Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education 3031411250, 9783031411250

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Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education Mark Sterling Lia Blaj-Ward Rosalind Simpson Karin Crawford

Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education “For conceptual analysis, practical guidelines and comprehensive references, I would recommend this book to any university which has realised that its role in society should be reflected in its policies for academic career development.” —Professor Chris Brink, Emeritus Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University, UK, and author of The Soul of a University “This book is a gift to modern academics and modern universities. Carefully researched, thoughtful, and progressive, Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education provides us with strong, nuanced guidance around how to recognise and build the kind of academic work we need to move universities forward. I predict this book will have a significant, positive, and very welcome effect on the culture of universities.” —Professor Susan Rowland, Vice-Provost, University of Sydney, Australia “A thoroughly researched work exploring the next horizon in academic careers. Readers will gain useful perspectives from careful discussions on emerging researchfocussed, education-focussed, and entrepreneurial roles, and how these can benefit individuals and institutions. Most helpfully, the book clearly frames practical principles on how to elevate these specialist roles, which often already exist under the radar, to new opportunities that will undoubtedly end up being celebrated in universities across the world.” —Professor Merlin Crossley, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic Quality, UNSW, Sydney, Australia “Sterling et al.’s volume offers us an insightful examination into the significant contribution that academic career frameworks make to institutional agility and to the evolving role of higher education in society. In the face of constant change and global challenges, 21st century higher education institutions need experts in curriculum, pedagogy, professional practice, entrepreneurship, public engagement and knowledge exchange alongside their research stars. And to grow and retain these experts, the sector needs robust criteria that enable progression to the highest levels in roles with different areas of focus, but which align to institutional goals, for example with regards to student experience, and graduate outcomes, and

to broader mission. In addressing academic career frameworks, Sterling et al. prompt us to look beyond our traditional role boundaries and to see career pathways as tools for capacity building and for greater diversity. It is good timing for such a volume.” —Professor Sarah Speight, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience, University of Nottingham, UK “A timely, considered and necessary contribution for higher education institutional leaders and aspiring senior managers. With consensus around the need to recognise a broader spectrum of talents within universities and the multidimensional nature of academic careers, this volume articulates how academic career frameworks can be utilised to create more inclusive and effective working environments. The volume is, refreshingly, written from a perspective of hope. I highly commend this volume and endorse its encouragement of higher education institutions to invest in redesigning their academic career frameworks.” —Dr Paul Roberts, Director, CollaborateHE Ltd, UK

Mark Sterling Lia Blaj-­Ward • Rosalind Simpson Karin Crawford

Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education

Mark Sterling University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK

Lia Blaj-Ward Nottingham Trent University Nottingham, UK

Rosalind Simpson The Girls’ Day School Trust London, UK

Karin Crawford Lincoln Academy of Learning and Teaching University of Lincoln Lincoln, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-41125-0    ISBN 978-3-031-41126-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 1.1 Setting the Scene for the Redesign of Academic Career Frameworks  1 1.2 Career Framework Redesign in Global Higher Education  5 1.3 A Note About Universities  7 1.4 A Note About Academic Development in the Context of This Volume 10 1.5 Chapter-by-Chapter Overview 12 References 16 2 Academic  Roles, Identities, and Career Frameworks 21 2.1 Academic Roles 21 2.2 Academic Identities 26 2.3 Academic Career Frameworks 31 2.3.1 Our Approach to Analysing Frameworks 31 2.3.2 Insights We Gained About New Pathways 34 References 38 3 Career  Frameworks and Development: The Individual Perspective 43 3.1 The Benefits of Redesigned Pathways for Academics, Students, and Other Stakeholders 43 3.2 Job Crafting and Alignment to New Pathways 49 3.3 Vignettes of Individual Journeys 51 v

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Contents

3.4 Broader Themes and Challenges to Consider 60 3.5 A Note on Collegiality, Collaboration, and Academic Citizenship 64 References 66 4 New  Pathways in Redesigned Academic Career Frameworks 73 4.1 Opening Note 73 4.2 Education-Focused Pathways: Unpacking Expectations and Supporting Development 74 4.2.1 Teaching Expertise and Excellence 74 4.2.2 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 80 4.3 Pathways Related to Practice, Enterprise, Public Engagement, and Knowledge Exchange: Unpacking Expectations and Supporting Development 84 4.3.1 Dual Professionals and the Student Academic Experience 84 4.3.2 Enterprise, Public Engagement, and Knowledge Exchange in Academic Career Frameworks 88 4.4 A Note About Paths That Cross 92 References 93 5 Career  Frameworks and Development: The Institutional Context101 5.1 The Benefits of Redesigned Pathways for Institutions101 5.2 Broader Questions and Challenges to Consider103 5.2.1 Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion103 5.2.2 Mainstays of Academic Professional Development in Universities108 5.3 A Note on Collegiate, Collaborative Institutional Cultures119 References121 6 Guidelines  for Pathway Redesign and Implementation129 6.1 Principles for Academic Career Framework Redesign129 6.2 Implementing New Pathways: Senior Sponsors, Decision-Making Panels, and HR Processes141 6.2.1 Senior Sponsorship of Career Frameworks141 6.2.2 Decision-Making Panels for Academic Promotions143

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6.2.3 The Role of HR Professionals in Career Framework Redesign146 6.3 A Note About Frameworks as Ongoing Projects149 References150 7 Provisional  Wrap-Up and an Invitation to Continue the Academic Pathways Conversation155 7.1 Opening Note155 7.2 Academic Career Pathways in Transnational Education Contexts159 7.3 Evaluating the Impact of Redesigned Academic Career Frameworks162 7.4 Impact Illustrations167 7.5 A Note About the Future170 References174 Index179

Abbreviations

AI APA CATE CPD DORA EDI EIA ERA EUA GUNi HEA HESA

Artificial Intelligence Academic Professional Apprenticeship Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence Continuing professional development Declaration on Research Assessment (San Francisco) Equality, diversity, and inclusion Equality impact assessment Excellence in Research for Australia European Universities Association Global University Network for innovation Higher Education Academy (now part of Advance HE) Higher Education Statistics Agency (merged with Jisc in 2022) HR Human resource IfATE Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education Jisc (formerly JISC, Joint Information Systems Committee) KEF Knowledge Exchange Framework LERU League of European Research Universities NTFS National Teaching Fellowship Scheme OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PBRF Performance-Based Research Fund RAE Royal Academy of Engineering REC Race Equality Charter REF Research Excellence Framework SoTL Scholarship of teaching and learning STEM Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

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ABBREVIATIONS

ST(R)E(A)M Science, technology, reading and writing, engineering, art and mathematics TEF Teaching Excellence Framework THE Times Higher Education TNE Transnational education UCEA Universities and Colleges Employers Association UK United Kingdom UKPSF UK Professional Standards Framework (revised in 2023, currently PSF to highlight global relevance) UN United Nations US United States VSNU Vereniging van Samenwerkende Nederlandse Universiteiten (since 2021, Universiteiten van Nederland, UNL)

List of Tables

Table 6.1 Table 7.1

Principles for academic career framework redesign Broader evaluation questions for redesigned academic career frameworks and the assumptions that underpin the questions

131 166

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About the Authors

Mark  Sterling is Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Staffing) and Beale Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham. He has over 25  years of experience in Higher Education and has held several senior leadership positions during that time. He led the redevelopment of the academic career framework at the University of Birmingham which pioneered a new approach to promotions, career development, and career pathways within the Higher Education sector. He is also an external accreditor on behalf of the Joint Board of Moderators—an organization which professionally accredits Civil, Structural, and Transportation Engineering degrees on behalf of five professional bodies. He undertakes multidisciplinary research in Wind Engineering and teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Lia Blaj-Ward  is an Associate Professor on the Teaching and Scholarship pathway at Nottingham Trent University. She co-chairs the recently set-up network for Teaching and Scholarship Associate Professors and Professors at her university. She is an Advance HE Aurora mentor, as well as a mentor and assessor for Nottingham Trent’s in-house Advance HE professional recognition scheme, supporting the professional development of colleagues involved in learning and teaching in a variety of roles. Outside Nottingham Trent, Lia is currently serving a second term as an Associate Editor for the Higher Education Research and Development Journal and is Chair (2022-2025) of the BALEAP course accreditation scheme. Lia is the author of three Palgrave volumes: Academic Literacies Provision for International Students: Evaluating Impact and Quality (Palgrave Pivot, xiii

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2022), Language Learning and Use in English-Medium Higher Education (Palgrave Pivot, 2017), and Researching Contexts, Practices and Pedagogies in English for Academic Purposes (Palgrave, 2014). Rosalind  Simpson  has held a number of higher education roles connected to organisational development, people performance and talent management. She is currently Director of People at The Girls’ Day School Trust, the UK’s leading family of 25 independent girls’ schools including two academies. Prior to this, Rosalind was Director of Human Resources at the University of Lincoln, where she was also the designated Senior Leadership Champion for Carers and Parents. She holds an MSc in Personal, Executive and Corporate Coaching from the same university and has extensive experience coaching at senior executive level. She also has experience as Chair of the Midlands Staff Development Partnership and has been co-investigator and co-author on a number of projects funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and the Higher Education Academy (now part of Advance HE), focusing on academic leadership, career progression, and staff transition. Karin  Crawford  is a Senior Lecturer with the Lincoln Academy of Learning and Teaching (LALT). Karin works part-time, teaching and supporting learning and development across the LALT provision, including the Academic Professional Apprenticeship (APA), Post-graduate Certificate in Higher Education, and the Higher Education Academy Recognition Scheme (HEAR). Prior to moving to work part-time, Karin was the inaugural Head of the Lincoln Higher Education Research Institute at the University of Lincoln. Karin has extensive experience in teaching, research, leadership, and management in higher education. Over her teaching career, Karin has supported undergraduate and postgraduate students, full-time, part-time, work-based and online, distance learners. Karin has also undertaken a range of research, both in education and in health and social care, which was Karin’s discipline earlier in her career. Karin has authored and co-­authored a number of books, many of which are now published in their second or third editions. Her publication record also includes a range of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters that report on Karin’s research work.

Acknowledgements

All authors are very grateful to the Palgrave editorial team for their support throughout the publishing process. The anonymous reviewers of the book proposal are also due thanks for their kind and thorough comments, all of which we have considered carefully and integrated in some form or another into our discussion of academic career frameworks. We are also very grateful to the endorsers of this volume, who took the time to read our final draft and offer thoughtful and thought-provoking comments, as well as reassurance about the direction of travel we map out in our book. Mark Sterling would specifically like to thank Gillian McGrattan, Louise Kindon, and Lora Morris for their support in helping to shape the Birmingham Academic Career Framework. Their collective expertise and well-timed challenges not only improved the framework, but also kept him on his toes! Lia Blaj-Ward, Rosalind Simpson, and Karin Crawford would specifically like to thank Mark Sterling for setting the book project in motion and for his unerring commitment to its success, at every single stage of the writing and publishing process. Mark’s championing of academic career frameworks that benefit everyone who is connected with a university is commendable, as is his support of colleagues to flourish on all academic career pathways, in ways that align with the mission and aspirations of a university.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1   Setting the Scene for the Redesign of Academic Career Frameworks The degree to which universities are embedded in society has changed considerably over the last decade or so. Across the world, universities’ civic relevance and mission have become more salient, either through an increased portfolio of activity in local and regional communities or through increased visibility of already existing social, cultural, or economic partnerships. The OECD (2019a) offers details about the global policy context for university-industry connections, while a number of studies explore universities’ contributions to society from a variety of angles in a variety of national contexts (e.g., Boughey & McKenna, 2021; Goddard, 2018; Grant, 2021; Lo et  al., 2017; Locatelli & Marginson, 2023; UPP Foundation, 2019). The last decade or so has also brought changes to the ways universities are required to evidence the value of their work to various stakeholders. In the United Kingdom, the context where the authors of the volume are based, the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and its two more recent counterparts for teaching (TEF) and knowledge exchange (KEF) evaluate the contribution of higher education and focus the energy and resources universities expend on student-facing and society-­relevant activity. Other circumstances have added to the scope, degree, and impact of change in UK universities—among these, the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Sterling et al., Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7_1

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planned launch of the UK Graduate Outcomes Survey in 2018 to ‘gain insight into whether the student experience delivered what was promised […], from a learning and potential employment perspective’ (Graduate Outcomes, n.d.), welcomed by some but viewed as problematic by others, the unexpected arrival of a global pandemic a year or so later and long-awaited government recommendations on university student finance. More sector transformation is expected moving forward, in the United Kingdom and globally, driven by automation, demographic changes, broader economic forces, political unrest, government legislation and policies, the long shadow of Covid-19, as well as by a deeper awareness of how the resource of knowledge is replenished and exchanged for sustainable societal development (see the quintuple helix model put forward by Carayannis et al., 2012). Agility will be key for the global higher education sector to develop and respond appropriately to challenges going deeper into the twenty-first century. The walls around learning and teaching environments, whether physical or digital, on campus or elsewhere, need to flexibly glide to make space for known and not-yet-identified needs arising from the accelerating pace of change in society. To enable such experiences for their students and external stakeholders, agile universities employ talented people and create opportunities for them to thrive within supportive systems. They demonstrate a genuine commitment to learning to benefit everyone (Buller, 2014; Sarrico et al., 2022; Winter, 2017). They respond to the need to regularly review and adapt both what is learnt and how the learning is carried out (Crowley & Overton, 2021; Senge, 2006). This is reflected in the new academic career frameworks that a number of higher education institutions in various parts of the world have recently introduced to recognise more fully the rich variety of professional knowledge and experiences that academics draw on to facilitate high-quality, world-­ relevant student learning and to deliver on complementary institutional agendas (Crosier, 2017; EUA, 2021; Frølich et  al., 2018; Locke et  al., 2016; OECD, 2020; RAE, 2018; Saenen et  al., 2021; Whitchurch & Gordon, 2017). While pockets of good practice exist, career framework redevelopment has been uneven across the globe, with insufficient comparative data and limited guidance on framework redesign and implementation. Valuable progress risks being undone as a result of tensions between well-intended but insufficiently scaffolded framework implementation and individual academics’ experiences of change.

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In institutions that have embraced academic career framework redesign, traditional teaching-and-research academic roles now sit alongside ones which place education and learning-focused scholarship centre stage (e.g., Smith & Walker, 2021, 2022), or which overtly value professional practice from other sectors, enterprise, public engagement, and knowledge exchange (GuildHE, 2018, 2019). The redesigned frameworks are due to multiple reasons which include but extend beyond external drivers such as research excellence assessments, government policy, and the perceived need for financial and social accountability (Baker, 2019; Lock, 2022; Wolf & Jenkins, 2021). They support universities’ civic-oriented mission and foreground the need to rethink the education offer so that it better prepares students for an unpredictable future, resulting in a positive experience for all—students, academics, and other stakeholders in universities and in local and global communities (Bradley, 2021; Graham, 2022; Grove, 2018). They reflect how the traditional categories of ‘research’, ‘learning’, and ‘public engagement’ have become more fluid and nuanced (Scott et al., 2017). New pathways (education-focused or practice/entrepreneurship ones) are also intended to create greater parity of esteem and more balanced allocation of resources for various strands of academic activity. They help address tensions between agendas that prioritise global research and ranking and activities that benefit local communities. They help retain talent in universities (UCEA, 2019), offering systemic solutions rather than short-term fixes to staffing costs incurred through staff turnover prompted by reward opportunities which no longer match growing expertise (Buller, 2021; Universities UK, 2015). They help universities fulfil their role as educators, knowledge co-creators, contributors to policy and strategy development, catalysts for economic growth, and promoters of cultural wellbeing in  local, regional, national, and global contexts. The present volume spotlights new academic career pathways (education-­focused and practice/entrepreneurship ones) which sit alongside traditional teaching-and-research ones and enable progression based on differentiated strengths, placing education at the centre and recognising more fully the value that professionals from other sectors and from industry bring into universities when they take on academic roles. It seeks to develop understanding of how these new pathways respond to the triple mission of universities (education, research, and societal engagement). It offers a context in which collaboration and dialogue about academic work, roles, identity, and professional growth can occur. The word ‘pathway’ is

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used in the volume to reflect the substantive academic activities which are undertaken in addition to or instead of discipline research and which open up opportunities for progression for a broader range of academics with a broader range of expertise. New pathways are laid out in redesigned academic career frameworks, with detail about how recognition can be achieved along each. The volume situates pathway redesign in relevant scholarly literature and reports of higher education practice and unpacks how these pathways are (likely to be) experienced by academics to ensure that redesigned frameworks achieve their intended impact, supporting academic work to flourish for the benefit of all stakeholders in and of a university. It carefully considers organisational constraints around pathway redesign so that the implementation process runs smoothly and leads to positive outcomes for all involved. As well as discussing the balance of academic activities on pathways and how to build a relevant development offer, the volume considers ways in which equality characteristics and life circumstances intersect to enable or hinder positioning on a pathway. Discussion throughout the volume culminates in 12 principles for the redesign of academic career frameworks in Chap. 6. The principles build on key parameters for constructive conversations about alignment to new pathways, highlighted throughout the volume both from the point of view of individuals at different stages in their careers and from the point of view of institutions. They are accompanied by guidance on how to implement new pathways and on ways to rethink the development offer (within an institution as well as signposted externally) so that the new pathways bed in and fully achieve the purpose for which they were designed. While the volume does not focus on pathways with a traditional teaching-and-­ research focus that would align to the REF in the United Kingdom, it highlights research areas where academics with an education-focused or practice/entrepreneurship remit can make a valuable contribution to REF-aligned academic work. The volume draws on the authors’ combined experience, in UK universities with different histories but a shared civic commitment, of redesigned academic career frameworks. It brings together four different but complementary perspectives: leading the redesign process in an institution, experiencing promotion on a new pathway, overseeing career framework design and implementation from a human resource (HR) vantage point, and supporting academics’ development with regard to facilitating student learning. It builds on an initial conversation about new pathways (Sterling & Blaj-Ward, 2022) and on an analysis of redesigned career frameworks in

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the UK context. It synthesises insights from theoretical, conceptual, and empirical literature in a range of different fields (e.g., higher education research, organisation and management studies, sociology) which have various methodologies and theoretical orientations. The volume speaks to the wider academic community, to senior decision-­makers in institutions, as well as to individuals seeking to achieve enhanced positioning on a pathway. The standpoint from which it is written subscribes to Sarrico et  al.’s (2022) view that ‘The “good old days” about being an academic may be gone. But that must not mean that “good new days” about being an academic are not possible’ (p. 14). The volume shows how new pathways make ‘good new days’ possible, in a sustainable way, through suitably resourced collaboration among and parity of opportunity for academics on all pathways. It echoes Clegg’s (2008) optimistic view that ‘Rather than being under threat, it appears that identities in academia are expanding and proliferating, and that there are possibilities for valorising difference’ (p. 343).

1.2  Career Framework Redesign in Global Higher Education Pockets of good practice in rethinking academic career frameworks are beginning to take shape in the United Kingdom (Locke et  al., 2016; Marini et al., 2019; Whitchurch & Gordon, 2017) and across the world (GUNi, 2017; Helms, 2015; OECD, 2019b; Overlaet, 2022; Saenen et  al., 2021), both in higher education systems where regulations are defined at state level and university staff are civil servants, and in ones where higher education institutions have fuller scope to shape the nature of academic roles and to develop human resource management policies and practice. There is widespread agreement about the relevance of new pathways, yet the design and implementation processes are being held back by the complexity of the task and by a lack of comparative evidence. As emphasised in an OECD (2019b) report, OECD member countries would greatly benefit from access to comparative data that would enable them to ‘benchmark their policy choices to others, assess what is feasible, and foster deeper and more productive peer-learning discussions’. Some comparative evidence is available in Frølich et  al. (2018), who look at the Norwegian academic career landscape alongside that of six other countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria,

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and the United Kingdom) and lay out the differences between national systems. The United Kingdom is highlighted in the report as an outlier in terms of allowing substantial variation within and across institutions, as well as a greater degree of autonomy for institutions to develop their own frameworks. Too much variety, however, has the potential to impact negatively on the international mobility of academics. Frølich et al. (2018) also note that ‘[a]cademic career systems are not static, they are continually discussed, reformed, and changed in the various national contexts’ (p. 94). In the United Kingdom, most institutions have introduced changes to career frameworks since Frølich et  al.’s (2018) report was published. While some valuable work has gone into the redevelopment of academic career frameworks, this work is nowhere near finished. Some institutions have redesigned or rethought frameworks less successfully than others. As Locke et al. (2016) found in the United Kingdom, the lived experience of academics in some of the institutions they explored as part of their research flagged up ‘still many practical points to iron out in the application and implementation of policies around the promotion pathways’ (p. 23). In such cases, the design and implementation need to be rethought. The pathways need greater visibility, with benefits more clearly articulated and policies aligned more fully. They frequently require creating a richer and more complex development offer, which integrates various forms of provision within and outside universities. This is a piece of work that the higher education sector needs to engage in collaboratively across national borders. This is not to suggest that there should be a universally adopted framework, because variety is important for institutions to survive and thrive. Different universities will have different missions, and higher education systems operate within similar but not identical constraints. Collaboration and dialogue, however, are more likely to result in fine-­ tuned, carefully thought-out pathways that benefit academics and the institutions, pre-empting unhelpful idiosyncrasy in pathway structure and a lack of transparency in criteria. A degree of mobility across the sector nationally and internationally is beneficial both for individuals and for institutions. Peer review and calibration of academic judgment are fundamental to the success of the higher education sector: a shared view of standards for outputs and impact generated through scholarship and practice-­based activities helps establish rigour and credibility. A collaborative project to develop a mutually agreed framework for recognition and reward of academic work is underway at the time of writing this volume, involving research-intensive universities in the Netherlands, and building

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on a position paper (VSNU et al., 2019) with input from a range of official bodies in the Dutch higher education system. Importantly, changes to academic career frameworks need to be understood in the context of changes they respond to, as well as prompt within organisations. Siekkinen et al. (2022) note that ‘the functions of the university institution have remained rather the same, as the functions of the university organisations have changed under the external pressures’ (p. 418). It is not just academic frameworks that are being redesigned, other areas of the university are being realigned to ensure that universities continue to deliver effectively on their missions (Benner et al., 2022).

1.3   A Note About Universities Throughout the volume we refer to academic career frameworks in universities, though we appreciate that tertiary (or post-secondary) education is delivered in a broader variety of institutions, by academic staff on a variety of contracts with different terms and conditions and different levels of job security. Universities are not a homogenous category. University typologies indicate possible ways in which the triple mission (education, research, and societal engagement) is fully embraced or some aspects prioritised over others, and implicitly aspects of academic career frameworks that may need rebalancing in the redesign process. In the United Kingdom, where Universities UK counted 140 universities as members at the time of writing the volume, though the overall number of higher education providers exceeds this, categories include research-intensive institutions (Russell Group), ‘red brick’ universities with an explicit civic mission, ‘plate glass’ universities established between 1963 and 1992 to enable greater participation in higher education, post-1992 universities (former polytechnics), as well as higher education providers with firm links to industries and professions and affiliated to GuildHE. In Australian Higher Education, which is comparable in size to the United Kingdom, universities are members of the Group of 8 (research-intensive universities) or the Australian Technology Network (capital city universities with strong links to industry and community). There are additional universities in state capital cities, as well as regional universities with a main campus in a city or town other than the capital. The European Universities Association (EUA, n.d.), meanwhile, counts over 850 universities in 49 countries as members, with a variety of ways, across national systems, of classifying institutions according to their focus, priorities, and the impact they aim to

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achieve in their locality as well as on a national and global scale. A recent EUA policy document, Universities without Walls: A Vision for 2030 (EUA, 2021), sets out reforming academic careers as a priority for action. The EUA’s vision is that ‘All of Europe’s universities will be responsible, autonomous and free, with different institutional profiles, but united in their missions of learning and teaching, research, innovation and culture in service to society’ (p. 5). Globally, some national systems differentiate between universities which focus on undergraduate pre-professional education and ones which have the power to award doctoral degrees. The range of subjects taught may vary across universities. Aspiration to be part of an elite subsystem which ranks high in global league tables may drive some universities, whereas others may prioritise their national or local portfolio of activities. While diversity of institutional profiles is necessary for higher education to engage purposefully with anticipated as well as yet unknown societal challenges, and academic career frameworks will consequently vary, sharing good practice across institutions in Europe as well as globally will more likely support the realisation of this vision. Scholarly literature about universities aligns on a continuum of tone, from dark and dystopian to hopeful and transformative. Universities have been deemed to be ‘in ruins’ (Readings, 1996), ‘hollowed out’ (Cribb & Gewirtz, 2013), or ‘toxic’ (Smyth, 2017). Authors towards the hopeful end of the continuum, however, indicate that subversion could happen (Rolfe, 2012), that choice is possible (Barcan, 2013), that universities are responsible (Geschwind et al., 2019), that they go beyond a narrow focus on excellence and consider both what they are good at and what they are good for (Brink, 2018), that action can be taken to build ‘the good university’ (Connell, 2019), or that ‘generous thinking’ (Fitzpatrick, 2021) can assist this project. Our discussion of redesigned academic career frameworks acknowledges the challenges that neoliberal agendas have created for universities and society more broadly and ‘the importance and necessity of previous critiques of the neoliberal university’ (Hartung et  al., 2017, p. 43) as an institution that is ‘marketised, privatised, commercialised, franchised, corporatised, managerialised, vocationalised, technologised, surveilled and securitised, and increasingly individualised, infantilised and casualised’ (Kenway et al., 2014, p. 262). The intention and ambition driving our discussion of redesigned academic career frameworks, however, are to amplify Dwyer and Black’s (2021) call to ‘remain hopeful and focused on enacting changes, on reimagining the academy we want for ourselves, our

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colleagues and our students, and on building the kinds of communities of which we wish to be a part’ (p. 2). The recent developments in academic career frameworks discussed in the volume seem to subscribe to the view of a university put forward by Bourner et al. (2020): ‘an institution that is a good neighbour and an active citizen’ (p.  120). Bourner et  al. emphasise that the three missions of a university are interdependent. They express a strong preference for the phrase ‘advancement of knowledge’ instead of research, as this places more emphasis on co-creation and transfer, on ‘knowledge that enables students to make a difference’ (p. 52), and on outputs that are relevant to societal wellbeing and flourishing. The two other missions—education and contribution to society—are not subsumed within advancement of knowledge. They carry equal significance in order for universities to be fully functioning. Although some redesigned academic career pathways may appear to place one mission centre-stage, we argue in the present volume that an integrated view will lead to positive impact in relation to all missions. Integrated impact does not necessarily have to be achieved by an individual; teams of colleagues with complementary specialisms can work towards this. Collegiality, Henkel (2016) notes, has potential to lead to ‘collective academic responsibility and capacity to contribute to the good of the institution as a whole and, in so doing, strengthen academics’ sense of identity with it’ (p. 215). While new pathways carry the risk of identity loss for some academics, if appropriately engaged with, they can support new career aspirations and professional identities in the ‘new multiversities’ (Krücken et al., 2007) of the twenty-first century. For a number of years now, scholarly debate about the nature of academic work in universities, in a variety of national contexts, has explored the tension between professionalism and managerialism (Carvalho, 2017), the former understood as relying on expertise, peer review, and non-­ hierarchical decision-making, the latter critiqued, more often than not, for its overreliance on metrics and efficiencies. Insights from research by Kolsaker (2008) inform the discussion about academic work, identities, and career frameworks in this volume. Through a survey of 707 academics in English universities, Kolsaker explored the relationship between managerialism and professionalism in higher education. She found that experiences of ‘radical changes that have swept across the sector, such as staff restructuring, departmental closures, systematic audit, performance management and a proliferation of short-term contracts’ (p. 518), over which academics had little control, had not led to a completely negative

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perception of managerialism, performativity, and accountability. In contrast to literature about managerialism which highlighted ‘dissonance, disquiet and demoralisation’ (p.  523), respondents to Kolsaker’s survey recognised the potential of managerial practices to ‘maintain the professional status and position of academics in society’ (p. 522) through supporting ongoing professional development. In Finland, Tapanila et al. (2020) discuss the restructuring of the higher education in Finland prompted by the New Universities Act 2009 and note the difference in how tension between professionalism and managerialism plays out in different disciplinary contexts, with some being impacted more fully, reflecting ‘multiple and somewhat contradictory positionings towards the new management system’ (p. 120). A section heading in  van Houtum and van Uden’s (2022) ‘speaking out’ essay pithily captures the negative impacts of managerialism on academic life: ‘Excellent, out-of-the-box quality is programmed in standardised excel-boxed qualities’ (p. 199). Changes in the way universities are financed, van Houtum and van Uden note, have shifted focus from quality to quantity, have contributed to an erosion of academic freedom, and, paradoxically, are working to reduce the benefits that universities have for society as a whole. The ‘tyranny of metrics’ (Muller, 2018) has led to knowledge being disseminated in ways that pre-empt it being accessible to and useable by stakeholders and that fuel a distrust of scientific truth, turning universities into ‘a mere corporate factory of publications and diplomas’ (van Houtum & van Uden, 2022, p.  208). Through valuing a broader range of activity and applying evaluative criteria that are more sensitive to the purpose of academic work, redesigned career frameworks have potential to redress the balance.

