Career Cycle Research Articles

Identifying Teaching and Laboratory Instruction Concerns of Illinois Agriculture Teachers

Concerns of teachers must be identified to provide quality teacher education programs and professional development. The theoretical framework of this study was the Teacher Career Cycle (Fessler & Christensen, 1992). The theory explains that as teachers move through the cycle, their characteristics and professional needs change. The purpose of this study was to identify the concerns of Illinois agriculture teachers of different experience levels. A multi-part instrument of demographic information, two teacher concern statements, and a Likert-type scale of concerns was administered. The sample was divided into three experience groups: early career, mid-career, and late career. The results indicate that certain concerns do change with the level of experience and that mid-career teachers in this sample have the most concerns. We recommend that these results be shared with the Illinois Association of Vocational Agriculture Teachers, universities, state agricultural education staff, and other stakeholders. Those leading professional development should consider years of experience when planning for workshops. Professional development topics on student motivation, funding for supplies, and student safety should be explored.

Formal and informal professional development during different Covid-19 periods: the role of teachers’ career stages

ABSTRACT This mixed-method study is based on interviews with 60 elementary-school teachers who participated in TPD (Teacher professional development) during two periods of the Covid-19 pandemic. Teachers were in early, middle and senior career stages. Teacher statements revealed three categories: (1) Informal and formal TPD – without appropriate formal TPD, teachers, especially those in the middle and senior career stages, turned to colleagues and to social media to cope with online instruction. (2) Self-regulated learning, in which teachers listed their motivating factors and expressed their TPD difficulties during the Covid-19 periods. (3) Perceived learning – the cognitive aspect was found to be higher than the emotional and social aspects, especially during the first Covid-19 period. The practical recommendations are intended for policy makers, to adapt the TPD system to teachers’ particular needs according to their ‘career cycle’, in order to cope with technology-integrated learning-teaching challenges, even in routine teaching.

Positive Influences on Why They Stay: A Qualitative Study on the Contributing Factors to Teacher Retention in Rural North Dakota

In the United States, a considerable amount of educators leave the field within the first five years of employment. Midwestern rural schools experience a slightly higher turnover percentage than do their urban counterparts. Due to this shortage of teachers, many districts have employed strategies to recruit and retain effective teachers. Although many studies focus on the reasons teachers exit the profession, this study identifies the positive factors of why teachers remain in a rural North Dakota school. This qualitative study employed a phenomenological approach which generated common themes among long-staying teachers in a rural district. Both the social constructivism and teacher career cycle theoretical frameworks were utilized to support the researcher’s understanding of rural teachers' feelings, perceptions, and experiences. The positive attributes of working in a rural community are the personal relationships teachers make with students, families, and colleagues and the strong support from administration and mentorship from colleagues.

Achieving gender equality in seafaring: an analysis of stakeholders' suggestions

PurposeThis paper examines the changes suggested by maritime stakeholders to achieve gender equality in seafaring, a male-dominated profession.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a four-stage career cycle framework, this paper analyzes changes proposed by 423 industry stakeholders to promote gender equality in seafaring. These proposed changes were posted on the Day of Seafarers 2019 virtual wall set up by the International Maritime Organization, which served as a forum for industry stakeholders from all over the world to voice their opinions and suggestions.FindingsThe data analysis shows that the suggested changes reflect many challenges and barriers women seafarers face. While stakeholders from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are more likely to call for changes to remove barriers in the retention and development stage, gender equality in seafaring in non-OECD countries is still seriously hindered by barriers in the recruitment stage. The paper also reveals that comparatively male stakeholders are less likely to appreciate the problems women seafarers face.Originality/valueThis paper takes a comparative approach, comparing the changes proposed by seafarers and other industry stakeholders from different parts of the world. This approach provides a nuanced understanding of issues related to gender equality in seafaring by showing that stakeholders from different backgrounds have different priorities.

Australia needs to implement a national health strategy for doctors.

Australia needs to implement a national health strategy for doctors.

Balancing the Collaboration Portfolio: Functions Served by Co-authors and Scientific Productivity

We question the network approach to scientific collaboration. First, by insisting on collaboration relationships as channeling knowledge essentially, it tends to ignore the reality of the division of labor in science, which involves a variety of resources (legitimacy, access to funding, etc.). Our paper proposes that collaborators can serve either creative, routine or strategic functions, and that the collaboration mix (whether a scientist has relatively more creative, routine or strategic functions in her portfolio of collaborators) matters for productivity. We find empirical evidence supporting this view, after combining bibliometric and survey data on 468 French nanoscientists. Moreover, while earlier network research has conceived of any scientist as able to compose at will virtually any portfolio of collaborations, we show that, instead, the latter is endogenous. Above and beyond any deliberate collaboration strategy, the collaboration mix is determined by the scientist’s pre-existing structural position within the community, position in the career cycle, institutional context, as well as the characteristics of the collaborators and the quality of the relationships to them.

