Academic Hierarchy Research Articles

Competing identities in diverse classrooms: mapping social and academic hierarchies in perceived inclusive utopias

ABSTRACT The concept of inclusion, which emphasises access to education and well-being for all students, is fundamental to Icelandic schools, but its aims and applications continue to be impacted by various social and academic barriers experienced by an increasing diversity of students. This article is an ethnographic study focusing on power relations in a seemingly inclusive classroom and school in the capital city of Reykjavík. The analysis draws on Bourdieu’s concept of social space to examine the classroom as a network of intersecting social positions. Data consists of participant observations, teacher interviews, and sociograms derived from student questionnaires. Findings suggest that the hierarchies found within the framework of inclusion are affected not only by social and academic relationships among students, such as those based on gender, ethnicity, class, and language or academic ability, but also by teacher and student perspectives on normative cultural practices that are intertwined with inclusive practices.

Rethinking power and positionality in debates about citation: Towards a recognition of complexity and opacity in academic hierarchies

Rethinking power and positionality in debates about citation: Towards a recognition of complexity and opacity in academic hierarchies

Reaching for Excellence Through Equity or Prestige? US Private Master's Comprehensive Institutions and Low‐Income Students

ABSTRACTPrivate master's comprehensive institutions (PMCIs) in the United States navigate pressures to expand college access and equity while striving for prestige in the academic hierarchy. To strive for prestige entails competing for world‐class status of greater selectivity, research intensity and resources, but such a pathway to excellence may, because of market‐competition, deepen institutional and student stratification in the sector. In this study, we examine how organisational characteristics associated with striving influence low‐income student enrolment at PMCIs over time. Our panel analysis revealed selected factors constraining the enrolment of low‐income students at the average PMCI. But the magnitude of these statistical relationships was rather modest and did not suggest dramatically worsening institutional and student inequality in the sector. These findings support a flexible theory of organisational fields, illuminating more equity‐centred behaviours at the typical PMCI than what prior literature indicates. We discuss implications for research and policy emphasising equity's connection to institutional excellence.

‘Helping academics shine’: An exploration into the relationships working-class professional services staff have with others in UK higher education

AbstractDrawing on research interviews with thirteen self-identifying working-class professional services employees in Russell Group institutions, this article attempts to develop a nuanced approach to understanding institutional cultures in UK universities, through the relationships within these establishments. Throughout the study, the tensions between working-class professional services or administrative staff and their counterparts working on academic trajectories became clear. Often highly qualified themselves, the participants in this study describe feelings relating to inadequacy and often negative attitudes proliferated towards them by academic staff. These relationships are framed within the perspective of three themes: academic hierarchies and superior academic value, treatment of staff, and language codes and patterns. In contrast, the participants in this sample often describe their relationships with their networks in professional services as highly positive, developmental, and enriching. This study focused on working-class professional services staff specifically. In the field of working-class research, professional services staff from working-class backgrounds have currently been largely omitted from research, which tends to focus on working-class students and working-class academics. Not all professional services staff identify as working-class, but due to this deficit of evidence in the research field, it is this group in particular that this paper focuses on. The findings in this paper suggest that the relationships these professional services staff have with academics are often fraught, difficult to manage, and at times, derogatory in their nature. This finding comes at the juxtaposition of the wider inclusion agenda UK universities pursue.

Pedagogy as care: Love, loss, and learning in the world politics classroom

In this article, we elaborate pedagogies of care, contemplating what it means to teach with and about care in the world politics classroom, situated within the neoliberal, colonial, heteropatriarchal, white western academy. Further, we actively reflect on what it means to work caringly and carefully in practice, exploring pedagogy as care. What are the dilemmas that arise for scholars and teachers, differently positioned in the academy, who seek to teach with and about care in the context of a world politics education? How can we teach with care in often uncaring educational institutions that are hostile to staff and students, particularly those from racialized and other oppressed and marginalized communities? How are our practices and methods of teaching also acts of care? Building on interdisciplinary feminist literature on care, we argue that caring pedagogies can disrupt academic hierarchies and foster intergenerational connection. We also position pedagogy as care, acknowledging that as we teach, we mourn and honor/care for antecedents (both human and more-than-human), nourish our present selves and those with whom we interact, and build community/care for (visions/versions of) the future. Our intervention contributes to ongoing conversations about opening our classrooms as spaces of radical possibility in contemporary higher education.