1.4   A Note About Academic Development in the Context of This Volume Discussion throughout the volume is underpinned by a desire to enhance understanding of how academics can be supported to own and thrive in redesigned academic roles for the benefit of their students and other stakeholders across all stages of their career. Redesigned academic career pathways also create the need for a redesigned academic development offer. Central to the volume is the question of how the development offer in universities can be enriched, with various strands brought together and

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with various categories of developers working collaboratively with colleagues, students, and external partners to co-create an inclusive, transformative academic and professional learning experience that benefits all. Our volume subscribes to Sutherland’s (2018) call for development that engages with the whole of the academic role, the whole institution, and the whole person, acknowledging cross-over between organisational, educational, researcher, and learning development. It echoes Sutherland’s recognition that Academic staff starting university jobs in 2018 can expect, at different stages during their academic careers, to undertake the roles of teacher, researcher, administrator, manager, leader, entrepreneur, academic/community/corporate citizen, industry liaison, recruiter, fundraiser, and many more. (p. 267)

The volume synthesises insights and offers guidance to individuals and institutions on how to create a personally meaningful, locally relevant, and globally impactful development offer. A statement by Guccione and Hutchinson (2021) resonates with us: ‘institutions have a “memory” of collective knowledge and learned experiences which is valuable and should be retained’ (p. xiii). We appreciate that some institutions will have a more mature formal ‘infrastructure’ of developers than others to enable rich learning from the collective knowledge base. We also appreciate that the institutional memory is continuously reframed and enriched and that new academic career pathways contribute to this reframing and enrichment. We emphasise the importance of clearly articulated development policies which are informed by national and international standards and of visible, consistent, and rigorous sponsorship of policy implementation. Our volume draws inspiration from Shrand and Ronnie (2021), whose research with 1649 academics in the South African context confirmed that organisational support through relevant development opportunities, constructive feedback, and fair appraisals enhanced their institutional commitment and sense of identification with the organisation. Redesigned career frameworks respond to change in society and are intended to build capacity for new ways of learning and working that generate new solutions. Senge (2006) noted that ‘work must become more learningful’ (p. 4) and put forward five disciplines which can offer a useful underpinning for conversations about engendering institution-wide learning cultures: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning. His model has attracted consistent

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interest over the years from scholars and practitioners (Hoe, 2020). Challenges with operationalising and evaluating the implementation of the model (Bui, 2020) have been highlighted in the literature. Nevertheless, its visionary qualities have helped the model to stand out and to continue to inspire initiatives to create learning organisations. Senge (2006) differentiated between adaptive and generative learning, describing systems as ‘invisible fabrics of interrelated actions’ (p.  7). In learning organisations which aim to sustain generative learning there is commitment to lifelong learning. Internal images that individuals hold of the world are scrutinised. Teams build and commit to a shared vision, appreciate the importance of learning together and the value of focusing on longer-term outcomes. Carefully designed new pathways have potential to enable better interrelationships within organisational systems, which lead to innovative solutions that generate more effective outcomes and longer-term benefits. Senge (2006) advocates living life ‘from a creative rather than reactive viewpoint’ (p. 131) and developing clarity of purpose. Well-designed new pathways enable academics to focus on issues that align with their sense of purpose and that matter deeply to them. Shared vision within an organisation channels energy and supports further learning to take place. To facilitate learning successfully in a university among academics, as well as students and other stakeholders, it is essential to identify the dynamics as well as the detail in systems. Senge acknowledges the limited value of formal training in organisations as well as the challenge of building learning-­ oriented cultures without accessing the tacit knowledge of experience. Redesigned career frameworks create opportunities to re-examine the assumptions embedded in tacit knowledge about what academic roles entail, about ways of working, and about forms of leadership that sustain effective practices. Carefully balanced frameworks accompanied by forms of professional learning build organisational capacity for collaborative action, and learning and collaboration in higher education are richer and more impactful when they cross institutional boundaries.

1.5  Chapter-by-Chapter Overview The redesign of academic career frameworks aims to respond to the increased complexity of academic roles. The nature of the academic role is discussed in Chap. 2, with reference to the substantive activities that make up a role as well as to career stages. Discussion about academic identities

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follows. Roles and identities overlap partly; both evolve over time. Academic identities have been the focus of a substantial body of literature and have been explored through various theoretical lenses and methodological approaches. Chapter 2 highlights contributions to the identities debate which are of immediate relevance to the discussion about academic career frameworks. Drawing on an illustrative analysis of publicly available career framework documents in UK universities, the chapter highlights key features of these frameworks and links discussion to academic identities. It uses teaching expertise and excellence to signal a potential lack of consistency in how institutions interpret these criteria. It notes the varied ways in which academic citizenship, collegiality, and collaboration are integrated and rewarded on different pathways in different frameworks. It looks at the way documentation and information are organised and presented to make expectations for each pathway and career stage transparent. Carefully redesigned academic career frameworks benefit academic staff with a diverse range of professional profiles, life circumstances, and scholarly interests. Chapter 3 lays out benefits for individual academics, as well as for students and other internal and external stakeholders. Discussion of job crafting as a means to achieve pathway fit and career progression is included here, to highlight the importance of individual agency, and to signpost potential barriers that well-designed frameworks should work to remove. The chapter introduces five vignettes of fictional individual academics, to illustrate various possible journeys into academic roles and to explore suggestions about development and next steps in academic careers. Broader themes arising from the vignettes are discussed, to inform the redesign of career frameworks, and a number of challenges are given due consideration. The chapter closes by highlighting academic citizenship and collegiality as core threads to embed in redesigned frameworks. Career progression may reward individuals but is in fact the outcome of collaborative efforts, involving stakeholders within as well as outside a university. Redesigned frameworks, the volume argues, should catalyse and reward collegial activities and the kind of collaborative, purposeful work that generates good outcomes for all. Alongside traditional teaching-and-research pathways, a number of universities have implemented new pathways, which have an education focus (but are different from teaching-only contracts) or which place emphasis on professional practice, enterprise, public engagement, and/or knowledge exchange (labelled practice/entrepreneurship in short in the volume). Building on two of the vignettes in Chap. 3, Chap. 4 unpacks

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expectations related to education-focused pathways, exploring how teaching expertise and excellence are defined as well as how they map onto various career stages, and teasing out the nuances of scholarship. This is followed by discussion of newer pathways labelled practice/entrepreneurship in the volume and linked to universities’ third mission. Care is taken, however, to pre-empt pathways being viewed as rigidly aligned to one mission only. Discussion threads related to practice/entrepreneurship pathways include professional development for dual professionals, the complementarity of commercial and social entrepreneurship, as well as how the UK-based Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) can catalyse discussion about how academics and institutions deliver on their commitment to society. The closing section loops back to the two vignettes and offers a fictional scenario involving the vignette protagonists, to illustrate how pathways in an academic career framework can cross to generate value within and beyond a university. Redesigned academic career frameworks are intended to benefit an institution overall, through resourcing academics to use their strengths in support of a university’s strategic priorities. Chapter 5 highlights various benefits from the institutional perspective and addresses broader questions and challenges around career framework redesign and implementation. Robust frameworks recognise that attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) plays a vital role in delivering the kind of experience that a forward-looking institution wishes to create for its internal and external stakeholders. Sector-wide EDI initiatives that support framework redesign and implementation processes at institutional level are, therefore, highlighted, with specific attention to race, gender, and (dis)ability, and discussed alongside insights from relevant higher education research into these aspects. A related question addressed is organisational capacity to support alignment to new pathways through coaching, mentoring, secondments, and various forms of leadership development. The chapter closes with a note on collegiate, collaborative institutional cultures and two examples of collaboration, one among a network of institutions in the United States focused on promoting women and underrepresented minority academics, the other UK-based and connecting universities and other organisations as part of a learning community. The pace of change of academic career frameworks varies within and across national higher education systems. Trailblazing institutions have

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introduced frameworks that speak to their core ethos and mission, and support academics to use a broad range of expertise for the benefit of students and wider communities. Other institutions are at different stages of framework development and maturity and may be grappling with design and/or implementation decisions. Chapter 6 puts forward 12 principles, abstracted from theoretical, conceptual, and empirical literature in various national contexts, to guide the framework redesign process flexibly and lead to context-specific solutions that draw critically and constructively on good practice in the sector. The chapter then looks in turn at three aspects that have particular relevance to the way in which frameworks bed into a specific institutional context: the role of senior sponsors in the pathway redesign process; promotion criteria and decision-making panels; and HR input into pathway design and implementation. It is premised on the view that successful frameworks are the result of collaborative efforts and benefit from policies and processes which support alignment between individual aspirations and institutional ambitions. It is also premised on the view that academic career frameworks evolve in time. Learning and personal and professional growth are at the core of what universities do, whether for students, academics, or other internal and external stakeholders. Redesigned academic career frameworks support this, either through distinct pathway tracks or through recognition of the need to flexibly combine and reward a broad enough range of academic activities. Redesigned frameworks may be experienced differently by academic staff on offshore campuses in the context of transnational education. Factors which have a bearing, positively or less so, on offshore experiences are discussed in Chap. 7. As is the case with other change initiatives in universities, the introduction of redesigned frameworks will benefit from ongoing evaluation, both to allow adjustments that enable the implementation to run (more) smoothly and to support longer-term, strategic planning. The chapter offers a range of evaluation questions (and their underpinning assumptions) to help institutions ensure that their academic career frameworks are fit for purpose. It revisits the five scenarios, introduced in Chap. 3, of academics at different stages in their careers, to illustrate the impact of the frameworks on individuals and on their immediate and extended stakeholder communities. A note about the future offers provisional closure to the discussion about academic career frameworks.

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Crowley, E., & Overton, L. (2021). Learning and skills at work survey 2021. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. https://www.cipd.co.uk/ Images/learning-­skills-­work-­report-­2021-­1_tcm18-­95433.pdf Dwyer, R., & Black, A. L. (2021). Reimagining the academy: Conceptual, theoretical, philosophical, and methodological sparks. In A. L. Black & R. Dwyer (Eds.), Reimagining the academy. Shifting towards kindness, connection, and an ethics of care (pp. 1–16). Palgrave. EUA. (2021). Universities without walls: A vision for 2030. https://eua.eu/downloads/publications/universities%20without%20walls%20%20a%20vision%20 for%202030.pdf EUA. (n.d.). Who we are. https://eua.eu/about/who-­we-­are.html Fitzpatrick, K. (2021). Generous thinking: A radical approach to saving the university. Johns Hopkins University Press. Frølich, N., Wendt, K., Reymert, I., Tellmann, S., Elken, M., Kyvik, S., Vabø, A., & Larsen, E. (2018). Academic career structures in Europe: Perspectives from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, and the UK. https://nifu.brage.unit.no/nifu-­xmlui/handle/11250/2487666 Geschwind, L., Kekäle, J., Pinheiro, R., & Sørensen, M. P. (2019). Responsible universities in context. In M.  P. Sørensen, L.  Geschwind, J.  Kekäle, & R. Pinheiro (Eds.), The responsible university. Exploring the Nordic context and beyond (pp. 3–29). Palgrave. Goddard, J. (2018). The civic university and the city. In P.  Meusburger, M.  Heffernan, & L.  Suarsana (Eds.), Geographies of the university (pp. 355–373). Springer. Graduate Outcomes. (n.d.). About the survey. https://www.graduateoutcomes. ac.uk/about-­survey Graham, R. (2022). Teaching cultures survey: 2022 findings. https://teachingcultures.com/resources/TCS-­2022-­amalgamated-­report.pdf Grant, J. (2021). The new power university. Pearson Education. Grove, J. (2018). Career plan puts teaching at the heart of the promotions process. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/career-­plan-­puts-­teaching-­ heart-­promotions-­process Guccione, K., & Hutchinson, S. (2021). Coaching and mentoring for academic development. Emerald Publishing. GuildHE. (2018). Practice-informed learning. The Rise of the Dual Professional. https://guildhe.ac.uk/practice-­i nformed-­l earning-­t he-­r ise-­o f-­t he-­d ual-­ professional/ GuildHE. (2019). Delivering practice-informed learning. https://guildhe.ac.uk/ wp-­c ontent/uploads/2020/07/Delivering-­P ractice-­I nformed-­L earning-­ Final-­Web-­1.pdf GUNi. (2017). Higher education in the World 6. Towards a Socially Responsible University: Balancing the Global with the Local. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000248150

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Hartung, C., Barnes, N., Welch, R., O’Flynn, G., Uptin, J., & McMahon, S. (2017). Beyond the academic precariat: A collective biography of poetic subjectivities in the neoliberal university. Sport, Education and Society, 22(1), 40–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2016.1202227 Helms, R. M. (2015). Internationalizing the tenure code: Policies to promote a globally focused faculty. https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Internationalizing-­ the-­Tenure-­Code-­Policies-­to-­Promote-­a-­Globally-­Focused-­Faculty.pdf Henkel, M. (2016). Multiversities and academic identities: Change, continuities, and complexities. In L. Leisyte & U. Wilkesmann (Eds.), Organising academic work in higher education: Teaching, learning and identities (pp.  205–222). Routledge. Hoe, S. L. (2020). The topicality of the learning organisation: Is the concept still relevant today? In A. R. Örtenblad (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the learning organisation (pp. 19–32). Oxford University Press. Kenway, J., Boden, R., & Fahey, J. (2014). Seeking the necessary ‘resources of hope’ in the neoliberal university. In M. Thornton (Ed.), Through a glass darkly: The social sciences look at the neoliberal university (pp.  259–281). Australian National University. Kolsaker, A. (2008). Academic professionalism in the managerialist era: A study of English universities. Studies in Higher Education, 33(5), 513–525. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03075070802372885 Krücken, G., Kosmützky, A., & Torca, M. (2007). Towards a multiversity: Universities between global trends and national traditions. Transcript. https:// www.transcript-­open.de/isbn/468 Lo, C. W.-H., Pang, R. X., Egri, C. P., & Li, P. H.-Y. (2017). University social responsibility: Conceptualization and an assessment framework. In D. T. L. Shek & R. M. Hollister (Eds.), University social responsibility and quality of life: A global survey of concepts and experiences (pp. 37–59). Springer. Locatelli, R., & Marginson, S. (2023). UNESCO’s common good idea of higher education and democracy. In S.  Marginson, B.  Cantwell, D.  Platonova, & A. Smolentseva (Eds.), Assessing the contributions of higher education: Knowledge for a disordered world (pp. 197–217). Edward Elgar. Lock, D. (2022). Owned, shared, and contested spaces in higher education. In E.  McIntosh & D.  Nutt (Eds.), The impact of the integrated practitioner in higher education: Studies in third space professionalism (pp. 93–106). Routledge. Locke, W., Whitchurch, C., Smith, H., & Mazenod, A. (2016). Shifting landscapes. Meeting the Staff Development Needs of the Changing Academic Workforce. https://www.advance-­he.ac.uk/knowledge-­hub/shifting-­landscapes Marini, G., Locke, W., & Whitchurch, C. (2019). The future higher education workforce in locally and globally engaged higher education institutions: A review of literature on the topic of the academic workforce (Working Paper No. 43). Centre for Global Higher Education. https://www.researchcghe.org/publica-

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tions/working-­paper/the-­future-­higher-­education-­workforce-­in-­locally-­and-­ globally-­engaged-­higher-­education-­institutions-­a-­review-­of-­literature-­on-­the-­ topic-­of-­the-­academic-­workforce/ Muller, J. Z. (2018). The tyranny of metrics. Princeton University Press. OECD. (2019a). University-industry collaboration: New evidence and policy options. https://www.oecd.org/fr/innovation/university-­i ndustry-­c ollaboration-­ e9c1e648-­en.htm OECD. (2019b). Benchmarking higher education system performance. https:// www.oecd-­ilibrary.org/sites/ab924c3e-­en/index.html?itemId=/content/ component/ab924c3e-­en OECD. (2020). Resourcing higher education: Challenges, choices, and consequences. https://www.oecd-­ilibrary.org/sites/d6f502d9-­en/index.html?itemId=/ content/component/d6f502d9-­en Overlaet, B. (2022). A pathway towards multidimensional academic careers. A LERU Framework for the Assessment of Researchers. LERU. Readings, B. (1996). The university in ruins. Harvard University Press. Rolfe, G. (2012). The university in dissent. Scholarship in the corporate university. Routledge. Royal Academy of Engineering. (2018). The career framework for university teaching: Background and overview. https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/ reports/career-­framework-­for-­university-­teaching-­backgroun Saenen, B., Hatch, A., Curry, S., Proudman, V., & Lakoduk, A. (2021). Reimagining academic career assessment: Stories of innovation and change. https://eua.eu/downloads/publications/eua-­dora-­sparc_case%20study%20 report.pdf Sarrico, C., Rosa, M.  J., & Carvalho, T. (2022). Introduction. In C.  Sarrico, M. J. Rosa, & T. Carvalho (Eds.), Research handbook on academic careers and managing academics (pp. 1–16). Edward Elgar. Scott, P., Gallacher, J., & Parry, G. (Eds.). (2017). New languages and landscapes of higher education. Oxford University Press. Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline. The art and practice of the learning organisation. Random House Business. Shrand, B., & Ronnie, L. (2021). Commitment and identification in the Ivory Tower: Academics’ perceptions of organisational support and reputation. Studies in Higher Education, 46(2), 285–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03075079.2019.1630810 Siekkinen, T., Pekkola, E., & Nokkala, T. (2022). Visible organisational boundaries and the invisible boundaries of the scholarly profession. European Journal of Higher Education, 12(4), 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235. 2022.2060846 Smith, S., & Walker, D. (2021). Scholarship and academic capitals: The boundaried nature of education-focused career tracks. Teaching in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1965570

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Smith, S., & Walker, D. (2022). Scholarship and teaching-focused roles: An exploratory study of academics’ experiences and perceptions of support. Innovations in Education and Teaching International. https://doi.org/10. 1080/14703297.2022.2132981 Smyth, J. (2017). The toxic university: Zombie leadership, academic rock stars and neoliberal ideology. Palgrave. Sterling, M., & Blaj-Ward, L. (2022). Realigning the staff development offer to new academic career pathways. SEDA, 28/04/2022. https://thesedablog.wordpress.com/2022/04/28/realigning-­t he-­s taff-­d evelopment-­o ffer-­t o-­n ew-­ academic-­career-­pathways/ Sutherland, K. (2018). Holistic academic development: Is it time to think more broadly about the academic development project? International Journal for Academic Development, 23(4), 261–273. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1360144X.2018.1524571 Tapanila, K., Siivonen, P., & Filander, K. (2020). Academics’ social positioning towards the restructured management system in Finnish universities. Studies in Higher Education, 45(1), 117–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079. 2018.1539957 UCEA. (2019). Higher education workforce report 2019. UCEA. Universities UK. (2015). Efficiency, effectiveness and value for money. https:// issuu.com/universitiesuk/docs/efficiencyeffectivenessvalueformone UPP Foundation. (2019). Truly civic: Strengthening the connection between universities and their places. https://upp-­foundation.org/wp-­content/uploads/ 2019/02/Civic-­University-­Commission-­Final-­Report.pdf van Houtum, H., & van Uden, A. (2022). The autoimmunity of the modern university: How its managerialism is self-harming what it claims to protect. Organization, 29(1), 197–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420975347 VSNU, NFU, KNAW, NOW, & ZonMw. (2019). Room for everyone’s talent: Towards a new balance in the recognition and rewards of academics. https:// recognitionrewards.nl/wp-­content/uploads/2020/12/position-­paper-­room-­ for-­everyones-­talent.pdf Whitchurch, C., & Gordon, G. (2017). Reconstructing relationships in higher education: Challenging agendas. SRHE/Routledge. Winter, R. (2017). Managing academics. A question of perspective. Edward Elgar. Wolf, A., & Jenkins, A. (2021). Managers and academics in a centralising sector: The new staffing patterns of UK higher education. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ policy-­institute/assets/managers-­and-­academics-­in-­a-­centralising-­sector.pdf

CHAPTER 2

Academic Roles, Identities, and Career Frameworks

2.1   Academic Roles Universities are complex organisations, inhabited by communities of academics who hold both shared and competing values. These communities are brought together by stronger or looser connections to a discipline. They occupy institutional spaces over which they have varying degrees of control. They count among their membership academics whose understanding of academic roles can develop over time in response to external factors and to evolving individual aspirations and priorities (Henkel, 2005; Siekkinen et al., 2022; Trowler et al., 2012). In this chapter, we build a first layer of scaffolding for our discussion of principles for academic career framework redesign in Chap. 6. We highlight insights from existing literature about changes in the nature of academic roles. Redesigned career frameworks are responding to these changes, integrating redesigned roles into a more coherent structure which aims to facilitate better experiences for the role holders and for everyone they work alongside. We also tap into scholarly debate about academic identities to understand how redesigned roles are likely to be experienced by existing and new academics and to prompt identity work. In Sect. 2.3.2, we offer our analysis of actual academic career framework documents from a number of UK-based universities, which helped focus

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Sterling et al., Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7_2

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our reading of the literature and frame the career redesign principles we put forward. The starting point for our discussion of academic roles is the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) definition of academic contract staff: Academic contract staff are defined as professionals holding a contract for planning, directing, and undertaking academic teaching and research within HE providers. Examples of such contracts include those for vice-­chancellors, medical practitioners, dentists, veterinarians, and other health care professionals who undertake lecturing or research activities. (HESA, n.d.)

The HESA description is understandably brief and does not capture the richness and complexity of academic roles or ways in which these have evolved over time. Neither does it reveal how individual academic identities are ongoing projects, which interpret objective role descriptions in a myriad of ways. Redesigned academic career frameworks in higher education institutions are intended to recognise changes in role composition and emphasis. They set limits and open up possibilities, mediating between sector-wide trends, institutional priorities, and individual academics’ aspirations. They act as catalysts for identity projects to progress and spark further identity work. While the detail and nuance of academic roles are outside the remit of HESA data, overall trends in how broader factors in the higher education sector impact on role alignment are immediately apparent. The 2007–2008 to 2020–2021 HESA dataset differentiates between academic staff engaged in teaching only, teaching and research, or research only (HESA, 2022). The dataset reveals a strikingly visible increase in numbers of academics on teaching-only contracts over the past few years, with combined full-time and part-time numbers steadily rising from 56,130 in 2016–2017 to 72,970 in 2020–2021, and with part-time academics at approximately double the number of full-time ones in 2020–2021. The increase, most notably visible in the year before the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) (mirroring a similar situation immediately before the 2014 REF iteration, see Whitchurch & Gordon, 2017), has been linked by some commentators to universities’ desire to increase their chance of success in research assessment, an important source of income and prestige for universities. Writing prior to the 2014 REF, Trowler et al. (2012) attributed the following quote to a department manager in a composite vignette:

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You are as aware as I am, Mike, that this is—excuse the phrase—‘mission critical’: no research funding, no research. If all these people don’t want to be on teaching-only contracts from 2015 onwards, they really need to get their act together. (p. 252)

The REF connection and the importance of the research mission are echoed, from a different standpoint, by Wolf and Jenkins (2021), who note that senior management ‘consistently pushed for “research-active” appointments, and blocked bids for new teaching-only posts’ (p. 69). HESA returns and REF-linked interpretations, however, do not do justice to the expanse and nuances in academic career frameworks, and there are caveats around HESA data definitions and what counts as ‘academic atypical’ in HESA returns. Resourcing Higher Education: Challenges, Choices and Consequences, a report published by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2020, notes the following with regard to academic roles: Changes in technology and funding in higher education have also led to greater differentiation of the academic career structures, tasks and working conditions (Frølich et al., 2018). They have led institutions to place a growing number of academic staff in specialised roles with responsibility solely for teaching, research, or engagement. This trend represents a shift from a tradition in which an individual was responsible for all stages of academic activity—course design and development, teaching, assessment, research, and knowledge transfer. (Coates & Goedegebuure, 2012; OECD, 2020)

The trend towards differentiation and specialisation in academic work, to support universities to fulfil their triple mission (education, research, and societal engagement) in a more effective and relevant way, is evident in the academic career frameworks which have recently been redesigned and implemented in universities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The word ‘solely’ in the OECD quote is problematic, however. Teaching-­ only roles have been signposted in the literature as allowing little scope for professional development which nourishes the creation of rich learning experiences in universities. A useful point of reference for the discussion in our volume about recognising more fully the richness of academic work is Bennett’s (2015) account of introducing new academic career pathways which creatively reinterpret the teaching/research binary. Bennett’s account centres on

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Bournemouth University, an institution which began its life in the early 1970s as a college of technology and became a university in 1992. The Bournemouth University framework launched in 2014 was linked to strategic institutional objectives. It had the concept of ‘fusion’ at its core, highlighting synergies between research, education, and professional practice, and emphasising co-creation or co-production of knowledge with students and academics. Starting from the premise that a teaching-only category carries the risk of reducing options for academics to engage in a broad enough range of professionally enriching activities, a point echoed in later studies about the academic landscape (Locke et  al., 2016; Whitchurch & Gordon, 2017), the framework prioritised fusion of activity under the banners of ‘creating, sharing and inspiring’. Fusion was intended to ‘re-balance the perceived, although not actual, emphasis on research in the previous framework’ (Bennett, 2015, p.  16). In the spirit of fusion, the new framework came with an expectation that academics would contribute across all three areas but focusing time and energy primarily on two, and that fused activity was designed to generate positive impact in all three areas. Bennett (2015) provided the following rationale for his choice: the external higher education climate has undergone, and is arguably still undergoing, a period of profound change, or at least disruptive instability, with the increasing marketisation of this sector. Institutions need, arguably, to not only be much fleeter of foot, but also deal with greater planning uncertainty. Academic career frameworks operate on different timescales. (p. 25)

His rationale is even more pertinent in the current context. Redesigned frameworks align to institutional priorities and reconfigure the balance of activities within academic roles. For reconfiguration to be effective, it needs to draw on academics’ understanding of role composition. A piece of research carried out shortly before the pandemic that helps illustrate this is Cutler et al. (2022). In the US context, Cutler et al. surveyed 75 academics across 12 engineering-related departments in a research-focused university. The respondents were at different stages in their careers. Cutler et  al.’s study mentions Research Professors and Teaching Professors, without differentiating findings according to pathway focus. The survey invited respondents to identify and rank their main responsibilities from lists which covered research, teaching, and service aspects of an academic role, and also to specify which of these

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responsibilities the university should support through development activities as a matter of priority. The answers to Cutler et al.’s (2022) survey offer a useful reminder that academic roles can be complex and ambiguous and that responsibilities and priorities change over time. Cutler et al. carried out their research in subject areas leading to professions regulated by an external body. Responsibilities such as ‘working with industry partners or various government agencies’ and ‘involvement in professional organisations’ will have struck an immediate chord with Cutler et al.’s respondents but may be viewed as more challenging and less of a priority in other subject areas. For universities that wish to increase their external engagement across all disciplines, supportive contextualising conversations may need to take place before more structured development is designed and implemented. These conversations will be beneficial both on a one-to-one basis and within teams, acknowledging that collaborative efforts that draw on team members’ strengths are more likely to lead to relevant external impact. While discussion in this volume about evidencing activities and engaging in professional development is channelled along two distinct pathways (education-focused and practice/entrepreneurship), the view we support is one that recognises the interconnectedness of academic roles and responsibilities. Our volume focuses on redesigned career pathways which enable fuller recognition and resourcing of colleagues with expertise in pedagogy or work in sectors outside a university. It discusses substantive components of the academic role, rather than functional managerial responsibilities such as heading departments or acting as a director of learning, teaching, and student experience. Academic role grading and nomenclature that fall within the remit of this volume are ones which enjoy a certain level of job security: assistant, associate, or full professor (originally North American terms that have gained currency in the global context) or lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, or professor roles. Full professor roles are not a homogenous category. Reflecting on changes to professor roles in the United Kingdom in 2015–2016  in a study which maps rungs on the academic career ladder, Evans (2018) notes that these occurred in response to greater alignment between universities’ research agendas and the government’s economic growth policies. Using Regius professorships (honorary appointments made by the UK Sovereign) as an example, Evans highlights how the 2013 iteration placed emphasis on discipline-related contribution and recognition, whereas the 2016 competition criteria emphasise research translation and contribution to economic effectiveness and productivity (p. 16). The shift in focus is mirrored within

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universities. Evans also notes a lack of consistency, across institutions with different reputations and across disciplines, of thresholds which distinguish professorships from roles on the lower rungs of academic hierarchies. Similarly, a lack of consistency is apparent in professorial grading systems, which use numeric label for grades or labels such as ‘zones’, ‘tiers’, or ‘bands’ instead of grades. While in some national higher education systems professorships (and academic grading) are centrally determined by the state, redesigned frameworks have potential to provide clarity, consistency, and enhanced credibility to academic appointments as well as enriching the scope and likely impact of professorial roles.