Academic mothers, professional identity and COVID-19: Feminist reflections on career cycles, progression and practice.

Based on a collection of auto‐ethnographic narratives that reflect our experiences as academic mothers at an Australian university, this paper seeks to illustrate the impact of COVID‐19 on our career cycles in order to explore alternative feminist models of progression and practice in Higher Education. Collectively, we span multiple disciplines, parenting profiles, and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Our narratives (initiated in 2019) explicate four focal points in our careers as a foundation for analyzing self‐definitions of professional identity: pre‐ and post‐maternity career break; and pre‐ and post‐COVID‐19 career. We have modeled this research on a collective feminist research practice that is generative and empowering in terms of self‐reflective models of collaborative research. Considering this practice and these narratives, we argue for a de‐centering of masculinized career cycle patterns and progression pathways both now and beyond COVID‐19. This represents both a challenge to neo‐liberal norms of academic productivity, as well as a call to radically enhance institutional gender equality policies and practice.

Bridging the Gap 2021- Summary Report

Differential Attainment
 
 Healthcare professionals are among the most respected, valued members in any society- and also the most regulated. It attracts some of the most talented, innovative and resilient individuals who are keen to do good. Respect, job satisfaction and autonomy are fundamental to the experience of any professional, and often valued above financial or material reward. Doctors are no different.
 Education and training of the healthcare workforce is a lengthy and resource intense process. No nation-state can be truly self-sufficient. Hence workforce migration is a reality where various pull and push factors lead to professionals moving across countries and continents, in the service of populations.
 Society is divided along many lines and steeped with structural inequalities. Many of these are the result of thousands of years of history, legacy and societal wrongs. Healthcare services and professionals reflect similar patterns of the 'big society'.
 The phenomenon of differential attainment (DA), which is the subject of this report is simply a manifestation of such structural inequalities. DA or differential outcomes for doctors due to their age, race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, socio-economic deprivation or influenced by migrant status - rather than motivation, ability, effort or enterprise.
 DA is fundamentally unfair. Those affected by DA are either unaware or unable to counteract the influence on their careers. DA leads to demoralisation, disengagement and poor outcomes for professionals and their patients. It takes its toll not only on careers but on lives and livelihoods. DA leads to a huge under-utlisation of human resources- a true waste of talent and enterprise.
 This report- BTG21 focuses on DA in the medical profession exploring the career cycle through the themes of recruitment, assessments, career progression, research & academia, leadership roles, awards and professionalism.
 BTG21 is people-centred and in tackling inequalities offers solutions on career fulfillment and wellbeing- by an ideological shift of hearts and minds.
 
 Thematic Synthesis
 
 BTG21 summary report is the culmination of a thematic synthesis of evidence covering the full spectrum of medical careers. It presents lived experiences (collected through mixed method approaches) capturing patterns in peoples experiences through an online survey, and in-depth qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of professionals from across the career cycle, range of ethnic heritage, medical specialism and country of origin.
 Followed by consensus developed through workshops by a triumvirate of experts, stakeholders and grassroots professionals.
 There are 5 primary causes of DA- bias, social class & deprivation, immigration status, geographical and individual factors and impacts every stage of medical professional careers.
 The thematic synthesis reviews are published in the Sushruta Journal of Health Policy.
 
 Recommendations
 
 The Workshop discussions, recommendations (the 10-point plan) include policy enablers, immediate actions and research questions in the following areas;
 
 
 
 Tackling bias
 Embracing diversity & inclusion
 Celebrating the contribution of migrants
 Leveling the playing field
 Inclusive leadership & accountability
 Removing structural barriers
 Review-Reform-Rethink assessments
 Redefining professionalism
 Disaggregation-intersectionality-benchmarking of data
 Support-flexibility & Wellbeing
 
 
 
 

Life Cycle and Career Cycle in Socialist Bulgaria

The author examines changes in the interaction between life cycle patterns and career patterns during the period of socialist development in Bulgaria. She explores the implications for the interconnected problems of young people and middle-aged people regarding their roles – productive and reproductive – in the society. The author has made eight research trips to Bulgaria, over an eighteen year period. As background to the analysis, the author reviews the changes in Bulgarian society up to summer, 1989, particularly developments during the socialist period from 1944.

Approaching Teaching as a Complex Emotional Experience: The Teacher Professional Development Stages Revisited

Along the evolving teaching journey, teachers experience a series of events that allow them to transition from novice to expert. Throughout the years, such transition has been the object of theories and debates about how this process is carried out, and when it is that teachers move from one stage to the other. This article presents a study of a Mexican teacher of English and examines the professional-developmental stages based on Huberman’s (1993) career cycle model. Its aim is to understand the challenges and decisions a teacher may encounter in her or his career. The article shows the realities a teacher faces by exploring the concepts of emotions, identity, socialization, and agency. Moreover, it questions the belief that teachers achieve expertise through accumulating years of practice.

