Gender inequalities in transnational academic mobility and the ideal type of academic entrepreneur

Based on a study on academic career paths of PhD graduates in Switzerland, this paper is concerned with the individual and institutional factors that affect transnational academic mobility in the postdoctoral period. It will be argued that the institutionalisation of geographic mobility in academic career paths through research funding institutions and universities have gendering and stratifying effects. Complex formations related to gender, partnership, children, and dual-career constellations, as well as to social class and academic integration, are resulting in inequalities in the accumulation of international cultural and social capital.     

Globalisation,transnational academic mobility and the Chinese knowledge diaspora: an Australian case study

The master discourses of economic globalisation and the knowledge economy each cite knowledge diasporas as vital ‘trans-national human capital’. Based on a case study of a major Australian university, this article examines the potential to deploy China's large and highly-skilled diaspora in the service of Chinese and Australian scientific and technological development. It finds that at a time when much of the world is deeply mired in a global financial crisis, this treasured resource of highly-skilled intellectuals assumes even greater significance. Meanwhile, there are key challenges to be confronted to fully utilise China's overseas talent. It argues that the Chinese knowledge diaspora are a modern kind of cosmopolitan literati, and could contribute actively to higher education internationalisation in both Australia and China.     

Stretching the academic harness: knowledge construction in the process of academic mobility in Chile

In this article, we analyse the impact of academic mobility on the construction of knowledge for Chilean scholars who have studied abroad. We conducted 41 semi-structured interviews with Chilean-born scholars in the social sciences and humanities, who accepted jobs at national research universities in Chile after receiving their doctorates abroad. Findings show that international academic mobility allowed these participants to question legitimised ways of doing knowledge, where they can stretch the academic harness that increasingly rules their knowledge construction. Our main argument is that knowledge construction process is neither linear nor unidimensional and it occurs as a rhizomatic process in a multidimensional space.     

Transnational academic capitalism in the Arab Gulf: balancing global and local,and public and private,capitals

This article contributes to the emerging theoretical construct of what has been called ‘transnational academic capitalism’, characterised by the blurring of traditional boundaries between public, private, local, regional and international, and between market-driven and critically transformative higher education visions. Here we examine how these issues are reflected in higher education policy in the Arab Gulf, asking: what kinds of capital are being constructed and traded? By and for whom? What is the relationship between higher education competition, governance and the public good? We find contradictory trends, which we see as strategic ambivalence pointing to country-specific readings of similar regional markets and attempts to hedge bets between rival forms of apparent capital. The exploration offers a counterpoint to more widely cited examples, hereby helping to shape new paradigmatic ‘glocalised’ understandings of this field.     

资本、资本经营与跨国公司并购方式探析

以资本、资本经营的内涵与外延为基础,可以看出,近年来跨国公司并购的新方式主要是:强强联合,全球性跨国并购,同行业并购,发展中国家跨国公司化,高新技术的跨国并购等等。     

The relevance of identity style and professional identity to academic commitment and academic achievement in a higher education setting

Student retention remains an ongoing concern for higher education institutions worldwide. In the present study, we examine the predictive utility of identity styles, professional identity and academic commitment to academic achievement. We asked 120 second-year students in the profession of engineering in an augmented degree programme to complete the Identity Styles Inventory, the Engineering Identity Factors Inventory and the Academic Commitment Scale. We found that a normative identity style predicted professional engineering identity and meaningfulness, which predicted the participants’ investments in their studies. Additionally, a diffuse-avoidant identity style negatively predicted professional identity, meaningfulness and satisfaction, which provides empirical evidence of the contribution of identity to academic commitment. None of the variables we studied predicted academic achievement. Our findings are relevant, given current debates on access, equity and decolonisation in higher education, because it suggests that students’ sense of identity largely influences whether they feel a sense of belonging at university. Although identity styles and meaningfulness are not significant direct predictors of academic achievement, they probably do have an indirect effect on academic achievement through their direct influence on investment.     