2.2   Academic Identities The way in which abstract, formal academic role descriptions are interpreted and enacted may differ substantially within and across departments, disciplines, and institutions. Being an academic does not have the same meaning for all (Leišytė & Hosch-Dayican, 2016; Rosewell & Ashwin, 2019). Identities and roles overlap partly, not fully. Academic identities are dynamic, ongoing projects, which involve balancing the more ‘mundane aspects of the job’ with ones that act as ‘deeply anchoring elements of the self’ (Clegg, 2008, p. 334). They may be more or less closely aligned to different aspects of work and life within and outside academia, given that, as Buller (2021) aptly points out, ‘faculty members are three-dimensional human beings’ (p. 28). Identities can also be context specific, with multiple facets, and dependent on both external and internal validation. New academic career frameworks allow new identity storylines to emerge that carry more coherence and congruence with individual and community interests, values, and priorities (McCune, 2021). New frameworks allow academics with a practice background to be recognised for their strengths rather than unhelpfully labelled as not fitting into the ‘productive researchers’ category (Ennals et al., 2016, p. 438). They could, however, generate dissonance if based on too narrow a definition of what counts as scholarly work (Baxter, 2023). The extent to which changes in the higher education sector have led to a perceived ‘crisis of academics’ being and belonging’ (Watermeyer & Tomlinson, 2022, pp. 92–93) also varies. The degree of academic freedom (traditionally defined as having control over the scope and focus of academic work) experienced by academics and the impact of performativity, viewed ‘in terms of the achievement of institutional metrics, through performance reviews, and in relation to associated accountability

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measures’ (Barrow et al., 2022, p. 242) have a bearing on how academic identities are constructed. In the case of roles with some degree of managerial responsibility, tension may be experienced between the ‘idealised academic selves’ which value academic freedom and non-hierarchical collegiality and the role identities these role holders choose ‘to adopt in today’s managerial academia’ driven by a focus on outcomes, metrics, targets, and external accountability (Shams, 2019, p. 623). Academic identities have been the focus of a substantial body of literature. Clegg (2008) informs the view of identity taken in this volume, a view which recognises the careful balancing act between the ‘potentialities of the agential self’ (p. 332) and the structural, institutional, and discursive factors which shape the way academic roles are experienced and owned. The purpose of the volume is not to theorise academic identity or offer a systematic review of research but to highlight insights from existing academic identity research of immediate relevance for the redesign and implementation of academic career frameworks. The current work subscribes to a view of identities as dynamic and in flux over time and aims to sensitise stakeholders to the identity work prompted by new frameworks, with identity work defined as ‘a contextually situated construction and sharing of meanings and interpretations of what it means to be an academic’ (Pick et al., 2017, p. 1176). Theoretical underpinnings of academic identity research are synthesised in Barrow et al. (2022). Barrow et al. carried out an analysis of 11 highly cited higher education research articles on academic identity, mapping the theoretical frameworks used by their authors or the stated theoretical affiliations. While social constructionism appears to be the preferred overarching approach, Barrow et al. (2022) note the presence of a range of theoretical standpoints gathered under the social constructionist umbrella and, within these, ‘a range of different theorists who foreground different issues and emphases’ (p.  248). They highlight the need for a broader range of theoretical lenses and also note that empirical work appears to have focused on identities in a smaller number of academic disciplines, thus offering an incomplete view of academia. They argue that ‘we may need new imaginings of academia and academic identities especially, perhaps especially now as universities navigate their paths in the incalculably long shadow of Covid-19’ (p. 251). Methodological approaches in academic identity research vary in line with how identity is conceptualised. Djerasimovic (2021) endorses Cao and Henderson’s (2021) insights about diary methods and notes that

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nuance and fluidity in ‘identity work’ can best be captured through a combination of diary and interview data. Djerasimovic (2021) asked participants in a pilot study to keep a diary for a week prior to interviews, noting down ‘the activities in which they engaged, their purpose, duration, other participants involved, professional identification/positionality they felt was invoked by it, and the emotion associated with it’ (pp. 512–513). This generated richer data and revealed not only the identities that participants constructed for themselves but also the processes through which those identities took shape, the value judgements made by themselves or others, the constraints they negotiated, or the opportunities they found in their everyday experiences. Academic identity research relies on accounts by academics themselves about their experience, constructed in one-off interviews or over a longer period of time, or in written form. Alternative sources of insights about academic identity are fictional texts by literary authors (Pick et al., 2017) or interviews with members of promotion panels (Barrow & Grant, 2019). Research into academic identities has covered a range of topics of relevance to academic career framework redesign. Among these are how affiliation to an institution impacts on sense of identity, how allegiance to a discipline can be reframed, and how success is defined and secured through identity work. A small number of key sources (ones substantially cited, others less prominent but with potential to enrich discussion about academic career frameworks) are highlighted below, recognising that it would be difficult to do full justice within the remit of this volume to the plethora of studies which have explored academic identities. In Clegg’s (2008) research, affiliation to a particular type of institution played a greater or lesser role in how respondents articulated their identity. Affiliation to a prestigious institution (evaluated on research productivity criteria) could enhance credibility and create opportunities to build networks on the basis of subject expertise. As Clegg found, however, less prestigious but more agile institutions can offer equally valuable scope for identity construction, especially where interdisciplinarity and innovative courses and projects are supported and where academic career frameworks offer appropriate recognition to the breadth of activity. Prestige is enacted differently across national higher education systems. Ylijoki (2019), for example, notes the absence of a counterpart to UK’s Oxbridge and Russell Group universities in Finland. Traditionally, academic identities have been aligned more closely to disciplines rather than institutions, with growing expertise and specialisation

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in a particular sub-area. Disciplines themselves are living entities, not static bodies of knowledge, while teams and departmental units within higher education institutions are not constrained by disciplinary boundaries. Education-focused pathways prompt a rethinking of the relationship between identity and discipline. An apt illustration of challenges with reframing an identity built on subject expertise as one that has education at its core can be found in the context of engineering, given the epistemological differences between the engineering and education subject areas (Gardner & Willey, 2018; Wint & Nyamapfene, 2022). Gardner and Willey (2018) trace the three strands of identity-trajectory theory (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2011) in the data they generated through interviews with 19 engineering academics at various stages in their career. Identity-trajectory theory in academia acknowledges the interplay between individual agency and structural parameters and consists of three strands: intellectual contributions to a disciplinary field, networking within the broader disciplinary community and across institutions, and their specific institutional affiliation. Data that Gardner and Willey collected in the Australian higher education context and reflective of the intellectual strand revealed that identities were shaped by the ability to use theoretical frameworks and to engage with qualitative methodologies. Networking at conferences led to developing a stronger affiliation to the engineering educational research community, whereas the institution to which participants belonged offered time, funding, and infrastructure resources to support professional growth as engineering education researchers or, conversely, had the potential to limit this growth. Gardner and Willey call for distinction to be made between education research and education innovation projects, although as discussed in Chap. 4 in this volume, there is scope to integrate the two in different ways on education-­ focused pathways. Engineering education researcher identities in the UK context are discussed by Wint and Nyamapfene (2022). In contrast to the United States, where identities are fully resourced by communities of practice substantially supported by the National Science Foundation, in the United Kingdom, recognition and infrastructure have developed informally and reside in fragmented pockets, with some institutions setting up specialised centres. Data that Wint and Nyamapfene generated through interviews with 14 academics at various stages in their career in 11 different universities revealed that engineering education research was generally driven by a motivation to enhance the experience of students in their immediate

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teaching context and took an ‘engineering-centric problem-solving approach’ (p  10). While it involved some degree of collaboration with education specialists, this was very much dependent on ‘individual relationships’ and ‘luck’ (p. 10). Lack of appropriate REF recognition reduced the credibility of such research and impacted on engineering education researchers’ ability to build a positive identity in institutional contexts where dedicated career pathways for engineering education researchers were not available. SEFI (the European Society for Engineering Education) and its dedicated track for engineering education researchers at conferences were put forward as an example of an initiative to build capacity and to resource the development of positive identities for engineering academics whose interests lay primarily with student education. Reframing academic identities in relation to education-focused projects is also discussed by Martin et al. (2020), in the UK context, with regard to designing and delivering degree apprenticeships. Degree apprenticeship curricula align to national standards but involve substantial input into content and assessment from the higher education institution delivering them, from employers and from professional bodies. Through interviews with 30 academics who had volunteered or been required to participate in the validation and delivery of degree apprenticeship courses, Martin et  al. (2020) explored how desired versions of identity had to be reconciled with ‘versions of themselves able to fulfil roles required for their university and faculty’ (p. 531). In institutions where degree apprenticeships were perceived as having less worth than traditional university courses, interviewees found they had to explain their involvement to colleagues to regain full credibility as academics. Internal conflict also unsettled identity concepts, particularly when the pace of the course approval process did not allow sufficient reflection and discussion time and challenges were experienced with addressing employer needs while upholding the values of professional bodies and those of academia. Interview data surfaced ‘potential ambiguities and uncertainties as to the role and purpose of an academic’ (p. 526) and the work of ‘relocating, redefining or rewriting’ (p. 531) oneself which was involved. What counts as a successful academic identity at different points in time and what criteria and strategies academics use in their journey towards an established scholar identity will inevitably differ. Career progression is one way of defining success, through external validation. Another is ‘a sense of self-worth being preserved’ (p. 340) amid an environment where values are being eroded (Clegg, 2008). The two accounts of engineering academics

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reframing their identities as engineering education researchers (Gardner & Willey, 2018; Wint & Nyamapfene, 2022) and Martin et  al.’s (2020) insights into identity work prompted by involvement in a less traditional form of academic activity point towards a need to resource this identity work at a more systemic, structural level. From a different disciplinary and national perspective (history and political science in Sweden), Nästesjö (2022) adds empirical weight to this point by showing how early career scholars negotiate institutional expectations and personal interpretations of success to establish themselves in academia and obtain recognition of their work. Nästesjö uses the concept of ‘identity labour’ to highlight the exchange value of identities and the need to make them visible through a broad repertoire of academic activities. We continue this discussion later in the volume. In the following section, we focus attention on redesigned academic career frameworks as systemic, structural responses to redefining success.

2.3   Academic Career Frameworks 2.3.1   Our Approach to Analysing Frameworks Our discussion of academic career frameworks is underpinned by an analysis of frameworks in use in the United Kingdom at the time of writing. The analysis yielded insights into how different universities have chosen to channel and reward the professional growth of academics for the benefit of the institution. To identify new pathways developed alongside traditional teaching-and-research ones, we carried out, in early Summer 2022, an online search using the keywords ‘academic career framework ac.uk’ and ‘academic promotion ac.uk’. The search enabled us to access a range of openly available documentation from 31 different institutions across the United Kingdom (five based in London, 17 in England, six in Scotland, two in Wales, and one in Northern Ireland). We did not include clinical academic career information in our analysis. To capture any changes in the following academic year, given that deadlines for promotion in UK-based universities tend to be clustered in January/February, we retraced our steps in early Spring 2023. First, we accessed the weblinks saved for the 31 institutions identified in the original search, then we carried out a search using the same keywords to identify whether material from additional institutions had been made available online. There were no noticeable changes in the overall structure and substance of academic career

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frameworks between the two academic years (2021–2022 and 2022–2023), though approximately two-thirds of the institutions in our original list had made minor revisions to their application forms or had made available additional material to support the promotion application process. A small number of institutions had modified the webpage architecture for promotions documentation or had enabled or restricted access to this. Our initial analysis of the documentation in early Summer 2022 sought to identify the number of distinct pathways in academic career frameworks and the labels used for the education-focused pathways or for any other pathways in addition to traditional teaching-and-research ones (excluding information about teaching-only or research-only roles). Using our combined knowledge of academic career frameworks in three different institutions, we reviewed the criteria and noted the substantive composition of each pathway, focusing primarily on Associate Professor (or equivalent role titles, depending on the nomenclature used by institutions) and Professor levels. Our choice to focus on these career stages was justified by the aim of new pathways in redesigned frameworks to recognise performance and enable progression for a broader range of staff, who make a valuable contribution outside a traditionally framed teaching-and-research track. We looked at whether progression in the context of student-facing activity was evidenced through Advance HE professional recognition and/or other types of information. We examined the place awarded to collegiality, collaboration, and citizenship in the criteria, looking for explicit use of these terms or implicit suggestions that collegiality, collaboration, and citizenship would be expected and valued. We searched for information on how the content of applications was being evaluated (e.g., whether through a points-based system or through specifying levels at which criteria had to be met). At the same time, we noted process-related aspects that stood out for a variety of reasons. Insights from the preliminary analysis fed into choices we made about the literature to review between early Summer 2022 and early Spring 2023, and insights from the literature reviewed guided our re-reading of career framework documents in Spring 2023. Ongoing review of literature and reflective conversations on relevant experiences in our different roles shaped the principles shared in Chap. 6 in this volume. The enhanced early Spring 2023 analysis, which focused more fully on the promotion application process and on the audio-visual resources accompanying the written documents, then informed the final version of the principles. The process of writing the current text was an integral part of the analysis.

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We chose to focus on openly available documents and resources only, so that the readers of our volume could follow in our footsteps, appreciating that career frameworks are dynamic documents and that ways in which they are engaged with varies over time. We aim to provide a basis on which good practice can be built in the future and we appreciate that documents tell only one part of the story. It is the way they are interpreted and utilised by academics and by various stakeholders in the career progression process that has a bearing on the success or failure of an institution’s redesign efforts. The insights we share from the documents are illustrative; they aim to capture range and breadth in existing approaches to academic career framework redesign, to signpost possible directions of travel rather than offer definitive solutions. Openly available documents from the 31 institutions we included in our illustrative analysis varied in level of detail. They consisted of framework descriptions with progression criteria, application forms, and/or application procedure documentation from the majority of these. Some institutions also made available audio-visual recordings of sessions which unpacked the promotion application requirements. These were led by senior sponsors of career framework redesign initiatives. We were able to access recordings of academics who had recently been promoted and were sharing their experience of engaging with the redesigned framework through the promotion application process. We reflected that while career progression to a higher rung on the hierarchical structure is an intended outcome of new career frameworks, there is scope for institutions to contextualise career framework information more fully in discussions about professional success and wellbeing within each career stage. Some institutions had complex and comprehensive academic career framework documents which made explicit reference to an institution’s strategic ambitions and to the values underpinning the organisational culture, as opposed to merely listing objective competency descriptors in matter-of-fact language. Some framework documents contextualised the criteria in a narrative about how the framework had been developed, the rationale behind the development work, and how the framework enabled the institution to tap into the complementary strengths of academics across all pathways to create mutual learning and growth. Sector-wide initiatives (e.g., Athena SWAN, a framework focused on gender equality in higher education institutions across the world) were overtly referenced in other cases as the driving force behind career framework development.

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Discussion in the following section highlights salient features of framework structures and pathway specifications. Insights about the promotion application process are captured in the principles we lay out in Chap. 6. Discussion throughout the volume about academic development and about resourcing and evaluating performance also builds on process-­ related aspects. 2.3.2   Insights We Gained About New Pathways The analysis we carried out revealed variation in terms of framework structure and pathway composition across the 31 institutions for colleagues in academic roles based in academic departments. Roles with a teaching component (as opposed to research-only roles, which lie outside the scope of our volume) were distributed along two, three, or four pathways. Traditional teaching-and-research pathways were complemented by pathways with a substantial education focus or, in a smaller number of institutions, by pathways which placed professional practice from other sectors or societal engagement centre-stage. In some frameworks (but not all), these pathways were laid out as separate tracks with specific labels. In institutions without separately labelled pathways, activities corresponding to the third mission of universities (societal engagement) were either explicitly articulated as a separate set of criteria to be met or were integrated in some way in criteria aligned to research and/or teaching. In some career frameworks, sets of criteria for each pathway were prescribed; in others, a larger number of options were available, with academics being given a greater or lesser degree of freedom to tailor their progression route. The pathway with the most substantial education focus was assigned different labels in different universities, with the keywords ‘education’, ‘learning’, ‘scholarship’, and ‘teaching’ being used in various combinations: Academic Education; Education; Education, Pedagogy, and Citizenship; Education and Scholarship; Education, Scholarship, and Professional Practice; Learning and Teaching; Teaching; Teaching focused; Teaching and Curriculum Leadership; Teaching and Education; Teaching and Scholarship; Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship. Criteria for progression on the education-focused pathway varied. In some cases, they referred predominantly (or solely) to outputs and evidence related to delivering or leading teaching and engaging in pedagogic research and scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL, e.g., Fanghanel et al., 2016). In others, they included a broader range of scholarly activity

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with an internal or external-facing remit along the lines of strength-based scholarship, as discussed by Fung (2017), recognising the need for ‘flexibility regarding the kinds of scholarship undertaken—whether in a home subject discipline, in a professional field, focusing on their own teaching practice or in any other scholarly field of importance to them and their institution’ (p. 106). A strength-based approach to scholarship on education-focused pathways resources academics to continue to build the knowledge base in a discipline, on a different scale than their counterparts on research-­ centred pathways. Criteria were broadly similar in substance across institutions, but the level of detail provided varied substantially as did expectations related to what needed evidencing as the core of a role and the way in which activity in other areas of academic practice could be woven into an application for promotion. Progression on an education-focused pathway, in the more fully developed frameworks, was underpinned by evidence of leading projects that ensure a high-quality student academic experience in the applicant’s institution, by developing and disseminating pedagogic knowledge in a variety of fora, by gaining external recognition through securing external funding and invitations to act in an advisory capacity for other higher education organisations, and by taking up chairing roles to deliver specific initiatives that enhance the standing of the applicant’s institution and benefit a range of internal and external stakeholders. Education-­ focused pathways varied with regard to the importance they awarded international recognition below full professor level, as well as with regard to how expectations of impact and reach increased across various hierarchical rungs on a pathway. Separate pathways with a predominant focus on professional practice, enterprise, public engagement, or knowledge exchange (practice/entrepreneurship in short in this volume) appeared much less frequently. One institution had a four-pathway structure which distinguished between Enterprise and Professional Practice, though both had an emphasis on income generation, the application of knowledge, relationships with external stakeholders, and links to curricula. Another institution made external-­ facing practice the core remit of an academic role at Professor level only, through internal promotions to Professor of Practice from roles described as ‘fellow’ at grades below. Three aspects stood out in the documentation we explored and helped focus our review of literature, as well as the career framework redesign principles put forward in Chap. 6. One was the variation with regard to detail required to evidence teaching expertise or leadership of learning and

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teaching on all pathways but particularly on education-focused ones, through internal or external recognition. This raised the question of how higher education institutions develop a shared understanding of excellence and expertise. Drawing on King (2022) and other sources, we provide a more in-depth discussion later in our volume, from a focus on student-facing classroom practice or generating meaningful scholarship of learning and teaching through to evidencing leadership of learning and teaching at various levels. A second aspect that caught our attention was the way academic citizenship, collegiality, and/or collaboration were explicitly integrated into the criteria for each pathway. In some cases, internal contribution to the university community was framed as an essential descriptor or core criterion across all career pathways and all career stages. Work which in a traditional teaching-and-research context might have been labelled ‘academic housework’ (Heijstra et al., 2017), and held in low esteem with regard to promotion, was given due credit in redesigned frameworks. This included activities such as acting as a personal tutor, managing courses, coordinating professional networks, involvement in admissions and recruitment, or outreach work. Recognition of internal contribution was not consistent across institutions, as in some cases citizenship or collegiality were optional criteria and could be sidestepped when building a case about performance or promotion, without this impacting negatively on decisions made. Academic citizenship carries some ambiguity, as Macfarlane and Burg (2018) point out, given potential overlap with external engagement. One framework in our sample stood out in terms of how the dimensions of citizenship (within the institution as well as externally oriented) were unpacked as central components of the university’s long-term strategy and visually laid out for emphasis. We support the view that citizenship should be at the core of academic career pathways (Sterling, 2022a, b) and should encompass external engagement (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2016). We echo Grant’s (2019) invitation for academics to work with others to ‘articulate and nourish’ and make ‘alive in small everyday ways’ (p. 24) a vision of the university that ‘is of most value to our societies, our world’ (p. 20). The framing of messages about citizenship, collegiality, and collaboration among academics and their colleagues within an institution is potentially reflected in the way citizenship, collegiality, and collaboration are enacted with external partners (for example, through knowledge exchange or outreach activity), as well as in the student learning and teaching spaces (through student-staff

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collaborations, e.g., Green, 2020; Hawley et  al., 2019; Luke & Evans, 2021). A third aspect where variation across career framework documents from different institutions was apparent is how information was organised and presented to make criteria and expectations for each pathway and career stage transparent. Criteria and expectations were specified either in terms of areas of activity (e.g., student experience, scholarship, citizenship, leadership, enterprise or civic mission, professional development) or worded as outcomes (e.g., educational impact, international reputation, external influence). Some institutions listed core activities for each pathway, with thresholds for each hierarchical stage, and indicators of achievement. Differentiation by rung on the career ladder was not made in the (publicly available) documentation for all institutions. One framework document offered an interesting mapping of areas of academic work that were valued, through five different categories of activity for each specific pathway, broken down into more specific lists and linked explicitly to the university’s strategic ambition. Another document used the same set of overarching categories across all pathways, but with differentiation by pathway within each category. Some documents clarified that activities listed were indicative, and that there was no expectation that all categories would be fully evidenced by one individual. In some cases, an explicit note was made that international reach and impact would not necessarily count as more significant than work of national relevance. In more fully developed frameworks, criteria that mapped vertical progression provided threshold-level indicators as well as indicators of excellence, or guidance on how to evidence effective, significant, and outstanding contribution. All pathways involved several sets of criteria, not all of which had to be met to the same degree. Career frameworks and promotion guidelines have the potential to influence how different aspects of academic work are valued and engaged in, and the way workload allocation is managed and negotiated, to support operational organisation needs and individual career aspirations (Whitchurch & Gordon, 2017). Clarity of guidelines is of paramount importance if universities are to deliver successfully on their mission. Career framework documents represent the views of all involved in the framework development and consultation process. Responses from the wider body of academics within an institution during framework implementation may range from a celebration of the potential of the framework to offer clarity on academic roles in ways that enhance academic work

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experiences, all the way through to more sceptical reception as the change process sweeps through the organisation unsettling the existing systems and balance. Barrow et al. (2022) note that the substantial literature on academic identities over the past decade or so would seem to indicate that ‘many are struggling to (re)define who they are as academics and how they might respond to what is happening around them’ (p.  240). Redesigned academic career frameworks could lead to a reframing of academic identities for academics who join via a traditional PhD route and have expectations of a linear career trajectory, while potentially being identity-enhancing for those with a portfolio career and a broader range of professional experience to draw on (Whitchurch et al., 2019). The way new pathways are introduced, unpacked, and embraced is highly likely to vary across subject areas, institutions, and national higher education systems, impacting on the way academic roles and identities are experienced. Universities have missions to which academic communities and individual academics align to a greater or lesser extent. New career frameworks aim to enable greater alignment. The extent to which this is achieved will most likely depend on the creative and constructive negotiation of the complex dynamic between individual interests, the shared values of academic communities within an institution, the institution’s priorities, the expectations of external stakeholders, and the pressures from the external environment over which institutions have greater or lesser control. The next chapter unpacks benefits that career framework redesign is intended to bring to individual academics, and implicitly to their colleagues, students, and to external stakeholders as well. Alignment to pathways is explored through five fictional vignettes, with broader themes from the vignettes discussed to inform the redesign of career frameworks and with emphasis on citizenship and collegiality as core aspects of academic work.

References Barrow, M., & Grant, B. (2019). The uneasy place of equity in higher education: Tracing its (in)significance in academic promotions. Higher Education, 78, 133–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-­018-­0334-­2 Barrow, M., Grant, B., & Xu, L. (2022). Academic identities research: Mapping the field’s theoretical frameworks. Higher Education Research and Development, 41(2), 240–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1849036

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Baxter, J. (2023, March 14). The role of scholarship of teaching and learning in developing practitioner/academic identities. Advance HE. https://www. advance-­he.ac.uk/news-­and-­views/role-­scholarship-­teaching-­and-­learning-­ developing-­practitioneracademic-­identities Bennett, M. R. (2015). Academic career frameworks: Key to change? A case study from Bournemouth University. https://www.advance-­he.ac.uk/knowledge-­ hub/academic-­career-­frameworks-­key-­change-­case-­study Buller, J. (2021). Retaining your best college professors. Rowman and Littlefield. Clegg, S. (2008). Academic identities under threat? British Educational Research Journal, 34(3), 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701532269 Cutler, S., Kottmeyer, A., Heinen, R., Xia, Y., Zappe, S., & Litzinger, T. (2022). A holistic assessment of the responsibilities and areas of support of engineering faculty. International Journal for Academic Development, 27(1), 96–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2020.1855592 Ennals, P., Fortune, T., Williams, A., & D'Cruz, K. (2016). Shifting occupational identity: Doing, being, becoming and belonging in the academy. Higher Education Research and Development, 35(3), 433–446. https://doi.org/10. 1080/07294360.2015.1107884 Evans, L. (2018). Professors as academic leaders: Expectations, enacted professionalism and evolving roles. Bloomsbury. Fanghanel, J., Pritchard, J., Potter, J., & Wisker, G. (2016). Defining and supporting the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL): A sector-wide study. https:// www.advance-­h e.ac.uk/knowledge-­h ub/defining-­a nd-­s uppor ting-­ scholarship-­teaching-­and-­learning-­sotl-­sector-­wide-­study Fung, D. (2017). Strength-based scholarship and good education: The scholarship circle. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 54(2), 101–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2016.1257951 Gardner, A., & Willey, K. (2018). Academic identity reconstruction: The transition of engineering academics to engineering education researchers. Studies in Higher Education, 43(2), 234–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079. 2016.1162779 Grant, B.  M. (2019). The future is now: A thousand tiny universities. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, 1(3), 9–28. (Special issue on ‘Imagining the Future University’) https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/plg/ptihe/ 2019/00000001/00000003/art00002?crawler=true&mimetype=app lication/pdf Green, W. (2020). Partnerships in global learning—Before and after the outbreak of COVID-19. https://www.sapgl.com/post/engaging-­students-­as-­partners-­in-­ global-­learning-­before-­and-­after-­the-­outbreak-­of-­covid-­19 Hawley, S., McDougall, J., Potter, J., & Wilkinson, P. (2019). Students as partners in third spaces. International Journal for Students as Partners, 3(1). https:// doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v3i1.3980

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Heijstra, T. M., Steinthorsdóttir, S. F., & Einarsdóttir, T. (2017). Academic career making and the double-edged role of academic housework. Gender and Education, 29(6), 764–780. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016. 1171825 Henkel, M. (2005). Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment. Higher Education, 49(1–2), 155–176. https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s10734-­004-­2919-­1 HESA. (2022). Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK, 2020/21. https://www. hesa.ac.uk/news/01-­02-­2022/sb261-­higher-­education-­staff-­statistics HESA. (n.d.). Definitions: Staff. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/support/definitions/ staff#:~:text=Academic%20staff%20are%20defined%20as,defined%20by%20 the%202010%20Standard King, H. (2022). The characteristics of expertise for teaching in higher education. In H.  King (Ed.), Developing expertise for teaching in higher education (pp. 15–28). Routledge. Leišytė, L., & Hosch-Dayican, B. (2016). Boundary crossing and maintenance among UK and Dutch bioscientists. Towards hybrid identities of academic entrepreneurs. In L.  Leišytė & U.  Wilkesmann (Eds.), Organizing academic work in higher education: Teaching, learning, and identities (pp.  223–242). Routledge. Locke, W., Whitchurch, C., Smith, H., & Mazenod, A. (2016). Shifting landscapes. Meeting the staff development needs of the changing academic workforce. https://www.advance-­he.ac.uk/knowledge-­hub/shifting-­landscapes Luke, K., & Evans, G. (2021). Students as partners in digital education: Exploring lecture capture in higher education through partnership between students and learning technologists. International Journal of Students as Partners, 5(2), 78–88. https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v5i2.4508 Macfarlane, B., & Burg, D. (2018). Rewarding and recognizing academic citizenship. https://www.advance-­he.ac.uk/knowledge-­hub/rewarding-­and-­ recognising-­academic-­citizenship Martin, L., Lord, G., & Warren-Smith, I. (2020). Juggling hats: Academic roles, identity work and new degree apprenticeships. Studies in Higher Education, 45(3), 524-537. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2018.1550478 McAlpine, L., & Amundsen, C. (2011). Making meaning of diverse experiences: Constructing an identity through time. In L. McAlpine & C. Amundsen (Eds.), Doctoral education: Research-based strategies for doctoral students, supervisors and administrators (pp. 173–183). Springer. McCune, V. (2021). Academic identities in contemporary higher education: Sustaining identities that value teaching. Teaching in Higher Education, 26(1), 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1632826 Nästesjö, J. (2022). Managing the rules of recognition: How early career academics negotiate career scripts through identity work. Studies in Higher Education, 48(4), 657-669. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2022.2160974

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Nørgård, R. T., & Bengtsen, S. S. E. (2016). Academic citizenship beyond the campus: A call for the placeful university. Higher Education Research and Development, 35(1), 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2015. 1131669 OECD. (2020). Resourcing higher education: Challenges, choices, and consequences. https://www.oecd-­ilibrary.org/sites/d6f502d9-­en/index.html?itemId=/ content/component/d6f502d9-­en Pick, D., Symons, C., & Teo, S. T. T. (2017). Chronotopes and timespace contexts: Academic identity work revealed in narrative fiction. Studies in Higher Education, 42(7), 1174–1193. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015. 1085008 Rosewell, K., & Ashwin, P. (2019). Academics’ perceptions of what it means to be an academic. Studies in Higher Education, 44(12), 2374–2384. https://doi. org/10.1080/03075079.2018.1499717 Shams, F. (2019). Managing academic identity tensions in a Canadian public university: The role of identity work in coping with managerialism. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 41(6), 619–632. https://doi. org/10.1080/1360080X.2019.1643960 Siekkinen, T., Pekkola, E., & Nokkala, T. (2022). Visible organisational boundaries and the invisible boundaries of the scholarly profession. European Journal of Higher Education, 12(4), 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1080/2156823 5.2022.2060846 Sterling, M. (2022a, February 9). Revamping an archaic promotions process and career structure. SEDA. https://thesedablog.wordpress.com/2022/02/09/ revamping-­an-­archaic-­promotions-­process/ Sterling, M. (2022b, February 18). The importance of the employee ‘deal’. HEPI. https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2022/02/18/the-­importance-­of-­the-­employeedeal/ Trowler, P., Saunders, M., & Bamber, V. (2012). Conclusion: Academic practices and the disciplines in the 21st century. In P. Trowler, M. Saunders, & V. Bamber (Eds.), Tribes and territories in the 21st century: Rethinking the significance of disciplines in higher education (pp. 241–258). Routledge. Watermeyer, R., & Tomlinson, M. (2022). Competitive accountability and the dispossession of academic identity: Haunted by an impact phantom. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54(1), 92–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013185 7.2021.1880388 Whitchurch, C., & Gordon, G. (2017). Reconstructing relationships in higher education: Challenging agendas. SRHE/Routledge. Whitchurch, C., Locke, W., & Marini, G. (2019, March). A delicate balance: Optimising individual aspirations and institutional missions in higher education (Working Paper No. 46). Centre for Global Higher Education.