Dynamics of Overqualification: Evidence from the Early Career of Graduates

This study analyses the persistence and true state dependence of overqualification, i.e. a mismatch between workers' qualifications and their jobs' educational requirements. Employing individual-level panel data for Germany, I find that overqualification is highly persistent among tertiary graduates over the first ten years of their career cycle. Accounting for unobserved heterogeneity, results from dynamic random-effects probit models suggest that only a small share of the observed persistence can be attributed to a true state dependence effect. Unobserved factors are found to be the main driver of the high persistence of overqualification. In particular, selection into initial overqualification at the start of the career is of high importance. Furthermore, overqualification persistence is shown to be partly attributable to observed heterogeneity in terms of ability and study characteristics.

Dynamics of overqualification: evidence from the early career of graduates

ABSTRACT This study analyses the persistence and true state dependence of overqualification, i.e. a mismatch between workers' qualifications and their jobs' educational requirements. Employing individual-level panel data for Germany, we find that overqualification is highly persistent among university graduates over the first ten years of their career cycle. Accounting for unobserved heterogeneity, results from dynamic random-effects probit models suggest that a moderate share of the persistence can be attributed to true state dependence. Unobserved factors are found to be the main driver of overqualification persistence. However, observed heterogeneity in terms of ability and study characteristics significantly contributes to overqualification persistence.

Teachers Teaching Life-Cycle and Academic Productivity: A Pilot Study of One Higher Education Institutions in Northern Mindanao

The objective of the study was to demonstrate whether Huberman’s teaching career cycle model can shed similar insights when used in Camiguin Polytechnic State College, whose context and setting is very different from the one used in the original study. In particular, the study attempted to find out whether academic productiveness was associated with the stages as indicated in Huberman’s teaching career cycle model. A survey design was used with a 132 faculty and staff as respondents. The findings have shown that academic productiveness was significantly associated with the stages in the teaching career cycle model in the context and settings of Camiguin Polytechnic State College. On that note, the higher a faculty goes through the stages the more academically productive they are in which the highest odds is that of faculty in the serenity stage. Hence, the findings demonstrated that though this study was conducted in a setting and context very different from that of the original, indeed, academic productiveness was significantly associated with the Huberman teaching cycle model, which meant that for this particular setting and context, the Huberman model demonstrated its appeal and potential. On this basis, there is a need to take seriously the significance of the Huberman teaching career cycle model particularly for school administrator as they come up with decision and formulate policies and programs that have significant bearing to faculty’s academic productiveness in the realm of research and development.

Then What? Quantifying SBAE Teacher Career-Decisions Post-Migration

Complex career decisions, such as teacher mobility, are often reduced to stigmatizing labels that do little to account for the state of teaching as a profession or credit those engaging in migratory decisions as making healthy career choices. Through our study, we focused on understanding workforce mobility, teaching as an unstaged profession, and the current quantifications existing around SBAE teacher migration. We drew on over 100 years of data from California as we quantitatively explored and synthesized the career decisions of migrating SBAE teachers. This snapshot offers a means of understanding the Teacher Career Cycle (Fessler & Christensen, 1992) in light of the implications for the teaching career as a series of choices rather than a stretch of time at an individual school. Implications of this conceptualization of migration stretch beyond SBAE to administration.

The teacher career cycle and initial motivation: the case of Slovenian secondary school teachers

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the career cycle and initial motivation of secondary school teachers in Slovenia and is based on the Teacher Career Cycle Model. The aim of the study was to determine whether there are differences in the career stages and motivation in terms of teachers’ gender, mode of formal education and length of work experience in teaching and whether there are any correlations between the stages and motivation. The study included 94 secondary school teachers who completed the Slovenian version of the Career Choice Scale and Career Development Scale. The results show that female teachers are more intrinsically motivated in choosing the profession, while male teachers are more insecure in the profession. Teachers who completed concurrent programmes show a higher level of intrinsic motivation for the teaching profession and a major wind-down was apparent for teachers with 21 years or more of work experience in teaching.

Preservice Agricultural Education and Secondary Education Teachers’ Self-Efficacy and Professional Identity

The purpose of this study was to describe the self-efficacy and professional identity of preservice agricultural education teachers and other secondary education preservice teachers. Data were collected from respondents (n = 85) from 13 institutions and included both agricultural education preservice teachers (n = 68) and other secondary education preservice teachers (n = 17). The instrument used in this study was a modified questionnaire that combined two previously established scales, Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy’s (2001) Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy Scale and Woo’s (2013) Professional Identity Scale in Counseling. Descriptive statistics revealed that agricultural education preservice teachers possessed a slightly higher level of self-efficacy than other secondary education preservice teachers. Conversely, secondary education preservice teachers possessed a slightly higher level of professional identity than agricultural education preservice teachers. A Spearman’s rho Correlation was used to reveal a negligible relationship between self-efficacy and professional identity among agricultural education preservice teachers. However, there was a small relationship between self-efficacy and professional identity among secondary education preservice teachers. Further research should be conducted to establish the development of self-efficacy and professional identity throughout the teacher career cycle through longitudinal studies.

