Foreign early career academics’ well-being profiles at workplaces in Japan: a person-oriented approach

Abstract

The well-being of foreign early career academics (FECAs) has been the subject of research attention in relation to present demanding academic milieux in general and to those unfamiliar workplace settings in particular. A traditional variable-oriented approach that focuses on mean scores can easily gloss over the diverse nature of the group under study. Our study, conducted in Japan, took a person-oriented approach and identified FECAs’ distinct well-being profiles and the associations of their personal attributes with the profiles. Most (64%) were classified as having the highest stress scores and moderate scores for sense of belonging, control of workload and career development engagement. The second-largest profile (29%) included FECAs characterised by the lowest stress score and a strong sense of belonging, control of workload and career development engagement. Those in the smallest profile (8%), who had moderate levels of workload control and stress, lacked a sufficient sense of belonging and career development engagement. Among FECAs’ personal attributes, contract type was significantly associated with their distribution across the three well-being profiles, whereas no attributes of FECAs’ unique nature significantly pertained to their distribution. Our results suggested that support for well-being may be important regardless of background. Our investigation, using multifaceted well-being subscales over a composite scale, offers analytical, strategic support for academics in globalised higher education.

Tokenized but remaining: how do international academics make sense of their decision to remain in Japanese universities?

“…The study examines the sensemaking of international academics in terms of their decisions to remain at their affiliations despite perceptual unaccommodating host environments and perceptions of being tokenized. While scholarly attention has persistently focused on the typology of international academics in Japan, including their demographics, work roles (Huang, 2018b), integration (Brotherhood et al, 2020), and well-being (Sakurai & Mason, 2022), this study addresses a crucial aspect of internationalization by recognizing the indispensable role of retaining minority academics (Chun & Evans, 2009). Thus, the study proposes a significant framework for advancing institutional internationalization in Japan based on the retention of international academics.…”

“…Parrish et al (2022) identified the major factors that influence the satisfaction of English instructors with Japanese universities by conducting a national survey on perceived respect, autonomy, departmental relationship, and work-life balance. Additionally, Sakurai and Mason (2022) characterized international academics under three categories according to their well-being in Japan based on scores for stress and sense of belonging. Surprisingly, only Chen and Chen (2023) specifically addressed the career plans of international academics.…”

An autoethnography of internationalisation: ethical dilemmas in Japanese academe

“…19 The ambiguity of my status was aggravated by the fact that there are no signals on the Tōdai track to tenure. JNUs are often indifferent to the ethno-national make up of scholars, too, with young foreign faculty on fixed term contracts equally bereft of "belonging" (Sakurai & Mason, 2023). Such insecurity is a neoliberal technique of control, with universities the unashamed pioneers of the precarious gig economy.…”

Mixed methods study on foreign early career academics' sense of knowledge and intellectual development

“…We considered these measures suitable for academic communities (content validity), and studies have indicated the survey's psychometric adequacy in the HEI context (e.g. Pace et al, 2019; Sakurai & Mason, 2022).…”

“…Have you felt this kind of stress recently?’ (1 = not at all to 9 = very much ) (Elo et al, 2003). Studies have validated this measure in various occupational settings (Elo et al, 2003) including HEIs (Opstrup & Pihl‐Thingvad, 2016; Sakurai & Mason, 2022).…”