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Wint, N., & Nyamapfene, A. (2022). The development of engineering education research: A UK based case study. European Journal of Engineering Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2022.2121686 Wolf, A., & Jenkins, A. (2021). Managers and academics in a centralising sector: The new staffing patterns of UK higher education. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ policy-­institute/assets/managers-­and-­academics-­in-­a-­centralising-­sector.pdf Ylijoki, O.-H. (2019). Happy in academia: The perspective of the academic elite. In F. Cannizzo & N. Osbaldiston (Eds.), The social structures of global academia (pp. 107–121). Routledge.

CHAPTER 3

Career Frameworks and Development: The Individual Perspective

3.1   The Benefits of Redesigned Pathways Students, and Other Stakeholders

for Academics,

In most universities where new academic career pathways have been introduced, the development of pathways has taken place during a time of unprecedent change in higher education. A time with increased focus on innovation and on activity with positive impact on society. A time during which digital transformation has intensified. This has provided colleagues on education-focused pathways or on pathways with a practice, enterprise, public engagement, or knowledge exchange remit (practice/entrepreneurship in short) a golden opportunity to channel their energy into projects that play to their strengths, providing evidence for promotion applications if desired and for sector recognition. Acknowledgement of the substantial contribution that universities make in their locality has increased and has allowed academics across a wider range of disciplines and fields on redesigned pathways to make more overt use of knowledge and expertise not traditionally linked with the student experience (e.g., through a variety of forms of civic engagement and knowledge exchange) but that can, to varying degrees, be brought back into the curriculum and be of wider benefit to students, staff, and the institution. In this chapter, we explore new academic pathways from the viewpoint of individual stakeholders and their experiences. We consider the benefits © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Sterling et al., Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7_3

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that education-focused pathways and practice/entrepreneurship pathways accrue to academics themselves, to students, and to other internal and external stakeholders. We discuss job crafting as an approach to achieving best fit with a pathway. We offer vignettes through which we unpack options to develop and progress that are available on new pathways to individual academics at various stages in their career. We consider some of the broader themes and challenges that arise, from the viewpoint of individual academics, when new academic pathways are introduced. We close with a note about collegiality, collaboration, and academic citizenship, which, we argue, should be central to academic career framework redesign, and to endeavours to highlight more fully universities’ status as ‘learningful’ workplaces (Senge, 2006, p. 4). Implicit in our approach is that new academic career pathways are designed to maximise benefits for all stakeholders in and of a university: academics, their colleagues who support student learning in a variety of roles, the students that a university enrols, the external stakeholders who are directly engaged in student learning and knowledge exchange activity or who will be on the receiving end of civic engagement work, and the institution as a whole. Whilst the benefits could be interpreted to accrue primarily to one stakeholder category, we argue that they will generate positive ripple effects as long as employer and employee understand the implicit compact that has been established. New pathways signal the full range of activities that are explicitly valued by a higher education institution and they encourage talented academics who subscribe to the ethos and mission of an institution to make it their professional ‘home’ over a longer term, or to continue to engage in collaborative projects after the end of a direct employment relationship. Making room for everyone’s talent and ensuring academics are supported to thrive are substantial benefits that start at onboarding (Buller, 2021) and apply to re-onboarding as well after a career break. (Re-) onboarding that takes careful account not only of what colleagues who join academia need to learn about an organisation, but also of what their professional strengths and interests are and the direction in which they hope to develop, creates a foundation for an overall better experience with a growth trajectory in mind. Aspirations to develop may or may not align to a traditional linear academic career, premised on gradually increasing expertise in discipline-focused research. They may involve a broader range of professional activities that can bring equal if not more value to a university’s ecosystem.

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Pathway variety also has implications for mid-career progression, not least because ‘mid-career’ will have different meanings for colleagues who bring expertise from other professional sectors. Referred to in the literature as ‘pracademics’ (Dickinson et  al., 2022) or ‘dual professionals’ (Bradley, 2019; Guild HE, 2018), these are experienced professionals in their field but new to academia. Dual professionals may join on entry-level academic positions, needing to build their scholarly credentials through postgraduate study (Gustafsson et  al., 2021), or at higher levels in the academic hierarchy. New pathways increase opportunities for career progression on an upward trajectory for academics who do not follow traditional linear academic paths. To a certain extent the concept of a linear career is debatable in the case of a substantial proportion of academics not just dual professionals, given the degree of ongoing change in higher education. Traditional understandings of what it means to be an academic have evolved over the years in response to external factors (Grant, 2021). This has prompted the organic growth of new pathways that offer recognition of a broader range of academic work and that enable individual academics to achieve better balance between core academic work, other professional activities, and personal commitments. Whitchurch et  al. (2021), for example, put forward the concept of ‘concertina careers’ to capture the way in which progression on an upward trajectory will be accelerated, slowed down, or derailed by the complex interaction between individuals, their life circumstances, and the institutional context in which they are located. Strengths developed through concertina careers are recognised more fully and readily on new pathways. Benefits associated with new academic career pathways are not solely connected to upward career progression. They may include an enriched role remit with more leadership responsibilities, the opportunity to specialise and focus, and, in some cases, access to a broader range of development opportunities, leading to greater job satisfaction. Reallocation of tasks within teams, for example, creates opportunities for others’ professional development, beneficial regardless of whether they are pursuing upward career progression or not. New pathways lead to increased wellbeing and increased job satisfaction as a result of engagement in activities which allow academics to step back, reflect, and use and develop their strengths to experiment with ‘concept projects’ and to appreciate more fully the value of their work for others. Eardley et al. (2021) differentiate between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, with the latter defined as

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‘actualisation of human potential and flourishing’ (p.  184), while Kolomitro et  al. (2020) signal the connection between wellbeing and belonging and call for a ‘shift in our cultural mindset that respects the whole person, and their wellbeing in the workplace’ (p. 43). Whole-person wellbeing on new career pathways can also result from legitimising a range of scholarly outputs. McPherson and Lemon (2022), two academics with complex, multilayered roles (involving various combinations of educator, researcher, writer, printmaker, coach, photographer, and/or crafter), creatively co-constructed hybrid academic texts that reflected more fully their professional and pedagogic interests and values. They recounted conversations fuelled by coffee and green tea in cafés in Melbourne, Australia, which they documented in their writing visually as well as through a poem and reflective dialogue. The chats served as ‘more of a community space that scaffolds care’ and wellbeing (p. 138). Similarly, Manathunga et  al.’s (2022) scholarly account—visually illustrated and carefully embedded in literature—of collaborative thinking and writing reveals how the regular walks on an Australian beach enhanced their sense of ‘friendship, connection and wholeness’ (p.  248), working to mitigate against the ‘academicwritingmachine’ (Henderson et al., 2016, p. 4) and its negative effects: In the hectic world of ‘cybernetic capitalism’ (Peters, 2015, p. 9) and ‘network time’ (Hassan, 2017, p.  76), academics are required to produce research outputs as if we operated like digitally-driven ‘machines’ (Henderson et al., 2016, p. 5) without the need for exercise, thought, rest, sustenance or relationships. (Manathunga et al., 2022, p. 239)

These collaborative writing experiences reflect what Heron et al. (2021) among others refer to as a ‘publish and flourish’ ethos, and signal a need to give legitimacy, in evaluation criteria on new pathways, to ‘a range of output types and formats which emphasise collaborative learning and wellbeing, and share insights which resonate with different audiences beyond the academic world’ (Blaj-Ward, 2021). Placing student learning and success at the core of all academic pathways means that benefits will accrue to students as well. Pathways with an education focus or practice/entrepreneurship ones remove the expectation that all academics would spend a substantial proportion of their time carrying out research that pushes the boundaries of subject knowledge. They signal a strong focus on understanding student learning experiences

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and on enhancing ways in which these are facilitated and/or linked to the world outside campus walls. While subject research remains a core activity in universities and infuses student learning experiences, the extent to which individual academics engage in and with subject research varies. The introduction of new pathways will ideally lead to more emphasis being placed on collaborative work in course teams to bring together complementary experiences and expertise (research, education and external engagement) for the benefit of students and of all involved. Academic staff with a link to a professional field outside academia bring with them experience, expertise, and networks that support students in becoming ‘knowledge-able, not knowledgeable’ (Dickinson et al., 2022, p. 291) and connect students to professional and civic communities in ways that would not necessarily have been available to students otherwise. Opportunities for cross-fertilisation and expertise sharing with regard to learning and teaching increase. For example, dual professionals can successfully use skills developed in the context of their industry practitioner work when carrying out pastoral aspects of their academic role (Dickinson et  al., 2022), while carefully managing role boundaries, and share these with others. Dual professionals can also offer perspective on how experiences of learning in the workplace can inform and shape experiences of learning at university, linking university learning to lifelong learning and helping transform the student learning experience at university and beyond. A clearly articulated collaborative approach to enhancing student learning will benefit not only academics and students but also institution-­ internal stakeholders in a variety of student-facing professional services roles, given that their contribution will be more fully recognised, and their own roles could be enriched as a result. Redesigned pathways place greater value on cross-functional collaboration, on more equal terms, between academics and colleagues such as library professionals in learning and teaching roles or careers consultants. External stakeholders such as employers and professional organisations will also benefit from having access to work-ready graduates. Professionals who transition into academia from other sectors are ‘driven to make an impact on their professions by teaching the professionals of the future’ (Dickinson et al., 2022, p. 297). While fully cognisant of and open about the realities of practice, dual professionals are ‘keen to instil a passion for their subject or vocation’ (p. 297). They model positive professional values and identities for students to take into the realms of work. As well as being able to recruit graduates with a higher level of work readiness, external

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stakeholders can input directly into student learning experiences in mutually beneficial ways. Digital transformation has made it easier for dual professionals in academia to leverage relationships with external stakeholders, and secure virtual placement experiences for students who might otherwise find travel challenging for a variety of reasons or who would benefit from a hybrid work experience opportunity. External stakeholders can also deliver talks virtually, expanding their own skillset and benefitting from cross-fertilisation of ideas and experience through dialogue. Participation of external stakeholders in academia is actively encouraged by some professional societies such as the Royal Academy of Engineering, who fund visiting professorships over a period of three years. These enable industry experts to contribute to enhancing learning and teaching in a university through approaches which ‘recognise that engineering education is not simply the accumulation of knowledge, but should identify with the process of engineering through the stages of creativity, design, and innovation’ (RAE, 2022). External stakeholders in civic communities also benefit when students are supported by academics on newly created pathways to leverage connections between their developing understanding of subject knowledge and the locality where the knowledge can be applied (UPP Foundation, 2019). Stuart and Shutt (2021) offer a comprehensive account of the role that universities play with regard to sustaining economically and civically vibrant localities and ‘levelling up left behind places’ (p. 12). Combining expertise from different academic career pathways and drawing on students’ and external stakeholders’ lived experience of left behind places through curricular activities and through consultation is likely to enable the development of more ‘nuanced and place-appropriate interventions’ (p. 14) that address present challenges and support communities to resiliently meet their future needs. There is substantial cross-over between student learning at university and externally oriented public engagement and knowledge exchange. Multiple benefits can be embedded by bringing students into this work as opposed to treating it as separate to teaching. Civic engagement and ensuring students’ work readiness are gradually being brought closer to the core of academic activity in universities across all academic career pathways and subject areas, including ones where only tenuous links appear to exist between academically verified knowledge and its application in real-life contexts. Career framework redesign enables collaborative working that creates value for individuals and the communities that matter to them.

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New pathways have potential to generate numerous and substantial benefits. They make room for talent with professionally diverse backgrounds and enable them to craft a coherent academic identity that integrates non-linear experiences. They shape academic roles in ways that play to role holders’ strengths. They create a stronger sense of wellness and belonging. They offer richer and more societally relevant student learning experiences, by legitimising and incentivising cross-functional, collaborative work, and building mutually beneficial relationships with external stakeholders. Individual academic agency plays an important part in embracing the freedom offered and ensuring that potential benefits are actualised.

3.2   Job Crafting and Alignment to New Pathways Traditionally, academics have had the benefit of more flexible roles than other members of staff in universities, and academic roles have evolved over the years without intentional intervention (Coates & Kezar, 2022). Of late, however, the rate of change of the academic role has been such that traditional academic career structures have started to hinder the agency of some academics rather than celebrate it. Job crafting is one possible option for individuals in traditional academic roles to secure a better fit to their role in institutions where new pathways are not yet available or to gather evidence for a case to join a (different) pathway in universities where redesigned academic career frameworks have been introduced. Joining academia from industry could also be considered a form of job crafting, given the change in career trajectory while still drawing on a core professional identity. Within the field of organisational psychology, job crafting is defined as going against the grain of a formally designed role. It could be argued that new academic pathways are in themselves an attempt to give individuals greater scope to select and combine activities and approaches that give their role purpose and meaning. Academics develop their roles in ways that not only address their own professional needs and aspirations but also allow them to make a greater contribution to an organisation, responding to the priorities of the university that employs them. In doing so, they ‘craft a career that has coherence and a sense of purpose’ (Brew et al., 2018, p. 119). The new pathways arguably reduce the amount of energy individuals would need to put into going against the grain of a role; however, research into job crafting still offers extremely useful insights with regard

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to how individuals are supported to align to pathways and develop their career trajectory. In a short piece for Harvard Business Review, Dutton and Wrzesniewski (2020) re-introduce three types of job crafting they identified through extensive research conducted over two decades: task-oriented, relational, and cognitive. Task crafting involves making changes to the range and scope of core activities an employee is required to engage in. Relational crafting focuses on varying the people one interacts with as part of their job. Cognitive crafting involves reframing the way one interprets the purpose of one’s role. Depending on the nature of the job, crafting could entail one or more of these aspects—they are neither mutually exclusive nor operating in isolation. To engage in job crafting presupposes a degree of intrapreneurialism, defined by Chamorro-Premuzic (2020) as ‘the overall tendency to harness innovation in your work, by finding better ways of doing things, and proactively nurturing progress in your organisation’. Intrapreneurs, according to Chamorro-Premuzic, are able to breathe new life into ideas, help others see their value, and gather support for implementation, that is, they demonstrate leadership without necessarily having line-management responsibility for anyone or everyone they interact with. They make things happen and they take risks. They support others and they build connections to help increase everyone’s sense of belonging. In a similar way, Brew et al. (2018) describe academic artisans as not only crafting their own roles but as drawing on their skills and interests to provide ‘a service to the institution by going beyond necessary tasks and contributing to a bigger whole’ (p. 123). Position in an organisational hierarchy may impact on the (perceived) extent to which an individual can engage in job crafting. Not surprisingly, perhaps, research carried out by Berg et al. (2010) in organisations outside the higher education sector showed that roles with a higher positioning in the hierarchy carried greater scope for job crafting due to their more open-­ ended nature. Individuals in roles with a lower positioning, on the other hand, expended greater effort creating opportunities for job crafting. They looked for situations in which they could use and develop their strengths ‘in ways that were valuable to others’ (Berg et al., 2010, p. 175), availed themselves of informal opportunities for professional learning and growth and placed emphasis on building trust to unlock support. Berg et al. (2010) portray job crafting as a ‘continuous process of adjustment and change’ (p. 159), a view which resonates both with traditional

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pathways and with the introduction of new ones. A degree of scaffolding is necessary to ensure that crafting has successful outcomes. Data that Berg et al. (2010) collected from employees closer to the top of an organisational hierarchy revealed that despite having greater opportunities to job craft these employees were sometimes apprehensive of ‘stepping into someone else’s realm’ (p. 170) when seeking opportunities to take on new or more complex tasks, develop a broader range of relationships, or a deeper, reframed understanding of their role. They were likely to benefit from coaching to increase their awareness and sense of self-efficacy with regard to meeting the goals associated with their role, support others’ development, and fulfil their own professional potential. At the higher end of the hierarchy, where goals are achieved mainly through leading and working with others, and job boundaries are more fluid, obstacles appear to be primarily internal and self-focused. At the lower end of the hierarchy, individuals expended energy on ‘recognising and acting on openings to win others’ support for their job crafting intentions’ (Berg et al., 2010, p. 178). Creating structured opportunities and space for quality conversations to occur about the possibility to reframe the activities, relationships, and purpose of an academic role is likely to benefit both individuals and organisations. Colleagues with a variety of responsibilities to help others develop are uniquely well positioned to facilitate these conversations.

3.3   Vignettes of Individual Journeys To capture a variety of journeys into academic roles and the way in which stages in an academic career impact on engagement with new academic pathways, we have included in this section five vignettes. These are a composite of abstract features of academic roles and experiences (Fanghanel, 2001; Thomson, 2017), broad outlines which readers are invited to fill in with more specific details. Any resemblance to specific individuals is unintended and purely coincidental. The vignettes do not directly specify the academic career pathway or track on which the individual is positioned in their imaginary institution. This is to allow discussion of how best pathway fit is established and evolves when new academic career frameworks are introduced, and also to highlight the importance of enabling the borders between pathways to be as porous as possible. While discussion of academic career frameworks is linked to permanent contracts, the first vignette included below is of a doctoral student, in order to explore early career development that opens opportunities and attends to all relevant aspects

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of academic work. All other vignettes focus on academics on permanent full-time or fractional contracts, at various stages in their professional and personal lives. The vignettes offer a range of situations, by no means exhaustive; a fuller discussion of equality, diversity, and inclusion is available in Chap. 5. The vignettes exemplify common features of academic life and their purpose is to be evocative, ‘to create resonance and recognition’ (Trowler et al., 2012, p. 241) in readers, whether in an academic role or in a role with a remit to support the development of academic colleagues. They are a useful point of entry into conversations about new academic pathways and about how to facilitate individuals’ growth for their own benefit as well as that of the stakeholders they engage with and the organisation where they work. There are various aspects to consider and potential challenges to address in the situations illustrated in the vignettes or other similar situations. The suggestions made in this section are framed in the spirit of job crafting, acknowledging the importance of individuals taking agency to shape their work in ways that are personally and professionally relevant. The vignettes are then revisited in the closing chapter in this volume, where we suggest possible follow-on trajectories for our vignette protagonists’ careers. Lynne Lynne is halfway through a full-time PhD with an interdisciplinary remit and is also teaching undergraduates in a different department to the one which houses her doctoral research. She is hoping to secure a permanent role in academia when she completes her PhD, although she is also open to gaining more industry-related experience (both her research and her teaching relate to medical technology, with immediate applicability in industry). Lynne benefits from a supportive network and from access to researcher and teaching development opportunities within her university, aligned to the Vitae (2011) researcher development framework.

While the development offer available to Lynne in her institution with regard to research and teaching is commendable, the challenge for her is perhaps how to ensure her research and teaching enrich each other and are not orthogonal activities. Her development as a researcher  and the teaching-­focused development she engages in may be facilitated from within different areas within her university and the connections between the two may or may not be fully realised. Lynne has access to a personal

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and professional support network, which she can make relevant use of for the immediate priorities in her career. A possible next step for her would be to consider who, in addition to her PhD supervisors, are the key actors in her support network, and how they can resource her growth both in the immediate future and the longer term, for example, by providing opportunities to participate in projects run by external expert organisations to communicate and advise on science-related matters (Gustafsson, 2022), co-producing research agendas with knowledge users, developing credibility, and consolidating their identities. Lynne is also keen to gain industry experience and a potential challenge for her is how to do this while maintaining ties to academia and working to build relevant relationships within the confidentiality constraints of industry-linked projects. Membership of a professional industry body could support her in this respect, as would tailored guidance on post-PhD careers outside academia (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2016). Her university offers formal research and teaching development, but Lynne’s industry-linked aspirations are developing informally and organically. There is perhaps scope for the university to offer Lynne more formally supported access to industry-linked development opportunities, for example, through initial conversations with a range of knowledge transfer professionals at the university (Lock, 2022). These professionals can offer her insights into the way partnerships and relationships are built between higher education and other sectors. Different universities manage relationships with industry in different ways and place different value on research and practice capitals. Lynne may wish to explore how the impact she hopes to achieve through her work aligns with the mission of the university where she is currently based or whether in the longer term she could make a fuller contribution elsewhere. An option for her is to take time out of academia after her doctorate to work in industry and then rejoin on a practice/entrepreneurship pathway. While in industry she could mentor university students doing internships or work experience placements to maintain her connection to teaching and help universities deliver on their student life-readiness and employability agendas (Advance HE, 2021). Other factors will need to be considered, for example, how her broader life ambitions and immediate career plan interconnect. Erica Erica has worked in several different roles (academic and professional services ones) leading education-focused projects in three different higher

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education institutions. Erica’s highest academic qualification is an MBA. In her late thirties and with a young family, she is hoping that a recently secured permanent academic position will become her professional ‘home’. Erica teaches mainly at postgraduate level, on courses focusing on management and leadership. She has achieved recognition from a professional body focused on teaching excellence with regard to her ability to design inspiring learning opportunities for her students, as well as for mentoring her colleagues to do the same. She has co-authored reports for internal audiences in the institutions where she previously worked.

In Erica’s case, the main question to be asked is whether an education-­ focused pathway would best enable her to showcase her strengths or whether a focus on developing discipline research into management and leadership would be more relevant for her to reach her next career milestone. Conversations with a mentor or a career coach about her career aspirations and ways to balance work and life commitments and interests would help Erica identify both a pathway that would be an immediate best fit and a future direction of travel, with the possibility of switching pathways if she finds that over time a different area of interest is developing more substantially. With a young family, some degree of flexibility in her work pattern is a priority for her, though this should not be at the expense of growing professionally or delivering for her employer. To establish best fit to a pathway, Erica would need to explore where she sees her contribution as adding most value and what she herself values most in terms of the core aspect of her role. Erica already has experience of different academic institutions and different roles crossing the academic/professional services divide. She was recruited to deliver management and leadership education and has secured a permanent role on the strength of her professional background and recognised expertise in teaching. She does not hold a doctoral qualification. She does, however, have experience of institutional research and she could build on this by pursuing a traditional or professional doctorate. She may also wish to think, given that her teaching focuses on management and leadership, about what additional knowledge of the world of work beyond academia would enrich her professional experience and her impact on students. Professional bodies linked to developing management and leadership in the workplace are also an option for her to consider engaging with, not least because of the opportunity to contribute to the profession through engaged scholarship, that is, co-producing insights with members

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of a professional community in ways that create immediate, direct value for them (through practical recommendations) and beneficial legacy (Franz, 2011). She would then be able to bring these insights into the curriculum for the benefit of her students. To strengthen her connections to the communities beyond campus walls in a meaningful way, Erica could also consider joining a charity board as a trustee, supporting the charity to deliver its mission and providing robust challenge where necessary. As regards developing her scholarly profile, Erica has the opportunity to build on her prior experience of co-authoring written work and create broader impact, for example, by setting up a collaborative writing and career support space for women across the university in academic and professional services roles. She could follow in the footsteps of a group of women academics from US and Canadian universities who took collective, collaborative action to develop slow, care-full scholarship, reinstating writing as an epistemological experience rather than using it as an instrumental skill (Mountz et al., 2015). Participants in Mountz et al.’s writing project offered support and mentoring to each other which erased work-life boundaries, acknowledging more fully the way choices in an academic career are constrained or impacted by life circumstances not always within people’s control. Since starting this article, members of this collective have coped with the birth of a child, the loss of a child from miscarriage, divorce, the death of parents, caring for parents with declining health, and other life-changing experiences that have made us unplanned experts in everything from childcare policy to urban transportation and Medicare coverage. These and other experiences have taught us to be compassionate to one another (and to our scholarship) as we navigate the difficult realities of daily life with the support of our colleagues. (Mountz et al., 2015, p. 1247)

Erica’s collaborative writing and career support space would contribute to counteracting the ‘publish or perish’ tendency in academia, which prioritises generating a maximum number of outputs with a maximum number of citations, and would model the ‘publish and flourish’ ethos for the benefit of her colleagues (Heron et  al., 2021), building the supportive culture that would enable colleagues with caring responsibilities similar to the participants in Villar-Aguilés and Obiol-Francés’ (2022) research to thrive.

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Regardless of the pathway she chooses, Erica could explore what experience she would need to gain for the next category of recognition from the professional body focused on teaching excellence and expertise in her field, which emphasises strategic leadership of education. The application process would enable her to reflect on how she can have even greater impact within her institution and to secure additional credibility and resource to raise the profile of education-focused projects that matter deeply to her. Yasmin Yasmin has a couple of decades’ experience in the legal profession and has taken up a part-time permanent role teaching in a university, which she has been doing for about two years. She has substantial professional expertise but was new to teaching when she was appointed. Given her route into academia, she was eligible for a funded place on the Academic Professional Apprenticeship (APA) course (see IfATE, 2022), which she completed successfully. Yasmin’s highest academic qualification is a postgraduate taught degree. She is keen to explore ways in which she can grow into her new role but that do not necessarily involve a doctorate. The option she is prioritising is to identify how her expertise can be used for the benefit of setting up or supporting projects with colleagues.

A question for Yasmin to consider is how she will continue to grow her teaching expertise and share this, for example, through mentoring colleagues on subsequent cohorts of the APA programme who have joined academia via routes similar to hers. In the two decades that Yasmin spent in the legal profession, she has developed a broad skillset, beyond expert knowledge of her field. Potentially there will be aspects of her broader skillset—such as negotiating change or mediating conflict—that she could capitalise on. Although fairly new to teaching in higher education, Yasmin has plenty of drive and enthusiasm to champion teaching and learning initiatives that align to her university’s priorities and she has the skillset to mobilise colleagues and enable implementation. At the same time, Yasmin will need to think about how her academic role enables her to maintain her connections to the legal profession. The strategic priorities of her department will impact the level of resource she can access to maintain those connections formally, on an education-­ focused pathway or a practice/entrepreneurship one, for example, through covering professional body membership fees or attendance at conferences and events.

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Yasmin’s stated interest is to identify how her legal expertise can be used for the benefit of setting up or supporting projects with colleagues, for example, by scaling up the work of the legal advice centre attached to the university and offering pro bono assistance to local community members. To achieve that ambition, she can explore whether those projects need to stay within her department or whether there is scope for projects to cross over into different areas of the university, capitalising on expertise from other subject areas and catalysing cross-disciplinary, cross-functional collaboration (HBR, 2019). A possible challenge for Yasmin might be to integrate her two identities: academic and professional. Two articles authored by Laura Empson, a senior academic in a different field, offer an insightful commentary into how she eventually accommodated her dual identities as academic researcher of leadership dynamics and experienced consultant outside academia (Empson, 2013, 2017). The iterative sense-making process Empson describes offers a useful reminder of the complexity of identity work in an organisation. Unlike Empson, Yasmin is not keen to pursue a doctorate herself. However, this should not necessarily pre-empt her inputting into the research culture in her department, collaborating with her research-­ focused colleagues to create impactful projects that engage practitioners outside academia in meaningful ways and enrich the knowledge base of her discipline. It is likely that Yasmin would also add value as a member of doctoral supervision teams. Alfie Alfie has a doctorate in STEM and is a mid-career academic in a highly research-oriented university. He leads and contributes to projects set up in collaboration with industry and policy makers. He teaches at undergraduate level, supervises research projects and is part of an established research team. He has a substantial research portfolio and over the past few years he has been regularly invited to speak at high profile conferences and events, both in academia and for the professional body associated with his field. He is an active STEM Ambassador both nationally and internationally, supporting the achievement of gender balance in his field, and has co-founded a charity to support STEM education for girls in underprivileged areas.

Alfie is a mid-career academic who has so far followed what might be referred to as a linear academic career path and has built an impressive portfolio of achievements. The question for him is what would be the

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most appropriate next stage in his career? He has compelling evidence to support a full professorship application. He has a well-established research core and experience of mentoring others in that direction, as well as recognised external impact commensurate with expectations at professorial level (Macfarlane & Burg, 2018). As he has reached a turning point in his career, it is perhaps time for him to re-evaluate which aspect of his work he finds most fulfilling. Flinders (2022) defines research leadership as ‘the activity of supporting and facilitating the production of research in an inclusive manner that maximises the scientific quality and social impact(s) of that endeavour’ (p. 195) and notes a lack of attention to developing leadership aspects such as relationships, emotional intelligence, scientific ingenuity and public value. Alfie’s colleagues are very appreciative of what they refer to as Alfie’s high stempathy level (his ability to empathise with colleagues and engage them in inclusive projects). Alfie would potentially benefit from stepping outside his research comfort zone and possibly also outside his academic specialism,  to explore a leadership role with a broader remit and focusing more fully on public engagement. To do so he may wish to take some time out to explore next steps without this creating a gap in his impressive record of achievement. Alfie has a well-established network built around shared research interests. His network could expand further to encompass role models and resources that would enable him to build on his existing strengths and create impact on an even broader scale. This could be achieved through the civic university agreement work that his institution is involved in, working collaboratively with colleagues across all career pathways as well as functional areas in the university, and engaging other universities within the region. Support could be available internally from various combined sources within the institution. It could be sourced informally via an agreement with another institution, or formally arranged through commissioning executive coaching or attending a senior leadership development programme. Evans (2018) questions the meaning and scope of professorship in the twenty-first century and calls for professorships to be redesigned, enabling academics with Alfie’s professional profile and aspirations to draw on a core, predominant strength while having flexibility to build other activities around their core strength in ways that bring individual and institutional benefits. Redesigned pathways create opportunities for this to happen.

