages all of her daily activities within the English
department of the Division of Arts and Letters. The knower (Kk.) is a tenured professor in
the Division of Advanced and Applied Technologies and planned, coordinated, and made
deliberate choices to move from a job (work for pay) to a career (life-long occupation). The
teacher (Tt.) is also tenured and in the Division of Business, Industry, and Public Safety: she

40
 CHRISTINE PRIVOTT

serves students in all aspects of student life and this is the primary source of satisfaction in
her academic career. The supermom (Ss.) is a single mother and perceives that her career is
often jeopardized by her children’s needs. She is a tenured professor in the Division of Social
Science and Education and was a social worker prior to teaching. The online educator (Dd.)
considers her professional life “a little unusual” because she teaches almost one-hundred
percent online education and does not envision a teaching career in the classroom in the near
future.
Cross-case comparisons of the women indicate five thematic roles that explicate the rel-
evant aspects of human doing captured in MOHO: dominant instructor, task manager, ama-
teur counselor, goal seeker, and social/political player. Across participants, the volitional,
habitual, and performance aspects of enacting these roles and doing their job are different
for each participant; however, the activities are all a function of teaching. Their daily living
in the context of time, effort, and emotional stability are dominated by these activities which
are essential to their sense of job satisfaction. Furthermore, it is clear that not only are these
activities essential to some level of participant job satisfaction, but they completely dominate
their daily living in the context of time, effort, and emotional stability.

Dominant Instructor

Volition
These women are motivated to teach. They make deliberate career choices to teach at the
community college, and three of them sought this career after flourishing in other professional
careers. According to developmental classifications by Early (1996), all of the women are
chronologically in midlife–late adulthood stage. For them, concerns about capacity for doing
things that matter changed over their life course. Their sense of personal causation is evident
when they see a connection between what they teach and their effect on students. For example;
students travel to other campuses to take their specific courses, refer others to their courses,
and perceive the courses as manageable.
The women attach value to diverse teaching activities such as instructing, grading, and
guiding students contingent on their respective expertise. They prepare lectures by reading
textbooks, creating PowerPoint presentations, and organizing interactive classroom activities.
Their management of the classroom involves deciding which students to admit or deny access
during registration, tracking course enrollments, and advertising and recruiting students for
new course offerings. The women feel obligated to adjust personal schedules to meet the
emotional needs of students. They have strong convictions about mentoring and how time
should be spent during the workday. Superimposed on their days is the desire to learn new
pedagogy, help students adjust to college life, and inspire students to succeed.
All of the women find teaching enjoyable and satisfying despite overwhelming personal
and professional routines that require constant attention and effort. Teaching is a hobby for
(Hh.), and (Pp.) feels she is enacting her fantasy career role. The others consider their career
at the college a prime part of their lives that has generated pleasure and satisfaction. They
are attracted to this profession strictly because they get to teach. The women are able to
fulfill their intellectual intrigue, as they search out new material for class, read new textbooks,
learn new technology, share current events with their students, and keep pace with faculty
peers. Their enjoyment also emanates from environmental pleasures- they enjoy how they

41
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

feel in a classroom surrounded by adult and/or second-career learners, classroom computer

technology, and campus buildings, grounds, and social culture.

Habituation
Teaching has become a habit for the women. Their habits include organizing their day, and
for (Ss.), doing this even though her days are fragmented by the multiple roles she enacts.
Five of the women are bound by on-campus, and sometimes, multiple-campus teaching
schedules. For (Dd.), she teaches in a virtual world; however, she still holds office hours,
grades papers, and shows up on time for class. The women habitually strategize about who
to get-to-know on campus , the state of their supervisory relationships, course schedules,
the pursuit of professional development opportunities, use of a-vocational and professional
time, and dressing for teaching success. As long as these things remain familiar, they can
teach effectively.
The women have taken on an identity that suits their college workplace. The role of in-
structor has been internalized, and they know the script for acting out this role. They impart
knowledge to students, mentor students, serve on college committees, abide by institutional
rules, and participate in professional development and graduate scholarship activities. A
majority of the women’s work time is occupied by this predictable academic behavior.

