Support for new career academics: an integrated model for research intensive university business and management schools

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the general and discipline specific support needed by academics new to the profession. The paper takes a social process approach to the examination of the experiences of new academics. The approach taken is, therefore, qualitative in nature and centres around a series of semistructured interviews carried out with new academics and senior managers in two research intensive business schools in the UK. The research suggests that there are four crucial dimensions to successful career support for new academics: managing expectations, career management, mentoring and professional development. Whilst it is important to offer good practice in each of these dimensions, the paper argues that it is the relationship between them which determines the quality of career support offered. The paper offers a number of original insights into this issue and contributes to both the literature on career support for new academics and to practice with a conceptual model which may have applicability across a number of different settings.2

Mentoría pedagógica para profesorado universitario novel: estado de la cuestión y análisis de buenas prácticas

“…Otros autores consideran la mentoría como un factor clave para el éxito de los estudiantes de doctorado (Holley y Caldwell, 2012;Linden, Ohlin y Brodin, 2013;Lunsford, 2012) y para la carrera de nuevos académicos (Adcroft y Taylor, 2013;Weijden, Belder, Arensbergen y Besselaar, 2015;Baiduc, Linsenmeier y Ruggeri, 2016). En el caso de las experiencias de mentoría con profesores jóvenes, se destaca el hecho de que los benefi cios son también para los profesores con más experiencia (Yun, Baldi y Sorcinelli, 2016).…”

Sink or swim?: Learning from stories of becoming academics within a transforming university terrain

“…These tensions, coupled with an absence of requisite coping strategies, can result in heightened feelings of insecurity, anxiety and unworthiness among early-career academics (Adcroft and Taylor 2013;Archer 2008;Foote 2010).…”

“…A second tension, identified by Adcroft and Taylor (2013), is between visible and invisible rules that operate in academia. For example, Sternberg (2014) emphasises that academic performance should be judged on a combination of scholarship, teaching and service (to institution and profession).…”

“…Academic work is characterised by multiple tensions through which new academics must navigate their way (Adcroft and Taylor 2013). One such tension is that of the competing demands placed on early-career academics' time and resources by research, teaching, community engagement and administration (Price, Coffey and Nethery 2014).…”

“…If, as Adcroft and Taylor (2013, 838) found, the 'success or otherwise of the professional and personal support offered to new academics [is] primarily determined by the human relationships involved', then it is vital that universities and national higher education bodies pay specific attention to facilitating the growth of collegial relationships as an intrinsic part of developing transformative institutional and interinstitutional cultures. Prerequisites for this include time and recognition for formal and informal mentoring of early-career academics by senior colleagues; time and backing for early-career academics to initiate and sustain peer support groups; and time and funding for new academics to build more extensive networks by attending inter-institutional and international professional meetings (Adcroft and Taylor 2013;Cox 2011;Foote 2010).…”