Ecological Pushes and Pulls on Women Academics’ Pursuit of Research in China

Women academics reportedly exhibit lower research productivity than males. This study first quantitatively explored gender differences in research output based on a survey among 309 Chinese academics teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). Qualitative data obtained through interviews with seven female respondents were analyzed from an ecological perspective. Results showed significant gender differences in domestic publication but no such differences in international publication. Women academics’ pursuit of research was influenced by many factors from and beyond the microsystems of workplace and family, and their coping strategies included soliciting help from seasoned colleagues, attending academic conferences, and joining online communities. The findings highlight the institutional supportive practices and familial environment that are equally important in promoting women academics’ professional development.     

发挥文化生产力的重要职能壮大我国民族文化创意产业

目前,境外文化产品充斥国内市场的现象十分严重。长此以往,外国生产商将垄断国内文化市场,我国也将沦为文化贸易的逆差大国。同时,中国消费者在不断消费外来文化产品时,不断受其的意识形态的潜移默化,使之弱化了民族主体性。在此背景下,该文提出文化生产力的两项职能,并分析了我国民族文化创意产业在科技创新和彰显民族主体性两方面的现状,最后提出发展我国民族文化创意产业的内外两种途径。     

Going places: exploring the impact of intra-sectoral mobility on research productivity and communication behaviors in Japanese academia

This study analyzes the impact of intra-sectoral mobility of academics on research productivity and R&D information exchange dynamics in Japan. The analysis shows intra-sectoral mobility impacting positively both research productivity and information exchange dynamics, but that this effect—except for information exchange with peers based abroad—has a threshold. This result highlights the importance of academic job mobility but also alerts for cases of “overloads of mobility,” leading us to argue for some degree of stability in academic careers, supported by policies fostering temporary international mobility spells. We also find that the role of foreign academics in the Japanese higher education is one of national and international gatekeepers being this role shaped by where the doctorate was obtained (Japan vs abroad). Japanese academics that have performed the doctorate abroad are also key international gatekeepers.     

Pedagogic democracy versus pedagogic supremacy: migrant academics’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the underexplored area of othering of migrant academics within their teaching context. Nine personal narratives of migrant academics’ teaching were analysed qualitatively for indications of pedagogical othering. Migrant academics indicated the need to align their own pedagogic values and practices with that of their host institutions they work in as they felt their own values and practices were considered less desirable. We argue, from a Gramsci’s hegemonic perspective, that the pedagogic adaptation by migrant academics aimed at improving student learning is not problematic in itself, but more problematic is the inequality of opportunity for migrant academics to contribute to pedagogical decisions which can meaningfully influence the departmental culture. Lack of pedagogic democracy where the ‘home’ academic environment has a monopoly of knowledge and a hegemonic position regarding learning and teaching can compromise the student-learning experience by limiting articulation of alternative pedagogical perspectives by the migrant international academics.     

Constructing academic identity in the changing Russian higher education context: preliminary perspectives

ABSTRACT

Currently, Russian academics are facing significant demands because of a new, urgent requirement to pursue their research in accordance with international standards. Until recently, these academics were used to working within a familiar community and communicating their research via the Russian language, but now, they are expected to move beyond that and function on a global level, which can challenge their academic identities. A qualitative study was carried out in a research-intensive Russian university. The aim was to explore academics’ experiences and perceptions of the dynamic changes in their academic work with a particular focus on the limitations and pressures they meet in their career path towards global research. The data were collected by means of reflective journals during a course on English for academic purposes. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The results showed that global trends turned out to be unachievable for Russian academics due to the lack of specific knowledge, attributes and skills required to do research globally. This might be the first study from Russia contributing to the literature on academic identity construction. The article provides insights into the experiences and perceptions of Russian academics and offers a research agenda for further investigation to bridge identity shifts in academia. In terms of practical purposes, the results will be used as a source of preliminary data within a broader research project aimed at supporting Russian academics in their research in an international English-speaking academic context.     

Research productivity by career stage among Korean academics

This study explores Korean academics’ changes in research productivity by career stage. Career stage in this study is defined as a specific cohort based on one’s length of job experience, with those in the same stage sharing similar interests, values, needs, and tasks; it is categorized into fledglings, maturing academics, established academics, and patriarchs. Academics’ research productivity in each career stage is analysed, and these characteristics are compared across academic disciplines. In addition, the factors influencing research productivity in different career stages are examined. The results indicate that research productivity among academics changes according to their career stage, and its pattern differs across academic disciplines. Thus, there is a need to provide proper reward systems or career development programs in consideration of such differences.     

