title: Engaging with Adjuncts in Higher Education: An Action Research Study
Creators: name: Birnstiel, Kellee
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2022

description: The recent trend in certain industries to hire part-time workers has introduced a challenge in securing high-performance from these workers. Research was conducted in a small college near Boston on adjuncts that were perceived to have low performance. The literature on part-time workers suggests motivational issues relating to identity, social support, resources, and job quality. These issues relate to low performance falling under the theories of job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, and engagement. After reviewing each of these theories, engagement, with its dimensions of dedication, rigor, and absorption along with its persistent state, was the best fit for my problem. If engagement is low in part-time workers, then their performance will be low. The literature offers several suggestions for increasing engagement; I focused on increasing job resources for this research. A quasi-experiment was set up to measure engagement in my adjuncts as a baseline, offer job resource interventions, then measure engagement again. The research was conducted during one college semester, which coincided with the initial Covid quarantine. Job resources were provided to all faculty including adjuncts. The planned resource interventions provided training, learning and development opportunities, manager support, coworker interaction, innovative organizational climate, role clarity, and information. Due to Covid, the college shifted to remote, online instruction during my research semester. This resulted in unplanned interventions offered by the college to provide other resources, such as information, coworker interaction, supportive organization, and training. Engagement was measured before the interventions and after the interventions by a survey using the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) scale. The before and after survey included other questions to help with the research including an assessment of deficient resources, identification of their top valued resources, and the effectiveness of the resource interventions. The resource interventions were deemed successful as engagement had increased by the end of the semester despite a very traumatic shift mid-semester to remote, online instruction. While increased engagement from the addition of resources was the primary goal for this research, the data results identified three central themes of Competency, Connections, and Communication impacting the adjunct’s ability to perform well. When viewed collectively, these three themes point to issues with low self-efficacy. Low self-efficacy in adjuncts suggests issues with imposter syndrome and liminality. Imposter syndrome results because adjuncts are practitioners who are experts in their fields but can feel like imposters in the classroom as their knowledge and skills may not be easily translated. Liminality occurs because adjuncts are supposed to represent the organization to the students, yet the organizational structure and its actor tend not to include part-time employees in organizational life. Organizations with part-time workers should address these low self-efficacy issues by providing resources that address the deficiencies in Competency, Connections, and Communication. While it may be difficult to quantify the benefit of these resource provisions to adjuncts, there is a connection between the net investment of resources and the benefit from increased performance. By equipping part-time workers with resources that will increase their self-efficacy, their engagement will be high which can lead to high performance.