Early Career Academics Research Articles

Disciplinary positioning struggles

With no existing panel for applied linguistics at the last Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014, academics working in this field in the UK struggle to position their work and themselves as researchers. Yet, gaining recognition for one’s expertise and positioning oneself in disciplinary terms are rites of passage for all academic researchers. This paper agues that disciplines, rather than being clearly defined and static areas of knowledge, are instead constituted and demarcated through the enactment of discursive practices. Focusing on qualitative research interviews with three early career academics out of a corpus of 30 interviews with academics from various career stages, and informed by ideas from Bakhtinian polyphony and positioning theory, I demonstrate how these academics often resist positions imposed on them by unnamed voices in larger discourses which constitute mainstream expectations about academia. The findings highlight how respondents’ struggles to position their research relate to changing institutional demands in the current climate of higher education in the UK. This paper also contributes to our understanding of disciplinary positioning as enacted through the qualitative research interview.

Pictures of Research and Teaching in Psychology: A Comparison of Early-Career Academics' and Students' Perspectives

An academic career in psychology typically begins with a role reversal: young academics, who were only recently being taught, become doctoral researchers and teachers. Studies at two German universities provide insights into how students and early-career academics (ecas) in psychology view research and teaching and how their perspectives might differ due to changed roles. In Study 1, participants ( n = 35 ecas and n = 26 students) rated the appropriateness of pictures for illustrating teaching or research. Study 2 ( n = 25 ecas and n = 42 students) reassessed typicality judgements and collected open statements for the 10 most representative pictures from study 1. Five pictures for research and teaching each illustrate how the discipline is seen by students and doctoral academics. The views of the groups differed in two regards: in how independent research and teaching situations were seen, with students treating them as more integrated than early-career academics; and in the perspective from which comments were given, with students reacting from a learner's perspective and early-career academics reacting mainly from a teacher's perspective. Findings implicate that roles shape how one views research and teaching. The pictures are valuable to the research community and applicable in teaching and academic development.

The art of academic negotiation.

I was meeting my new colleagues at a wine and cheese reception. Some of us early-career academics—all members of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups—started to talk about salaries. I shared how, after years of feeling undervalued, I had doubled my salary in my new job as assistant professor compared with what I was earning as a lecturer a year prior. Jaws dropped. There were lots of questions. We all agreed that we were ill-prepared to negotiate. No classes had taught us that skill, and people didn't really talk about it. This is probably a challenge for many, but it particularly affects underrepresented minorities who may be first-generation college students and are less likely to have academic mentors with similar experiences. We often find ourselves navigating academia blindly. ![][1] ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER > “I thought I deserved more, but … I had no idea how to negotiate.” I didn't enter public health research to make millions of dollars, but I hoped not to struggle. I grew up in a single-parent household, with my amazing mother working multiple jobs to make ends meet. I thought academia was my ticket to financial stability. But when I started my postdoc, I was surprised at how low the salary was after so many years of education. Then it came time to apply for faculty jobs. I got an offer—for less than I had earned as a postdoc. I thought I deserved more, but my internal impostor syndrome voice told me I was lucky to be offered any job in academia. I had no idea how to negotiate. I didn't know that negotiation was even possible. When I voiced concern about the salary, I received a handshake and a verbal promise that it would increase in a year. I trusted this promise and signed on the dotted line. I jumped into gear, creating teaching materials for eight courses, taking on administrative roles, starting a new campus global health center, conducting research, supervising staff, and mentoring students. My energy was boundless, but not my time. I began to understand the invisible labor of mentoring students from underrepresented groups who came to me for support—requests that would probably be even more frequent if I were a woman or sexual or gender minority. I was also asked to join several committees that wanted to diversify their makeup. I believed all my efforts would be rewarded in line with the original handshake agreement, and I waited. After 2 years, I finally got the nerve to ask for a raise. I went in prepared with documentation of strong teaching, administrative work, research grants, staff supervised, students mentored, and other faculty members' salaries—which I had recently learned were available online because I worked at a public university. But my efforts were for naught. I was told that if I wanted a higher salary, I needed to go out and get an offer from another school. I felt betrayed. I thought I brought enough value to warrant an increase. Did they not care if I left? And what about that handshake? Once I was on the job market, I realized my true value. I learned from mentors that I could negotiate for much more than salary, including startup funds, moving expenses, parking, laboratory space, graduate research assistants, administrative support, teaching load, and more. I took my best offer back to my institution and they matched it. However, other problems persisted. Six months later I accepted an offer—which I had negotiated well, resulting in that doubling of my salary from a year prior—for a tenure-track job at my current institution. I now frequently lecture about academic negotiation—and share my mistakes. I try to emphasize a few key points. Salary is negotiable, and it's not the only part of an academic contract that you can negotiate. Verbal agreements are easily forgotten; if something is not in writing, it doesn't exist. Offer letters set your market worth in academia. And committing time and energy to service such as committee work and indispensable mentoring—even if substantially above and beyond the norm—doesn't usually pay off in terms of salary. To help one another grow and prosper, we need to talk about these things and share our stories. [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Transitions theory and liminality in information behaviour research