Conceptions of ‘research’ and their gendered impact on research activity: a UK case study

ABSTRACT

The last twenty years have seen an increased emphasis around the world on the quality and quantity of research in response to national research assessments, international league tables, and changes in government funding. The prevailing attitude in higher education embeds research as the ‘gold standard’ in the context of academic activity. However, a key feature of this trend is significant gender differences in research activity. We argue that research productivity is related to identification as a researcher, and that identifying as ‘research-active’ or not would appear to depend upon how an individual academic subjectively defines ‘research’. This article brings together two hitherto separate bodies of work (1) the impact of gender on academic research careers, and (2) academic conceptions of research. Through a combination of interviews, focus groups and questionnaires, we investigate the extent to which interpretations of ‘research’ and ‘research activity’ differ by gender within an institution in the UK and the potential impact of these interpretations. Although the research found that there are many similarities in the interpretations of ‘research activity’ between genders, we found one important difference between male and female participants’ conceptions of research and its relationship to teaching. Significantly, our findings suggest that there is a need to expand our existing conceptualisations of ‘research’ to include ‘research as scholarship’ in order to address the obstacles that current understandings of ‘research’ have placed on some academics. Self-definition as a researcher underlies research activity. A narrow conception of ‘research’ may prevent individuals from identifying as ‘research-active’ and therefore engaging with research.     

Chinese Academics under the Reformed Remuneration System: A Case Study

Abstract:

As part of ongoing efforts to attract and keep talents, Chinese governments and universities have initiated a series of reforms to improve faculty salaries over the past decades. However, the reformed salary policies do not work as well as expected. According to the field data, the formed salary policies had posted a new set of challenges to academics. On one hand, the salaries offered to academics remained low. Most junior academics could not live on their salaries. As a result, they actively tied themselves to the large-scale research projects headed by their senior peers to earn additional compensations, even at the cost of research interests and research qualities. On the other hand, the new remuneration policies created many potential conflicts among faculty members and significantly discouraged academic collaborations at the sample university. This made academics develop a new strategy—“one project with two separate teams”—to safeguard each others’ benefits in collaborations. It is found that the reformed salary policies had served as impediments to academics’ career development.     

Community engagement is … : revisiting Boyer’s model of scholarship

ABSTRACT

Criticisms have been levelled at academics at a time when funding of universities is increasingly tied to private and corporate purposes and when academics are held accountable through a hierarchy of functions. Claims are also made that academics work within narrow specializations and are removed from real-world experience and problems. Boyer’s model of scholarship offers four categories of scholarship that remain relevant to understanding and guiding the work of academics, including how they engage with communities. To explore the nature of academics’ work, we draw on data provided by a group of academics who participated in a research project using both sociological elicitation and visual arts-based research methodologies. The participants were asked to explore what various aspects of current academic work mean for them by providing an image and text, akin to creating a postcard. In this article, we focus on responses they provided to the prompt ‘Community engagement is?…?’ The postcards show how community engagement can be interpreted in diverse ways and that, along with teaching and research, community engagement are all integrated, mutually reinforcing drivers and outcomes of academic work.     

R&D policy and social contribution in Japanese higher education

The Japanese academics have high recognition of themselves as the researchers rather than the teachers. This kind of climate developed in the national research universities including Teikoku Daigaku in the prewar time and even in the postwar time; it has extended to almost all academics not only in the research universities but also in the non-research universities. This fact was testified clearly in the CAP survey conducted in 2007, in which the Japanese academics’ research orientation belonged to the German type. A climate of academics in Japan is different from the counterparts in the USA as shown in the CAP survey, in which the American academics are oriented to research and teaching with a weight of half and half. Given the Japanese academic climate involved in research orientation, the national government offers in recent years the research grants to academics as the category of researcher on the basis of “selection and concentration principle” to the extent that only distinguished researchers in research productivity can be selected. Accordingly, Kakusa Shakai, or the social difference between the institutions with high productivity and those with low productivity, seems to be increasingly extending recently. The question that how the Japanese government disseminates research outputs to make these outputs be more socially utilized is likely to be not answered adequately for many years because there are few meta-evaluations to assess policy’s usefulness. However, such meta-evaluation of policy is expected to be done strictly since 2002 when it was introduced in the context that government policy’s contribution to society was functioned substantially.     

