Post-PhD Career Trajectories

Intentions, Decision-Making and Life Aspirations

Lynn McAlpine, Cheryl Amundsen

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137576590
• eBook ISBN: 9781137576606
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Labour Economics

This book argues that post-PhD career planning should ideally begin at the same time as the PhD itself. Drawing from ten years of research and stories of close to 50 individuals, each chapter focuses on the stories of individuals who share common career intentions and how they negotiate these both before, during and after their studies. Each career trajectory is different as individuals planned and made decisions in the face of both expected and unexpected work, personal experiences and responsibilities. The book concludes with resources to help those who are currently planning or reflecting on their own career trajectories. 

Part I
Introduction

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Lynn McAlpine and Cheryl AmundsenPost-PhD Career Trajectories10.1057/978-1-137-57660-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Overview of Book

Lynn McAlpine^{1, 2} and Cheryl Amundsen³

(1)

Professor of Higher Education Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

(2)

McGill University, Québec, Canada

(3)

Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Are you wondering if this book might be helpful for you? Our goal in this chapter is to give you enough background to make this decision. We offer a description of who we imagine you, the reader, to be. We let you know how we have structured the book, provide an overview of the terms we use, and explain why we chose to write the book. We also suggest how you might most meaningfully find your way through it. We end by thanking all those who have made the research possible.

Keywords

Purpose of bookStructure of bookDefinition of termsSuggestions for reading

End Abstract

How We Structured the Book

We imagine you, the reader, to be an early career researcher. You might be a new doctoral student or you might be post-PhD by several years and establishing yourself in a career. We imagine you as being interested in exploring the lives of others who are in the same phase of their careers and lives as you are, in order to be more knowledgeable about the realities of balancing personal and career intentions. We hope you will be able to locate your own experience in the progressions and challenges of those who participated in our research. To support you in doing this, we have intentionally adopted a more informal style of writing than would be found in our research papers and have structured the book with you in mind. (If you are interested in the primary research studies that have been published about this research, just Google our names).

The book is divided into three sections. In the remainder of Section 1, we provide background information to make sense of the individual experiences reported in Section 2. Chapter 2 introduces what we call a nested contexts perspective that locates the individual within the institutional, national, and international contexts: all of which may influence doctoral work and the kinds of careers available after the PhD. Chapter 3 introduces a key construct, identity-trajectory, a construct that emerged from our research as a way of understanding individual experience and identity development. Identity-trajectory encapsulates the key notion of agency which we define as efforts to be intentional, to plan, and to construct a way forward given constraints. The constraints may be expected or unexpected, and the efforts to move forward will not always be successful. Agency provides a means to understand not just investment in work, but also how work is embedded within personal goals, challenges, relationships, and responsibilities.

Section 2, the core of the book, is divided into six chapters. The chapters are not structured around a type of career, but rather around the role that intention played in individuals’ career development. Each chapter introduces the stories of individuals who were similar in how intention played a role in their career decision-making in relationship to changing life circumstances and career options. Our goal in using this approach is to provide you with the opportunity to draw out themes meaningful to you across individual stories.

Section 3 draws together the implications of the stories related in Section 2. Chapter 10 summarizes the key themes that have emerged in Chapters 4 to 9, especially the important role played by agency and resilience in developing and achieving career intentions. Chapter 11 offers a set of resources related particularly to developing different aspects of doctoral work in relation to preparation for careers.

The Terms We Use in Describing Careers

There are international differences in the terminology used to describe academic roles, expectations, and benchmarks. This challenged us as we chose language that would be understandable to all readers. Consequently, we developed a set of terms that we hope manage this variation. (Please refer to the Glossary for the full set of definitions). The individuals in our study were PhD students or had been PhD students and were now in various post-PhD roles. We use the terms post-PhD researcher or researcher to refer to PhD graduates who have research as their principle responsibility in a university, whether funded by salary from a grant or personal fellowships. In North America, these researcher roles are commonly referred to as postdocs even if salaried, whereas in the UK, both roles are generally referred to as researcher. We use the term research-teaching position to designate traditional academic positions that involve research, teaching, and service/administration and provide the possibility of tenure (North America) or permanence (Europe/Australia).

