Identity-Trajectories of Early Career Researchers

Unpacking the Post-PhD Experience

Lynn McAlpine, Cheryl Amundsen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781349952878
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

The book asks how we can make sense of career paths for PhD graduates, something that has rarely been systematically studied. It offers a coherent synthesis of the empirically-based insights that arose from the experiences of 48 early career researchers, who were participants in a 10-year qualitative longitudinal research program. The book has the power to inform other researchers' conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of post-PhD career trajectories.
The authors draw on the conceptual lens of 'identity-trajectory', which emerged from their research program, to examine the decision-making processes underpinning the careers of PhD graduates, whether contingent researchers and teachers, assistant professors within the academy or professionals elsewhere. The book highlights the role of personal agency in negotiating academic and non-academic work and careers within broader personal lives. It will be compelling reading for researchers and students working in the areas of Education and Sociology, particularly those with an interest in examining career development and decision-making.

Part I
Part I

Introduction

The two chapters in this part of the book provide background for the reader to make sense of the three parts of the book that follow. Chapter 1, ‘Overview,’ describes the origins of the book, how it is structured, and the imagined readers. Chapter 2, ‘The Global Context,’ specifically locates the starting place for our work, empirically, conceptually, and methodologically. Together, the chapters set our work and the experiences of research participants within the international context as well as within the research addressing post-PhD careers.

© The Author(s) 2018

Lynn McAlpine and Cheryl AmundsenIdentity-Trajectories of Early Career Researchershttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95287-8_1

Begin Abstract

Chapter 1: Overview

Lynn McAlpine¹ and Cheryl Amundsen²

(1)

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

(2)

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

End Abstract

What Led Us to Write This Book?

This book has at its core a 10-year longitudinal research program about the experiences of doctoral students, contingent post-PhD researchers, those in teaching-only positions,¹ those in research-teaching positions, and post-PhDs in professional positions inside and outside the academy. What brought us to this study initially was a growing awareness of what was referred to in the early 2000s as high ‘attrition’ rates among doctoral students. We began by examining the existing English language literature on doctoral completion and the factors understood to be influential in students leaving. We mostly found large correlational survey studies or single-interview studies which provided a limited understanding of individual experiences that might offer explanatory value. We realized that what was needed were data that encompassed the day-to-day experiences (interactions, successes, and challenges) that together over time contributed to investment in doctoral or academic work, and ultimately completion.

In 2006, when we initiated this research, we both were senior academics in Canadian universities teaching, supervising students, leading research teams, and working as educational developers. While our experience with and disposition toward development informed our doctoral practices, we wondered what we and others could learn from a broader and more scholarly examination of doctoral student experience.

Initially we and the research team recruited social science doctoral students in Canada. Within the year, Lynn started working in the UK. She, with colleagues there, was able to initiate a parallel study of social science doctoral students and include as well a few post-PhD researchers, again in the social sciences. About a year into the work, we realized that our initial focus on noncompletion was changing to one that highlighted learning to do academic work, and we decided to make the study longitudinal. Over the period of 2006–2010, we followed close to 40 social scientists for varying amounts of time.² In 2009–2010, as our first research funding in the two countries was nearing the end, we wondered if any participants would wish to continue in the project. We were fortunate that 22 of them (11 originally in Canada and 11 originally in the UK) found the research personally useful and elected to continue for as long as seven years as they moved into positions in and out of the academy. It was at this point that we saw the need to better understand the nature of career decision-making during and after the PhD.

With additional funding, we planned a next phase (beginning 2010) to also examine the experiences of STEM scientists (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in Canada and the UK. We wanted to investigate the suitability of our emerging conceptual understanding of how personal goals, intentions, and relationships influenced investment in work and ultimately career choices in another disciplinary cluster. Given our growing understanding of the importance of the transition from the PhD into careers, we sought out in this next phase, research participants who were more advanced in their doctoral studies and would soon graduate, as well as post-PhD researchers and those starting research-teaching positions. Again, we recruited close to 40 scientists whom we followed for varying periods of time. As with the social scientists, a number continued to participate in the research beyond the funding period. So, in total, this next phase of our research ending in 2016 provided information about the lives of 26 scientists beyond the PhD (21 originally in Canada and 5 originally in the UK).

The longitudinal study has been a central focus of our research, but during this time we also became interested in some specific aspects of early career researcher experience, for example, becoming a new thesis supervisor or new ways of structuring doctoral education. So we also conducted more focused studies with other research participants both in Canada and the UK related to these aspects. These studies were sometimes conducted by our research team, but also with colleagues in the UK and Australia who share similar research interests with us.

What Is Our Intent in Writing This Book?