教育研究合作行为的比较研究

本文通过对六种重要的中外教育研究杂志中合作文章篇数以及实证文章篇数的统计分析,展现了最近五年中、外教育学者的合作研究状况,并得出如下基本结论:1.国外教育研究者比国内教育研究者更倾向于进行合作研究,其合作频率显著高于国内教育研究者的合作频率;2.从事实证研究的教育研究者合作频率比其他研究的教育研究者的合作频率更高,而且国外进行实证研究的教育研究者比国内实证研究者更倾向于进行合作研究;3.国外教育研究者更加重视实证研究,近年来国内教育研究杂志中的实证文章比例在平稳提升.     

Australian social scientists and transition to a more commercial university environment

Australian social scientists generally are highly critical of Commonwealth Government higher education policy and funding levels, and the new commercial, entrepreneurial and managerial university environment. They are frustrated with increased workloads, higher degrees of regulation and reporting requirements, incompetence of university management and often deteriorating social relations within academic departments. At the same time, many social scientists have proved to be remarkably adaptable, showing high degrees of interest in and commitment to their teaching and research, impressive levels of research productivity and substantial involvement in providing policy advice to government and in commercial activities, including recruiting fee‐paying domestic and international students, consultancies and attracting external research funds. Many work effectively with colleagues or in research teams, and often publish jointly with colleagues from their own and other institutions. Despite strong research links with government agencies, respondents report that their research is primarily driven by intrinsic interest and to generate inputs to teaching, rather than by utilitarian motives.     

International mobility of PhD students since the 1990s and its effect on China: a cross-national analysis

ABSTRACT

Of all the levels of education, doctoral education is the most internationalised. By selecting one key indicator (the proportion of international students among a country’s doctorate recipients), the article presents an analysis of PhD students’ international mobility. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, many barriers to the international mobility of PhD students were removed, leading to an even larger flow of students. From 2000 to 2012, the international mobility of PhD students reached a new peak, with a significant increase in the percentage going to Japan, France, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia. Nowadays, China has become the largest source of international doctoral students. In that process, a number of excellent students go abroad to study for foreign doctoral degrees. On one hand, the loss of excellent students is harmful to China’s PhD training system, but on the other hand, it is a great opportunity for China to change brain drain into brain gain by making full use of the knowledge diaspora scattered around the world.     

Determinants of Research Productivity in Spanish Academia

This article aims to widen the empirical evidence about the determinants of Spanish academics’ publication productivity across fields of study. We use the Spanish Survey on Human Resources in Science and Technology addressed to Spanish resident PhDs employed in Spanish universities as academics. Productivity is measured as the total number of publications in a three‐year period. We show how personal and academic variables explain differences in productivity within universities and fields of studies and across fields of research. Female workers report lower productivity than their male counterparts, but family responsibilities do not explain this gender gap. The type of contract and tenure or rank do not seem to have any influence on productivity. Researchers seeking professional promotion rather than altruism or personal satisfaction are more productive and young scholars publish more than their older counterparts. Additionally, we find a certain research‐teaching trade‐off and some nuances in the predictors of publication productivity across birth cohorts and fields of study. Finally, international cooperation is one of the most relevant determinants of the number of publications, regardless of the birth cohort. The institutional context in the Spanish research system as regards requirements for promotion and the assessment of research outcomes may contribute to the understanding and interpretation of our results.     

‘Write every day!’: a mantra dismantled

Numerous books, blogs, and articles on research productivity exhort academics to ‘write every day’ even during the busiest of teaching times. Ironically, however, this research-boosting advice hangs from a perilously thin research thread. This article scrutinises the key findings of Robert Boice, whose pioneering studies of ‘professors as writers’ in the 1980s and 1990s are still widely cited today, and offers new empirical evidence to suggest that the writing practices of successful academics are in fact far more varied and individualistic than has generally been acknowledged in the literature.     