Data snapshots of the access and participation of ‘women’ academics in UK universities: Questioning continued gendered, racialised and geopolitical inequalities

AbstractReplete with espoused discourses of equality, diversity and inclusion within public bodies, is the UK, wherein lauded initiatives reward its universities’ commitments to increasing the access and positioning of ‘women’ in higher education. This paper contributes a critical quantitative analysis of the state of representation and participation of academic staff within these universities generally, and the majority‐female discipline of education particularly. Education is important because it has a direct relation to social change and ethicality. It may maintain or reproduce the status quo; however, exercising its transformative potential is essential for the success of various international frameworks aiming to address global inequality, including most recently the Sustainable Development Goals. Sensitised by QuantCrit principles, a descriptive statistical exploration was undertaken of the staff composition and employment conditions captured within the administrative datasets reported on academic staff by all the public universities in the devolved nations of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales from 2015 to 2020. The findings of this study confirmed: (i) the continuation of gendered inequalities across the academic hierarchy, particularly as the pyramid narrows to the assigned intellectual leadership position of ‘professor’; (ii) racialised, gendered inequalities in access to employment, and in positioning once employed; and (iii) more adverse conditions where gendered, racialised and geopolitical inequalities intersect, most extremely for Black African female academics. The study demonstrates that the centring of ‘race’ and consideration of nationality are required to challenge coloniality, and to bring to the fore the differential impacts of systems of discrimination within this globally influential sector.

Professional opportunities, gender obstacles, and narrowed progression: The case of the first Social Science Research Council female fellows (1925-1934).

Between the years 1925 and 1934, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) awarded 198 postdoctoral research fellowships to early-career social scientists, among which 29 were awarded to women. This article, which is based on the SSRC directory and Rockefeller institutions' records, examines the professional paths of these female fellows to shed light on the presence of women in the social sciences and to probe the peculiarities of their professional trajectories. The SSRC fellowships represented a significant professional prospect for brilliant young female graduates who were often denied similar opportunities in other fields. Nonetheless, they did not eradicate all gender discrimination that remained prevalent, not only in the vertical sense by preventing women from progressing in the academic hierarchy, but also in the horizontal sense by retaining them in designated spaces (specific disciplines or institutions) that were underrecognized. Ultimately, the analysis of women's professional paths underscores the importance of examining the private or intimate lives of scientists to gain a more in-depth understanding of the social structure of science and its impact on its protagonists.

Emoting up, emoting down: status, authenticity and the emotional labour of STEM graduate students

Various studies have examined emotional labour’s positive and negative aspects, but the structural conditions under which people experience emotional labour as fulfilling vs. taxing are underexplored. In this study, I use interviews with graduate students – a group whose relative social status changes routinely – to illuminate the types of emotion work that occasion positive and negative feelings. I find that graduate students often felt positive when performing emotional labour down the academic hierarchy to undergraduate students but felt negative about their emotional labour when performing it up the academic hierarchy to professors. I also find that women, people of colour and international students find their emotional labour particularly distressing when they perceive it to be an expectation of their marginalised social identity. Using identity theory, I show how status dynamics underlie people's emotional reactions when their identities are at risk of being disconfirmed. This research study contributes to the field of the sociology of emotions by specifying that status matters for whether emotional labour is a positive or negative experience for workers.

Students as co-producers

To engage students with academic research is recognised as a high-impact activity that supports the development of valuable critical thinking skills. Various approaches have been developed to promote student research both in and outside the curriculum. By incorporating the perspectives of both students and academics, this qualitative study evaluates the extent to which a research partnership is formed through an institutional research scheme called the Junior Research Associate. Our findings indicate that it is critical to move beyond the entrenched academic hierarchies of supervisor/supervisee to develop a negotiated research relationship. Challenges identified include the short timeframe to establish the conditions for successful partnership and differential expectations of partners at the outset of the scheme. It is also important to safeguard against such initiatives being instrumentalised by academics seeking to further their personal research agenda. The findings help to inform strategies to scale up such initiatives.

Predicting Graduate University Admission in Azerbaijan Using Multiple Regression

Each year, Azerbaijani universities strive to attract the best candidates for graduate degrees within the academic hierarchy. Since 2005, one-third of undergraduates have been applying for master’s programs. The admission decisions primarily depend on the State Examination Center exam scores. This quantitative research mainly discusses the predictors of graduate university admission based on numerous factors using multiple linear regression. This study statistically measured four independent variables to predict university graduate admission scores in 2021 (GAS21). Significant differences were found between the average graduate admission scores of 2021 and those of 2020 (GAS20) and the percentage of students who scored >86%. There was no evidence of a connection between graduate and undergraduate admission scores and undergraduate enrollment. There is a need for more theoretical and descriptive studies to verify whether universities/institutions lose their prestige after the undergraduate degree.

Gender Gap in academic medicine: a narrative review and the Italian forensic context.