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Faraz Faraz is a long-serving member in an academic team that has grown substantially over the past few years. Faraz would describe himself as research-­ active, but not in terms of generating outputs which could be described as world-leading. He teaches at all levels (undergraduate and postgraduate) and contributes to PhD student supervision. His teaching is rated highly by his students, though Faraz does not have a higher education teaching qualification and has been less keen to engage with the process which awards professional recognition of teaching in his institution. Faraz is contemplating retiring in a couple of years. He has substantial knowledge of the region within which his university is located, both through a personal interest in local history and through contacts he has built over the years with alumni and companies that offer work placements to students.

Career progression on a newly developed career pathway is perhaps less of a priority for Faraz. He is clearly valued by students and, although reluctant to engage with the formal development offer within his university, he makes a valuable contribution to his department. He is likely to be an excellent fit for the education-focused career pathway and there is scope for him to share his experience more broadly for the benefit of others. A narrow view of scholarship on the education-focused pathway would disadvantage Faraz, who is keen to maintain the currency of his subject knowledge and is likely to perceive scholarship associated with education as a new discipline (Whitton et al., 2021). A collaborative project with an educational developer, sensitively facilitated by the latter, would ensure that Faraz’s experience is captured and framed in a way that reaches a broader audience, within Faraz’s department and outside the institution. Faraz’s institution encourages academics to secure Advance HE (2023) professional recognition of teaching aligned to the Professional Standards Framework (formerly UKPSF) or equivalent. Recognition is encouraged but not yet officially mandated in his institution. A way for Faraz to support his early career colleagues to evidence the core knowledge and professional values in their own practice would be to work collaboratively with them, co-teaching or observing. He might also be persuaded to lead or contribute to projects that co-create aspects of course design, delivery, or assessment with students, illustrating how ‘pedagogies of care’ (Motta & Bennett, 2018) can be enacted. Faraz’s work with students is internally recognised within his department for the way he values students’ prior experiences (care as recognition) and integrates them into his teaching, his approach to scaffolding student learning

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by engaging them as equal partners in a learning conversation (care as dialogic relationality), and his ability to create a safe space where students feel able to contribute and are not rushed or judged (care as affective and embodied praxis). Positioning on an education-focused pathway would mean that Faraz could continue to facilitate undergraduate research projects linked to his own research interests, or scaffold student placement experiences. Faraz can draw on his extensive connections with industry through alumni to enhance students’ career outcomes, or on his thorough knowledge of the region within which the university is located in order to help students understand how their subject knowledge can be leveraged to transform a place for the benefit of all (Stuart & Shutt, 2021). An education-focused pathway underpinned by a strength-based approach to scholarship (Fung, 2017) would enable Faraz and the students, colleagues, and other stakeholders he engages with to thrive professionally and personally. In her 2001 volume, Being an Academic, Fanghanel reflects that The pace and intensity of change over the past two decades or so, and the increasingly complex link to policy, societal, epistemic, ethical and technological developments, may, however, necessitate more thoughtful and purposive forms of questioning about the nature of the academy’s engagement with the world. (p. 118)

Two decades later, the pace and intensity do not appear to have relented, making it even more necessary for universities to rethink their purpose in the world. New academic career pathways allow academics like Lynne, Erica, Yasmin, Alfie, and Faraz to craft their own meaningful interpretations of purpose and to tap into what Fanghanel (2001) describes as ‘the empowering potential residing within the academy’ (p. 115) to create transformative experiences for all.

3.4   Broader Themes and Challenges to Consider To ensure that redesigned pathways yield clear benefits for individual academics and for the stakeholders (students and, where applicable, external partners) that academics engage with, several themes arise with relevance for situations similar to the ones discussed in the vignettes. These themes include clear pathway framing and clear messages about parity of esteem; ensuring that full consideration of equality, diversity, and inclusion is

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threaded through the pathways; paying careful attention to the wording of job advertisements to attract talent and to enable transferability of academic professional capital across the sector; access to appropriate resource for professional development; aligning the appraisal process to redesigned pathways; re-thinking the development offer in line with new pathways; and ensuring sufficient pathway flexibility. A first and very important aspect to bear in mind when redesigning pathways is to ensure that the substantive activities which make up each pathway in an academic career framework and the expectations associated with hierarchical stages along a pathway are clearly laid out to support optimal positioning. Positioning of existing academic staff on a redesigned pathway should aspire to best fit not only to the individual’s existing strengths but also for their longer-term career aspirations. Guidance about the type of activities that map onto a pathway will have been carefully drawn up; however, the way academics unpack this guidance and use their newly developed understanding to consolidate their academic role identity may differ from individual to individual. Decisions about positioning need to be made with full knowledge about options, with support and guidance. Pathways which have porous boundaries rather than rigidly defined activity tracks enable individuals to develop new interests over time as they gain more experience in a role. Such pathways are more likely to support greater job satisfaction and wellbeing. Perceptions of parity can in themselves be a challenge. Although pathways are set up to carry parity of esteem, uneven numbers of promotions and insufficient visibility and celebration of achievements across all pathways, coupled with uneven resourcing, may inadvertently create the impression that some pathways are privileged over others. Academics who join an institution on any pathway (either from a different sector or with prior experience of working in higher education) are likely to experience the redesigned pathways differently from academics who are already in that institution when redesigned frameworks are introduced. In the case of new staff, it is important to bear in mind that labels such as ‘early career’ and ‘mid-career’ may be less straightforward to apply and to use when signposting development opportunities or establishing what would be most helpful to them. Mutch (2017) proposes the label ‘emerging scholars’ for staff who enter academia at various points in their professional life. Nästesjö (2022) allowed for up to eight years after completion of PhD when selecting participants in his study of early career academics, though a doctorate would not necessarily be a requirement for

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new career pathways in universities. Bearing in mind the variety of criteria to establish best fit to the ‘early career academic’ category, differentiated support may need to be made available to new and existing academic staff. Choices of academic career will inevitably be linked to broader choices an individual needs to make, bearing in mind individual circumstances and personal life and family commitments. These life choices should be supported through appropriate policies linked to equality, diversity, and inclusion (e.g., including space on promotion application forms to explain career breaks) and institutions should commit to robust Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) to support decision making in policies and criteria for promotion. Careful framing and wording of job advertisements that accompany academic role descriptions will ensure that the advertisement reaches a wide enough pool of applicants (see discussion in Pilcher et  al. (2021), with regard to recruitment in Construction and Engineering departments). It will also ensure that pathways are presented in a way that enables academics to bring professional capital from another institution, rather than in a way that limits transferability of professional capital and hence academic mobility across the sector (see risk identified by Smith and Walker (2021), with regard to developing capitals which are specific to an institution when pathways are too idiosyncratic). To thrive on redesigned pathways for the benefit of students and external partners, academics need access to appropriate development resources. Facilitating student learning, this volume argues, is or should be at the core of academic work. Academics on all pathways need access to initial and continuing development of teaching skills, making the most of available teaching-focused development opportunities, formal or informal, and should be resourced to contribute to their colleagues’ development through a collaborative peer learning culture—within an institution or more broadly within the higher education sector, in networks that cross geographic and discipline boundaries. In a pandemic-transformed context, where a substantial proportion of student learning is taking place in digital spaces in circumstances which call for attention to mental wellness, ongoing development is particularly relevant, regardless of the amount of time an academic has allocated in their workload for direct student-facing facilitation of learning. Effective leadership of and strategic input into teaching, which occupy a more substantial proportion of roles at higher levels in the academic hierarchy (HEA, 2013; RAE, 2018), also rely on a thorough understanding of how university students engage in digitally

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enhanced learning experiences and develop a sense of belonging in higher education. Dual professionals who join on practice/entrepreneurship pathways may need support to maintain the currency of their professional practice outside academia and their professional credibility through engagement in external professional development, which will potentially also have resource implications. If pathways are set up in such a way that different activity strands can be combined to capture more fully the systemic, integrated nature of work in an academic context rather than forcing specialisation on a single track, the development offer will ideally mirror this, with development opportunities meeting the needs of academics with a range of experiences and aspirations. In the UK context, in addition to teaching-focused development, all academics, regardless of the pathway they are on, will need guidance on how to engage in knowledge exchange activity across all Knowledge Exchange Framework perspectives (Research England, 2022a, b) so that priority is assigned to areas where the most significant impact can be made, without this pre-empting smaller-scale activities that have potential to create a positive ripple effect in the future for communities within and beyond a university. Additionally, as academics progress on a career path, opportunities to lead projects or areas of work arise. Whether progression happens along the same pathway in a seemingly linear fashion or the movement is across pathways to roles where leadership is key to success, making leadership development opportunities available enhances the likelihood of individual success as well as creating implicit benefits to others. Formal processes that universities use to appraise performance need to align to new pathways and have the values of the institution running through them. Performance related either to teaching or to other aspects of activity on each pathway should be the focus of developmental conversations which signpost individuals to the most relevant options from an institution’s formal development offer and other resources available to them. Line managers are ideally placed to have these conversations, provided they themselves are fully supported to become aware of the range of options available for each pathway and of how best to mix and match opportunities from the existing core portfolio of development activities. While managers support the framing of performance objectives and development goals in relation to institutional, departmental, and individual priorities, they are not necessarily the most suitable person to actually facilitate development, given that they may not have direct experience of a pathway

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or sufficient time at their disposal. They may guide the selection of development activities and connect academic members of staff to other experienced colleagues, within the immediate team or from other areas of the institution, who would act as mentors. Access to coaching can also be very effective in terms of helping the individual to devise and take ownership of their personal growth (Guccione & Hutchinson, 2021). If carried out in an appropriately supportive, developmental way, appraisal conversations create space for reflection and opportunities for individuals to craft a coherent identity narrative that strengthens their sense of self-efficacy and purpose. Academic roles in universities are filled with talented individuals who are identified as a potential best fit to that role and the organisation. Pathway flexibility is designed to support academics to harness the full potential of their role. The extent to which an initial best fit to a role is confirmed and sustained over time will depend in equal measure on the appointed academic’s initiative and on the formal and informal support network around them that allows them to articulate their experience of the role and to wear the role in or adjust it until it becomes fully comfortable. Flexibility to move from one pathway to another as an academic career progresses, with clear bridges that indicate routes across pathways, creates potential for individuals to remain fully engaged, have agency, and for their impact to be maximised. Individuals’ circumstances, career interests, and priorities may change over time. For a variety of reasons, existing academics may find that their alignment to a role begins to shift and they may experience depletion. If sufficiently flexible to reflect the ‘messiness’ of academic work (Malcolm & Zukas, 2009) and appropriately scaffolded, new pathways offer scope for alignment to be regained, in a variety of ways, including through artisanal work (Brew et al., 2018). New pathways are designed to support individuals in building sustainable careers which enable their professional growth (de Vos et al., 2018) and, therefore, create positive impact for an organisation as well on a broader scale.

3.5  A Note on Collegiality, Collaboration, and Academic Citizenship The five vignettes included in Sect. 3.3 focused on individual academics, however, the suggestions we made with regard to pathway alignment and academic development take into account Lemon’s (2022) emphasis on

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positive relationships to enhance wellbeing within academia and create greater positive impact. Two questions Lemon asks, ‘What happens when “we” turn the “I” to “us”? How can others support us and how can we support others?’ (p. 4) are addressed indirectly in each vignette. In Lynne’s case, it is support networks that will enable her professional growth. Erica is in a position to draw on her prior experience to set up a writing and women’s career development network within her institution. Yasmin has expertise and interest in setting up collaborative projects to benefit her colleagues. Alfie’s next step involves translating core research into knowledge for public benefit on a broader scale. Faraz has substantial potential to add value to the development of an inclusive, strength-based scholarship of teaching and learning culture within his department. Carefully designed academic career pathways acknowledge, reward, and encourage collegiate behaviour, as highlighted by Grove (2019) in a THE piece about criteria for promotion to professorships in a prestigious, UK-based research-intensive university. Collegiality manifests itself in different ways, ranging from a casual collegial gesture such as an informal, impromptu conversation about a useful pedagogic resource to more complex contributions such as supporting the success of team projects over a longer period of time. It also includes sharing experience in broader networks, carrying out academic citizenship duties such as contributing to committees, programme leadership, external examining, or journal editorial commitments or broad consultation when strategic-level decisions about resource allocation are made to increase trust, buy-in, and engagement. Collegiality criteria that Grove (2019) highlights are framed explicitly as making a positive contribution to colleagues’ success, such as supporting others to gain credit for work they do, nominating colleagues for awards, and providing access to opportunities such as co-authorship or keynote talks. Bacon (2014) supports this view in his stimulus paper about neo-collegiality in the managerial university, noting that collegial activities ‘take a number of forms and are not tied to existing structures and representative committees’ (p. 19). While his paper focuses on structural collegiality rather than the behavioural counterpart, and on how collaborative decision-­making can be reintroduced to facilitate the effective governance of a university for the benefit of that particular institution as well as for a greater common good, Bacon offers useful insights into how institutional expectations about collegiality need to be introduced so that they fully achieve their aim. New pathways arguably enable and reward ingenuity

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and creativity in terms of how collegiality manifests itself. Kligyte (2021) unpacks collegiality further, drawing on insights from semi-structured interviews in Australia and New Zealand. Meaning participants in her research assigned to collegiality included welcoming newcomers and supporting them to integrate; balancing opportunities for development with fulfilling obligations towards an institution; contributing to decision-­ making with the interest of the organisation in mind rather than that of an individual or, conversely, re-configuring broader institutional imperatives in ways that align to local institutional contexts; welcoming a variety of perspectives; mobilising energy to enhance the quality of academic work to innovate and to engage external stakeholders. Collegiality and citizenship can be deemed to extend beyond campus walls, encompassing external engagement activity and civic contribution within the immediate local community, the region, and the global communities to which academics, students, and external partners are linked. New academic career pathways that interpret knowledge exchange and civic engagement requirements in an integrative way, as opposed to relegating this to one specific pathway only and/or separating it from student-­ facing activity, are more likely to engender collegiality and citizenship which lead to significant impact. They create a ‘placeful university’, whose relationship with society is characterised by ‘openness, dialogue, mutual integration, joint responsibility and care’ (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2016, p.  14). New pathways that enable such relationship to develop are the focus of Chap. 4. Discussion in Chap. 4 picks up the threads of pathway specifications and academic development opportunities when designing and implementing academic career frameworks so that individual purpose crafting activities converge into a shared institution-wide vision. The various themes and challenges highlighted in relation to individual experiences of redesigned academic career pathways are explored in Chaps. 4 and 5, from an institutional perspective, to identify ways in which they can be addressed in a balanced, structurally supported way.

References Advance HE. (2021). Employability: A review of the literature 2016–2021. https:// www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/employability-review-literature2016-2021

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CHAPTER 4

New Pathways in Redesigned Academic Career Frameworks

4.1   Opening Note The vignettes of Erica and Yasmin in the previous chapter are two accounts of career trajectories that align with new pathways in redesigned academic career frameworks. Erica has potential to deliver exemplary work on an education-focused pathway, while a practice/entrepreneurship pathway would potentially allow Yasmin to use her strengths and expertise most effectively at her university. This chapter unpacks the features of these pathways and discusses how academics can be supported to develop, in line with the recommendations articulated by the European University Association (EUA, 2021), to create parity of scholarly esteem for teaching, incentivise academic projects which generate varied forms of impact, and facilitate two-way transfer between academic employment and work in other sectors. Starting with a scenario of impactful digital learning and teaching in a university, we discuss teaching expertise and excellence, how these are defined, recognised at various levels in a career stage, and continuously developed. We then focus on building capacity to generate impactful scholarship of teaching and learning, which differentiates teaching-­only roles from education-focused pathways. Switching attention to practice/entrepreneurship pathways, we discuss how dual professionals enrich the learning experience of students at university. We consider the place of enterprise, public engagement, and knowledge exchange in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Sterling et al., Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7_4

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redesigned academic career frameworks. While we discuss the pathways separately, we acknowledge their overlap and complementarity with regard to student education and knowledge exchange.

4.2  Education-Focused Pathways: Unpacking Expectations and Supporting Development 4.2.1   Teaching Expertise and Excellence The role of redesigned academic career pathways is to help re-imagine universities for the future. One hypothetical vision for the future, offered by a UK-based university vice-chancellor in the context of Jisc’s Learning and Teaching Reimagined initiative, is as follows. It’s 31 August 2030 … I’m just back from our party to celebrate the successful end to our academic year and being top in the National Digital Learning Survey (which you may recall replaced the NSS around the turn of the last decade). (Maguire, 2020)

To achieve that level of success, the university in the imagined vision for the future appointed a PVC-Digital to their senior management team; invested in a sophisticated, integrated digital platform; ‘worked out how to use the data from the analytical engine to determine what works and then feed this back into the design for new modules’ (Maguire, 2020), developing a new philosophy of learning; worked hard to achieve the right balance between digital and in-person provision and to capture the value of social learning. As well as high student satisfaction scores, the university achieved excellent academic and employability outcomes and won the National Governing Body of university sport e-sports cup for virtual tobogganing. Maguire (2020) reflects that ‘Although it took a number of years, eventually we were able to align staff with the idea of being a digital university and soon we were all pulling in the same direction.’ Maguire’s vision for the future does not make explicit reference to teaching expertise and excellence, although that would be expected to underpin the university’s success. While we discuss teaching in relation to education-focused pathways here, the present volume views all pathways in redesigned frameworks as having a core, student-facing component and teaching expertise and excellence as something that all academics need to strive for, regardless of the pathway they are on.

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We noted in Chap. 3 the variety of ways in which career framework documents in a number of UK universities articulated their expectations with regard to evidencing teaching expertise and excellence. Various definitions of teaching expertise in higher education have been put forward in scholarly literature. King (2022) notes that ‘the specific details of what expertise looks like will vary from domain to domain’ (p. 15) and offers a model of expertise which includes pedagogical content knowledge (weaving subject matter and teaching), the more intangible artistry of teaching which relies on building meaningful connections and relationships with participants in the learning setting, and professional learning, which assumes an intention to grow and develop as a learning facilitator. Expertise ‘is not built from scratch, but is part of a continuum, an evolution across time and experience’ (Gannaway, 2022, p.  58). Floyd (2021) discusses teaching excellence rather than expertise and unpacks this concept into individual excellence and collaborative excellence, with individuals taking ownership of their professional learning in institutional contexts with supportive policies, a suitably resourced academic development offer, and a collegiate organisational learning mindset. Excellence, however, also has negative connotations in some contexts if associated with elitism (Hattam & Weiler, 2022) and viewed as a binary opposite to equity or when associated with student feedback used uncritically in academic promotion processes. Teaching qualifications (or professional recognition of teaching expertise) in higher education have benefits and challenges for individual academics and institutions. In her comparative analysis of quality standards in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, Roy (2020) notes the different emphasis placed on teaching-focused development in these countries, with Australia having no formal requirement (in 2020) and with development being seen as primarily the responsibility of individuals rather than institutions. Some OECD member countries specify minimum qualification standards and in some cases these are linked to external quality assurance requirements, though this varies substantially (OECD, 2020). Universities in the United Kingdom have a certain degree of freedom to decide what teaching qualifications to request from new academics they recruit, what counts as evidence of teaching expertise, and what is deemed as conclusive evidence of teaching quality and excellence to demonstrate progression along a career pathway. The data HESA collects in the United Kingdom annually about teaching qualifications includes yes/no responses which could refer to a wide range of qualification options available and no

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regulatory use is made of this information other than a brief mention in Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) submissions (Kernohan, 2022). If regulatory use were made of data, there would be an opportunity for institutions to justify allocation of additional resource to development focused on teaching but also a risk that training or development opportunities might be engaged with superficially and not achieve the expected benefits for students’ academic experience. Teaching-related development needs to take place on an ongoing basis, given that a teaching qualification on its own is not necessarily a reliable indicator of teaching quality and excellence at any given point and that this will develop over time (Turner & Spowart, 2020). Securing professional recognition of teaching expertise in higher education through a process that is more ‘retrospective and affirmatory’ than ‘forward thinking and developmental’ (Turner & Spowart, 2020, p. 12) may impact on the extent to which genuine professional growth can occur and excellence can be reached. The Advance HE Professional Standards Framework (formerly UKPSF, see Advance HE, 2023a, b), which has underpinned professional recognition in the United Kingdom since 2011, as well as in over 100 countries across the world more recently, was renewed in consultation with the sector, without losing ‘the framework’s unique capacity, its “elasticity” to support the diversity of higher education teaching and learning’ (Advance HE, 2022a). Institution-internal professional recognition schemes accredited by Advance HE have responsibility to ensure that recognition processes tie in with other formal appraisal processes and with relevant support for development so that the framework’s ‘forward thinking and developmental’ potential (Turner & Spowart, 2020, p. 12) is not lost. Formal development for some categories of academics through the Advance HE-aligned UK-based Academic Professional Apprenticeships (IfATE, 2022) enables universities to access funding and to develop resources which benefit a greater proportion of academics across a university in addition to those who are eligible to participate directly in the apprenticeship provision. While academic members of staff at all career stages should be able to evidence expertise in facilitating learning, progression on a pathway is usually discussed in terms of increasing one’s sphere of influence gradually from impacting on student success directly to enabling colleagues to create impactful learning experiences and ultimately to leading policy developments within an institution and at sector level (HEA, 2013; van Dijk et  al., 2020). The principles of increased sphere of influence and a

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collegiate approach to developing teaching expertise and excellence are central to the career framework for university teaching developed by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE, 2018). The RAE (2018) framework draws on case studies from a number of different countries in addition to the United Kingdom (Australia, Chile, Denmark, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States) and maps types of evidence against each level of teaching achievement (effective teacher, skilled and collegial teacher, scholarly teacher, institutional leader, and national and global leader). Effective teachers reflect on their student-facing practice, construct a teaching portfolio that leads to successful student academic and graduate outcomes, and receive recognition from their students, teaching mentor, senior colleagues, and alumni. Skilled and collegial teachers share their expertise within their immediate academic environment, disseminating insights at pedagogical conferences and acting as external examiners. Scholarly teachers contribute actively to developing a scholarly pedagogic knowledge base within their field and secure funding for learning development projects. Institutional leaders offer strategic input into institutional curricula and policies and work with external collaborators to influence practice in other institutions. National and global leaders evidence their contribution through national survey results, student outcomes reported at institution level, leadership of educational initiatives with national and global reach, and recognition received through national and global awards. A project that complements the RAE framework, namely, the Teaching Cultures Survey (Graham, 2022), currently in its second of three planned iterations, reveals ‘promising signs of change in [respondents’] experiences of how university teaching was evaluated and rewarded’ (p.  2). A total of 11,623 academics from 16 universities in 8 countries shared insights from direct experience and observations; the majority of universities were undergoing a change in the structure of academic career frameworks. Not all academics are expected to reach the pinnacle of the RAE (2018) framework and be rewarded through promotion, but a collegiate approach to creating an environment where teaching expertise is valued and a culture of teaching excellence will ensure that all benefit through an increased sense of belonging, wellbeing, and job satisfaction, taking pride in their work. As McCune (2021), among others, notes, with reference to education-­focused pathways, these pathways enable academics to sustain identities that capitalise on their strengths and centre on deep care for student learning. The RAE (2018) framework echoes the recently revised

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Advance HE (2023a, b) Professional Standards Framework, which underpins a professional recognition system in place since 2011 and open to higher education professionals from the United Kingdom and Australasia; however, the RAE framework is more overtly and directly aligned to career progression within institutions. The pandemic has made digital fluency central to teaching expertise and excellence, accelerating the need for academic colleagues to upskill digitally, meeting students where they are now and where they are likely to be in the future, and making effective use of the technology and platforms introduced to support collaborative learning in a transformed higher education context. A report on the digital learning experience in universities in the early stages of the pandemic, produced by a UK-based not-for-­ profit organisation which aims to ‘deliver considerable collective digital advantage, financial savings and efficiencies for UK universities, colleges and learning providers today’ (Jisc, n.d.), highlighted the importance of developing a digital innovation strategy to take institutions which had a low digital base at the start of the pandemic to a level of digital maturity that enables them to deliver an excellent, equitable learning experience for their students (Jisc, 2020). A digital innovation strategy works to support the ambition of redesigned pathways with regard to facilitating excellent, equitable learning if careful alignment is achieved to the academic careers framework within an institution and to that institution’s academic development policies and plans. The strategy also needs to inform decisions to invest in digital infrastructure and in resource for development. Giving academic colleagues access to a range of ways in which they can develop their digital fluency and their ability to facilitate digitally enhanced learning, formally and informally within institutions or via externally sourced means (e.g., Jisc and LinkedIn Learning), will ensure buy-in and engagement from academics in the most effective and impactful manner. It will also support them to build a case for progression along a pathway. Jisc (2020) notes that ‘universities only very recently acknowledged that reward and recognition for teaching should be at the same level as for research’ (p. 19). In this regard, there is scope to give more in-depth consideration to the way teaching (broadly defined) is evidenced and evaluated, and how it is recognised through internal teaching excellence awards linked to enhancing the student experience. There is also scope to develop institution-­internal processes to support applicants to sector-wide teaching awards such as the Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship Scheme

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or their Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (Advance HE, 2022b, c) in the United Kingdom. In a pandemic-transformed context, academics are developing their teaching-oriented digital fluency by attending formal training sessions in their institutions, run by digital learning specialists; through engaging with learning resources about online learning, in a variety of formats; through conversations with colleagues; or while experiencing online interaction in other settings (e.g., attendance at virtual conferences or project working groups). Digitally enhanced ways of working and access to online platforms have both enabled and hindered access to a supportive academic development culture and have impacted on ways in which academics learn (Crowley & Overton, 2021). Trial and error when experimenting with technology on one’s own or with others, and giving oneself permission to fail, play an important part in the learning process (Hardman, 2021; Jisc, 2021). Trial and error have led to pedagogic innovations, such as hybrid learning models which offer options to attend in person or virtually, or dual learning scenarios which connect classrooms and workplaces for a richer learning experience, or microcredentials (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2022). The pandemic created momentum and urgency for academics to develop their digital fluency, ensuring that the learning was timely and could be impactfully applied with immediate benefit for others. It perhaps made more apparent the diverse ways in which academics learn and grow their teaching expertise and excellence. It also reconfigured the distribution of expertise, locating this more fully in students and/or external partners, as well as creating opportunities for educational innovators to take up informal leadership roles. Continuing to involve students and external partners in co-creation of digital learning resources and experiences as the world emerges out of the pandemic will be more likely to make the learning and development process sustainable in the longer term, to ‘create a step change in the way students and staff interact with each other’ (Jisc, 2020, p. 29), recognising the valuable contribution students can make by working in partnership with academics to (re)define learning in a university (Peseta et al., 2021). Without wishing to downplay the value of formal qualifications and development sessions, we echo recognition that there is great value in informal approaches to continuing development of teaching expertise and excellence (Pleschová et al., 2021; Thomson & Barrie, 2021), for example, through peer review of practice. We support the view that

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teaching-focused development should be enjoyable, rewarding, and personally relevant to academics on all pathways and that universities should explore what forms of professional learning offer greater awareness of how to help students make successful connections between learning at university and the world outside campus walls. We acknowledge the important role that redesigned academic career pathways play in ensuring that everyone in a university benefits as fully as possible from the rich ‘ecologies for learning and practice’ (Barnett & Jackson, 2020) that expert, excellent teaching creates in a university. The level of resource institutions put into defining, developing, and rewarding expertise and excellence in facilitating student learning varies across disciplines and national higher education systems. We echo Locke’s (2016) call for career development and management to be viewed more generally as partnership work between the individual and the institution. Joining up development activity (Whitchurch & Gordon, 2017), for example, through integrating development of pedagogic expertise with leadership-related development, supports progression on academic career pathways at the same time as meeting an institution’s strategic objectives. The financial and time commitment universities make for academic development is influenced by broader sector-level priorities and needs to be balanced against other commitments in a university’s portfolio of activities. It has potential to tie in with leadership of education-focused projects, in roles a step removed from classroom practice but influencing this directly or indirectly. Examples of projects that explore relevant education data within an institution to identify and implement context-relevant solutions include the way artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting learning, teaching and assessment, the closing of awarding gaps for various categories of learners, or enacting pedagogies which support wellness and belonging. 4.2.2   Scholarship of Teaching and Learning The hypothetical vision for the future of a university achieving top scores in the 2030 National Digital Learning Survey (Maguire, 2020, summarised in the previous section) can be created through teaching expertise and excellence developed through ongoing iterative efforts, as well as through consistent and sustained engagement in scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) which facilitates reflection on and dissemination of good practice. SoTL is the focus of this section.