PurposeTransitions – as a focus of study – have been missing from information behaviour research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of transitions – their characteristics and influences, the related concept of liminality and Transitions Theory – and what it can contribute to the field of information behaviour. This exploration includes the application of liminality and Transitions Theory to an empirical study of participants making the transition from doctoral student to early career academic.Design/methodology/approachIn addition to an extended literature review, this paper reports on a qualitative study that used constructivist grounded theory methodology for data collection and analysis. Early career academics were followed for a five- to seven-month period and data were collected using interviews and “check-ins”. Transitions Theory and liminality were used to guide the analysis.FindingsThree important findings were highlighted: the complicating effects of being in a liminal space on information behaviour; the changing information needs of those undergoing a transition; and the importance of comparison as a way of using information to understand new situations. A revised model of Transitions Theory (Meleiset al., 2000) is also proposed, to incorporate information behaviour.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrates that by examining information behaviour over longer periods of time and by making transitions a focus of research, new understandings and insight can be gained into what information individual needs, how they find, share and use that information. This research demonstrates that information behaviour research adds important elements to the study of transitions and, conversely, that transitions (and Transitions Theory) add important elements to the study of information behaviour.

Learning through doing: the potential of a collective editing pedagogy

ABSTRACT For postgraduate students and early career academics, the pressure to publish can be acute because gaining, and keeping, an academic job depends on producing publishable writing. As these pressures affect more scholars globally, there is increased demand for innovative pedagogies to support writers’ development. In this study, students from a ‘writing for publication’ course identified a collective editing pedagogy as innovative and effective. In Vygotsky’s terms, the process of collectively editing while viewing the consequences on a big screen, provided opportunities for students to observe each other’s mental processes as they articulated and externalised their thinking to clarify meaning. The public and collective nature of the pedagogy is examined from students’ perspectives, gathered primarily via interviews. Key principles and practices are identified to inform adaptation of the pedagogy for other sociocultural contexts. The collective editing pedagogy supports postgraduates and early career staff in the challenging task of crafting publishable writing.

Academic Arrhythmia: Disruption, Dissonance, and Conflict in the Early-Career Rhythms of CMS Academics

In this paper we examine the changing labor and identities of academics in the early stages of their career. It is now over 20 years since the publication of Frost and Taylor’s influential book, Rhythms of Academic Life (1996), and given the significant changes in the nature of Higher Education (HE) over this period it is timely to critically consider how working lives have changed for this important group representing the future of the profession. We draw on a study of 32 Critical Management Studies (CMS) early-career academics (ECAs) in 14 countries, which we analyze as an extreme case of what it is like to be an ECA working in business schools today. Taking the lead from Frost & Taylor’s (1996) metaphor of rhythm, we explore the changing rhythms of CMS ECAs’ lives as well as the theoretical and practical implications of these changes for academic careers, labor and identity.