Gender gap is a neologism that identifies the disparity between social and professional conditions experienced by females compared to males. The disparity increases as one ascends the academic hierarchy. In recent years, the debate has expanded, and more options have been planned for the elimination of the current gender gap. This research was conducted by examining the landscape of the gender gap, particularly in the academic forensic medicine field. Our analysis involved reviewing papers published between 2006 and 2024, identified through electronic database searches (PubMed). The search terms used were: "gender gap" AND "academic" AND "medicine" AND "leadership." In total, we analyzed 85 papers. Additionally, we examined data from forensic medicine residency programs. The representation of women in medicine is well-known. Despite the increasing number of women in leadership positions in medicine, they still lag significantly behind men. These data highlight a situation that could be seen as grounds for an accusation of "academic abuse". In the Italian forensic residency programs, less than 20% are led by women, and among these, not all hold the rank of full professor. Although a certain rebalancing is already underway, the gap is still significant. There are already regulations obliging local authorities to promote gender equality in councils, companies, and institutions under their jurisdiction. It would be desirable to consider minimum quotas for female participation in university competitions. This would be a first step toward eliminating the gender gap in academic and forensic medical fields.

Doctoral researchers as change agents of higher education: An autoethnographic account

Doctoral researchers are often assumed to be the academic actors with the least agency due to rigid academic hierarchies. In doctoral education scholarship, it has not been extensively discussed how doctoral researchers deploy their agency beyond their own research projects or how they might even play a pivotal role in shaping their institutions. By drawing on the concept of a tempered radical, in these Notes from the field, I provide a reflexive account of actions I took as a doctoral researcher to create change within doctoral education: searching for allies, focusing on positive deviance, and accepting slow, incremental change. With this analysis and by offering some considerations for practice, I argue that doctoral researchers should be encouraged to see themselves as agentive and take opportunities—even risks—to affect the settings they work in and academia in general.

CORE Econ: a Neoclassical Synthesis for the twenty-first century?

This paper provides a critical review of CORE Econ’s The Economy and associated materials. It argues that there is a need for reworked economics textbooks and that CORE Econ’s approach to this project – to replace mathematical abstractions with relevant real-world economics and to overcome the free market bias of introductory economics course – is well-founded. It is argued that The Economy contains a wealth of material which, in the hands of a sophisticated teacher, could form the basis of excellent introductory and intermediate economics modules. Despite this, however, the paper argues that the newly charted path through the economics discipline – using game theory and market imperfections as the entry point – is not easy to traverse. The demotion of Marshallian supply and demand is welcome and overdue, but its replacement is not yet fully formed. The CORE Econ authors’ claim that they present a unified model in which microeconomics and macroeconomics are coherently integrated – a new Neoclassical Synthesis – is overstated. In particular, the paper argues that students who do not have substantial access to tutoring and mentoring will find the text hard. Those students with only limited guidance and support – due to large cohorts, outside commitments or other reasons – are likely to struggle to learn directly from the text. For this reason, The Economy may favour stronger students and elite institutions over those further down the academic hierarchy. Most fundamentally, it is argued, the issues that surface in The Economy go beyond the specific implementation of a textbook, and reflect problems with the discipline itself. The Economy reflects the view that all economic problems can ultimately be understood in terms of individual optimisation. This assumption is highly controversial. A deeper rethink of how we teach undergraduates in economics is needed.

Changes in the gender structure at the University of Dubrovnik from its founding (2004/5) until (2022/3)

Women make up 40% of the world's workforce and half of the students' body in developed countries. Why then are there less and less women as we look upwards the academic hierarchy? The University of Dubrovnik is a relatively young institution and a good subject of research into gender structures of academics as there are no “old structures” and primary discrimination to overcome. The institutions' first yearbook was published in 2004; we note that there were only a few female professors at the University and one woman in a decision making position, at the time. Compared to the most recent yearbook published in 2021/22 (20 years later) the situation in regards to gender equality has changed radically due to employment of many young female researchers. Alas, men continue to dominate the hierarchy and we can trace a gap between “male” and “female” departments both in student's and teacher's bodies.

Career ambitions of women academics. Are women willing and able to rise to the top in higher education institutions?

ABSTRACT The disproportion of women to men at the top tier in the academic hierarchy, concerns politicians, academic leaders, students, and other stakeholders. A popular explanation for the gender imbalance in elite positions is that potential female candidates lack ambition and therefore do not have sufficient drive to make it to the top. In this study, we explore the issue of professional ambition among a group of women academics working as tenured associate professors in Norway. With the backdrop of VIE (Valence-instrumentality-expectancy) theory, we focus on two key subjective, but nonetheless contextual judgments that are assumed to underlie the decision to aim for a promotional opportunity; (i) Do I want it and (ii) Can I make it? Three sources of qualitative data provide interesting insights into these considerations, and our findings point to focusing more specifically on the perceived costs that are assumed to derive from making this career choice. The women are ambitious in the sense that they desire the professional clout and impact that comes with this top role (so, yes, they want it). However, a number of conditions are perceived to be central to the actual realization of their ambitions, such as more time, resources and transparency when it comes to the qualification process. The findings may serve as important to designing more suitable career conditions for this target group in practice. Finally, we propose the application of a context-specific gender perspective to better understand women’s career ambitions in higher education institutions (HEI).