Performance Capacity
Teaching is a physical and cognitive skill. Students inherently depend on the actions they
can objectively see in the classroom, and the women faculty rely on cognitive and physical
abilities to get the job done. Cognitively, all six women hold masters degrees and feel com-
petent in their areas of expertise. Three of the women give credit to physical exercise and
fitness routines for maintaining their teaching duties, while the others recognize health and
well-being as important but have not incorporated these activities into their lives. Two of
the women also acknowledge that if it were not for the time allotted for physical exercise
during their days, they would not be able to teach as competently or find as much joy in
teaching.

Task Manager

Volition
The women participate in a wide range of actions linked to teaching and this has a profound
effect on their sense of competence. A majority of the women feel they are in command of
their personal and professional responsibilities, having learned how their institution works
and taking liberties with this knowledge. Most of their days are spent independently teaching
and traveling to one of three main campuses to deliver lectures. Meeting and mentoring
students follows, and this is wedged in-between days filled with care-giving, parenting, a-
vocational pursuits, personal exercise, grading, and developing coursework. Tasks are per-
formed in weekday increments and work time is defined by weekday hours and typically
does not include the weekends. Surprisingly, the tasks are not delineated by academic
semesters, months, or years. Instead, the women refer to their activities as daily tasks and

42
 CHRISTINE PRIVOTT

do not further distinguish tasks along an academic and temporal continuum. It is the juggling
of different types of tasks in a single day that affords the women a sense of cause and effect;
however, half of the women periodically feel incapable and lack a sense of self-efficacy
specific to managing teaching tasks and personal responsibilities. In their own words, this
accounts for the inconsistencies in seeking out other opportunities, such as leadership, and
persisting in their work.
To meet students’ needs, the women begin their days early and end late and attach import-
ance to the following tasks:

• holding office hours

• classroom teaching
• preparing and grading assignments
• elder care-giving
• college committee service
• reading to maintain teaching competence
• mentoring new faculty
• performing community service
• eating three meals a day
• childrearing
• fitness routines
• a-vocational commitments (such as an outside business)

The women’s strong sense of obligation to their students leads them to make work choices
that fulfill a subliminal need; however, this can be in conflict with mainstream home and
work values. Three of the women believe that their personal convictions regarding work-
family balance undermine their confidence in the classroom and at home when they cannot
perform adequately all around.

Habituation
The women use fellow faculty, supervisors, and the community to get their jobs done, and
rely on objective and subjective student teaching evaluations to evaluate their daily habits.
For example, (Dd.) and (Kk.) state that if any of their daily personal and professional habits
do not support their teaching, they believe it will turn up in student teaching evaluations. In
addition, faculty and supervisors may be the impetus for habit change, but all of the women
agree peers and supervisors do not interfere with their habitual natures. Four of the women
feel the resources the college provides to teach, such as software, and the condition of the
physical facilities are adequate to support teaching habits. Personal habits that support or
breakdown the ability to teach is behavior such as:

• grading papers in a reasonable amount of time and to students’ expectations.

• adhering to scheduled office hours.
• making time for lunch each workday.
• making time for exercise or down-time each workday.
• arriving on campus on time, especially traveling between campuses, to prepare for class.
• checking in, by phone or e-mail, with family and/or children each workday

43
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

• taking or eschewing stimulants such as coffee or soda

What is striking is that over time, all six of the women have not acquired new ways of doing
things, or new routines. They have maintained, relatively speaking, the same academic
identities that have made their work lives predictable and familiar.
For these women, in the roles of task managers, role socialization morphed from formal
roles to more informal roles. Over time, as the women managed teaching tasks, they became
immune to formal faculty policies and focused more on how to teach and manage their stu-
dents effectively: They ended up making a paradigm role shift from (VL2) teacher- (VL2)
student, to raw teacher-student. The intrinsic reward of teaching drives their ability to manage
tasks, and not necessarily their workplace.

Performance Capacity
The women self-report they are attentive, literate, articulate, coordinated, energetic, and
mentally stable. They testify that they do not experience physical or cognitive impairments
in managing their personal and professional duties. The ability to manage work tasks, as
observed, is not influenced by a weakened physical capacity; although two of the women
highlight their need for improved physical fitness to get their jobs done.

