Teaching from the margins: An examination of the teaching practices and labor conditions of adjunct faculty in communication

Abstract

This study explores the teaching practices and labor conditions of media and communication adjunct faculty at three universities. Since the late 1960s, the number of faculty who are part-time and contingent is increasing and adjuncts are now more than 70% of college and university faculty (AAUP, n.d.). In this study, I examine the neoliberal university’s reliance on the teaching labor of part-time faculty and interrogate the use of adjunct labor for skills-based, vocationally oriented elements of the media and communication curriculum. The history of higher education, the literature of teaching and learning, and the theoretical frameworks of Bourdieu’s practice theory and Freire’s critical pedagogy situate this qualitative study of adjunct faculty teaching practices and labor conditions. A multi-method approach includes textual analysis of course syllabi and university documents; eight interviews with administrators, department chairs, sequence heads, course directors, and university leadership; three interviews with union activists; eleven interviews with current or former adjuncts; semester-long participant observation of teaching practices of thirteen courses taught by nine adjunct faculty; and three student focus groups with nineteen total participants. This study reveals media and communication adjuncts as key members of the academic community who apply student-centered practices and who are responsible for important elements of the curriculum, and at the same time, marginalized as a flexible, on-demand, and disposable labor force that serves the neoliberal university. This study offers insights to improve the labor conditions of adjunct faculty. I conclude that the COVID-19 global pandemic and the disruption of higher education’s normal tempo reveals a changing higher education landscape with threats of financial exigency and increased precarity for all faculty.