International mobility for early career academics: does it help or hinder career formation in Japanese studies?

Abstract

Career formation in professional occupations is heavily influenced by national institutional contexts. In common with many professions, however, in academia international exposure is attractive to employers and valued by employees. This national-international dualism presents early career academics (ECAs) with potentially contradictory challenges in navigating their career development. Drawing on multidisciplinary approaches we researched international mobility in academic career formation. We designed a rigorous five-stage mixed methods quantitative and qualitative methodology to question whether a lengthy early career sojourn in Japan assists British-trained scholars in pursuing an academic career in Japanese studies in the UK. Further, we ask whether and why a lengthy sojourn might hinder academic career formation. Although we researched experiences in Japanese studies, our research is relevant to any discipline where significant periods are spent overseas. We found that early career international mobility caused scholars to experience significant challenges of distanciation and socialisation in navigating their imagined career paths, including the potential to become marooned in Japan. Fortunately, our informants are adaptive in the best use of their circumstances and decisions. We conclude with a brief discussion of theoretical implications and provide advice for ECAs in managing international career transitions.

Keywords:

• career formation
• career development
• Japanese studies
• international mobility
• Early Career Academics

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the British Association for Japanese Studies for generous funding that made this research possible. More information on membership of the Association, its conferences, funding, and other opportunities can be found here: https://www.bajs.org.uk/. In addition, we sincerely thank all our respondents and informants for sharing their time, knowledge, experience and insight.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Here ‘career development’ refers to progression within organisations and occupations, and ‘career formation’ includes the acquisition of knowledge, skills, competencies, accomplishments, and the attainment of work and life goals.

2 The term ECR, as an acronym for Early Career Researcher, is most commonly used in the UK to describe academics at the start of their career. The term itself is contested and mutable, according to differing institutional definitions, whether the period of the PhD is included, as well as individuals’ experiences and circumstances (Bosanquet et al. 2017). We use the acronym ECA, in recognition that the job of an academic in the UK includes core tasks other than research, such as teaching, administrative and citizenship contributions.

3 Examples include the Bologna Process for the creation of a ‘European higher education research area’ (https://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/higher-education/bologna-process-and-european-higher-education-area_en); or the RecoLATIN project for ‘increasing the quality of vertical and horizontal mobility within the Latin American and European higher education systems’ (http://www.recolatin.eu/).

4 Former Times Higher Education World University Rankings editor, Phil Baty is THE’s Chief Knowledge Officer, and considered one of the world’s 15 ‘most influential in education’. See: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/content/phil-baty.

5 See the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings) and the QS World University Rankings (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2019).

6 See the Russell Group website at: https://russellgroup.ac.uk/.

7 These numbers refer to the country in which the interviews took place.

8 In Japan this included one year as an English conversation teacher (1987–1988), two years as an Assistant Language Teacher on the JET Programme (http://jetprogramme.org/en/) (1989–1991), and two years in Tokyo working as a JET Programme Coordinator at CLAIR (http://www.clair.or.jp/e/) (1991–1993).

9 See Kamada (2007) for a discussion of the limitations of Japanese kiyo journals in the humanities and social sciences.

10 The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme is a Japanese government sponsored initiative that brings university graduates to Japan to engage in grass-roots international exchange, language education, and sports. Currently participants come from 40 countries. The programme began in 1987 with four countries participating, including the UK. JET was a merger and expansion of two previous programmes, the Monbusho English Fellows Programme (MEF) and the British English Teachers Scheme (BET), which began in 1977 and 1978 respectively, and brought US and British graduates to Japan to teach English in Japanese schools.

11 Boliver (2015) found four distinct institutional tiers in her cluster analysis of UK universities: Tier 1 = Oxbridge (n = 2); Tier 2 = 22 Russell Group institutions + 17 Old universities (n = 39); Tier 3 = 13 Old universities + 54 New universities (n = 67); Tier 4 = 19 New universities (n = 19). We interviewed informants from Tiers 1, 2 and 3.

12 See Rausch (2019) for a more detailed description and analysis.

13 The Japan branch of the British Association for Japanese Studies. See: https://www.bajs.org.uk/.

14 The REF is a quality audit of the UK research base performed every six or seven years to provide accountability and benchmarking to inform the selective allocation of research funding. Information on can be found here for REF2014: https://www.ref.ac.uk/2014/ and REF2021: https://www.ref.ac.uk/.

15 See the DIJ website at: https://www.dijtokyo.org/, and the IUC website at: https://web.stanford.edu/dept/IUC/cgi-bin/index.php.

16 Times Higher Education: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/; Chronicle of Higher Education: https://www.chronicle.com/.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS).

Notes on contributors

Peter Matanle

Peter Matanle is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Research and Innovation, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. Email: [email protected].

Euan McIntosh

Euan McIntosh, BA (Hons.) in Japanese Studies, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. E-mail: [email protected]