Instrumentalism and the publish-or-perish regime

Motivated by concerns about the nature and implications of the current publish-or-perish culture in the academe, we firstly examine based on which perceptions and interpretations individual researchers at universities cope with, survive, or even flourish, in the context of the publish-or-perish regime. Secondly, we probe, following a critical agenda of fostering non-instrumentalist understandings of research, to which extent local conditions may impact these perceptions, interpretations, and ways of coping. We conducted interviews with 32 researchers from six different research units in European universities across all ranks of the academic hierarchy, from first-year PhD students to very senior professors. Our focal descriptive category is instrumentalism: the degree to which an instrumentally rational understanding of research as a means of producing publications as items of countable performance dominates the entire research process from its very beginning. In our study we find notably heterogeneous forms of instrumentalism, which we have termed modes of instrumentalism, from purposely instrumentalist to critical non-instrumentalist modes. We identify and describe local research cultures as mediating the perceptions of individual researchers, and thus the influence of the global publish-or-perish regime on them. Based on our conceptualisation of degrees and modes of instrumentalism and the local research cultures we sketch some measures for fostering non-instrumentalist research cultures that would help in resisting the undesirable effects of the publish or perish regime.

Gesturing towards decolonial teaching praxis and unlearning colonial methods: teaching reflections in the struggle to decolonise research methodologies

ABSTRACT In this article, we reflect on our experiences teaching and learning in a digital course for PhD students, Oxford-UNISA Decolonising Research Methodologies. The aim of the course was to ‘gesture’ beyond the coloniality of knowledge by thinking ‘otherwise’ about research methodologies. As a decolonial teaching praxis, gesturing embraces experimentation, humility and becoming as we pursue decolonial being/thinking and seek/create coexistence, well-being and dignity beyond its constraints. We conceive of co-teaching as co-learning and co-becoming. Teaching as becoming, we argue, means engaging with students without a rigid structuring telos. We revisit video footage from the class, course materials and review insights from our students to reflect upon the substance and configurations of our co-teaching. We analyse the significance of ‘keeping the fire’ of our shared intellectual projects, even as we remain situated within colonial institutions. Three interrelated challenges emerged while teaching decolonial geographies and decolonising methodologies in this online course. These dynamics include: (a) the challenges of cultivating student-teacher trust in digital exchanges; (b) the aspiration to embolden transdisciplinary engagements in the face of logistical, temporal and practical constraints, including ‘settler time’ and our ties to stated disciplines; and (c) the significance of co-presence and shared commitment to challenge academic hierarchies.

‘I need a grant but spend time on teaching’: how academics in different positions play out the teaching–research nexus in interdependence with their contexts

ABSTRACT The teaching–research nexus is omnipresent in academic professional life. How it is articulated depends on specific situations, contexts, and academic hierarchies. Initiatives to change the nexus in Dutch research universities are now informing European policy processes, but how academics in different positions play it out and deal with various contextual aspects is understudied. In this study, Wittgenstein’s notion of language games is combined with Elias’ notion of human figurations to assess articulations and interdependencies in the nexus. We analysed tensions and strategies in ten homogeneous focus group discussions with assistant, associate, and full professors across social sciences in The Netherlands. All academics identified tensions regarding the balancing of research and teaching and a systemic undervaluation of teaching, yet their games differed. Assistant professors experienced personal insecurities, whereas associate professors faced further differentiation of tasks, and full professors dealt with responsibilities concerning group performance and market-driven demands in both domains. In some figurations, research and teaching were balanced at team level. Paradoxically, all academics’ strategies tended to reproduce and strengthen patterns that exist at collective level, including tensions.

Career development: A balance of opportunities and choices.

Career development: A balance of opportunities and choices.

Leveraging Student–Faculty–Staff Partnerships to Implement Inclusive Curricular Reform in Chemistry Education

This paper describes the formation and ongoing efforts of a collaborative partnership between students, faculty, and staff within the Chemistry department at Amherst College. Formation of the group was inspired by calls for structural, inclusive, change from students, faculty, and alumni. There are many benefits to collaborating across traditional academic hierarchies, and this report aims to show that these partnerships can help identify avenues for the implementation of inclusive change in STEM departments. The Amherst College Chemistry community agrees that graduates of the Chemistry department should leave the College with a critical understanding of the implications of systemic discrimination as they pertain to chemical research and education; this paper shares organizational methods and strengths, as well as limitations and holistic reflections, of creating spaces for student, staff, and faculty partnership to shape a STEM educational community. A specific outcome of this committee was the creation of a diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) requirement in the major. We share how CARAC helped the department arrive at this decision and discuss the departmental course, Chemistry in Society, that was developed in response.