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Newly developed education-focused pathways are receiving increased attention in higher education literature (Smith & Walker, 2021, 2022; Godbold et al., 2022, Whitton et al., 2021). These pathways need to be differentiated from teaching-only roles, which are often associated with substantial teaching loads, limited opportunity for professional development, and insufficient employment security or opportunities for academic career growth (Bennett et al., 2018). Education-focused pathways carry an expectation that academics will engage in knowledge creation and scholarship, although there seems to be a lack of consensus among institutions, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, about the nature of scholarship and its status compared to traditional research. In the Australian context, Godbold et  al. (2022) highlight ‘the confusion teaching focused academics experience surrounding how they understand the knowledge creation aspect of their academic workload’ (p. 3). A degree of consensus appears to be emerging in higher education literature that the scholarship component of education-focused academic career pathways equates to scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), and that this could involve a broad spectrum of activity (Fanghanel et al., 2016) that includes scholarly, reflective teaching practice, disseminating pedagogic and educational research, and cultivating ‘cultures of continuous improvement’ (Canning & Masika, 2022, p.  1086). Academics on education-­focused pathways develop peer-reviewed educational enhancement initiatives which they share publicly beyond their own immediate context. They may engage in pedagogic research that is less likely to be ‘counted towards national and international research metrics’ (Godbold et al., 2022, p. 3), that is local and likely to generate limited impact (Tight, 2018), and that could be perceived as ‘a thorn in the flesh of educational research’ (Canning & Masika, 2022) when not built on theoretical foundations or carried out with sufficient methodological rigour (Zou & Geertsema, 2020). SoTL could potentially be used to inform institution-­ level educational enhancement initiatives, contextualising metrics within explanatory, literature-informed narratives. A nuanced understanding of scholarship/SoTL is required to ensure that education-focused pathways achieve the impact they are designed to create. This understanding can be informed by two recent publications: Matthews et al. (2021) and Chick (2022). Matthews et al. (2021) propose an inclusive definition of scholarship that brings together its different facets and positions universities as ‘communities of teaching and learning, discovery of knowledge, integration of disciplines and application’ (p. 18).

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The notion of scholarship they favour is one where Boyer’s (1990) four scholarship quadrants, which include SoTL, are seen as interconnected rather than separate strands and where students are legitimate members of a university’s community of scholars. Chick (2022) brings additional useful perspective by focusing on SoTL’s potential to impact on society. She argues that at least some of the work that SoTL does with regard to ‘elevating demonstrably effective teaching, increasing our understanding about student learning, unpacking the complex relationship between teaching and learning, expanding what we know and do about all of these issues’ (p. 15) should be framed as ‘projects that transform (and are transformed by) the world outside of academia’ (p. 21), amplifying the impact of SoTL on academic as well as on civic communities and the professions—at a local, national, and global level. She calls for an expansion of SoTL outputs to genres that engage broader audiences and collaborators beyond scholars of teaching and learning in universities; such genres include whitepapers, practitioner articles, opinion pieces, policy briefs, memos, grant applications, fact sheets, infographics, diagrams, charts, pictures, stories, videos, blogs and other social media, and books written for mainstream audiences. (p. 25)

This, Chick argues echoing Fitzpatrick (2019), would be a way to ‘not just bring the university to the world, but also involve the world in the university’ (Fitzpatrick, 2019, p. 135). Co-creating SoTL with stakeholders outside academia and disseminating SoTL insights outside campus walls is viewed by Chick (2022) as ‘part of the healthy evolution of the [SoTL] field’ (p. 29). This is still aspirational, however. There is substantial work to be done to achieve clarity and consensus on outputs that count as evidence of high-quality SoTL on new academic career pathways; to communicate this clearly to academics on all pathways to ensure buy-in and collaborative engagement in SoTL; to develop SoTL capacity within institutions and coherent processes so that insights shared through SoTL can feed back into the learning and teaching experience at university; to harness the potential of SoTL to develop lifelong learning mindsets among students, enabling a more seamless transition from learning at university to learning beyond the degree in variety of life realms (Kensington-Miller et al., 2022; Whitton et al., 2021). To support academics to align to, develop, and grow on education-­ focused pathways, institutions would benefit from developing inclusive

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definitions of scholarship and recognizing that individuals’ definitions and interpretations of scholarship evolve over time as their careers reach different milestones. Capacity to generate rich, rigorous, persuasive, and usable evidence for multiple audiences can be built in a structured way or it can evolve organically: from producing scholarship, academics gradually transition into mentoring colleagues and students to generate scholarship outcomes and impact. They become members of a sustainable scholarship community within institutions and externally, redefining the boundaries of these communities to include audiences not immediately linked to university campuses. They explore ways to evaluate the public impact of scholarship and the contribution of public, engaged scholarship to the creation of a more equitable society. Effective capacity-building is supported by clarity and consistency with regard to the nature, scope, and desired impact of outputs and outcomes that are valued on education-focused pathways. It is also important to note that academics on education-focused pathways will need to keep their subject discipline knowledge current to ensure that they can continue to facilitate meaningful and relevant student learning experiences. Within a smaller proportion of their workload, they may wish to continue to pursue an interest in subject discipline research, contributing to outputs and outcomes that develop the discipline, increase the relevance and currency of the courses offered, and enhance the research reputation of universities. The research they engage in individually, in teams, or with external partners may be of a more responsive nature, with potential direct relevance to other sectors. Academics who have been classed as ‘research inactive’ (Bennett et al., 2018) for a variety of reasons or who are positioned on pathways without a fully resourced research component that leads to the production of nationally and internationally recognised outputs will benefit from continuing to build on their discipline-­ specific identity. A strong SoTL orientation for education-­ focused pathways may offer more clarity and focus with regard to progression criteria on these pathways and more career fulfilment, but at the same time it risks disadvantaging academics if SoTL is too narrowly defined and too prescriptive of the kinds of activity they can engage in. There is also potential risk of disadvantaging students and external partners, reducing the benefit that universities generate in communities outside their campus walls.

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4.3  Pathways Related to Practice, Enterprise, Public Engagement, and Knowledge Exchange: Unpacking Expectations and Supporting Development 4.3.1   Dual Professionals and the Student Academic Experience Alongside traditional pathways with a substantial research orientation and newer ones with an education and scholarship focus, several universities have introduced pathways that give prominence to professional practice, enterprise, public engagement, or knowledge exchange. Given their position at the interface between universities and other employment sectors, these pathways are potentially the most heterogeneous ones in redesigned academic career frameworks. We use the label ‘practice/entrepreneurship pathways’ as an umbrella term for convenience, but acknowledge the nuance and complexity of activity gathered under it. Practice/entrepreneurship pathways in the UK context relate to all three missions of a university (providing education, creating knowledge, and being of service to society), although they may appear to have a closer link to activity impacting on external stakeholders directly, captured by the more recently introduced Knowledge Exchange Framework which guides allocation of funding to universities for this kind of activity (Research England, 2022a). Academic profiles on practice/entrepreneurship pathways vary. A substantial proportion are likely to be dual professionals with experience from other sectors and industries who are well positioned to support students’ employability learning (Advance HE, 2021) and the integration of enterprise and entrepreneurship in curricula (e.g., QAA, 2018; Advance HE, 2019). They can also provide mentoring in this regard to colleagues without relevant direct experience of the world of work outside academia. Dual professionals are well positioned to engage in projects outside the core of the student academic experience but which can indirectly contribute to this. To develop a balanced dual professional identity they can draw on for the benefit of a university, they need access to appropriate learning opportunities. In the Australian context, where formal practice/entrepreneurship pathways do not appear to have been introduced yet, Sheridan et al. (2021) echo Wenham et al.’s (2019) call for greater recognition and reward of colleagues with professional practice backgrounds from other sectors. Noting the increased importance, across the higher education sector in Australia and globally, of learning that engenders work readiness and professional

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career development, Sheridan et al. (2021) reflect on how academics with experience from other sectors support the mainstreaming of practiceinformed learning in curricula at strategic, governance, or delivery levels. Academics with a practice background share expertise and build capacity among their colleagues to unpack for students the connections between academic and workplace learning. As well as modelling workplace competencies for students, they facilitate development of ‘critical expertise and reflexivity required for informing the profession in the future’ (p. 322). They also initiate and sustain professional networks and relationships with external partners that lead to work placement opportunities for students and to external partner input into curricula. There is an increasing awareness across the sector that in order to deliver curricula fit for the future universities should embrace ‘innovative ways of thinking and working—the pedagogy’s got to be quite cleverly constructed as part of that’ (Michael Carr, in Coonan & Pratt-Adams, 2018, p. 25). The process of cleverly constructing and enacting pedagogy in a pandemic-transformed higher education environment relies substantially on interdisciplinarity, inter-professionalism, and cross-functional teamwork as a necessity rather than a ‘nice to have’ feature. As Goodwin notes, reform in the classroom and in the curriculum requires new work flows and the introduction of new paradigms. In order to be effective reformists, a third space academic must leverage existing capacity in the teaching and learning portfolio by designing complementary interfaces between services in order to facilitate a more integrated approach. (Goodwin, 2017, p. 5, in McIntosh & Nutt, 2022, p. 5)

In addition to student placements and direct curricular input, the networks and relationships that academics on practice/entrepreneurship pathways build can generate collaborative opportunities for research, innovation, and community engagement, incentivised in the UK context by the Knowledge Exchange Framework (Research England, 2022a). The outcomes of these collaborative opportunities potentially feed back into curricula and support their development, as noted, for example, in two reports produced by GuildHE (2018, 2019). GuildHE (2018) charts the value of dual professionals in terms of nurturing ‘a wider ecosystem of exchange, helping businesses engage with universities as centres of local and regional economic strength, and allowing universities to share their impact more widely’ (p.  43), while GuildHE (2019) offers specific useful

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recommendations on how these professionals can be supported to integrate their practitioner and academic identities for the benefit of students (GuildHE, 2019). The need to support dual professionals to establish legitimacy in academia is also the focus of a recent special issue of the Journal of Professional Capital and Community (Hollweck et  al., 2022), which draws on evidence and reflection from Australia, Canada, England, Hong Kong, Qatar, and Scotland about the value these professionals add when they ‘disrupt boundaries, catalyse education change and spur transformational learning at the micro, meso and macro levels’ (p. 3). Dedicated practice/entrepreneurship academic career pathways are an important step in this direction, as are accompanying development opportunities to consolidate identities on these pathways. Dual professionals bring valuable inter-professional capital to a university when transitioning mid-career into academia (as opposed to delivering one-off sessions), at various levels on an academic career pathway as well as when appointed directly to the top rung of the hierarchy as Professors of Practice. Redesigned academic career pathways have potential to offer greater recognition and support for individual dual professionals, provided that the teaching-related development they are offered when they join a university builds closely on their broader skillsets and on their prior experiences as learners and as developers of others in a workplace (Beaton, 2021; Bradley, 2019). Dual professionals will benefit from tailored guidance on how to integrate expertise from other sectors into university activities and from familiarising themselves with learning and teaching theory relevant to their specialism, with conventions for creating academic knowledge aligned to their professional field, and with processes and practices that support student progression throughout an academic course. In turn, dual professionals can contribute to the creation of a professional development ecosystem in a university by sharing relevant expertise from their other role and having constructive conversations about innovative, cleverly constructed higher education pedagogy with their colleagues on more traditional teaching-and-research academic routes (Gannaway, 2022). Reflections from a respondent in Puaca’s (2021) research about shifts of direction, in human resource management courses at three different Swedish universities, suggest that such support would be welcome: I have peeked at the [another university’s] model, […] because we have had quite a similar, or fairly similar programme, but now they have completely

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stepped up their programme, and all courses are conducted within HRM, human resource development, as subject area, or the main area they have, and [university name] has something similar though they call it human resources science. So, these are the two I have looked at and that, in my opinion, have done the best external monitoring. And I came as far as to the local management here, I had them with me, actually, on this, but we’ll see, we’ll see how it goes. But it’s lobbying, personal contacts, and you get to make use of everything informal, as you can imagine. (Sara, associate professor, traditional HEI) (Puaca, 2021, p. 828)

In the United Kingdom, the Academic Professional Apprenticeship approved for delivery in 2018 and embraced by a substantial number of universities (IfATE, 2022) has a shared core of knowledge and skills and offers two specialist routes: a Teaching route and a Research one. Practice/ entrepreneurship pathways do not always have a research or scholarship component; progression may be achieved on the basis of teaching and learning achievements and professional experience and expertise. One of the core knowledge requirements for academic professional apprenticeships on both routes, which may resonate more fully with dual professionals, include ‘how to engage with relevant professional bodies and other external organisations to support their work’. A core skill broadly frames expectations that successful academic apprentices will ‘share ideas and evidence with students, peers, policy makers and private and public organisations through a variety of channels including publication and teaching’. External engagement is also highlighted in skills for the specialist research role: ‘develop and sustain links with industry and other external organisations to grow collaborations and develop opportunities to access funding’ but not necessarily perceived as a core aspect of academic work. Dual professionals are likely to bring valuable relationship-building capacity to academia, enriching the learning experience of their education-focused or research-oriented colleagues on academic professional apprenticeship courses. Formal development options available to dual professionals with experience from other sectors will need to be supplemented to align more fully to redesigned career frameworks, so that they offer more substantial and relevant opportunities for these professionals to make the fullest contribution. As well as being supported to grow their teaching expertise and excellence, colleagues on practice/entrepreneurship pathways benefit from professional association membership and continuing development

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aligned with the focus of professional practice. They can access relevant professional development externally through professional bodies and may need to demonstrate continued competence to maintain their position in a given professional field. Some professional bodies offer support for practitioners to build their research profiles and for researchers to develop their knowledge of practice (Lindsay & Smith, 2021; Dickfos, 2019). Some professions have built a close and mutually beneficial relationship with universities; others, however, experience a clearly marked divide and hierarchy between professional practice, on the one hand, and academic values, priorities and knowledge-making processes, on the other. Professional expertise will be sufficient to give legitimacy and credibility to professionals who join academia in some areas. In others, more traditional scholarly credentials are required, such as a doctorate and an academic publications profile (Wakely, 2021). Fractional appointments to practice/ entrepreneurship pathways at more senior levels which impact on the student experience indirectly through policy development or education-­ focused leadership may carry a requirement to publish in a range of appropriate forums, with implications for writing-focused development activity, both in terms of how these role holders would benefit from this themselves and in terms of the value they could add to the development of colleagues without experience of writing for university-external audiences. 4.3.2   Enterprise, Public Engagement, and Knowledge Exchange in Academic Career Frameworks In addition to playing a direct role in shaping the student academic experience, practice/entrepreneurship pathways attract a continuum of expertise which enriches the knowledge base of a discipline through practice-relevant insights that can make an immediate and direct contribution to society. Academics with a research background and a strong interest not only in generating knowledge through research but in being actively engaged in ensuring that the knowledge reaches and benefits external stakeholders (as well as involving them in knowledge creation) would find this pathway a good fit. Their outputs portfolio is likely to balance peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals with a high impact factor with outputs in a variety of formats that speak directly to a broad range of knowledge beneficiaries. Their work will be funded and, where applicable, commissioned by public and/or private sector bodies. Active engagement, on this pathway, in generating knowledge through research

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as traditionally defined in academia is not a requirement, however. Practice/entrepreneurship academics play an equally valuable role bringing curiosity-led, blue-sky research closer to the ground inhabited by knowledge beneficiaries outside universities, ensuring that these beneficiaries play an equitable role in setting direction for research, inputting into key project decisions and evaluating outcomes (McCabe et al., 2016). Academics on practice/entrepreneurship pathways are potentially well positioned to enhance the entrepreneurial culture of a university. Etzkowitz et al. (2021) give the example of Professor of Practice, fractional appointments introduced in 2006 at Newcastle University and funded partly by the university and partly by an external development agency. They were intended to attract ‘a subset of high-tech entrepreneurs with strong academic credentials and research interests’ (p. 5), who would maintain their connection to industry but also take up an academic role, building a research group and initiating funding applications for research that leads to outputs transferrable outside academia. The understanding that Professors of Practice have of the practice they wish to impact on offers them a substantial advantage in managing relationships with external stakeholders (Knight & Mitchell, 2023). Established practitioners in fields other than technology or business would also qualify for this position, and Etzkowitz et al. (2021) suggest that a dual-role model could be expanded to other positions in the academic hierarchy or could involve crossing the academic/professional services divide. The concept of an ‘entrepreneurial university’ is usually associated with patents and licensing, commercialisation of services and outputs, start-ups and spin-offs, knowledge transfer offices, technology parks, or providing paid consultancy to external partners. A complementary perspective is that of ‘societally responsible entrepreneurial universities’ (Verduijn & Sabelis, 2021). This acknowledges that entrepreneurship extends beyond economic activity and rebalances commercialisation with community service and civic impact, engaging in delivering the university’s third mission. The ‘anchor institution’ status of universities, defined by Goddard (2018) as ‘the requirement for academic practice to be of relevance to the place in which academics live and work as citizens’ (p. 356) resonates with this view. The extent to which universities enact their anchor role will depend on the higher education policy environment, on how universities are funded and governed, and their activity regulated. The way ‘place’ as a ‘site for collaboration, experimentation, and intervention’ (p.  367) is delineated geographically will also vary, within and beyond the immediate locality of a

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university. Some universities have branches in countries different from the one where the main campus is located, while others may choose to interpret ‘place’ in a way that is inclusive of locations where their international alumni are clustered. The view that universities have a ‘third mission’ alongside teaching and research has global resonance (e.g., Boughey & McKenna, 2021; Grant, 2021; Haski-Leventhal, 2022). What the third mission consists of and how universities choose to enact that in response to local or regional priorities, or to further their global reach, will vary from context to context. In the United Kingdom, the introduction of the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF; see Research England, 2022a) has prompted a rethinking of emphasis in academic activity that aligns to a university’s third mission and, in some places, a reallocation of resource (both staffing and otherwise) in academic and professional services areas. The KEF is offering an incentive for institutions to reflect and act on their contribution to society, including but going beyond their economic impact. It has prompted higher education providers to rethink the role and expertise of academics involved in knowledge exchange activity, both via academic contracts or acting in a facilitating role. The ‘perspectives’ into which various types of knowledge exchange activity are grouped by the KEF can underpin discussion about academic career frameworks, academic career pathways, academic development resources (in the broadest sense), and the benefits that career progression has not only on individual academic colleagues but also on communities within and beyond a university. With particular emphasis on building ‘resilient pathways to recovery’ from the pandemic (p. 61), Goddard (2021) adds weight to the call to foreground community interests, arguing against an uncritical use of metrics and a focus on short-term outputs, and emphasizing the need for universities to work collaboratively with the full complement of stakeholders in a region. The first iteration of the KEF has generated comparative insights for the sector through the KEF dashboard and the Research England (2022b) report. These are in addition to awareness, within each of the participating institutions, of the breadth and depth of knowledge exchange activity that academics generate and could be used as a basis to fine-tune the development offer for all academic career pathways. Insights from Research England’s (2022b) review of the first iteration of the KEF seems to endorse the view that while some forms of knowledge exchange may be more readily aligned to a practice/entrepreneurship academic career pathway, the broad variety of knowledge exchange activity that all academics undertake

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collaboratively with external partners (and supported by professional services colleagues within a university) means that knowledge exchange should be recognised and rewarded across all pathways. An insight which resonates with the discussion about academic career frameworks is the need to broaden the range of published outputs co-authored by academics with external partners as a result of research collaborations. Another is the usefulness of a structured narrative template to highlight community and public engagement activity. Critical reflection and interpretation of how knowledge exchange activity in an institution is showcased through the KEF perspectives is necessary to incentivise activities in line with an institution’s ambitions, generating impact that makes a genuine difference in society. Critical reflection would also ensure that knowledge exchange is mutually beneficial, involving co-production rather than transfer, which impacts not only through knowledge outputs but through the process of generating these as well. While some aspects of knowledge exchange activity will be supported directly by professional services colleagues, academics are at the core of knowledge exchange. To ensure that knowledge exchange is delivered effectively, many academics with professional experience from other sectors and who are positioned on practice/entrepreneurship pathways are likely to be able to engage their audiences outside universities directly. Academics on different pathways who are engaged in knowledge exchange with partners in organisational contexts they may not be fully familiar with will benefit from relevant professional development. This could focus on supporting student enterprise and entrepreneurship within and outside the curriculum, establishing and commercializing IP, supervising doctoral work in collaboration with commercial organisations or non-profit ones, co-authoring a range of outputs with non-academic partners, delivering professional development for university-external participants, or securing funding for external partners routed through a university. As well as development related to the delivery of these activities, academics may benefit from workshops on designing and implementing impact plans and evaluating outcomes of a range of projects that aim to generate local economic growth and a more deeply felt sense of social inclusion, community belonging and environmental consciousness. Development could be provided formally, informally, or through direct participation in collaborative projects led by colleagues on practice/entrepreneurship pathways. Career progression on practice/entrepreneurship pathways can be mapped both in terms of external reach and impact of knowledge exchange activity and

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in terms of how academics on these pathways help develop colleagues with or without a practice/entrepreneurship remit to engage in knowledge exchange and generate positive societal impact.

4.4  A Note About Paths That Cross New academic career pathways are designed to bring new energy into universities as well as create a renewed sense of purpose among existing academic members of staff. Writing at the start of the twenty-first century, Clark (2004) followed up on earlier case studies he had conducted of entrepreneurially minded universities which were defying the general perception of universities as ‘immovable cathedrals’ (p. 1). He also expanded the geographic reach of his earlier study by adding new cases to the mix. He noted that successful entrepreneurial universities benefit from operational units with an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary base. Willingness and enthusiasm with regard to working across discipline and departmental boundaries can sometimes be hindered by institutional structures. New pathways have potential to spark serendipitous connections which complement the work of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary structural units. We illustrate this below with a scenario which involves Erica and Yasmin, the protagonists of the second and third vignettes in Sect. 3.3 in our volume. Erica and Yasmin could cross paths unexpectedly in the university café or as the outcome of an informal introduction by a colleague. On an education-­focused pathway, Erica has an interest in developing a collaborative writing and career support space for women across the university. Mentoring is one of Erica’s recognised strengths and she is further developing this by reading a variety of material (e.g., Starr, 2021) and by mentoring colleagues either formally or in impromptu encounters. Yasmin has joined the university on a practice/entrepreneurship pathway. Her prior experience in the legal profession means she is well placed to scale up the work of the legal advice centre that the university runs. Yasmin is working on a project which brings together a local community, a water charity, and a company that has agreed to provide some much needed water purification technology. She has extensive experience of mediating in company boardrooms but is finding it challenging to engage local community leaders when an important project contact, a water charity trustee, becomes unexpectedly unavailable. To ensure the technology is installed as originally planned, Yasmin needs to think outside the box and Erica’s breadth

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and depth of experience in management and leadership education can support Yasmin’s thought process. In turn, Yasmin could contribute to Erica’s collaborative writing network by sharing insights from her experience as a dual professional. The insights she shares could be captured in written work co-authored with members of Erica’s network and similar to Hartung et al. (2017), who use collective biography to illuminate and reconceptualise different ways of working in a university. The chance encounter between Erica and Yasmin leads to mutual learning and builds a basis for collaborative work. It mirrors Lyall’s (2019) line of thought about the value of serendipity for interdisciplinary research and the need for time and space that facilitate chance encounters and allow ideas to percolate. Lyall highlights the lack of flexibility in traditional higher education structures and policies towards work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, despite a rhetoric that promotes interdisciplinarity. New pathways can promote collaborative work by design. To ensure that new pathways do generate the positive impact they are designed to achieve within and beyond campus boundaries, there are several broader questions and challenges to consider alongside the substance and focus of pathways. These are related to equality, diversity, inclusion, and building capacity for academic development, and are discussed in Chap. 5.

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CHAPTER 5

Career Frameworks and Development: The Institutional Context

5.1   The Benefits of Redesigned Pathways for Institutions Institutions that successfully implement redesigned career frameworks which recognise a broader range of academic work and welcome a diverse academic workforce are likely to have an increased capacity to innovate; increased institutional resilience and agile response to planned and to unexpected change. Writing about teaching-focused academic career pathways in Australia a couple of years before the global pandemic, Bennett et al. (2018) noted that these were perceived as having low value and as limiting professional development and growth, implicitly putting institutions at a disadvantage. Since then, redesigned academic career frameworks that enable professional growth and career development in ways that support effective delivery of an institution’s mission have started to become more prevalent in higher education systems across the globe (OECD, 2019; Saenen et al., 2021). Benefits that accrue to institutions that have implemented new pathways are likely to include the ability to recruit and retain academics with the type of experience, expertise, and aspirations that fully align to an institution’s strategic ambitions (Buller, 2021; Gandy et al., 2018). Staff turnover in institutions with varied academic career pathways is likely to be maintained at the right level to achieve balance between the drive to renew an institution’s education, research, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Sterling et al., Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7_5

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and societal engagement offer and the need to ensure business continuity, maintaining consistent levels of quality in curriculum delivery (Gustafsson et al., 2021). Succession planning for formal management and leadership roles is also likely to be facilitated by new career pathways. Work design is linked to well-being and belonging (Maslach & Banks, 2017), and career pathways are one way to secure this in a university. High levels of well-being and job satisfaction create a collaborative, high-quality working environment where time and energy are spent on projects that have both immediate value and longer term benefits. Academics’ well-­ being is reflected in their engagement with students and impacts on students’ (and colleagues’) well-being as well as supporting positive student outcomes. Robust career frameworks anchor institutions within physical and virtual communities in academia and society, enabling them to set joint and mutually beneficial directions of travel. Implementing new academic career pathways is a complex endeavour, however. In previous chapters, we discussed development and growth with regard to the substantive focus of new pathways. Careful attention paid to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) will ensure that benefits gained through rebalancing the substantive focus of pathways and the activities academics engage in are amplified through making positioning and progression on new pathways fully open to talent in a broad range of manifestations. Enabling belonging for all colleagues, regardless of how they align to a particular diversity characteristic, should underpin EDI endeavours. As well as drawing on EDI data to inform pathway design, promotion decisions, and new staff recruitment, academic career framework implementation needs to be accompanied by relevant organisational learning and development approaches, while being mindful of the cost to the institution. EDI is the focus of the present chapter, alongside discussion of mainstays of academic development such as induction, mentoring, coaching, secondments or role swaps, and leadership learning. The chapter’s closing section spotlights two initiatives to build collaborative institutional learning cultures, one involving several universities, the other bringing together universities and external partners.

