Lived Experiences of Mothering and Teaching during the Pandemic: A Narrative Inquiry on College Faculty Mothers in the Philippines

How do academic mothers navigate their embodied selves in a disembodied academic life? More particularly, how do mothers in Philippine Higher Education balance the demands of mothering and teaching during the pandemic? This qualitative study used a narrative inquiry approach involving in-depth interviews with academic mothers from various faculties and ranks at some Philippine Higher Education Institutions. This approach explored the complex and often contradictory discourses surrounding the tension between the polarizing models of the ideal caring mother and ideal academic, trying to excel in both roles during the pandemic. The research began with an overview by way of a literature review of the pre-pandemic mother academics. It then reflected on eight mother college professors who balanced their careers with childcare, some with adult care, as this pandemic amplified deeply ingrained traditional social norms that perpetuate social inequities. Finally, it concluded that the two domains—academy and family—remained inhospitable to professing mothers in the Philippines. This study proposed that care work should be valorized, work–family narratives normalized and mainstreamed, and public and educational policies that support mothering and teaching rethought.

Preprinting is positively associated with early career researcher status in ecology and evolution

The usage of preprint servers in ecology and evolution is increasing, allowing research to be rapidly disseminated and available through open access at no cost. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) often have limited experience with the peer review process, which can be challenging when trying to build publication records and demonstrate research ability for funding opportunities, scholarships, grants, or faculty positions. ECRs face different challenges relative to researchers with permanent positions and established research programs. These challenges might also vary according to institution size and country, which are factors associated with the availability of funding for open access journals. We predicted that the career stage and institution size impact the relative usage of preprint servers among researchers in ecology and evolution. Using data collected from 500 articles (100 from each of two open access journals, two closed access journals, and a preprint server), we showed that ECRs generated more preprints relative to non-ECRs, for both first and last authors. We speculate that this pattern is reflective of the advantages of quick and open access research that is disproportionately beneficial to ECRs. There is also a marginal association between first author, institution size, and preprint usage, whereby the number of preprints tends to increase with institution size for ECRs. The United States and United Kingdom contributed the greatest number of preprints by ECRs, whereas non-Western countries contributed relatively fewer preprints. This empirical evidence that preprint usage varies with the career stage, institution size, and country helps to identify barriers surrounding large-scale adoption of preprinting in ecology and evolution.

Mentor and peer support for early career researchers sharing research with academia and beyond

There is a growing expectation that doctoral candidates and early career academics publish research outputs such as journal articles and conference papers, and that they share their findings with key stakeholders beyond academia. However, it is not known if these expectations are being coupled with support from mentors and peers within institutions. Through interviews with recent PhD graduates working as early career researchers in Australia and Japan, this paper investigates if mentor and peer support for producing both academic and translational outputs was forthcoming during their doctoral candidature and beyond. It also investigates kinds of supports provided in doctoral candidature and early career. Thirty early career researchers in Australia and Japan took part in this qualitative study involving in-depth semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of respondents. Researchers made translation support available for Japanese respondents so that those with limited English could take part. Findings suggest that mentor and peer support were not universal, and some respondents did not have a mentor or significant peer influence supporting their production of academic or translational research outputs. Support for sharing research with audiences beyond academia could be limited, with production of outputs for academic audiences consistently a greater focus of support. There were no mentoring supports for translational outputs that had salience across Australia and Japan within the sample. While limited attention has been given to the role that peer influence may play in supporting research output production of early career researchers the more even power relationship between peers as opposed to the peer-/mentor dyad can allow unique supports to flourish. Where institutions expect growing and diverse research output production by doctoral candidates and early career researchers, they should also ensure that support is provided through facilitating mentoring and peer relationships.

Should Google Scholar be used for benchmarking against the professoriate in education?

In the neoliberal environment of contemporary academia, an individual’s research rankings and outputs can shape their career security and progression. When applying for ongoing employment and promotional opportunities, academics may benchmark their performance against that of superior colleagues to demonstrate their performance in relation to their discipline. The H-index and citation rates are commonly used to quantify the value of an academic’s work, and they can be used comparatively for benchmarking purposes. The focus of this paper is to critically consider if Google Scholar be used for benchmarking against the professoriate in education, by weighting up issues of data reliability and participation. The Google Scholar profiles of full professors at top ranked universities in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America are analysed to explore how widespread Google Scholar use is in the education professoriate. Quartiles of impact are established in relation to H-index, with exploration of how gender is distributed across these quartiles. Limitations of using Google Scholar data are highlighted through a taxonomy of quality confounders, and the utility of Google Scholar as a legitimate tool for benchmarking against the professoriate in education is strongly challenged. As metrics continue to rise in their importance for academics’ job security and promotional prospects, reliance on metrics of dubious quality and uneven participation must be questioned.