Teaching-only positions or teacher indicate posts with responsibility principally for teaching and no formal responsibility for research. These positions may offer the possibility of permanent status. Academic professional designates a position in the academic sector that involves varied administrative duties, sometimes with educational and research-related responsibilities.

In the public/private sector outside the academy, we refer to professional positions in which teaching and research are not included in responsibilities and research professional positions when there are responsibilities for research.

Why We Wrote This Book

The research this book draws from was a ten-year longitudinal study (2006–2016) documenting the career trajectories of 48 individuals who began their participation in the study in either Canada or the UK. We began to follow most as PhD students, but some began participating in our research as post-PhD researchers and some were beginning in traditional research-teaching positions.

Our goal in writing the book is to provide access to the richness of the stories the 48 individuals told us as they navigated their PhDs and post-PhD careers. We hope we have made evident the important role played by intention and resilience in crafting a career. We trust we have also made transparent the role of the PhD in laying the groundwork for the career outcomes that are possible after graduation. Our goal overall was to create a collection of stories that would allow you to draw personal and professional implications and lessons for yourself. We also offer our own interpretations based on close analysis of the experiences of these individuals over time. Since these stories represent real people, we have, in some instances, modified details or not included information to ensure their anonymity.

Our Suggestions for How to Read This Book

We see this as a book that you can dip in and out of and encourage you to do so. For example, if you want to understand the broad international context in which individuals complete their degrees and seek careers, read Chapter 2, if you want to understand how we conceive early career researcher development, turn to Chapter 3 or Chapter 10, and so on.

We think the dipping in and out approach is critical for Section 2, since this is where you can read the stories of the 48 individuals in our research program. As noted earlier, the stories are grouped in chapters by individuals who shared common career intentions. Chapter 4 recounts the stories of those who identified non-research-teaching career aspirations early on and maintained those aspirations throughout the study. Chapter 5 shares the stories of those who identified research-teaching career aspirations early on and achieved them via a post-PhD researcher position. Chapter 6 offers the stories of individuals who early on stated their intention to seek a research-teaching position, but reached their goal through a less common trajectory than that of post-PhD researcher.

Chapter 7 includes the stories of those individuals who completed their PhD and still intend to obtain research-teaching positions, but had not done so by the end of our research study. Chapter 8 reports the stories of those who changed their career intentions away from academic positions. Chapter 9 recounts the stories of those who have not yet or who have just completed their PhD and are in the process of making their first career choices.

Acknowledgments

There are many to thank for the existence of this book. In addition to the research participants, the following stand out for their contribution. First of all, funding, principally from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada made it possible for us to undertake this research. Second, a wonderful team of researchers in Canada and the UK helped at various stages over the ten years of research. We name here those who, through their data collection, analysis, and authoring/co-authoring efforts, made a sustained contribution: Patrick Alexander, Shuhua Chen, Susan Harris-Huemmert, Nick Hopwood, Greg Hum, Marian Jazvac-Martek, Mahima Mitra, Jean Rath, and Gill Turner. Third, a small group of early career researchers gave us feedback on early drafts which helped us to make the book more useful.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Lynn McAlpine and Cheryl AmundsenPost-PhD Career Trajectories10.1057/978-1-137-57660-6_2

Begin Abstract

2. Understanding the Global Context

Lynn McAlpine^{1, 2} and Cheryl Amundsen³

(1)

Professor of Higher Education Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

(2)

McGill University, Québec, Canada

(3)

Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Have you ever thought that working in different institutions or changing countries might bring with it a change in career policies or work practices? What we have learned from our research is that individuals were not often aware of the range of institutional and national/regional regulations, policies, and goals that might influence their day-to-day experiences. Nor were they aware, particularly in the academic context, how similar language masked differences in work expectations. Thus, our goal in this chapter is to make these influences transparent so that you can understand the challenges faced by the research participants who experienced changes in context, and also so you can use your understanding of these influences to navigate them successfully yourself, should you need to.