Older Physicians’ Reporting of Psychological Distress, Alcohol Use, Burnout and Workplace Stressors

Most of the published data on the psychological health of physicians has focused on the youngest members of the profession. The aims of this analysis were to determine how psychological morbidity changes across the career cycle. We report data from the cross-sectional National Mental Health Survey of Doctors and Medical Students, conducted in Australia. Age differences in psychological distress, suicidal ideation, alcohol use, burnout, workplace, and personal stressors were examined for younger (40 years and younger), middle aged (41-60), and older (61+) physicians. A total of 10,038 physicians responded. Older physicians reported significantly less psychological distress, burnout and suicidal ideation than younger and middle aged colleagues, findings that were maintained after adjusting for sex and excluding trainees. There were no group differences in overall alcohol use and high risk drinking. On multivariate analysis, the largest contributor to psychological distress in older physicians was a past history of mental disorder. There was a decline across age groups in the endorsement as "very stressful" of work-life conflict and work-anxiety stressors such as fear of making mistakes. Older physicians were least likely to feel very stressed by all workplace stressors. The better psychological health of older physicians highlights the need to consider physician health according to age and career stage. Apart from the decline in work stressors, in particular work-life conflict, there may be a survivor effect such that physicians who practice into older age have developed greater resilience and professional maturation.

The Application of Career Theories in Teachers' Professional Development and Career Decision: A Literature Review

This literature review aims at exploring two career theories, one career model, and their applications to facilitate the comparison of their advantages and shortcomings in understanding contextual and personal factors influencing teachers' career choices. It first examines the chosen career theories and models in teachers' professional development, namely, Fuller's Concern Stage Theory, Fessler's Eight-stage Teacher Career Cycle Model The Social Cognitive Career Theory. Common factors encapsulated by those theories are outlined, and a close examination of how those theories prioritize contextual and personal factors are also discussed. This literature review also highlights some current research gaps of examining teachers' their career choices: an ambiguous interplay between personal and environmental factors, an ambivalent attitude towards considering psychological factors, neglecting in-service teachers in late-career development and exit stage, inadequate synchronic and diachronic studies on contextual and personal factors, and a weak association between influencing factors, teachers' sense of identity and their career choices. Through a discussion of those teachers' career theories, models and their applications, this literature review probes into the importance of examining the interplay between personal and environmental factors in order to understand how and why experienced teachers become demotivated and frustrated in different career stages. It also provides a more holistic view and insight on retaining experienced in-service teachers and alleviating the global teacher attrition and shortage problem.

Experimenting, partnering and bonding: a framework for the digital influencer-brand endorsement relationship

ABSTRACT Endorsement studies have gained complexity with the possibilities created by social media platforms, where ordinary consumers can achieve celebrity status and rise to the level of digital influencers. Recent studies highlight that influencers have evolutionary trajectories. However, little is known about how these trajectories are related to social media endorsement dynamics. Based on a five-year netnography, this research investigates the main forms of endorsement that connect digital influencers and brands and how endorsement practices evolve along influencers’ trajectories. The research outlines three forms of endorsement relationship that evolve during the influencer’s career cycle: experimenting, partnering and bonding. Finally, the paper argues that brands play different roles, as providers, partners and hirers, supporting and rewarding digital influencers’ entrepreneurial process.

The impact of emotional intelligence in the military workplace

ABSTRACT Armed forces are expected to support operations domestically and internationally. To perform their assigned duties, optimal preparation to participate in today’s complex security environment and in a wide range of operations is crucial. Central to these complexities are the psychosocial challenges that such an intense work environment creates. This article explores the impact of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the military domain. Literature from various countries confirms a strong link between the competencies associated with EI and leaders’ responsibilities. EI can be taught, developed, and enhanced as a group of competencies that directly affect the efficiency of a leader. Research has established a number of protective variables that could reduce the impact of stress on military personnel’s emotional health and behavioural issues. We provide evidence that EI training and EI interventions help, improve, and moderate the individual’s capacity to adapt to and manage stress and traumatic experiences. We also explore the implications for Human Resource Development (HRD) whose role is pivotal in the military career cycle; from pre-deployment during the formative years by developing soldiers through responsive, tailored, and effective programmes, to post-deployment with initiatives to improve career development, job fulfilment and the successful integration of veterans into civilian life.