Reflections on Being a Successful Academic Researcher

Research is central to the life of the career academic. However, the framework in which academic research is conducted is not generally well understood and neither is it often articulated or discussed. The literature tends to rather focus on issues in relation to specific research methodologies and the evaluation thereof. Additionally, previous research argues that it is common for university academics to have little or no formal preparation for their role as teachers. This paper posits that the same applies to that of the academic’s role as a researcher. It cannot be assumed that the mere obtaining of a Doctoral degree, prepares the novice academic for a research career. Early career academics are expected to acquire an understanding of how to survive as a researcher through a process more related to osmosis than to the principles of academic discourse. This paper commences with an overview of the origins of the academic career and the doctoral degree. Thereafter, it introspects the requirements to be a successful academic researcher. Aspects of the academic researcher’s agency in relation to personal values, characteristics, integrity, research uptake skills, as well as the benefits and challenges of a research career are explored. By unpacking the salient elements of what is required to be a successful academic researcher, this paper provides a basis for those who are considering a career in academe to make an assessment if such a pursuit is feasible. In addition, the paper provides a yardstick by which early or even mid‑career academic researchers may judge their progress towards being a successful researcher, thereby identifying areas for improvement.

(dis-)Belonging bodies: negotiating outsider-ness at academic conferences

Historically, universities have centred around white-ness and masculinity, meaning that people who do not belong to these groups navigate academic spaces as ‘outsiders’. We position the conference as an important site for understanding the implications of outsider-ness, and the impact of this on early career academics and on the reproduction of exclusionary practices. The conference demands different performances and disciplining of bodies to adhere to academic norms. Conducting interviews with academics within the disciplines of Geography and Politics, this article explores how bodies of white-ness and masculinity are both expected and accepted within an academic setting, whilst for people who are ‘outsiders’, particular along lines of race, gender, and for ECAs, conferences are more difficult to navigate, across ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ spaces. This article concludes by thinking about how conferences can reaffirm or resist the exlcusionary, precarious and uncertain future of the university.

Supports and barriers to new faculty researcher development

PurposeDepending on their institutional context, for new faculty members to successfully manage their transition from doctoral studies to early career, they must show potential as researchers. The purpose of this study was to learn about supports and barriers to researcher development in new faculty members.Design/methodology/approachThe investigators solicited open-ended responses from early career faculty members (N = 49) in an online survey. Content analysis was used to provide an initial categorization of supports and barriers identified by the participants.FindingsTen barrier categories (e.g. lack of resources, previous training, lack of mentoring, workload) and eight support categories (e.g. effective research collaborations, supportive university environment, funding) were identified.Research limitations/implicationsFindings were framed with a social cognitive conceptual model, which parallels previous studies in doctoral research training environments and research productivity and builds on our knowledge of early career faculty development. The study was limited in terms of number of participants and online response format.Practical implicationsPractical implications to minimize barriers and enhance supports for new faculty researcher development were identified (also drawing from the conceptual model, SCCT).Originality/valueThus, the study has value for university policymakers, administrators, faculty peers, research mentors and assistant professors or doctoral students seeking to develop as researchers.

‘Sometimes I dream I am a boy… and then I am a girl again’: Traversing Gender in The Knot Garden’s ‘Schubert Scene’

Intersectional Perspectives: Identity, Culture, and Society is an online international interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal which explores the representation and construction of identity, sexuality, race, and gender in social and cultural texts, discourses, practices, and subjectivities. We publish articles that address the themes of identity, sexuality, gender, race, and how they, and other markers of identity, interact and intersect, challenge, and/or question culture and society. We also encourage submissions that cut across racial, national, sexual, class, and (dis)ability divisions, as well as other markers of social difference. Our publication further provides a platform for marginalised voices to be heard, and accordingly, we are interested in receiving submissions that champion these perspectives.Our publication is geared towards academics, early career academics, postgraduate students, and the public. We encourage responses to issues that have been published and aim for an open and dynamic dialogue between our readership and authors.

Moral barriers between work/life balance policy and practice in academia

ABSTRACTDespite the proliferation of work/life balance policies in Australian universities, academic staff continue to report experiences of time pressure, anxiety, and over-work. This paper contributes to the research of academic time and career planning by exploring how early career academics engage with work/life balance policies, utilising a critical reading of Richard Sennett’s work on the corrosion of character in late capitalist economies. We find that policy engagement is tied into academics’ professional identities and perceptions of ‘good’ conduct. Drawing on interviews from a sample of 25 Australian early career academics, we argue that the failure of early career academics to use formal work/life balance policies is partially explained by the presence of workplace cultures that reward demonstrations of commitment to work roles. The use of work/life balance policies hence carries a moral cost, which participants report reflects on their character. This paper contributes to an understanding of how work/life balance policies are enacted at the level of department and individual, and argues that future research projects would benefit from attending to the construction of worker ideals within workplace cultures.

