Temporary contracts: effect on job satisfaction and personal lives of recent PhD graduates

In this study, we assess the effects of temporary employment on job satisfaction and the personal lives of recent PhD graduates. Temporary employment is becoming increasingly prevalent in many sectors, but has been relatively common in academia, especially for early career scientists. Labor market theory shows temporary employment to have a conspicuous negative influence on the job satisfaction and well-being of employees, but also identifies groups that may be exempt from these negative influences, such as the highly educated. Here, we study the effect of temporary employment on the highest educated group in the labor force, PhD graduates. We present findings of a survey of 1133 respondents who obtained their PhD from one of five Dutch universities between 2008 and 2012. Compared to PhDs employed on a permanent contract, PhDs on a temporary contract are less satisfied with their terms of employment, especially if they have no prospect of permanence. Temporary contracts with no prospect of permanence also decrease satisfaction with job content. Conversely, self-employment increases satisfaction with job content. Educational level required for the job also influences job satisfaction to a large degree: working below PhD level negatively affects job satisfaction. Finally, the type of contract affects different aspects of the personal lives of PhDs, such as the ability to obtain a mortgage, the stability of family life, and the possibility to start a family. In conclusion, we show that the highest educated, i.e., PhD graduates are not exempt from the negative influences of temporary employment.     

Changing lives: improving care leaver access to higher education

ABSTRACT

Australian and international research documents the limited access of young people transitioning from out-of-home care (OOHC) to further and higher education. This paper examines the processes, outcomes, and key findings of the Raising Expectations project, a collaborative university and industry approach to promote higher education among care leavers at two Australian universities. That approach was informed by the co-authors' previous research, including interviews with enrolled care-leaver students. The paper highlights the relevance of that research in the design and implementation of Raising Expectations. Our findings reiterate the importance of policy and practice reforms informed by rigorous research, particularly involving the voices and agency of care leavers. We outline strategies adopted by the participating universities resulting in a fourfold increase in enrolments, growth in school outreach activities, and significantly improved retention rates. The paper also highlights barriers to higher education access and success, through care-leaver student interviews and policy analysis. These interviews revealed the need for better university outreach and information to prospective care-leaver students, improved support for enrolled care-leaver students, and better capturing of data by universities and governments. The paper also highlights policy barriers to the greater expansion of care-leavers at university, especially in the absence of extended state care.     

Changing tactics: Embedding inclusion reforms within general education restructuring efforts

After years of research and efforts in pursuit of a greater understanding of inclusion, there is now growing certainty that inclusive reforms in special education must be pursued in terms of restructuring and improvement in general education. In this chapter three issues are raised and addressed. They are: (1) how does special education become an integral part of public schooling? (2) how will higher education, various research organizations, educational labs, institutes, and other research organizations in both general and special education need to change? (3) how should families, individual community members, community agencies, and business participate in large-scale school change?     

Publication by men and women with same-sex and cross-sex PhD supervision

The rates at which men and women published during and after PhD training in psychology were compared for samples experiencing same-sex and cross-sex supervision. When allowance was made for the research productivity and impact of the supervisor, women supervised by women published at similar rates to women supervised by men. Similarly, men supervised by men did not publish on average more often than men supervised by women. Further, there was no difference in mean publication rate between men and women who had completed their PhD degrees in the same university under supervision of the same advisor. Although the analyses provides no evidence that publication is more frequent following same-sex than cross-sex supervision, the possibility that supervision by an advisor of the same sex advantages graduates in other ways needs to be assessed.     

Changing from a special school to an inclusion service

Members of the Somerset Inclusion Project and Gary Thomas (professor and reader in education at the University of the West of England, Bristol) discuss the need for schools to become more inclusive in response to the Government's recent Green Paper (DfEE, 1997), which emphasises that special schools need to work in different ways and to provide services to local mainstream schools. The notion that inclusion is right and segregation is wrong led the staff to convert the Princess Margaret School (PMS) in Taunton, Somerset to an inclusion service.     