Amateur Counselor

Volition
The women help students be the owners of their capacity to succeed in higher education.
For example, they influence students’ views of coping mechanisms, career goals, navigating
technology, and service learning. This is cyclical process: the women personify their own
cause and effect because their intense student retention efforts result in something positive.
It is clear that for these women, caring is organized around a fundamental educational
viewpoint of adult learning that defines success in life. What matters is the students’ learning
potential and technology competence to successfully negotiate the world at large. All of the
participants counsel students on contemporary life skills and four of the six women value
online education as a means to college success.

Habituation
The women routinely counsel students on a daily basis and after hours by offering guidance
to students on assignments, grades, and classroom performance, to name a few. They counsel
in-person, by phone, and by e-mail, and seem to be available in an automatic way.

Performance Capacity
In order to counsel students successfully, the women have to demonstrate certain physical
and cognitive skills. The skills to attend, appear organized, physically endure long days,
and/or know each student’s profile should not be taken for granted in understanding how
these women counsel students.

44
 CHRISTINE PRIVOTT

Goal Seeker

Volition
For this college, academic merit is highly rewarded and the women’s goals appear to be
rooted in the institutional culture. They feel challenged to establish new programs in their
respective academic departments and learn new technology to aid in recruiting and teaching
students - these goals are familiar and unending. Loftier goals, such as pursuing graduate
degrees, are mentioned solely in the context of their perception of peer/colleague acceptance.
None of the women express a desire to study and earn a doctoral degree for promotional
and/or college-wide leadership opportunities.

Social/Political Player

Volition
The women’s abilities to assess how effective they are in achieving desired social and
political outcomes at work are part and parcel to understanding the work they do. Participating
in academic departmental politics that require at least a requisite knowledge of basic group
dynamics is a choice that few of the women make. They accommodate on a regular basis
department politics centered on pedagogy, program expansions that are inevitable and super-
visory relationships that revolve in yearly increments. All of the women remark that they
change roles and expectations depending on who is serving in the elected department lead-
ership positions. For example, (Ss.) particularly noted that her relationship with classified
staff takes precedence over any supervisory relationship.
In the capacity of social and political workers, their political aptitude is manifested only
in their perceived abilities to freely choose their activities and persevere in the midst of intense
academic teaching, counseling, and on occasion departmental strife. These women do not
value a social or political ladder; instead, they value widespread community and family
support.

Habituation
The women routinely coordinate social outings with faculty, cultivate useful relationships
with diverse staff, concede or demand rooms and resources for teaching, vote for department
leaders, choose courses to teach and college committee service, and set personal and work
boundaries. The women view these activities as characteristic of community college service
and as conventional social and political roles.

Performance Capacity
The women collectively opt out of social or political situations that require them to become
more physically, cognitively, and mentally involved. The act of staying late at work to
mentor students or lead student clubs are examples of tasks the women choose based on the
minimal physical, cognitive, and mental expectations placed on them. The social roles they
generally perform, that require more time, but not necessarily more effort, are attending

45
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

friends and peers special events, such as birthday celebrations, luncheons, and after-work
“happy hours.” The women are hypothetically unable to connect these actions to their abil-
ities to politically network; however, all of the women seem to be in reasonable physical
and emotional health to be able to perform these roles adequately.

Summary
The daily life of these women faculty is contingent upon the intrinsic rewards associated
with teaching. The meaning the participants’ attach to teaching is hierarchical given that all
three of the MOHO subsystems of volition appear indisputable in accounting for their actions.
A majority of the women also feel the type, amount, and meaning of administrative support
for a range of teaching activities are difficult to assess, but paramount to success. This includes
physical classroom space, office space, and technological resources.
Four of the six women recognize the need to globally understand the support mechanisms
that enable them to teach well. For them, habitual patterns in time management at work and
home contribute to or impede their ability to teach well. Long established immediate family
and community relationships also influence their ability to do their job.
The women’s definition of their adaptability to the social and political climate is based
on institutional governance structures. References to new institutional leadership, faculty
senate actions, and chair elections are significant. Fundamentally, they believe peer conflict
does not directly impact one’s ability to teach. The women’s ideas of change management,
leadership, expanding personal and professional horizons, and higher education as the ivory
tower are more ideological than applicable. Underscoring this is the fact that none of the
women aspire to progressive college leadership positions, but foresee participation in depart-
mental decision-making actions. None of the women share evidence of cross-disciplinary
or interdepartmental collaboration with faculty peers.
For some of the women, academic activities of daily living mean commuting to work,
holding class, and sticking to scheduled office hours; while others claim it is caring for others,
grading papers, and making time for leisure. The meaning applied by each of the women in
their academic work lives is variable and possibly complex, yet with one constant stream:
they are cognizant of the act of teaching and its impact on job satisfaction. These women
are not one-dimensional, but they are defined by the roles of dominant instructor, task
manager, amateur counselor, goal-seeker, and social-political player. The women rationalize
their workplace choices by embodying these roles.