Theorizing and theory building in the safety sciences: A reflective inquiry

Early career academics seeking to build and advance in their disciplines become recognised by their broad publishing of research papers. Most academic journals have a requirement that papers worthy of publication must contribute to and drive theory in the respective discipline. Whilst this publication requirement is understood by seasoned academics, it is not clear how early career researchers and/or early career academics learn how to go about building theory and how they can become an experienced theorist.Whilst many universities now offer an Early Career Research (ECR) program it may not deliver the required knowledge in how to go about theory building which seems to be akin to a tactic knowledge which more experienced and senior academics appear to have learnt only after many years in the professoriate.This paper was therefore interested in examining knowledge in the area of theory building, particularly as it pertains to the discipline of the safety sciences. The aim was to ascertain if there is was a methodology or key understanding that could be employed which would assist early career researchers and early career academics to understand how they can become theorists and therefore assist in their understanding of what theory building is in academic publication endeavours.

Collaborative Coteaching (CCT): Practitioner Learning through Shared Praxis

This paper explores the benefits of coteaching a philosophy and ethics subject for final year Australian primary preservice education students. It depicts the learning experiences of two early career academics, who were the coresearchers and coauthors of this article. A third author acted as a critical friend who facilitated reflective discussion around their coteaching practices. The coteachers adopt the living theory methodology to investigate collaborative coteaching as an effective model of instruction in higher education through a case study of their own practice. The primary data sources include both coteachers' weekly journals, an interview discussion with a critical friend, informal conversations and student surveys. The main themes emerging from the data include: the evolution of the coteaching relationship, practitioner learning and the viability of coteaching as an effective pedagogical tool. The findings illustrate the potential benefits of collaborative coteaching, particularly within the teacher education field.

Who Is (Likely) Peer-Reviewing Your Papers? A Partial Insight into the World’s Top Reviewers

Scientific publishing is experiencing unprecedented growth in terms of outputs across all fields. Inevitably this creates pressure throughout the system on a number of entities. One key element is represented by peer-reviewers, whose demand increases at an even higher pace than that of publications, since more than one reviewer per paper is needed and not all papers that get reviewed get published. The relatively recent Publons platform allows for unprecedented insight into the usual ‘blindness’ of the peer-review system. At a time where the world’s top peer-reviewers are announced and celebrated, we have taken a step back in order to attempt a partial mapping of their profiles to identify trends and key dimensions of this community of ‘super-reviewers’. This commentary focuses necessarily on a limited sample due to manual processing of data, which needs to be done within a single day for the type of information we seek. In investigating the numbers of performed reviews vs. academic citations, our analysis suggests that most reviews are carried out by relatively inexperienced academics. For some of these early career academics, peer-reviewing seems to be the only activity they engage with, given the high number of reviews performed (e.g., three manuscripts per day) and the lack of outputs (zero academic papers and citations in some cases). Additionally, the world’s top researchers (i.e., highly-cited researchers) are understandably busy with research activities and therefore far less active in peer-reviewing. Lastly, there seems to be an uneven distribution at a national level between scientific outputs (e.g., publications) and reviews performed. Our analysis contributes to the ongoing global discourse on the health of scientific peer-review, and it raises some important questions for further discussion.

Onramp to Scholarship: Putting Clinical Faculty Members on the Path to Academic Productivity.

Many faculty members in the health professions who come from a clinical background lack the research experience to produce original scholarship. Most faculty development programs focus on supporting individual projects, which helps faculty members who are already pursuing an intellectual question to locate useful resources. Those programs provide limited benefit, however, to faculty members without an identified academic project. An independent, health sciences graduate school designed and implemented a solution to create scholarship groups in which early career faculty members joined ongoing projects led by an experienced investigator. Groups presented internally at a midyear check-in and an end of the academic year poster session. Of the four groups launched in September 2017, three pursued systematic reviews or analyses of existing data. At the end of 9 months, all 4 groups had drafted a manuscript for peer review. Collectively, members of the group had made five poster presentations at national or international conferences and hosted one continuing education workshop. The experience suggests that collaborative projects are a viable form of faculty development to enhance scholarly productivity. Borrowing from the postdoctoral model of scientific mentoring, early career faculty members sacrifice some autonomy of intellectual pursuits in exchange for expert guidance. Senior investigators invest time in coaching novice researchers in exchange for additional intellectual labor and perspectives.