Spirituality in the academy: Reintegrating our lives and the lives of our students

American educational institutions were founded on the development of the spirit as well as the intellect, a concept that was ended by the Enlightenment. Now, research conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), reveals that most students want their college or university to help them develop spiritually. Are their institutions ready?     

Inner‐city femininities and education: ‘race’, class,gender and schooling in young women’s lives

This paper considers how urban, ethnically diverse working class girls’ constructions of femininities mediate and shape their dis/engagement with education and schooling. We discuss how girls generated a sense of identity value/worth through practices such as ‘speaking my mind’—which prioritized notions of agency and visibility and resisted the symbolic violences associated with living social inequality. However, we argue that this strategy was inherently paradoxical because it countered dominant discourses of the normative (middle class) female pupil and hence resulted in drawing girls into conflict with schools—a position that many girls came to ‘regret’. We illustrate how the girls’ attempts at resistance and transgression were constrained by gender‐ and class‐based discourses around moral worth, as girls struggled to be recognized as ‘good underneath’ and attempted to ‘change’ over the course of the project and their final year/s of schooling (to ‘become good’). This process, we suggest, illustrates the implication of reflexivity in the production of gendered and classed identities and inequalities, and illuminates how an internalization of multiple discourses of authority and surveillance of the self is integral to the production of the working class female educational subject.     

School exclusion and educational inclusion of pregnant young women

This article analyses the school exclusion and subsequent educational inclusion of pregnant young women participating in a course of antenatal and key skills education at an alternative educational setting. It examines the young women's transitions from ‘failure’ in school to ‘success’ in motherhood and re-engagement with education. This article draws on participant observation- and interview-based research carried out with pregnant young women and staff at an alternative educational setting in London in 2007–2008. The young women's participation in the course represented a severing of past negative experiences in mainstream education, allowing a renewed focus on education alongside a positive maternal identity. The setting represented a form of inclusion, and the young women appreciated the focus on their social and emotional well-being, yet the limited academic provision in some cases continued to reinforce an educational exclusion.     

How do women construct adventure recreation in their lives?

Research into adventure recreation has tended to be located in the experiences of men. This is largely due to a history of dominant male participation, though it is acknowledged that more women are accessing these forms of leisure experiences. This paper reports a study of forty-two women who had participated in adventure recreation at some stage throughout their adult lives. These women were interviewed regarding their personal meanings of adventure reaction. This included exploration of how adventure was experienced and the types of issues that affected their participation in adventure recreation. The results showed that adventure for these women incorporated risk and physical challenge, but also a sense of newness, learning, personal development and creativity. The evidence presented suggests that while traditional definitions of adventure recreation offer a general differentiation of adventure activities from other forms of outdoor recreation, they are perhaps too limiting. The women's experiences indicate that adventure extends beyond labeled “adventure” pursuits and that broader understandings need to be incorporated into our meanings of adventure.     

Troubling talk: assembling the PhD candidate

When PhD students complain it is assumed there are problems and that troubles talk is evidence of a ‘sick’ research candidature or culture. This paper argues that such a one-dimensional reading fails to attend closely to the academic identity work that is done when students talk together. Identity work has become a useful way of thinking about the nature of PhD study in the production of thesis texts, the development of PhD students as scholars and in the practices of everyday doctoral life. This paper extends this work by analysing various instances of PhD student ‘troubles talk’ in everyday interactions between peers and in online spaces where PhD students congregate. Attention to troubles talk allows us to explore how doctoral students might do academic identity work in the ‘hinterlands’ where academic subjectivity and other forms of subjectivity (wife, husband, parent, son, daughter etc.) start to blur into each other.     

现代女性母亲角色的变化

现代社会由于各种主、客观的原因,女性作为母亲角色在孩子婴幼儿时期所承担的特殊作用正悄然发生变化,母亲不再是孩子依恋的唯一人选,这种角色变化的原因和影响值得引起关注。