Discussion
Understanding women faculty occupations is important because their work impacts both
individual job satisfaction and organizational outcomes. Thus, what is the nature of women
faculty work? The answer appears to be the act of teaching: the volitional (personal causation,
values, and interests) drive to teach supersedes all other academic activities. Furthermore,
the meaning women faculty attach to their role in the academic workplace is that of dominant
instructors. The women do not attach significant meaning to academic roles and duties asso-
ciated with managing organizational change, leadership opportunities, or expanding personal
horizons.

46
 CHRISTINE PRIVOTT

Can MOHO explain women faculty work in community colleges? The answer is yes if
we define faculty work as the act of teaching. This is aligned with the MOHO premise that
individuals’ innate drive for pleasurable action is represented as the highest level of doing
and teaching is the doing that supersedes all other occupational dynamics. This evidence
leads us to assume that pedagogical innovations such as collaborative learning, service
learning, and interdisciplinary competence, remains elusive for these women as they try to
meet the demands of daily teaching.
How do volition, habituation, and performance affect women faculty choices in the
workplace? According to MOHO, one can enter and exit the academic environment at any
one of the three points of volition, habituation, or performance. These women are at odds
with this rule and make workplace choices solely based on the volitional component. They
demonstrate little regard for the physical and cognitive skills of performing in the classroom
and underscore the importance of personal motivation in doing their job.
Consistent with MOHO secondary habituation and performance components, the results
also account for the choices the women make to teach. If we represent both the positive and
negative choices women faculty make, then there is little emphasis on the habitual or skilled
performance nature of teaching and other activities such as the pursuit of scholarship, career
promotions, and participation in institutional governance. Likewise, changes in any part of
their volition directly affect how they choose their other habits, routines, and performance
as faculty. No personal habits or routines are counterproductive to faculty work as long as
they remain intrinsically motivated to teach and positively impact students’ lives.
The physical skills and rules for using skills while doing faculty work are conceptually
lost in the participants’ stories. The women barely address their capacity to physically perform,
even when prompted to do so. For example, the MOHO performance approach would be to
consider underlying body structures and functions required to teach: joint range of motion,
muscle strength, endurance, problem-solving, and memory skills. I did not observe any ex-
isting physical, cognitive, or emotional disability of the participants. However, only two of
the women articulated the value of their physical health (specifically physical strength and
endurance) to their abilities to skillfully teach in the classroom.

Conclusion
Ultimately, I suggest that community college faculty work stems from the act of teaching.
At face value, this may not seem like a complex concept to understand; however, these women
show us that teaching involves a myriad of roles and responsibilities that are explained in
the context of only one occupational component - volition. The women’s narratives began
with an overwhelming desire to impact students’ lives and culminated in the expressions of
daily academic activities inherent in making this happen. Ironically, the women’s perceptions
of institutional control or influence over their jobs were not a factor in successfully performing
faculty work. This may be exclusive to community colleges; however, four-year college
faculty and administrators would be wise to assimilate this knowledge for recruitment and
retention purposes.
I am not saying that community colleges should only hire women who are expert teachers,
but I am saying that these women faculty have different feelings about the importance of
the work that they do. They generally do not aspire to leadership roles or consider that they

47
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

are agents of organizational change. According to MOHO, they are not motivated or patterned
to do so.
The flip side of faculty dedication to teaching could be eventual professional isolation.
Community colleges can begin to pay attention to the women they hire and greatly increase
the odds of attracting and retaining potential women leaders; not solely leaders in the
classroom. I postulate that MOHO, as a model of occupational reasoning, vitally helps us
understand concepts of doing as applied to women faculty, so that a new paradigm of women’s
academic leadership emerges. These women could unite forces in other academic endeavors
such as new program development, university articulation agreements, recruitment of second
and third-career students, and curriculum policy-making; all of which rely on a progressive
and often masterful understanding of adult teaching and learning. They would then have the
power to influence how others view the work women faculty do. When the center of analysis
is on how women faculty do their jobs, then we can identify the diverse ways that women
carry out their occupation as faculty.