Academic mobility,transnational identity capital,and stratification under conditions of academic capitalism

Academic mobility has existed since ancient times. Recently, however, academic mobility—the crossing of international borders by academics who then work ‘overseas’—has increased. Academics and the careers of academics have been affected by governments and institutions that have an interest in coordinating and accelerating knowledge production. This article reflects on the relations between academic mobility and knowledge and identity capital and their mutual entanglement as academics move, internationally. It argues that the contemporary movement of academics takes place within old hierarchies among nation states, but such old hierarchies intersect with new academic stratifications which will be described and analysed. These analytical themes in the article are supplemented by excerpts from interviews of mobile academics in the UK, USA, New Zealand, Korea and Hong Kong as selected examples of different locales of academic capitalism.     

Poverty PhDs: Funds of knowledge,poverty, and professional identity in academia

In contrast to the common deficit approach, this self-study explores the relationship between the funds of knowledge possessed by people of poverty and their development of professional identity in academia. All three authors have moved beyond conditions of financial poverty, but all find that the mental conditions of poverty persist. We conclude that select skills and dispositions developed in conditions of material poverty helped us to navigate graduate school and continue to productively inform, yet complicate, the development of our professional academic identities. We tease apart the myth of meritocracy and identify the value of transferable funds of knowledge developed in poverty. We document how our own practices have changed as a result of recognizing our funds of knowledge developed in poverty.     

The imagined and the real: identifying the tensions for academic identity

Changes within the higher education sector have had significant effects on the identity of the individual academic. As institutions transform in response to government‐driven policy and funding directives, there is a subsequent impact upon the roles and responsibilities of those employed as educational professionals. Academic practices are changing as multiple roles emerge from the reshaping of academic work. Institutional pressures to produce specific research outputs at the same time as teaching and undertaking managerial/administrative responsibilities are creating tension between what academics perceive as their professional identity and that prescribed by their employing organisation. Reconciling this disconnect is part of the challenge for academics, who are now seeking to understand and manage their changing identity. Narratives obtained from research in a university with a polytechnic background and an institute of technology (aspiring to be a university), provide some subjective reflections for examining this issue.     

Critical emancipatory research and academic identity

Abstract

This paper documents the development and manifestation of academic identity among seven master's and six PhD students as they read towards their respective qualifications at the Central University of Technology, Free State. According to these students, this development occurred in the context of their carrying out research couched in the theoretical framework of critical emancipatory research (CER). The reported transformations seem to be characterised by newly acquired abilities to talk back, to stand up for one's chosen position and to thoroughly interrogate sources of information, including what is presented as self-evident. Using Fairclough's (2004) textually oriented discourse analysis (TODA) and Ineke Meulenberg-Buskens’ free attitude interview technique, the thirteen students produce narratives confirming how doing CER research has created opportunities for them to be passionate about what they do. This study reports on these reflections by the students and no claim of any causal relationship between CER and the formation of academic identity is made.     

Do human and cultural capital lenses contribute to our understanding of academic success in Russia

Using newly available data from the Trajectories in Education and Careers Study, the first longitudinal study on a representative sample of high school students in Russia, we examined the importance of investments in human and cultural capital on students’ mathematics and reading standardized examinations, as well as on the likelihood of matriculation into a selective institution of higher education. Studying mathematics and the Russian language on one’s own for more than a year was positively and significantly associated with standardized scores and with an increased likelihood of matriculating into a selective university. A higher number of books at home was also associated with an increased likelihood of matriculating into a selective university. The findings are discussed within the particular institutional context of the Russian educational system.     

The organisation of academic knowledge: A comparative perspective

How is academic knowledge organized? Does thisvary from country to country, and, if so, how?This paper explores these questions through anexamination of some of the data included in theCommonwealth Universities Yearbook 2001.In particular, an analysis is presented of thedifferent names given to basic academic units(departments, schools and/or faculties) inAustralia, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.Evidence is provided regarding forms ofinstitutional organization, and of the varyingstrength of different disciplines or fields ofstudy.     

劳动力的跨国流动与中国经济发展

劳动力流动是社会经济发展的必然,经济全球化使得劳动力的跨国流动成为可能并得到发展。加入世贸组织后,我国将会有更多的劳动力向境外输出并且接纳更多的外来劳动力。本文分析了我国劳动力跨国流动的现状及其对我国经济发展的影响,据此提出了促进劳动力跨国流动合理有序化的一些建议。     

Developing identity and agency as an early career academic: lessons from Alice

This paper draws on Lewis Carroll’s character of Alice as a metaphor for interrogating identity construction and agency amongst early career academics, a process which can seem like Alice’s pursuit of the White Rabbit in a strange land. Keeping in mind the effects of neoliberalism on the tertiary sector, we recognise the centrality of personal lives in decision-making about academic careers and the shaping of professional identities. We also foreground how communities of practice not only build agency amongst ECAs but can also be supported by academic developers.     