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5.2   Broader Questions and Challenges to Consider 5.2.1   Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Some of the measures taken to create inclusive and supportive institutional environments are a direct response to a legal requirement that universities have as employers (e.g., making reasonable adjustments or accommodations to avoid substantial disadvantage in cases of disability, as stipulated by the Equality Act 2010 in the UK or by the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities). Any measure taken, however, speaks to an institution’s commitment both to its employees and to its mission, to foster belonging which encompasses but goes beyond legally protected categories. That universities undertake a journey with regard to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is apparent, in the UK for example, in strategic plans. The 2020–2025 EDI strategic plan at the University of Southampton (University of Southampton, 2020) is built on a six-stage institutional maturity model which progresses from avoidance (with institutions having ‘a homogeneous culture where only a few are seen or heard’), to tick box, then inconsistent (which includes pockets of good practice), followed by established (characteristic of institutions with a clearly articulated business case and governance structure, strong self-awareness, processes for impact evaluation but not fully part of the fabric of an institution), then integrated (actively championed by senior leadership and showing clear signs of improvement of lived experience), to full maturity stage, that is, embedded, where attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion permeates all areas of activity and individual action is supported. Implementing academic career frameworks is part of a journey towards the highest level of maturity and is supported by sector-level initiatives. In the UK context, sector-level support for pathway (re)design and implementation in an equitable way that celebrates diversity and promotes inclusion is available to institutions for example through initiatives such as Athena SWAN (Advance HE, 2020a) and the Race Equality Charter (REC; see Advance HE, 2020b). Both are available to member institutions of Advance HE. Athena SWAN and the Race Equality Charter are types of membership and accolades aimed at redressing staffing (and student) inequalities in higher education, the former in relation to gender, inclusively defined, the latter with regard to race as its name clearly

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indicates. Athena SWAN was launched in 2005 in the UK, and since 2015, has been or is in the process of being adapted for use in higher education institutions in Ireland, Australia, the US, Canada, and India. Similar initiatives exist in other national contexts. To achieve Athena SWAN and REC accolades, institutions carry out a self-assessment exercise and submit documentation to evidence their equality-oriented approaches, priorities, and plans. They formally commit to embedding equality-oriented action on an institutional scale, as part of day-to-day business. If carefully designed and implemented, the self-­ assessment has potential to increase awareness of the degree of change required within an institution to increase diversity and to ensure buy-in from everyone who can contribute to enhancing lived experiences of working and learning in a university. The action plan drawn up will ensure that Athena SWAN and REC activity continues to generate positive impact (Li & Griffiths, 2020; Nash et al., 2021). The launch of these initiatives approximately ten years apart, with the Athena SWAN Charter developed in 2005 and the REC introduced in 2016 appears to have inadvertently led to gender being privileged, to multiple, intersectional, and complex inequalities not yet fully acknowledged, and to the risk of ‘silencing uncomfortable and necessary discussions of institutional racism’ (Bhopal & Henderson, 2021, p. 156). This is reflected in the gender and race breakdowns of HESA data about staff on academic contracts in 2020–2021 (HESA, 2022), which show stark imbalance, notwithstanding caveats about the completeness of the data set and the level of data granularity. Dobbs and Leider (2021) offer an insightful account, drawing on a duoethnography of their experience as non-white women in a predominantly white US institution, of how race and gender intersect. Race carries additional nuance in the case of academics from the Global South who pursue transnational careers (Ezechukwu, 2022). Gender may appear to be privileged over race; however, in the context of evaluating the Advance HE Aurora programme, Barnard et  al. (2021) reflect that the pandemic seems to have partially undone the good work supporting the success of women in academia. Hamilton and Giles (2022) offer a useful reminder that LGBTQ+ academics experience additional barriers when engaging in international mobility, an activity which generates capital for career progression. Acknowledging that globally ‘the ever-evolving socio-legal landscape of rights, discrimination and criminalisation of LGBTQ+ individuals produce uncertainty and risk for travellers within the LGBTQ+ umbrella (Frary

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2019), with unique challenges existing for each group within the acronym’ (p.  49), Hamilton and Giles analysed institutional policy documents focused on LGBTQ+ travel and found that these tended to favour a heterosexual model. Institutional policies paid greater or less attention to challenges such as visa restrictions for partners or other family members of LGBTQ+ staff, physical safety, medical assistance, or general well-being, in some cases placing the burden of locating information with LGBTQ+ staff rather than assuming a fair share of institutional responsibility. Different abilities are another aspect spotlighted by EDI initiatives. Institutions are supported in this through a range of initiatives such as the Disability Confident scheme in the UK, which identifies three levels in recognition that different institutions will be at different stages in their journey towards full confidence and leadership with respect to creating a work culture that embraces different forms of ability. Academia, as Brown (2021a, p. 2) notes in a recent volume about ableism in higher education, is publicly portrayed through a ‘discourse of inclusion, equality and diversity’ which is ‘unrivalled across sectors and professions’, yet this seems to sit uncomfortably alongside an expectation that academics are ‘connected and switched on at all times’, ‘highly productive’, often going above and beyond what is required and balancing both ‘visible and unseen work’. Similar insights are shared by Humphrys et al. (2022), who tapped into the experiences of academics with disabilities in Australia and their allies and identified a disconnect between actual practice and the ethos of inclusion in policy, regulatory, and legal frameworks. Disability disclosure in the UK is lower among academics than among their professional services colleagues (Advance HE, 2021), and similarly in single-digit percentages in the UK, Australia, and Canada (Advance HE, 2021; Lindsay & Fuentes, 2022; Mellifont et al., 2019). Low disability disclosure rates in general could be explained as the outcome of ‘a cost-benefit analysis between the cost of stigmatisation and discrimination and the benefit of support systems, such as reasonable adjustments’ (Brown, 2021a, p. 3). Ableism is perpetuated by language which portrays difference as deficit rather than a way of adding perspective and value, to the extent to which employees feel vulnerable disclosing difference and at risk of being stigmatised, as noted, for example, in Lindsay and Fuentes’ (2022) review of qualitative and quantitative studies of ableism in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Successful challenging of ableism is more likely to occur if the sector moves ‘away from what is expected as normal and standard to an environment where different forms of

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working and living are embraced to such an extent that “no adjustments are required”’ (Brown & Ramlackhan, 2022, p.  1234) and if the focus on deficit, limitations, and making reasonable adjustments is replaced, in the case of academic career pathways, with framing expectations in such a way that everyone in academia benefits. Very low numbers of disabled academics in full professorial positions in UK universities (Advance HE, 2021) could be linked to low disclosure rates but could also be explained in terms of lack of appropriate adjustments and career development support to reach that stage. As a result of the pandemic / lockdown, disabled academics were impacted by significant changes to the working environment, such as working partly or mainly from home and / or loss of their previous office space and adapted equipment. The technological developments prompted by the pandemic have, to a certain extent, been beneficial for some categories of academics. However, these benefits need to be considered in light of intersecting circumstances and characteristics. At the same time, the ‘return to normal’ runs the risk of unravelling some of the changes which have improved working lives (Brown, 2021b). The use of universal design approaches to student and staff experiences in academia has been highlighted as a way to preserve the beneficial aspects and to reduce the need to make individual adjustments (Lindsay & Fuentes, 2022). Continued attention needs to be paid to the questions and challenges raised above when (re)designing and implementing new academic career frameworks. Some progress has been made in terms of reframing perceptions around aspects that have potential to impact negatively on positioning and progression on academic career pathways, such as caring responsibilities, expectations about the scope of achievements for academics on fractional roles, professional excellence, the reliance on metrics to evidence performance, and the legitimacy of participation at key decision-making levels in institutions. There is still substantial progress to be made. Successful implementation of academic career frameworks which enable all academics to draw on and further develop their professional strengths in line with individual aspirations and institutional ambitions is unlikely to take place unless expectations regarding the volume of outputs or the range of impact of professional activity on each pathway are relative to opportunity. Fractional appointments, disability, long-term health conditions, neurodivergences, and a range of life events or personal circumstances may influence performance and progression (Bosanquet, 2021; Brown, 2021a; Brown & Ramlackhan, 2022). Consideration of these factors on an

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individual basis will ensure that appropriate decisions are made. Creating an institutional environment in which these factors are openly acknowledged as potential barriers, treated not as problems or conditions which individuals are expected to manage but as aspects of working life that institutions should engage with to create an inclusive culture, will ensure that academics are fully supported to perform to the best of their ability and build accounts of successful performance which allow them to be recognised for the positive contribution they make to a university. Likely conditions for embeddedness to occur at a faster pace include awareness and explicit articulation of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in policies and procedures regarding positioning and progression on an academic career pathway; in the context of opportunities for academics to have developmental conversations to unpack expectations for performance on pathways at each level; or in training for promotion panel members (e.g., unconscious bias). Developmental conversations may be more likely to happen on a one-to-one basis given the sensitive and very private nature of some circumstances which may need to be discussed; however, forums in which to unpack pathway focus and expectations as well as EDI factors while preserving confidentiality can offer broader perspective and additional support (see, for example, Brown & Ramlackhan, 2022). Forums can take a variety of formats and offer opportunity to share and normalise ‘painful, embarrassing, messy, frustrating and occasionally funny experiences of leaking, falling, breaking, blushing and limping through the hallowed halls of [the] ivory tower’ (Ellingson, 2021, p. 24) that complicate but do not pre-empt progression to the top of the academic hierarchy (in Ellingson’s case, managing a visible physical disability in a private liberal arts university in the US). Forums and networks which enable academics to ‘take ownership of how [a] disability is implicitly and explicitly perceived by academic peers’ (Mann & Clift, 2021, p. 122) and to draw on allies, mentors, and role models can also mitigate against the additional unpaid labour time required to navigate responses to and accommodations of disability in academia (Inckle, 2018; Martin, 2021) and support work-life balance and well-being (Mounsey & Booth, 2021). An emphasis on recognising academic citizenship as a criterion for successful performance and promotion across all pathways potentially shifts the burden of invisible work, rebalancing the effort that academics with disabilities put into advocating in favour of creating an inclusive environment and pre-empts situations such as the one described by Mellifont et al. (2019, p. 1194):

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Heeding the adage of ‘publish or perish’, some scholars with disability might ask themselves the question: why should we invest our precious time and energy into political activities? In the absence of protest against ableism and sanism, perhaps the bigger question becomes: to what extent do employment opportunities for these persons perish regardless of their publication achievements?

The same could apply to academic citizenship efforts expended by academics who are placed at a disadvantage by a range of other systemic inequities (Nichols & Stahl, 2019). When attention to the substantive components of pathways (discussed in Chap. 4) intersects with attention to EDI in framework redesign and implementation, the benefits to individuals and institutions are likely to be enhanced. Institution-level and sector-level initiatives work towards removing systemic, structural barriers in academia. They involve reporting on the outcomes of professional development activities and they prompt further allocation of resource for these activities. New(er) pathways do not necessarily require an overhaul of the development offer in a university. Institutions can tap into the strengths of their existing provision. Long-­ standing approaches to professional development within universities (induction, mentoring, coaching, secondments, and leadership learning) are discussed in the following section. 5.2.2   Mainstays of Academic Professional Development in Universities As organisations dedicated to learning, universities can only be successful if they are fully committed to growing and developing their academic members of staff, particularly relevant in a pandemic-transformed context where agility and flexibility to embrace change are key (Arghode et  al., 2022). Learning organisations, as defined by Senge (2006) in The Fifth Discipline and explored in a substantial body of work sparked by Senge’s volume, create an environment in which learning from formal training is complemented and enhanced by impromptu sharing of knowledge and informal, day-to-day learning conversations, and development. They create space for reflection, opportunities to surface and share tacit knowledge, and to understand how academics can best be supported to learn. Bui and Baruch (2013) draw attention to the complexity of building learning organisations in different national contexts and the potential

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tension arising between formal training provided and informal learning occurring more or less spontaneously and organically within a university. Informal learning may support organisational change but could potentially also be an inhibiting factor if it simply replicates existing beliefs and routines. A formal training option we mentioned earlier in the volume is the Academic Professional Apprenticeship (IfATE, 2022), which we look at again here briefly, in the context of induction, from the institutional viewpoint of setting up and resourcing. For ease, we use the terms ‘induction’ and ‘onboarding’ interchangeably. Alignment to and progression on academic career pathways in a higher education institution can also be supported through a culture of coaching and mentoring which may or may not be formalised, and through availability of forms of development which facilitate cross-fertilisation of knowledge and experience such as secondments and role swaps. These resonate with the aspirations of learning organisations as well as with Sutherland’s (2018) call for integrated, holistic academic development, which we highlighted in Chap. 1. Leadership learning is also discussed in this section, given its relevance to career progression, and to building capacity for collaborative working and learning. The importance of onboarding academics into their role was recently recognised in the UK through setting up Level 7 Academic Professional Apprenticeships, funded through the Apprenticeship Levy which was originally introduced in 2017 (IfATE, 2022). APAs involve collaborative working between the training provider, the experienced colleague acting as a mentor, and the academic lead who represents the institution as employer and who is likely to be the line manager of the apprentice. This generates more in-depth understanding, for all stakeholders, of the specific professional context within which an apprentice operates and can underpin choices to enhance provision. Immediate costs may place financial strain on institutions, such as workload remittance (academic professional apprenticeships come with the requirement to allocate 20% of workload time for off-the-job professional development) and a reduction in funds drawn down to cover the services of external end point assessors. However, the longer term benefits have potential to be substantial and easily offset these costs. Setting up and planning delivery of academic apprenticeships involves developing an in-depth understanding of apprenticeship-related requirements and the impact that these can have on the day-to-day delivery and on strategic resource planning. In Stocks and Hunter’s (2020) context,

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this has led to increased awareness for Human Resource (HR) colleagues of the challenges around continuing professional development (CPD) related to teaching and learning, making this a contractual requirement and a formal part of academic development policies. It has also led to increased awareness of ways to integrate CPD more seamlessly into probation and appraisal processes. Links to probation are also highlighted by O’Leary et al. (2019), who reflect that the APA offers opportunities to integrate probation with academic development and offer a more holistic, coherent, and time-aware experience for new academics (e.g., by not duplicating observation of teaching or progress review meetings). While funded places are available only to those who meet the specific apprenticeship criteria and are new to working in higher education, the resources developed for the course can potentially be made available more widely within and outside an institution and the learning that apprentices do can potentially impact not only on students but also on colleagues through helping them update their knowledge and skills. In higher education contexts where APAs are available, they are an important component of the induction process, but not sufficient on their own. Induction for new academics scaffolds the development of academic identities, offering guidance on how to navigate an institution’s culture and on practices, policies, and procedures related to a range of aspects of their new academic role. We echo King et al.’s (2018) view of induction as ‘encompass[ing] the early career stage which can last up to five years’ (p. 471), with the caveat, highlighted previously in this volume, that ‘early career’ may carry different meanings on different pathways. Buller (2021) makes a similar point about the need to view onboarding as a longer process, whether the person being onboarded is at the start of their academic career or new to an institution. King et al. (2018) make several recommendations about induction based on a piece of research they conducted with ‘new’ academics with a professional practice background in five UK universities. The participants in their study had taken up academic roles in engineering, health, design, business, forensic science, and the performing arts. They had different motivations for joining academia but were employed on teaching-and-research contracts at the time of the study (2015), when arguably new pathways discussed in this volume had not yet been introduced. Four of 30 participants had doctoral degrees and five left their academic role within three years of appointment. King et al.’s own experience of progressing into academia from a previous professional practice role placed them in a strong position to carry out reflexive analysis of

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their semi-structured interview data. They noted ‘a lack of connection between the imperatives that drive practitioner recruitment into the academy and their management once recruited’ (p. 480). They highlighted generally unstructured and insufficiently resourced induction support in their participants’ cases. An institutional policy to require doctorates of all academic staff was flagged up by King et al. as being inadequate in the context of practice-focused roles and the need for personalised induction for all was strongly emphasised: Although the outside experience that enabled our participants to jump into a university role may have made them demanding inductees, we do not argue that such individuals require specialised induction in order to promote retention. Rather, we contend that everyone requires individualised induction. (p. 481)

Personalised induction can help bridge institutional and individual expectations, ensuring that roles are fully understood and enacted, and new entrants to the academic profession are supported not only to do academic work but to belong, become, and confidently be academics, as Billot and King (2017) note, in the context of a New Zealand-based study and echoing recommendations made by Ennals et  al. (2016). A similar view about onboarding but not focused on participants with a professional background outside academia is put forward by Petzer et al. (2021), who draw on critical incident interview data in a South African business school context where gender and race impacted the development of a sense of legitimacy and a positive professional identity. Induction should be viewed as the starting point of an ongoing identity project and should draw on a range of colleagues with diverse roles in the academic context. It is most likely to succeed when it ‘incorporates supportive and collegial networks which are aligned with mechanisms for individual proactivity’ (Billot & King, 2017, p. 619). New academics who are collegially supported to take ownership of the initial stages of growing into an academic role are better prepared to be in a position to offer similar support to others later. During and beyond onboarding, universities offer coaching and mentoring. A substantial body of literature has made attempts to unpack the differences between coaching and mentoring, with both seen as conversation-­based, the former more exploratory, the latter relying on mentors’ more substantial professional experience and expertise in the

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mentee’s area of learning (Guccione & Hutchinson, 2021). Parsloe et al. (2022) emphasise the importance of developing institution-specific mentoring schemes and institution-specific definitions and ensure shared understanding so that participants (mentors and mentees) fully engage in the learning process. Establishing a difference between coaching and mentoring may be less relevant in the pandemic-transformed context, as Gannon et al. (2022) note in their discussion of how coaching and mentoring overlap and complement each other in any given context. While Gannon et al. refer specifically to supporting leadership learning at senior levels within universities, their insights have relevance to discussion about coaching and mentoring more generally in academia. Coaching conversations ‘enable an institution and its people to deliver on organisational and institutional priorities’ (van Nieuwerburgh et  al., 2019, p. 264). They support reflection, an increase in self-awareness and the development of coherent professional identities, understanding of the broader organisational context, and ownership of solutions. Meanwhile, mentors supplement coaching conversations with guidance based on their expert knowledge and more extensive experience of the issue being explored. Coaching and mentoring support the academic benefiting from the learning to ‘steer suitable routes with their values and commitments intact’ (Gannon et  al., 2022, p.  140). Through mentor-mentee pairs (hierarchical or flat) or through more fluid and collaborative mentoring networks, they develop capacity for distributed leadership in a university, as discussed with regard to teaching and learning by Milne et al. (2022). Coaching and mentoring cultures which facilitate learning and development among academics and support alignment to and progression on new career pathways may develop informally and organically, independent of, or in connection with a structured programme. They could be the outcome of a strategic institutional driver (Harding et  al., 2018) or of individuals modelling specific behaviours. Bhopal (2020) argues in favour of setting up formal mentoring schemes to support progression for underrepresented categories of academics. Other research highlights the value of informal, non-hierarchical mentoring networks (Guzmán Johannessen & Bristol, 2016). Writing in the New Zealand context, Baice et al. (2021) signpost a similar need for career mentoring of Pacific / Pasifika academics. They call for experiences of Pacific / Pasifika early career academics to be captured in more depth to inform mentoring initiatives and they share insights from one such initiative developed at a New Zealand university

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which ‘provide[d] ample opportunities for individual and collective learning’ (p. 80). Various studies have explored the effectiveness of mentoring relationships and have looked at whether institutions should match mentors and mentees or should allow relationships to grow organically. Same race and same gender relationships appear to be more successful in some cases, with Mabry et  al. (2020) challenging the view that male mentors (or ‘MANtoring’) are more likely to secure career progression for their mentees. In their discussion of mentoring relationships in STEM disciplines in four countries (Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland, and Turkey), O’Connor et al. (2020) note that the focus of mentoring guidance tended to differ between women and men, and that men may have been inadvertently advantaged by the choice of focus, but that heads of department played an important role in both cases. Writing in the South African context, where supporting women’s representation in research in the context of succession planning in higher education is a focus of attention, Obers (2015) cautions that heads of department may or may not be in a position to provide suitable mentoring if their skillset is mainly administrative rather than researchand leadership-oriented. Meanwhile, Dajani et al. (2021) evaluated a year-­ long peer mentoring initiative involving 26 mid-career women in STEM in Jordanian universities and highlighted that informal mentoring was more likely to lead to longer-term collegial and mutually supportive relationships, extending beyond an institution, with a national as well as international reach. Professional associations and discipline networks, such as the initiative described by Oberhauser and Caretta (2019) in geography, can offer a ready-made sustainable platform for mentoring. With regard to the length of the mentoring connection, focusing specifically on full professor-­level experiences, Mercer (2021) noted that the survey respondents and the interviewees in her UK-based research placed greater value on longer, cohort-based learning opportunities, because these ‘allowed participants to interact with people at a similar career stage facing similar problems’ (p. 805), and prompted reflection and deeper learning. Coaching and mentoring can support academics to craft new identity narratives aligned to redesigned pathways, as well as the ongoing identity work that being an academic entails. They can contribute to pre-empting ‘fragile academic selves’ (Dickinson et  al., 2022) for those joining academia via a less traditional route or switching between pathways, and to articulating how dual or multiple professional identities for academics not following a linear career path can positively intertwine and support each

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other. They are of particular relevance to education-focused and practice/ entrepreneurship pathways where doctoral supervisor mentorship is insufficiently related to the pathway focus, or inexistent in the case of academics without doctorates. Harding et al. (2018) signpost a paper by Gordon and Whitchurch (2007) that links the increased attention to coaching and mentoring in higher education to recruitment of mid-career professionals from other sectors and the ensuing need to offer a more varied and responsive range of academic development opportunities. Coaching that fully supports pathway initiatives is framed in positive developmental terms and takes a systemic approach (Whittington, 2020), putting organisational health first and the alignment of individual purpose to the system. A systemic approach, as Harding et al. (2018, p. 28) note, is highly relevant in that it creates ‘a transitional space for academics during a period of significant organisational change’, particularly while new pathways are being introduced and are in the process of bedding in, offering ‘support for career, role, time and psychological challenges’ through generating clarity on ‘future focus, support in implementing roles, forward momentum and psychological support’. Harding et al. suggest that coachees could identify a change they would like to effect for their benefit and a complementary one for the benefit of the organisation. Where there is potential tension between the two, the role of the coach is to facilitate exploratory conversations which lead to generative solutions. Decisions about the extent to which to resource and support informal coaching and mentoring cultures or to formalise processes for quality assurance and risk mitigation purposes rests with institutions. Organisations may have a roster of external coaches they work with and/or an internal coaching scheme. They may use coaching as a way to achieve specific substantive goals and strategic ambitions or as a means to ensure sustainable learning and development in the face of constant disruption and change. Guccione and Hutchinson (2021) offer guidance on setting up a coaching and mentoring scheme, acknowledging the complexity of evaluating the tangible and intangible benefits of coaching in higher education (Harding et  al., 2018). Tangible benefits to achieve through using coaching and mentoring as a sustainable form of support for progression on new career pathways include securing resource for projects and generating outputs to disseminate insights. Some examples of intangible benefits are positive mindsets, increased self-efficacy, well-being, clarity, reassurance, improved working relationships or work-life balance. Financial resource is finite and benefits do need to be balanced against costs, in order to establish the

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most cost-effective approach in an institution to harness the potential of this form of learning. Coaching spend per individual academic member of staff may be higher than the cost of participating in other (group) development activities. The use of external coaches may appear be a more expensive alternative than internal coaches, unless one takes into account the less immediately visible costs of developing and administering an internal coaching scheme and securing external accreditation for internal coaches when building internal capacity to deliver coaching. Experiencing coaching and mentoring, however, can help academics take on coaching and mentoring roles themselves more effectively and exercise academic citizenship by supporting colleagues’ growth, as well as transferring these approaches to the way they support student learning. Academics who have been successful in promotion rounds are well placed to nurture and develop – through using coaching and mentoring approaches – those at an earlier stage in their academic career. We spotlighted job crafting in Chap. 3, as an opportunity for individuals to reconsider how to achieve better alignment and fit with their academic roles and to take ownership of this process. While we appreciate that going against the grain of roles and being intrapreneurial involves a certain degree of serendipity, job crafting could be supported on a greater scale through access to fixed-term secondments, or temporary role swaps across departments within the same organisation, whilst still ensuring the institution can deliver their core activities. Where secondments and role swaps cross into professional services areas, they can potentially contribute to building strong networks of support which sustain professional development in the longer term. Individuals can be supported to gather evidence for promotion through structured opportunities matched by space in workloads to explore and develop ideas of benefit to individuals and teams. Job crafting is a complex process which involves identifying an individual’s existing strengths, activity outcomes that are a source of energy for them, the positive impact of those activities on others, and any constraints (specific to an institution) that may need to be addressed. Secondments and role swaps involve mobility within an institution and have the potential to disrupt learning and work ecologies; academics who engage in this form of development have to learn the unwritten rules of other professional communities within a university and integrate these into their approaches to work. Cross-pollination of ideas can, however, lead to richer learning ecologies. Secondments and role swaps can take

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place within institutions as well as between institutions, and learning potential is increased when experience is brought in from other sectors as well. A recent study carried out in the higher education context in India (Nagarajan et al., 2022) makes an explicit link between job crafting and recovery from the pandemic and recommends that human resource professionals should create opportunities for job crafting to help mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic on employee well-being and engagement. An institution’s policies, processes, and financial situation will determine the extent to which secondments and role swaps can be offered. Arrangements can also be made internally, informally, or in a structured way that supports core business needs to be met, with team members supporting each other to pursue interests and develop their strengths. A challenge here is to ensure that individual interests are channelled into team-based initiatives which generate combined positive outcomes on a broader scale for academics as well as for students; or exploring how collaborative cross-functional initiatives can be supported to succeed despite structural barriers in organisations (or despite insufficiently developed processes to allow collaboration with external partners, e.g., HBR, 2019). Leadership learning is another mainstay of professional academic development, given that academic careers are staged to progress towards roles with an increased scope to lead. Understandings of what leadership is and how it is enacted underpin vary substantially, as Tight (2022) highlighted in a systematic review of research on leadership in higher education. These understandings impact on the design of career pathways with regard to the choice of activities to reward and the way vertical progression on a pathway is staged. Bolden et al.’s (2012) study is one among many which differentiate academic leadership from management, the latter seen as a formal institutional role, with responsibility for allocating tasks and implementing organisational processes and priorities. Leadership, on the other hand, is about affirmation, values, and building shared identities through collaboration and mentoring. Academic leaders at all levels in a university actively help others ‘develop an internal sense of purpose and direction which informs and shapes the trajectory of their career’ (p. 42) and resonates with the core of their professional academic identity. Bolden et al. view leadership of subject (or discipline) and leadership of people as complementary and equally necessary in academia, where effective leaders are role models positioned at the forefront of their academic field. Bolden et al. use the phrases ‘leadership clusters’ (p. 11) and ‘leaderful teams’ (p. 44) to emphasise that leadership is not located in a limited number of individuals but

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woven throughout the fabric of an organisation. This is echoed in Readman and Rowe’s (2016) account of developing emerging leaders of learning and teaching at an Australian university, an initiative which built participants’ ‘confidence to work outside local disciplines or silos and to purposefully share and engage with the university’s business’ (p. 1021). Redesigned pathways can actively contribute to cultivating leadership potential across a university among all categories of staff amplifying diverse voices for the benefit of all. Gender plays an important part in how leadership opportunities are taken up. The Advance HE Aurora, a UK-based sector-wide initiative to address leadership and gender inequality in higher education, was set up in 2013, for ‘women up to tenured associate professor level or professional services equivalent working in a university, college or related organisation to develop and explore issues relating to personal leadership roles and responsibilities’ (Barnard et al., 2021, p. 7). The programme is designed to raise participants’ awareness of different approaches to leadership, to support them to develop their own definition of leadership, and to explore contextually relevant ways of exercising this. It is also designed to create crossfunctional career support networks, within and across institutions, enabling women to take up leadership roles and influence policy and practice that remove structural institutional barriers to women’s progression or ‘reconstrue how they define leadership and conclude that they could exercise it in their current role’ (Barnard et al., 2021, p. 36). The ethos of the Aurora programme is to offer participants access to development and support in ways that put them in a position to share the learning and act as support networks for others in turn, thus building a critical mass that can generate change in the higher education system. A longitudinal review of the programme (Barnard et al., 2021) identified positive impact in line with the programme’s ambition and made recommendations on how this impact could be extended and amplified. Supporting women to exercise intellectual leadership through professorial appointments is a gender-related challenge that institutions have been working to address over the past few years (Macfarlane & Burg, 2018). Macfarlane and Burg build on earlier work by the first author which defines intellectual leadership as consisting of four components (knowledge production, boundary transgressing, academic citizenship through mentoring others, and being a public intellectual) and note that the sense-making that takes place during the application process continues beyond appointment into spaces where development for women shifts focus to learning

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how to ‘better control their environment at the university and gain a stronger sense of independence and potential impact’ (p. 7) across all components of leadership. The repeated use of the word ‘research’ in a quote from Macfarlane and Burg (2018) (‘crossing disciplines, connecting research with the interests and concerns of industry, and a sense of the civic mission of research to make a positive difference to society’ p. 8) reflects both the greater proportion of professors from research-intensive universities among Macfarlane and Burg’s interviewees and the newness, at that stage, of varied academic pathways in universities. A recommendation that Macfarlane and Burg make with regard to ensuring that all areas of intellectual leadership are recognised for promotion and beyond, however, has relevance to all pathways. It has potential to impact positively on a university and build capacity, not least because through enacting academic citizenship, professors develop less experienced colleagues, often through mentorship, and this needs particular attention on new pathways. Leadership development and mentoring initiatives set up by Advance HE and aiming to address the systemic race and ethnicity imbalance in UK universities are discussed by Johns et al. (2019) and Fook et al. (2019), with reference to the Diversifying Leadership programme. Diversifying Leadership mirrored the core Advance HE Aurora, but had an additional layer of support from a sponsor to mitigate against multiple disadvantage. Gannon et al. (2022) caution that ‘no one blend of coaching and mentoring is likely to be appropriate’ (p. 155) when developing leaders and that context plays an important role. By extension, sponsorship has potential to yield more substantial outcomes, but is not necessarily sufficient on its own. In redesigned career frameworks, the proportion of academics on each pathway will inevitably differ across institutions based on their strategic priorities and course portfolios. As new pathways are being introduced, there is a risk that in the initial stages there is uneven allocation of resource to support positioning on new pathways and the development of coherent, positive academic identities that fuel effective engagement in a broad spectrum of academic activities. Critical mass will inevitably underpin decisions about resourcing, but potential impact (with impact defined in an inclusive way) should also inform the decision-making process. In a pandemic-impacted environment where financial resource is finite, a challenge with aligning academic development with new pathways is to establish what development activities should be centrally funded within an institution because they are relevant for a critical mass of academics, what

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activities should be locally funded within schools, faculties, or departments because they enhance work in a particular subject area, what forms of development should be outsourced because there is insufficient in-house capacity to deliver them, as well as how development time can be ring-­ fenced without this impacting negatively on teaching delivery.