48
 CHRISTINE PRIVOTT

References
American Occupational Therapy Association. (2006). The occupational therapy practice framework.
Retrieved from http://www.aota.org/members/area13/index.asp
ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Research Report. (1988). Critical thinking: Theory, research, practice,
& possibilities (Vol. 17, No. 2).
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2009). Women’s bureau. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/
opub/ted/2009/jan/wk1/art03.htm
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, (2006, September). The Carnegie Classification
of Institutions of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/
classifications/index.asp.
Clark, F. A., Parham, D., Carlson, M. E., Frank, G., Jackson, J., Pierce, D… Zemke, R.(1990). Occu-
pational science: Academic innovation in the service of occupational therapy’s future.
American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 45, 300-310.
Clark, S. (1998). Women faculty in the community college: Investigating the mystery. Community
College Review, 26(3), 77.
Creswell, J. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand
Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Early, M. B. (1993). Mental health concepts and techniques, (2nd ed.). New York: Raven Press.
Early, M. B. (1996). Mental health concepts and techniques. New York: Raven Press.
Early, M. B. (2000). Mental health concepts and techniques for the occupational therapy assistant.
(3rd ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.
Fugate, A. (2000). Career stages of community college faculty: A qualitative analysis of their career
paths, roles, and development. Community College Review, 28(1).
Hill, M. D. (1983). Some factors affecting the job satisfaction of community college faculty in
pennsylvania. Community/Junior College Quarterly of Research and Practice, 7, 303-317.
Hocking, C. (2000). Occupational science: a stock take of accumulated insights. Journal of Occupa-
tional Science. L7(2), 58-67.
Kielhofner, G. (1985). A Model of Human Occupation: Theory and Application. Baltimore: Williams
& Wilkins.
Kielhofner, G. (2002). Model of Human Occupation: Theory and Application (3rd.ed.). Baltimore:
Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins.
Larson, E. (2003). Shaping the temporal patterns of our lives: the social coordination of occupation.
Journal of Occupational Science, 10(2), 80-89.
Levin, J. S. (2005). Faculty in the U.S. community college: Corporate labor. Management in Education.
Lunt, A. (1997). Occupational science and occupational therapy: negotiating the boundary between a
discipline and a profession. Journal of Occupational Science: Australia, 4(2), 56-61.
Milosheff, E. (1990). Factors contributing to job satisfaction at the community college. Community
College Review, 18(1), 12-22.
Opp, R. D., & Gosetti, P. P. (2002). Women full-time faculty of color in 2-year colleges: a trend &
predictive analysis. Community College Journal of Research and Practice. 26, 609-627.
Primeau, L. (2000). Household work: When gender ideologies and practices interact. Journal of Occu-
pational Science, 7(3), 118-127.
Townsend, B. (1998). Women faculty: Satisfaction with employment in the community college.
Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 22(7), p 655.
Yerxa, E. J. (1989). An introduction to occupational science: A foundation for occupational therapy
in the 21st century. Occupational Therapy in Healthcare, 6(4), 1-17.
Zemke, R., & Clark, F. (1996). Occupational science: The evolving discipline. Philadelphia: F. A.
Davis.

49
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

About the Author

Dr. Christine Privott
Dr. Christine Privott is currently an Associate Professor in the department of Occupational
Science and Occupational Therapy at Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky.
She teaches undergraduate students in the social science program of occupational science,
women and gender studies, and masters students in occupational therapy. Her doctoral
studies included interdisciplinary scholarship in women’s studies, occupational therapy, and
higher education leadership. She has been an Occupational Therapist for over 20 years, su-
pervises students on field experiences, and has interests in qualitative research that explores
gender and the science of occupation.

50
Copyright of International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences is the property of Common Ground
Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the
copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.