An Assessment of Academic Staff Personnel Management in Regional Colleges of Teacher Education

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Date

2004-06

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

This thesis was based on the findings of the research study entitled "An Assessment of Academic Staff Personnel Management in Regional Colleges of Teacher Education ". The main purpose of the study was to investigate the problems attached to the prevailing system of managing the teaching personnel in some selected Regional colleges of Teacher Education, and suggest some practical steps to be taken to improve the situation. To this end, an attempt was made to look in to the current practices and major factors affecting the recruitment and selection of the academic staff, their utilization, and professional development. A descriptive method was employed to reveal the current state of academic staff personnel management in the colleges. The sample colleges were selected from Addis Ababa, Oromia, Amhara, and SPNNR regional states on the basis of purposive sampling technique. The subjects of the study were 82 instructors, 16 authorities in charge of recruiting and selecting instructors and 16 academic heads. The respondents sampling was carried out through purposive and availability sampling. Information was obtained through questionnaires, interview and documents. The result revealed that the sample colleges lacked an appropriate planning of the academic staff needs mainly due to lack of the required skills on part of the staff managers to analyse staff needs in quantitative and qualitative terms. Moreover, most of the authorities didn't get any training or orientation focused on systematic recruitment and selection techniques. Nor had they adequate experience in handling the issue. Academic qualification and cumulative G.P.A. were found to be the prime selection criteria of instructors; the professional assistance rendered by internal and more so by external supervisors was found to be inadequate; and the number of training opportunities for short-term and further education offered to the academic staff was found to be unsatisfactory. Therefore, it is concluded that the recruitment and selection of the academiC staff was so inappropriate that the colleges have faced a critical shortage of the required staff in various disciplines; the utilization of the staff is unlikely to make a positive contribution to the effective utilization of knowledge, skill and ability of the instructors. Hence, it is recommended that Regional Education Bureaus and Regional offices of Capacity Building should plan and take the initiative to provide the staff managers with training or orientation that focuses on skills necessary to analyse staff needs, and on systematic recruitment and selection techniques; the colleges ought to revise their terms of recruitment and selection criteria in such a way that experience and technical competence are given weight in the recruitment and selection of instructors; qualified and competent supervisors be assigned at REB level, and staff management should make more effort to periodically assess training needs of the academic staff and find ways to develop their abilities and up-grade their academic level.

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Assessment of Academic Staff Personnel Management

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