Keywords

Nested contextsInfluence of regulations and policiesInstitutional variationNational/regional variationMobility

End Abstract

Introduction

When we began our research program in 2006, we conducted a review of the doctoral education literature to better understand the factors that were believed to influence doctoral completion or the decision to leave doctoral studies. This review resulted in the idea of nested contexts (McAlpine & Norton, 2006). In the following, we discuss how nested contexts can influence individual experience and how it influenced the experience of some of the research participants in our study. We also note the variability between contexts to watch out for as you look forward to career possibilities. In other words, nested contexts will help you think about the big picture.

How Do Individuals Experience Nested Contexts?

At the core of the nested contexts’ perspective is the individual, nested within institutional, national, as well as global contexts. If we take the example of a doctoral student, the idea is that you as an individual doctoral student are situated within a particular scholarly community that may extend globally. You are also situated within your specific institutional and departmental context and subject to its policies and procedures related to doctoral education. The institution is in turn influenced by the affordances and limitations of a wider societal context, for example, the availability of desired jobs. The interplay among each of these contexts is a necessary frame to making sense of experiences as a doctoral student as well as later on in life.

A key aspect of our research is that those who participated in our research began doing so while in an academic role, being a PhD student, post-PhD researcher, or in a research-teaching position. As we followed them over time, however, some took up positions in the public/private sector rather than in the academic sector. While this was a relatively small number of individuals, it did make us question how the idea of nested contexts also fits those moving into this sector. We found that it did for the most part and we offer examples of this, along with the academic examples, in the following.

In an academic context, the workplace is the department, faculty, or research unit. Such units have different social practices as you may have experienced. For instance, there may be informal get-togethers or only formal meetings and the scholarly climate may range from more collegial to more competitive. The same is true in public/private workplaces with departments, offices, or units developing their unique workplace practices, some of which will be attractive and others not, depending on individual preferences.

These workplaces are embedded within an institution which has a set of regulations, requirements, and resources that influence departmental practices. In a more collegial structure of governance, these smaller units can in turn, influence institutional policies and regulations. So, for instance, in the academy, there will be a departmental or school set of regulations and policies around doctoral selection, admissions, requirements, and assessment and this will be influenced by broader institutional policies and requirements.

While those in our study were somewhat familiar with such departmental policies and practices, we found the same was not necessarily true about their knowledge of institutional policies. This lack of knowledge became even more pronounced when moving across academic institutions where policy and practices can vary considerably. The individuals in our study who moved to a new university were not necessarily prepared for such differences, so were somewhat surprised when things were done differently.

The public/private sector has similar degrees of variation in funding structures and policies. For instance, funding can vary from public to para-public to private. Such variation contributes to diversity in resources, types of employment, and responsibilities. In the case of our research, those who sought careers outside of the academy went into public or para-public organizations or decided to be self-employed.

Institutions are in turn embedded in societal contexts. So, in the case of universities, it is important to understand whether you will be working in a country with a more centralized or decentralized educational system; for example, in the UK it is more centralized and in Canada, more decentralized. This can influence the policies and regulations you must follow or respond to. Broad drivers such as international competitiveness will also determine many of the decisions of senior-level administrators, yet the reasons behind the decisions may not be known to most employees. For instance, the creation of new doctoral programs may be driven by a national imperative to compete internationally for students. Or, the expectation to complete doctoral studies in four years may result from funding council, national, or other jurisdictional policies.

Public and private organizations are equally challenged in responding to external pressures. For instance, a change in government legislation regarding immigration may substantially change the pool of applicants, or hiring and selec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Intention and Careers
• 3. Conclusions and Resources
• Backmatter