Developing the next generation of university teachers

South Africa’s higher education system requires systemic mechanisms to respond to the urgent, complex, and often competing urgent calls to transform. The New Generation of Academics Programme (nGAP) is an example of a systemic response to the challenges related to the composition and capacity of academic staff to adequately respond to the competing demands placed on higher education. The programme is designed to support public institutions’ recruitment, development and retention of early career academics (DHET, 2016). The programme allows appointees who have limited formal teaching experience access into an academic career. Questions have arisen, though, regarding the development of nGAP appointees as teachers that can contribute to institutional changes in pedagogical approaches and to curriculum development more generally. This study investigates how dominant discursive constructions of teaching, emerging from induction programmes in four institutions, may contribute to shaping a new generation of university teachers.

Should we use video technology for giving feedback?

ABSTRACTThis study explored the use of video screencasts to supplement written feedback with a small cohort of early-career academics (n = 29) undertaking a postgraduate programme aligned to the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching in higher education. The aims were to support the academics’ professional development following their summative assessment as well as introducing the technology to inform their own feedback practice. Whilst staff, as learners, were positive about the video feedback, only 50% would consider providing it to their students. They would, however, consider other ways to incorporate video screencasts into their teaching. In addition, the differences between the marks awarded for the first and second assessment were analysed and compared to those of a previous cohort (n = 32) that received written feedback only. The findings would suggest that in spite of positive perceptions about video feedback, there were no differences in performance between the two groups.

Cultivating Connectedness and Generosity in Universities: A View of Early Career Academic Experiences in Aotearoa, New Zealand

Cultivating Connectedness and Generosity in Universities: A View of Early Career Academic Experiences in Aotearoa, New Zealand

Sir Bernard Crossland CBE. 20 October 1923—17 January 2011

Bernard Crossland was one of the UK's most eminent engineers and an inspirational figure in his profession. He was a leading expert in materials and structural integrity, applied particularly to thick-walled pressure vessels and explosive welding. After an initial period with Rolls-Royce, his early academic career was at the University of Bristol where he developed his research into strength of thick cylinders under high pressure. He was appointed Professor of Mechanical Engineering and head of that department at Queen's University Belfast in 1959 at the age of 35, and he proceeded to transform both teaching and research in that department over the next 23 years. He continued his research into behaviour of thick-walled pressure vessels and also started research into explosive welding and forming in Belfast. After his retirement from QUB he was appointed as an expert adviser or expert witness in a number of high-profile disaster inquiries, including the King's Cross Underground fire in 1987, the Bilsthorpe Colliery roof collapse in 1993 and the Ramsgate Ferry walkway collapse in 1994. He took a major part in professional affairs in engineering and was president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1986/87. He was knighted in 1990 for Services to Education and Industry in Northern Ireland and was presented with the Sustained Achievement Award of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010.

Impact of demographic variables on emotional intelligence levels amongst a sample of early career academics at a South African higher education institution

Orientation: Emotional intelligence (EI) is highlighted by the literature as an important attribute that enables an individual to cope with changes and pressures in the work environment and subsequently yields consistent performance. However, some scholars debate the role of demographic diversities and their impact on levels of EI amongst individuals.Research purpose: This study examined the influence of demographic variables on EI levels amongst early career academics (ECAs).Motivation for the study: The study interrogates demographic variables and EI, two issues important in the 21st-century workforce setting. The relationship between the two may be of value to the debate surrounding the success of early career professionals in the higher education sector. The success of ECAs should be of importance to institutions of higher learning.Research approach/design and method: A quantitative approach was followed in conducting the study. Data were collected from a sample of 220 ECAs in a selected university in South Africa. A self-administered questionnaire was sent to the participants using SurveyMonkey online data collection tool. EI was measured using the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale.Main findings: Significant EI level differences were observed based on the participants’ ethnic background. However, no significant differences in EI levels could be found based on the respondents’ gender, age and work experience.Practical/managerial implications: The findings may be relevant to career management and human resources forecasting.Contribution/value-add: The study adds to the literature on EI and career success of early career professionals.