一个基于金融稳定的黄金储备分析框架——兼论中国黄金储备的适度规模

基于金融稳定的国际储备合宜规模与结构是目前国内外学界的研究热点,目前普遍认为中国的外汇储备总量已经明显过度,但对其黄金储备规模如何适度却莫衷一是。通过构建一个包含黄金储备、金融不稳定、跨境资本流动以及实体经济变量的系统分析框架,采用理论模型和实证方法探讨影响新兴市场经济体黄金储备的相关因素,继而模拟中国适度黄金储备规模的综合研究结果表明,金融不稳定程度的提高将会直接导致黄金储备占比的显著上升;国际储备对抵御经济金融危机的作用是有限度的,外汇与黄金储备之间不存在简单的替代关系;中国货币当局应在缩减外汇储备规模的同时,逐步增加黄金储备量并将其维持在3000吨左右,继而通过合理优化国际储备结构以确保国内金融稳定。     

Praxis,educational development and the university sector in Australia

In this article, we utilise recent theorising on praxis and educational development to explore how academics in universities can foster public, institutional and more personal development, even as they are challenged by what are sometimes described as more ‘managerial’ and ‘neoliberal’ conditions. The research draws upon a variety of sources of data, including publicly available correspondence on the university sector in Australia, interviews with colleagues, and personal reflective journals. These data reflect three instances of educational praxis development in the Australian university context, and at three scales/levels: nationally; unit-wide (university/faculty/institute); and sub-unit/individually. The findings reveal such development in the form of: academics using mainstream media to inform the general public about the nature of university industrial relations and funding at a national level; junior and senior academics collaborating and engaging in mentoring practices to build institutional research capacity at a university/institutional level; and, individual academics meeting to develop individual teaching practice. Through explicating the characteristics and value of educational development for and as praxis, we provide resources for hope for better understanding how the work of universities, including their broader mission to inform the public, might be enacted more educationally.     

基于科学知识图谱的国内外概化理论研究可视化分析

研究对比国内外概化理论研究的异同,为国内概化理论研究发展提供参考。基于CNKI、Webof Science数据库,分别选取2001—2020年中文373篇、外文734篇文献,借助CiteSpace软件定量分析国内外研究的发文数量、主题内容和合作关系。结果表明,国内外概化理论研究呈现积极增长态势;美国与加拿大对概化理论研究关注度一直保持较高水平,与世界各国合作紧密;国内的概化理论研究深度略低于国外,作者及机构之间的合作较分散,应加强与国际的交流与合作。     

The development of academics’ feedback literacy: experiences of learning from critical feedback via scholarly peer review

Abstract

The emerging literature related to feedback literacy has hitherto focused primarily on students’ engagement with feedback, and yet an analysis of academics’ feedback literacy is also of interest to those seeking to understand effective strategies to engage with feedback. Data from concept map-mediated interviews and reflections, with a team of six colleagues, surface academics’ responses to receiving critical feedback via scholarly peer review. Our findings reveal that feedback can be visceral and affecting, but that academics employ a number of strategies to engage with this process. This process can lead to actions that are both instrumental, enabling academics to more effectively ‘play the game’ of publication, as well as to learning that is more positively and holistically developmental. This study thus aims to open up a dialogue with colleagues internationally about the role of feedback literacy, for both academics and students. By openly sharing our own experiences we seek to normalise the difficulties academics routinely experience whilst engaging with critical feedback, to share the learning and strategies which can result from peer review feedback, and to explore how academics may occupy a comparable role to students who also receive evaluation of their work.     

新世纪第一个10年中国教育技术学科的国际交往研究

我国教育技术起步较晚,大部分理念和技术都是从国外引入并逐步加以本土化的。国际交往对于我国教育技术的发展具有很大的作用,作为我国首次全方位关注教育技术国际交往的研究,其意义就更为重要。21世纪以来,我国教育技术领域的国际交往越来越频繁,当前的主要途径有国内师生出访交流,国外学者来华作报告、进行合作交流,对国外学者进行专访对话,学者赴外参加国际会议或国内举办国际会议,以及翻译国外著作等。10年来,随着国际合作内容不断丰富,其研究越来越广泛并走向深入,主要集中在学科发展、远程教育和学习模式等10个领域。这些国际交往使我国教育技术学科地位得到巩固和发展,研究领域得到拓展,研究方法更加科学和规范。评估10年的国际交往,今后更应加强实质性合作研究,提高交流实效,重视国际项目合作,避免停留在表面或流于形式,要以一种平等合作、批判性、包容性的态度进行国际交流和对话。