论教育学识的习得与教育学派的创生

对教育学科学习者来说,学习是解构的过程,因此教育学派成为学科成熟的标志;对教育研究者来说,研究是建构的过程,因此教育学识的科学性与实效性才是学科成熟的标志。但教育理论科学性与实效性评价标准的缺位,既为社会大众利用个案对教育理论体系进行证伪提供了机会,也为教育研究个体利用个案对自己的研究成果予以证实提供了机会。走向教育实践,既是确定教育理论研究科学性与实效性评价标准的过程,也是教育研究者在实践问题的解决中,逐渐达成研究共识并进而形成学派的过程,也是通过教育学派间的理论竞争并最终形成教育研究范式的必然选择。     

Performing mundane materiality: Actor-Network Theory,global student mobility and a re/formation of ‘social capital’

ABSTRACT

Social capital is a puzzling actor; made real by its allies. It has been ‘out-there’ in the form of scientific publications for decades. Although some characteristics are common to all elaborations of this theory (networks, trust, and norms), there remains confusion in determining a ‘coherent concept’ of social capital. In this paper, we make use of such ‘incoherence gap’ to open an experimental theoretical and, subsequently, analytical space. Based on empirical research with mobile students and assemblages of non-human actors, the paper offers two investigative gatherings. First, the Bourdieusian approach to ‘social capital’ is discussed, allowing relational ontologies to enter the scene. Second, consideration is given to issues of performativity and the relevance of materiality for empirical social capital investigations. Despite the degree of ontological security social capital has managed to achieve, we question the disregard for the performative role of non-human entities in the context of global student mobility.     

知识经济时代人力资本的积累和投资

知识经济时代的人力资本将成为经济发展的“瓶颈”。人力资本的积累和投资是人力资源开发的两个重要方面。加速人力资本的积累、扩大人力资本的投资是知识经济时代提出的新要求。     

Examining the aesthetic dimensions of teaching: Relationships between teacher knowledge,identity and passion

Having an appreciation for the subject, their students and what the subject can offer their students has both cognitive and emotional dimensions for teachers. This paper uses empirical data to explore the efficacy of a Deweyan inspired framework called “Aesthetic Understanding” to scrutinise relationships between teacher knowledge, identity and passion. The paper uses case study data of three teachers of maths and/or science generated from a video study to illustrate the relationships between the three elements of Aesthetic Understanding. The need to value the aesthetic dimensions of teaching when examining the subject-specific nature of secondary teaching is discussed.     

Cultural capital: strengths,weaknesses and two advancements

In this paper I discuss two weaknesses in Bourdieu’s work on cultural capital, both of which are related to his integration of the multidimensional nature of social space in different domains of life: social mobility, lifestyle differentiation, and political orientation. First, there is an anomaly between the work on social mobility and on lifestyles. Multiple dimensions of social origin (cultural and economic capital) are related to uni‐dimensional outcomes (e.g. schooling levels), whereas it would be more appropriate to study multidimensional schooling outcomes too. Secondly, although Bourdieu sees a close resemblance in the type of resources affecting lifestyle preferences and political orientations, I argue that these outcomes are affected by two different types of resources: cultural and communicative resources. Proposals for progress, including a review of the empirical results supporting these, are given.     

Language (in)competency,communication strategies,and the development of an international academic teacher identity: becoming an audible minority

Despite universities’ enthusiasm for internationalization, international academic mobility requires considerable institutional and cultural adjustment in terms of teaching and supervision styles, research expectations, and departmental relationships. Although language competency underpins these practices, research on international academics has neglected the impact of language proficiency on professional identity. This article uses autoethnography to document conversations about language ability during my first two years as an academic in a French-language university. My responses to language-related comments evolved over time, reflecting how I positioned myself as a linguistic – or audible – minority, vis-à-vis the linguistic majority. Using cultural phenomenology, the findings highlight the interactional, unstable nature of international academic identities and the importance of positive collective support for international academics who shift from majority to minority linguistic status.