The Role of Professional Qualifications on the Quality of Work Life and Mental Growth of University Faculty Members

Background &

Quality of working life is a multidimensional structure containing concepts such as welfare measures and medical services, incentive schemes, job suitability, job security, job design, importance to the role and position of the individual in the organization, providing the basis for growth and development, participation in Decision-making, reduction of job conflicts and ambiguities, training and reward systems. It is impossible for universities to provide effective education and research without having faculty members equipped with knowledge and sufficient motivation. Therefore, as the quality of working life of the academic staff members of the university is strengthened, the functions of the university will be developed, and on the contrary, as their life goes down, the university will be exposed to decline. Therefore, paying attention to the quality of working life of academic staff should be among the highest goals of the university. On the other hand, nowadays, programs for the growth and development of academic members are among the new strategies to maintain and improve the knowledge and performance of lecturers, which have been used by most of the countries during the last few decades in order to improve the scientific ability of the members. To perform their job duties in various fields of education, research and executive-management activities, the academic staff should create a suitable platform for transformation in the educational system. Factors such as the introduction of advanced information and communication technologies, the rapid growth of knowledge and the resulting changes, the need for universities to be accountable to society, the financial constraints of higher education systems, universalization and globalization of higher education, the competition of higher education institutions, etc. All of them have caused universities and higher education systems to think about the continuous growth of their faculty members. The growth of faculty members is an essential and vital part of the success of faculty members as well as the university. Because faculty members are considered as the basic pillar of universities and higher education centers and as the executive arm of universities' triple mission (teaching, research and providing services) and paying attention to them means paying attention to human capital in higher education and in line with It is the fulfillment of this mission. In order to keep faculty members, especially in Farhangian University, who are responsible for training student teachers, considering the growth program as one of the most important university programs. According to the introduction, following the tradition of pedagogy and especially the approach of evaluating professional competence, it has been tried to align with global perspectives, a local model for monitoring, evaluating, issuing certificates and verifying the professional competence of professors (across the field) education) should be presented at the level of the system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and on the other hand, the basis for measuring the validity of the supervisory tests should be provided. Since there is little information about the role of professional qualifications on the quality of work life and growth of employees, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of professional qualifications on the quality of work life and mental growth of university faculty members.

The purpose of this research is practical, which was carried out with a mixed approach (qualitative and quantitative) with an exploratory design. In the qualitative section, the statistical population included managers and academic staff members of Farhangian University in the 9th region of the country, who had a doctorate degree and more than 10 years of teaching experience, and 20 people were identified and their opinions were used in the qualitative section. In the quantitative section, the statistical population included 263 faculty members of Farhangian University in 9 regions of the country (Semnan, Mazandaran, and Golestan), and according to the Cochran formula, 156 people were selected as a statistical sample. The researcher-made questionnaire of professional qualifications, quality of work life by Walton (1973) and Balandagi Koroneh et al. (2013) was used to collect the required data.

 The results showed that the effect of professional qualifications on the quality of work life and mental development of faculty members of Farhangian University of Region 9 is significant at the level of 0.99.

In general, it can be concluded that the quality of working life and mental development of faculty members refers to a wide range of activities, on which the role of professional qualifications was confirmed. Academic faculty members, as one of the biggest assets of any society and also one of the most important elements of the educational system, play a very sensitive and decisive role in the training of expert human resources, and the result of their efforts is ultimately growth. And it follows the development of every society. They form the main body of any university and are certainly more important than programs, activities and equipment in this system. Therefore, universities need professors who have competence and professional qualifications. Professional competence is actually part and parcel of the performance of university professors and actually reflects the areas of knowledge, attitude and skills of a person and allows him to act more effectively in his profession. The importance of professors' professional qualifications and their tremendous impact on organizational effectiveness has caused universities to try in various ways to improve and provide the necessary conditions for their maximum emergence. In fact, professional competence shows an image of a developed person who has complete preparations in every way to do the job. In this way, competence can be considered as a behavioral dimension that has an effect on the job performance and growth of a person. Based on this, it seems that professional competence is like an umbrella that includes everything that directly or indirectly affects job performance. Researches have shown that professional competence It has a significant impact on the quality of work life of research experts. If the university authorities are not able to attract and maintain competent and motivated human resources, the university will face problems in carrying out serious responsibilities and duties. Since the academic faculty members of the universities play an essential role in the production of science and the expansion of the boundaries of knowledge, therefore, the universities should satisfy their material and spiritual needs and create a suitable working environment for them for educational and research activities.