An-Najah Staff

This study tried to investigate the effectiveness of academic practices among Palestinian University faculty members in three domains: 1) Planning Instruction before teaching, 2) Implementing Instruction during teaching, and 3) Evaluating Instruction after teaching. Other academic activities have been investigated too, such as, doing research and attending conferences. A questionnaire of (48) items measuring the academic practices of faculty members in those three mentioned domains has administered to a random sample of (239) of male and female faculty members at Palestinian Universities. The data were manipulating by using descriptive and analytic statistics. • The results of this study were summarized as follows: 1- The overall mean of faculty members' performance on the questionnaire was (4.32) out of (5) points. 2- 90% of the practiced items were located in implementing domain, whereas the 10% of the practiced items were located in planning and evaluating domains. 3- The One-Way Analysis of Variance of repeated measures design using an F-test showed a significant difference (& = .05) Among faculty members' practices in favor of the implementing domain of instruction rather than the planning or evaluating one. 4- With respect to other independent variables, F-test showed a significant differences at (.05) which indicated that: a) the academic practices of Bethlehem faculty members were higher than- the practices of their counter parts in the rest of the Palestinian Universities, b) practices of the Associate Professors were higher than the practices of the Assistant Professors, c) practices of faculty members who attended (15) seminars/conferences or more were higher than the practices of their counter parts who attended less than that, d) practices of faculty members who published (4-6) articles were higher than who published more or less than that number of articles. 5-F-test did not show a significant differences between faculty members' practices in terms of their college, specialization, and years of teaching experience. 6- t-test showed a significant difference between male and female faculty members' practices in favor of females (& = .05). Based on the results of this study, the researcher strongly recommends the Universities administrative staff who are in charge to arrange instructional programs to train their faculty members on planning and evaluating competencies. This kind of training will definitely enhance the quality of faculty members' performance, hence, their students' academic achievements.