The result of this 10-year undertaking is a connected body of work that brings together conceptual, empirical, and methodological, as well as practical findings and implications. Others have noted that the research approach is novel and the emerging view of identity, identity-trajectory, is distinct from that of many others used to explain career development and decision-making during and after the PhD. Thus, at the heart of this book, and what motivated us to write it, was the desire to move beyond the separate reports of the work which we have published in academic journals. We wanted to create a coherent and complementary synthesis of our research with the potential to inform other researchers’ empirical, conceptual, and methodological thinking.³

Our first step in preparing to write this book was to reread the more than 50 published studies that have emerged from this research program. We noted and discussed the themes and the issues and how they developed over time. We defined three of them, specifically: (a) the challenge of constructing an adequate conceptual representation of PhD and post-PhD career development and decision-making within personal hopes and intentions; (b) our empirical insights into the nature of doctoral, academic, and professional work; and (c) our evolving exploration and understanding of the potential of the qualitative longitudinal narrative methodology we used. Thus, the purposes of this book are to provide the following:

• An introduction to identity-trajectory as a conceptual framework for scholars interested in understanding how PhD students and graduates navigate into academic and non-academic careers.
• Concrete representations of the experiences of the many people that we have followed over time in order to introduce researchers to a body of empirical research and knowledge that does not exist in an integrated form.
• Access for those new to longitudinal and narrative research to the principles, methods, and procedures underlying our approach, as well as the data collection and organization, and analysis of tools that were crucial to the outcomes.

Who Do We Imagine as the Reader?

We envision those most interested in this book as researchers with varying degrees of experiences who are interested in (a) exploring more fully the potential of the construct of identity-trajectory, (b) investigating the experiences of doctoral students and graduates, and (c) conducting qualitative longitudinal narrative research.

How Have We Structured the Book?

The book is organized into four Parts:

• Introduction
• Conceptual contributions to understanding identity
• Empirically-based insights into academic and non-academic work
• Methodological transparency and creativity

In the next chapter of Part I, we describe the landscape within which our work is located. Following this, Parts II, III, and IV use different lenses to provide coherent accounts related to the three purposes of the book. Each part begins with a short introduction designed to provide enough background information that readers may choose to explore one part more than another, or the parts in any order. Further, each part, except this one, ends with our conclusions about and implications of the research. In each chapter, we situate our research within the broader literature, but do not consistently cite all relevant research as we do in our published papers. As you read the different parts, you will notice some redundancy in our explanations and descriptions. We have done this for two reasons: one, we wanted to provide enough details so that a reader would not have to regularly check the index or seek out other chapters; two, we recognized that individuals might choose to read the book in an order other than beginning to end.

Part II Conceptual Contributions to Understanding Identity

This part consists of two chapters. Chapter 3 describes how the research has led to the particular construction of identity-trajectory, which is attentive to individual agency, the continuity of experience, the influences of the past on the present and the future, and situates work within the personal. We describe the various elements of identity-trajectory, and how they collectively offer a robust way of examining an individual’s experience through an identity lens. Chapter 4 explores our understanding of the relation between structural issues (e.g. institutional policy) and agency in light of our research and what this might mean for future research.

Part III Empirically-Based Insights into Academic and Non-academic Work

This part brings together important overall findings as regards making sense of early career work experience and raises important questions about the future of academic and non-academic work choices. Its starting point is what has emerged from our own work, but situated within related findings from others’ research. Each chapter addresses the experiences of those who took up different roles, the nature of their work, and their hopes for future careers. In Chap. 5, we examine the experience of those who were post-PhD researchers, attending particularly to their challenges in seeking research-teaching positions. In Chap. 6, we look at those who opted for teaching-only positions, and what this meant for their careers. In Chap. 7, we address the experiences of those individuals who achieved the hoped-for research-teaching position and how they managed the expanded responsibilities to teach, research, and provide service. Lastly, in Chap. 8, we look in some detail at the experiences of those who took up alternate careers both in and outside the academy—what exactly they did, how they felt their PhD was relevant to their work, and what they imagined for their futures.

Part IV Methodological Creativity and Transparency

This part, which consists of three chapters, recounts how our methodological approach evolved. We pay particular attention to making our process transparent. We knew early on that we wanted to investigate individual day-to-day experience longitudinally, but there were few models to guide us. We set about crafting diverse data collection methods that would preserve confidentiality but allow storied details to be brought forward. We improved upon these methods as we learned more and understood the process better.

Chapter 9 explains the growing use of narrative as a methodological approach in the soci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Part I
• 2. Part II
• 3. Part III
• 4. Part IV
• Backmatter