5.3  A Note on Collegiate, Collaborative Institutional Cultures We noted in various places throughout the book that academic citizenship, collegiality, and/or collaboration should be at the core of redesigned pathways. We argue in favour of encouraging collaboration within and across pathways and modelling cross-disciplinary, cross-functional, and cross-organisation learning. We also argue that the process of redesigning career pathways and supporting professional academic development should be a sector-wide collaborative endeavour. Through networks built across institutions for development purposes, academics can engage more deeply in personally meaningful, locally relevant, and globally impactful activities. A noteworthy example of a successful cross-institutional collaboration with a specific focus on promoting women and underrepresented minority academics is put forward by Bilimoria and Singer (2019). The initiative they describe is a collaborative learning community, funded by the US National Science Foundation and set up among six research universities clustered in the northern part of the State of Ohio. The aim was ‘to drive diversification of STEM academic presence in the region, inform broader efforts to foster science and technology careers and build capacity for a high tech regional workforce’ (Bilimoria & Singer, 2019, p. 367). The initiative led to visible, measurable change in terms of gender equity, diversity, and inclusion with regard to career progression within the participating institutions. It led to institutional change in terms of processes and policies to recruit and promote women (notwithstanding operational, structural, and mission differences across institutions). It also sparked a number of follow-on change projects involving new institutional members, again with a multi-institution remit, focused on career development and differentiated according to career stage, supported by successful external funding applications. The project was set up to enable the teams to participate in leadership development, benefit from coaching, build regional alliances, hold

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plenary conferences, and implement initiatives aligned to priorities in each institution. As Bilimoria and Singer (2019) emphasise, ‘systemic change to achieve equity […] must be rooted on individual campuses but must also propagate among higher education systems and the broader scientific community’ (p. 380). To increase their local relevance, collaborative learning communities do not have to be limited to universities and can straddle boundaries between sectors and organisation types. Harding et al. (2018) give the example of a coaching initiative set up collaboratively by Leeds Beckett University with external partners: The university participates in a successful city-wide partnership, the Leeds Citywide Coaching Network, with the NHS and Leeds City Council. This is really having an impact in developing senior managers and leaders; as an example a new female professor had a coach, the director of allied health professionals in the NHS Trust, and the feedback was amazing. Regional collaboration with other universities with a view to sharing coaches across institutions is ongoing, however due to the perception that universities are in competition with each other this has not progressed yet. (p. 22)

Academic research earns the highest accolades for institutions when it is based on global reach, collaboration, and impact. Education-focused academic career pathways and practice / entrepreneurship ones carry similar expectations. Redesigned pathways with the right degree of flexibility can help build capacity within institutions to set up mutually rewarding collaborations locally, nationally and globally. Greater success is likely to be achieved where official documents which unpack pathway expectations overtly articulate an intention to create positive impact in the communities where the collaborators are located and for this impact to have the broadest reach possible. Collegial, collaborative institutional cultures develop over time, through formal and informal learning. In their volume on coaching and mentoring in academia, Guccione and Hutchinson (2021) express concern that ‘a great deal of learning and professional growth is facilitated informally’ (p. 296) and that access to this may have been limited by the pandemic. At the same time, however, the pandemic has enabled the emergence of alternative learning spaces which offer a richer, more bespoke experience through removing constraints associated with time zones and geographic distance. To ensure that new academic career frameworks fully

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achieve the purpose for which they were designed, institutions will benefit from framing their academic development offer in ways that tap into collegiate, collaborative mindsets and nurture these. They will also benefit from removing the infrastructural barriers that hinder internal collaborative learning across functional areas and external collaboration across institutions that leads to innovation. Our analysis of redesigned academic career frameworks in Chap. 2, our interpretation of relevant existing literature throughout the volume, and our combined experiences in a variety of roles in higher education inform the principles for academic career framework redesign in Chap. 6.

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CHAPTER 6

Guidelines for Pathway Redesign and Implementation

6.1   Principles for Academic Career Framework Redesign Academic roles have increased in complexity over the years. Academics are responsible for ‘preparing the next generation of citizens, professionals, creators, leaders, and thinkers’, in order to ‘influence the kind of society we could become’ (Mutch, 2017, Kindle location 202, Chapter 1). Alongside a wide range of colleagues within a university, academics also create new knowledge through research and impact on society, civically and economically, through creative and effective collaboration with external industry partners, civic organisations, or policymakers (Coates et  al., 2015). Globally, as captured in a recent OECD report about human resources in higher education, there is recognition of the increased difficulty in carrying out all these responsibilities effectively. In various national higher education contexts, academic roles are becoming more differentiated and increasingly linked to individuals’ capabilities and preferences, with different components of administration, management and leadership, and other activities. Moreover, different institutions with different missions often have different portfolios of academic types, often with individually negotiated employment arrangements. (OECD, 2020)

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Redesigned academic career frameworks have tracks that signal a more substantial and concentrated focus on research, or education, or direct societal engagement and contribution. They do so without losing the connection with student learning or other aspects of academic life and are designed to help recognise all contributions, to value a broader range of activities and validate these as legitimate academic work. The three missions of a university—research, teaching, and societal impact—are closely interconnected, with each and every member of academic staff contributing to the delivery of the triple mission in different ways, drawing on their strengths and areas of expertise. Entrepreneurial-type academic activity, that is, ‘technology transfer from universities to industry and other users of research results, such as the military or the health-care system, has always been part of the academic world’ as Enders and Musselin (2008, p. 131) note, but has accelerated in recent years, adding variety and complexity to academic roles and creating opportunities for professional academic success to be enabled and recognised. Guidelines for redesigning academic career frameworks which emphasise that different contributions carry parity of esteem are listed below. They are articulated as general principles that apply across national contexts with different funding regimes, different legislative environments, and varied understandings of academic freedom. The 12 key principles for pathway redesign are abstracted from the discussion in the previous chapters in this work, and contextualised further in relevant literature. The principles, laid out in Table 6.1 and unpacked further below, are intended to inform the design of frameworks which align to the priorities and contextual specificity of individual universities. While previous chapters have spotlighted education-focused and practice / entrepreneurship pathways, the 12 principles look at academic career frameworks in the round. Principle 1: Academic career frameworks should be triply contextualised. Contextualisation should firstly be achieved within the strategy and mission of a university in order to achieve alignment. Career frameworks become the ‘body language’ of an institution (Kelley, 2001), amplifying a university’s message about its ambitions and aspirations. Secondly, frameworks should be contextualised within a robust evidence base from that institution to ensure maximum relevance for a specific institutional context, building on that institution’s strengths and existing capacity (Graham, 2019). Thirdly, frameworks should be informed by the scholarly literature

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Table 6.1  Principles for academic career framework redesign 1. 2.

Academic career frameworks should be triply contextualised. Academic career frameworks should have a multidimensional core that enables both vertical career progression (with stepped stages) and flexibility for lateral role enrichment or change of direction. 3. Academic career frameworks should be co-created with a broad range of stakeholders who document and share the rationale and changes. 4. Academic career frameworks should balance relevance for specific institutional contexts with the need to achieve some degree of comparability and transferability across the sector and internationally. 5. Academic career frameworks should demonstrate commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) for staff and students. 6. Academic career frameworks should contribute to creating an organisational culture that nurtures collaborative learning and development for students, emerging scholars, and established ones, as well as other stakeholders. 7. Academic career frameworks should be visibly endorsed by senior sponsors. 8. Academic career frameworks should be based on institution-central criteria that offer consistency across an institution’s academic disciplines, subjects, and organisational units while allowing local flexibility and encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration. 9. Academic career frameworks should be open to the use of a broad range of evidence to document performance and impact to enable progression. 10. Academic career frameworks should be supported through HR policies and procedures for recruitment, appraisal, and promotion which are fair, responsible, open, transparent, and holistic. 11. Academic career frameworks should be integrated into institutional capacity-building processes that support progression along newly redeveloped pathways. 12. Academic career frameworks should be seen as an ongoing project with space for experimentation.

on academic work and identity (e.g., Kezar & Maxey, 2016; Wolf & Jenkins, 2021). This will ensure that frameworks respond effectively to demands from societal stakeholders for heightened accountability and productivity, volatile fiscal constraints, a changing student body bringing a range of needs and expectations to their academic pursuits, the deepening of knowledge about human learning, the burgeoning research supporting calls for pedagogies that encourage active learning, the possibilities as well as uncertainties accompanying the availability of new technologies, the exponential rate of knowledge expansion, and the opportunities for global connections that enrich research and teaching. (Austin & Trice, 2016, p. 58)

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The triple contextualisation should be explicitly articulated in a document that accompanies the framework, to capture the ethos of the framework for the benefit of its users and support implementation. Principle 2: Academic career frameworks should have a multidimensional core that enables both vertical career progression (with stepped stages) and flexibility for lateral role enrichment or change of direction. In an OECD report on Higher Education to 2030, Enders and Musselin (2008) predicted a trend towards specialisation in either teaching or research. However, new pathways with flexibility to blend various areas of academic activity are likely to lead to more valuable contributions and increased job satisfaction (Coates et al., 2015). Where distinct pathways are created for each of the three higher education missions (research, teaching, and societal impact) to ensure that each mission is given due attention, it is important to allow porous boundaries between pathways in recognition that professional interests (and the needs of universities) can change over time. Pathways with a multidimensional rather than rigidly defined single-track core enable collaborative working. In the UK context, alignment to a research-focused pathway would entail substantial discipline research and REF-able outputs (the equivalent of ERA in Australia, PBRF-linked assessment in New Zealand, or other frameworks in European countries, see Reed et al., 2020). Beyond REF-­ able outputs, however, research provides cutting-edge content to include in teaching and inspire future generations of researchers, as well as offering insights that can benefit external stakeholders. Scope for academics on research-focused pathways to engage in these activities collaboratively with colleagues on other pathways can ensure maximum impact is created through research and would pre-empt the risk identified by Gair et  al. (2022) with regard to creating a hierarchy of academic activities, privileging some at the expense of others: No academic has been promoted for their ongoing commitment to supporting students on their field practicum. It is true that our academic role is divided into research, teaching and service. Teaching has gained traction as a highly worthwhile area of scholarship in more recent years. Service also is seen as important, and lots of things count for service. Serving on a university ethics committee or academic board or serving as an equity officer for matters like bullying, stalking and racism, all of which I have done, count as university service. And service to your profession counts, for example ­serving

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on professional committees, being a reviewer for professional journals or serving on editorial boards—and all which can take an enormous amount of time. Supporting students on field practicum is very important too but it is one of those valuable but invisible roles. And service and teaching do not have the elite status of research on the academic CV. (Gair et al., 2022, p. 46)

Pathways which are not rigidly defined enable everyone to ‘leverage their time and energy more effectively’ (Smith et al., 2021, p. 515), regardless of whether they are aspiring to progress vertically within their careers. Secondments and project work that enable temporary lateral moves into a different pathway or into roles with a complementary remit or into organisations outside academia without compromising their upward career trajectory can reenergise academic colleagues and support them to make a richer contribution through their work. Principle 3: Academic career frameworks should be co-created with a broad range of stakeholders who document and share the rationale and changes. Graham’s (2019) review of institutions which have developed education-­focused career pathways in 11 countries found that input from a wide range of stakeholders was necessary to create a robust evidence base for the redesign and adoption of a context-relevant framework. In the institutions that Graham surveyed, stakeholders—academics as well as professional services colleagues—were involved both in the initial stage and during iterative improvement stages. Academic role and career frameworks do not exist in a vacuum and their redesign impacts on and is impacted by other aspects of a university system. In some of the successful cases identified by Graham (2019), engaging the academic community directly in the process ensured that misconceptions about the purpose and nature of the redesigned framework could be addressed early in the process. It provided opportunities for existing academics to reach clarity about which aspects of the academic role would be re-balanced on the new career pathways. The benefit of involving cross-institution working groups in the redesign of academic role profiles and descriptors of grades is also discussed by Cameron (2021). Initial consultation and redesign experiences help articulate the vision behind the framework and its component parts. They ensure that all relevant perspectives are included, the core of each pathway is clearly articulated, potential blind spots are engaged with, pathways are equally valued, and the relevance of pathways is communicated in meaningful ways to academics and all others involved

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in delivering a university’s mission. Holding the consultation in a neutral space (Saenen et  al., 2021) offers a context for rich, supportive conversations. Principle 4: Academic career frameworks should balance relevance for specific institutional contexts with the need to achieve some degree of comparability and transferability across the sector and internationally. Finkelstein (2015) notes that there is a substantial amount of comparative evidence about national higher education systems in general, but that a degree of caution is required when interpreting this data for the purpose of redesigning career pathways, given that aggregated figures more often than not remove access to contextual detail which is of higher relevance to local decision-making. In an example that Finkelstein offers of a German and a US institution, contextual awareness would be required of the vast organisational difference between the structures of the two university systems (a campus corporate structure with faculty as “employees” in the American case vs. a ministerial structure and chair system in Germany where individual senior faculty may indeed negotiate directly with senior Ministry officials over the heads of nominal campus heads). (p. 318)

In the UK, institutions have a certain degree of freedom to make decisions about terms and conditions of employment and about promotion procedures, whereas in other countries academics may have civil servant status or may be constrained by tenure requirements (OECD, 2020; Scott, 2019). State approval may need to be sought for new professorial positions. This may limit the extent to which frameworks can be redesigned. Trade unions’ perspective should also be sought when career pathways are redesigned. Different institutions have different relationships with their own trade unions; however, as trade unions also network across the sector, they have the potential to offer constructive challenge which should strengthen the development of career pathways. The role trade unions play varies across the world and in some national systems they may have greater influencing power and may be more visionary than in others. The International Labour Organisation (2021) notes that trade union membership has declined globally and the future of trade unions is uncertain, though it also advises that the pandemic could be seen as an opportunity to revitalise their work.

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Evidence that can help maximise comparability and transferability across the sector and internationally could be derived from feedback provided by external referees who evaluate internal non-competitive promotion applications in an institution, or through consulting research-funding bodies on evaluative criteria. Institutions can provide case studies of career framework redesign, written from both institutional and individual viewpoints, with sufficient relevant contextual detail to enable comparison. Principle 5: Academic career frameworks should demonstrate commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) for staff and students. Forward-looking career frameworks harness the potential of the pandemic to contribute to a beneficial ‘reset and rethink’ (Baré et al., 2021, p. 12) of EDI in the context of academic work. An understanding of EDI as a legal, regulatory, and moral obligation, going beyond officially protected categories, will ensure that frameworks—which are a structural, systemic response to inequality—facilitate positive individual experiences and a broader sense of belonging and inclusion. Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) should take place at an appropriate point (i.e., when sufficient time has elapsed to ensure robust data is in place) to ensure a careers framework is fully inclusive. Promotions applications should allow space for applicants to articulate EDI-linked aspects that the panel may need to take into account. At the same time, they should invite academics to articulate their contribution to the EDI endeavour of the University, framing this as a responsibility that everyone has ownership of and not something which is the remit of a sole few. This will help mitigate against a potential sense of disconnect between policy and practice, facilitating policy enactment on the ground, pre-empting situations in which unhelpful attitudes such as ableism are internalised despite systemic barriers being removed. The way EDI is explicitly articulated in promotion criteria matters. Barrow and Grant (2019), writing about the New Zealand context and in particular about a research-intensive institution, offer an insightful analysis of how equity for students (both in terms of equal opportunities and access and in terms of outcomes) plays out in promotion-related policy documents and decisions. Inspired by Ahmed (2007) to ‘follow [institutional policy] documents around, examining how they get taken up’ (p. 590), Barrow and Grant (2019) interviewed decision-making panel members with regard to equity, a core institutional strategic area, and ‘surface[d] problematic logics around equity that shed light on equity’s slender grasp on academic culture’ (p. 142). One of challenges they identified was whether

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equity should be viewed as being linked mainly to teaching or whether it should also be discussed in the context of other areas of academic activity. They reflect that while the university they selected for their case study distinguished itself by using a broader range of ‘named equity groups’ (p. 137) than officially listed ones, the relocation of equity from detailed teaching-related criteria in an older version of documentation to an opening context section in revised criteria sent mixed signals about the importance of equity and the level of attention decision-making panels should pay to this when making promotion decisions. Principle 6: Academic career frameworks should contribute to creating an organisational culture that nurtures collaborative learning and development for students, emerging scholars, and established ones, as well as other stakeholders. Career frameworks should place learning at the centre (both student learning and professional academic development), emphasizing connection with society, and rewarding collaboration, collegiality, and the creation of learning ecosystems. Overlaet (2022) notes that ‘the output of the academic world is not only papers and patents, but also people’ (p. 11). The collaborative learning culture should be built on principles of mutuality, reciprocity and respect. It should recognise that ‘each faculty member [is] making an important contribution to the collective responsibilities of fulfilling institutional missions’ (p. 62). Wakely (2021) advises explicitly embedding mentoring in promotion criteria. Commitment to collaborative learning which engages students, academics, professional services staff, and external stakeholders creates a stronger sense of collegiality which cuts across occupational and generational divides. It ensures that an institution has capacity to address challenges systemically, to proactively embrace new ways of working (Winter, 2017), and to create a richer and more life-relevant learning experience for students. Principle 7: Academic career frameworks should be visibly endorsed by senior sponsors. In her work on developing frameworks which place teaching achievements at the centre, Graham (2019) found that institutions which were able to implement a framework change successfully had placed leadership responsibility in a senior academic sponsor who provided reassurance, throughout the redesign process, about the university’s commitment to

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‘respect academic autonomy and be sensitive to the existing workloads and priorities of faculty’ (p. 13). At implementation stage, senior sponsor visibility increases the consistency of framework application, particularly in large institutions with complex work cultures where the introduction of new frameworks is likely to unsettle habitual ways of working and where buy-in is uneven. The sponsor role is unpacked further in Sect. 6.2.1. Principle 8: Academic career frameworks should be based on institution-­ central criteria that offer consistency across an institution’s academic disciplines, subjects, and organisational units while allowing local flexibility and encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration. While institutions develop central criteria, Colleges, Schools, Faculties, and other units will need to flesh these out in ways that are appropriate to local disciplinary contexts, also ‘keep[ing] room for the quaint and counter-­ intuitive initiatives’ (Overlaet, 2022, p.  28). At the same time, there should be cross-fertilisation of practice. For example, criteria should recognise collegiality and collaborative contributions, pre-empting situations such as the one described by Austin and Trice (2016) where collaboration is discouraged because ‘co- or multi-authored publications have sometimes counted as less than single-authored publications in tenure and evaluation processes’ (p.  72). Multi-authored collaborative outputs are the norm in some disciplines but not in others. Encouraging interdisciplinary and cross-pathway collaboration for all disciplines is likely to result in richer, more relevant outputs that carry value both in themselves and through the positive impact they generated while they were being produced. Recognition that disciplinary boundaries may evolve over time and may lead to the reorganisation of academic units may impact on the detail in the frameworks. Principle 9: Academic career frameworks should be open to the use of a broad range of evidence to document performance and impact to enable progression. Metrics are frequently used to document academic performance and impact, but metrics on their own ‘fail to account for or recognise the diversity of contributions that is needed in (academic) research today’ (Overlaet, 2022, p.  5). Some metrics may be easier to generate than others. Dashboards with data within an institution may not be easily accessible to academics who wish to evidence their achievements and contribution.

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While metrics make for easier standardisation, numbers and narratives should be given parity in the decision-making (Forsberg et al., 2022), not least because citation metrics focus on impact within the scholarly community only and do not capture the relevance and usefulness of work beyond academia (Doyle, 2018). Narrative, reflective commentary should accompany numeric factual information so that the application process has a clear developmental ethos. Discussion throughout this volume has focused on pathways which complement traditional research-aligned ones; however, it must be acknowledged that discussion about metrics and the need to increase diversity in evidence to support academic career progression was initially sparked by research-oriented initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden manifesto, or the Hong Kong manifesto (Overlaet, 2022). Some evidence may require careful critical scrutiny for bias, as in the case of teaching feedback, where research has shown that some categories of staff may systematically receive more positive feedback than others (Kwok & Potter, 2022). Additionally, some promotion policies may emphasise outputs at the expense of evaluating outcomes and impact (Buller, 2021). As regards collating evidence of scholarship that prioritises engagement with communities, Franz (2011) emphasises that ‘faculty members must document the two-way relationship in academic and public partnerships to demonstrate a beneficial legacy’ (pp  18–19) and answer impact questions about new knowledge created, participant learning, changes in aspirations, motivations and behaviours (actual or intended), as well as contextual environment changes. Principle 10: Academic career frameworks should be supported through HR policies and procedures for recruitment, appraisal, and promotion which are fair, responsible, open, transparent, and holistic. To attract appropriate external candidates for roles on redesigned pathways, it is essential that role descriptions and person specifications are drawn up in ways that make the expectations associated with a role and a particular academic career pathway clear, not advantaging ‘career academics’ but engaging talent from a broader range of backgrounds (Pilcher et al., 2021). Clear role descriptions and person specifications also underpin successful onboarding and retention of academics (King et al., 2018), reducing turnover and financial costs for an institution (Buller, 2021) as well as associated reputational costs and negative impact on the student experience. Role descriptions were found to be important by Mercer (2021),

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who researched UK-based full professors’ development experiences and called for ‘clearer and more realistic job descriptions’ (p.  806) that would support performance in the role and by Mantai and Marrone (2023), who explored national and disciplinary differences in academic job advertisements with regard to attributes that support progression across all stages of an academic career. HR policies within an institution at a minimum should articulate the focus of pathways, with detail relevant for each career stage, criteria against which performance is evaluated, and the flow of promotion process, including procedures related to recruitment, selection, and promotion panels. Appraisal processes should be aligned to redesigned pathways. Providing guidelines on flexibility to move across pathways also falls within the remit of HR. HR play a role in ensuring appropriate external representation on decision-making panels. They mitigate against evidence from outside academia not being given due attention or against insufficient attention given to candidates from outside an institution when recruiting to a vacancy (Benner et al., 2021). The HR remit will vary across national boundaries. In some countries, entry to the academic profession is made on the basis of an initial nationally recognised assessment which stipulates eligibility but does not guarantee secure employment (e.g., in Germany or France). A doctorate may be a formal requirement in some universities or higher education systems but not in others. Career progression may be non-competitive and linked to an enhanced professional profile whereas in other countries (e.g., France) a vacancy may need to become available in order for an academic to progress in their career. Principle 11: Academic career frameworks should be integrated into institutional capacity-building processes that support progression along newly redeveloped pathways. Integration can be achieved in different ways. Processes and criteria could be unpacked in promotion application workshops for immediate potential applicants, as well as colleagues thinking about progression longer term. These workshops could feature contributions from recent successful applicants as well as senior colleagues. The introduction of redesigned academic career frameworks should spark a rethinking of the academic development offer to pre-empt the latter presenting itself as ‘a proliferation of approaches that do not work usefully together’ (Harding et  al., 2018, p.  83). Overt support for progression helps pre-empt

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situations such as the one identified by Dados et al. (2018) in the Australian context, where the introduction of scholarly teaching fellows contributed to some extent towards the reduction of casualisation but lack of attention to professional development created unintended negative consequences with regard to how the academic worth of these roles and opportunities for career progression were perceived. Development should focus on the whole of the academic role and should view academics as three-­dimensional beings, likely to benefit from learning carried out in a way that is conducive to well-being. The probation period in a role for new academics recruited should also be viewed as integral to capacity-building. In some national systems (e.g., Germany), it is unlikely that academics would be supported to grow their career linearly within an institution (Finkelstein & Jones, 2019). In such situations, a stronger case can be built for the need to achieve cross-region comparability to ensure talented academics are fully supported in their career aspirations. Principle 12: Academic career frameworks should be seen as an ongoing project with space for experimentation. In an increasingly volatile higher education context, framework development is a cyclical and iterative process that benefits from regular evaluation to ensure continued fitness for purpose. Austin and Trice (2016) offer a useful reminder that academic career frameworks should be built in a way that makes them ‘sufficiently robust and flexible to be relevant in coming years as new challenges and changes confront higher education institutions’ (p.  59). Continuous evaluation of how new career frameworks are implemented can yield useful enhancement data, as would research into how career frameworks are engaged with. For example, in the context of a Faculty of Social Sciences in a public Chinese university, Cai and Zheng (2016) identified, through document analysis and semistructured interviews, insufficient alignment between policy intention and implementation. New academic promotion policies led academics they interviewed to embrace a requirement for internationally recognised research and also societal service, defined as knowledge transfer and consultancy and viewed as opportunities to apply research insights in a relevant way. However, academics were reluctant to take up administrative work, which they perceived as ‘a waste of their gift for research’ (p.  256). Awareness of these potential challenges which could derail framework implementation from its intended course is essential to ensure that redesigned frameworks achieve their purpose. Decisions about the

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length of time between implementation and evaluation will vary from institution to institution. In Chap. 7, we offer examples of evaluation questions that institutions may wish to choose from, accompanied by underpinning assumptions.

6.2  Implementing New Pathways: Senior Sponsors, Decision-Making Panels, and HR Processes 6.2.1   Senior Sponsorship of Career Frameworks The principles outlined above are framed as guidelines for the redesign process rather than a set of rigid rules to follow. The seventh principle, visible endorsement by senior sponsors, is unpacked further in this section, given the central role that senior sponsors play not only in career framework redesign but throughout implementation. Reflecting on academic colleagues’ views regarding the introduction of a redesigned careers framework at Bournemouth University, from his perspective as the Pro-­ Vice-­Chancellor tasked with leading on career framework redesign in his institution, Bennett (2015) notes that the issue of leadership was raised in various ways, pertaining both to the leadership of the overall project, as well as to local leadership during implementation. A common view can be summarised as: ‘things change with new VC’s and Deans; how much will things change again with future changes?’ A real fear was expressed by some that future leadership changes might lead to an unpicking of the presently implemented changes. Also the independence of the leadership was questioned by some. For example, the fact that the project was led by the PVC with responsibility for research performance gave in some opinions a perceived emphasis to research in the career structure, despite the fact that it is intended to be completely balanced. This simply reinforced in some people’s views the intuitional mantra about the importance of research inherited from the previous management regime. (p. 24)

As Bennett emphasises, the profile and professional background of the senior leader ‘sponsoring’ the careers framework redevelopment work could inadvertently impact on the way the new framework and its implementation are perceived and engaged with. Individual academics’ understanding of the external environment to which senior leaders need to

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respond when designing and implementing careers frameworks will inevitably vary in depth and breadth. Appropriately timed and clearly framed communication about the redesign initiative, which bridges knowledge gaps and reconciles individual and institutional priorities, is fundamental to the success of a framework. Communication should emphasise not just the benefits for academics, but also the way in which redesigned academic career frameworks have the potential to create better experiences for the broader university community and beyond, reinforcing the value of collaboration and academic citizenship. Senior sponsorship of a careers framework may be directly associated with an individual, but it is the concerted effort of a leadership team that ultimately impacts on a framework’s success. A leadership team also ensures continuity if the senior sponsor takes up a new role in the same or a different organisation. Key members of that team include senior colleagues with leadership responsibility in individual academic schools or with responsibility for organisational learning and development related to educational and academic practice, research, and knowledge exchange broadly defined. While senior sponsorship is essential, one should not underestimate the contribution of early adopters at all levels in the hierarchy. When redesigning and implementing academic career frameworks, senior sponsors are also expected to engage in principled negotiation and fair and consistent allocation of resource for academic development. This underpins the success of a new framework, particularly in circumstances where development resource is finite (UCEA, 2019) and, in some universities, less able to stretch to meet all development needs. Development resource needs to be distributed within constraints placed on the sector or specific to an institution, in a sustainable way. A coherent leadership team that has access to relevant data about academic development is more likely to generate an integrated development offer that helps academics grow professionally in ways that fully align to an institution’s priorities. Senior sponsorship does not end when a redesigned career framework is launched. Framework implementation will inevitably vary, given the cultural organisational complexity of universities. Senior sponsorship from within the first tier of a university’s management team guards against loss of momentum and ensures a certain degree of consistency in how frameworks are engaged with to shape the work of various disciplinary and functional areas in alignment with a university’s mission.

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While redesigned career frameworks are intended to create ‘equitable opportunities for growth, development and promotion across different roles’ (Harris, 2017) for a more diverse—professionally and otherwise—body of academics, these frameworks may run the risk of being perceived as being primarily about promotion and inadvertently demotivate those who for varied reasons may not be in a position to achieve that. To pre-empt this, senior sponsors can arrange for a broader range of benefits of each new pathway to be communicated widely, through case studies and stories to which members of a university’s community can relate. 6.2.2   Decision-Making Panels for Academic Promotions When academics reach career milestones and have gathered sufficient evidence to apply for progression to the next stage in a career framework, decision-making panels are commonly formed to evaluate applications and confirm progression readiness or to offer further developmental guidance. Feedback to applicants should be provided regardless of the outcome, to support the next stage in the applicants’ career trajectory. Decision-making panels can also offer insight into ways to fine-tune the application process, by feeding back on the quality of evidence available in application forms, on the level of detail included, and on how identity narratives constructed in the application convey a clear sense of the applicants’ activity within the context of their professional field for an audience not necessarily familiar with that field. Promotion-related decision-making processes within an institution may involve several stages, with local or central university panel membership, and may contain input from discipline experts and from senior academics from other subject areas who can ensure parity of evaluative decisions across disciplines. Multiple perspectives add richness to the discussion and ensure consensus is reached on a principled basis. Prior to reviewing applications, however, panels may find it useful to explore their interpretation of criteria and their understanding of any scoring, grading, or points-based system in place to judge whether a threshold has been met. Prior to the official panel meeting, it would be useful to surface assumptions that may hinder the decision-making process. One set of assumptions may be linked to what counts as core activity specific to each pathway and what categories of evidence should be prioritised. In the absence of a common, shared understanding of scholarship across disciplines or of a standardised way of gauging impact on practice,

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carefully examining assumptions (both in the context of panel induction sessions as well as on an ongoing reflection basis) will increase the likelihood of fairness in decision-making. Hammarfelt (2022) offers an insightful account of differences, in Swedish universities, in the evaluation of professorial applications in three fields (biomedicine, economics, and history). Through an analysis of external referee reports, he identified that history favoured the mention of prizes for dissertations or books to emphasise scholarly reputation, while biomedicine and economics placed noticeably less emphasis on this form of recognition. Another aspect that Hammerfelt identified, as a point of similarity rather than difference across disciplines, was the tendency to look at outputs not as discrete items but as components integrated into a coherent trajectory. Attention to inclusion extends to panel membership as well. Sharing experience from countries where LERU (League of European Research Universities) members are based, Overlaet (2022) notes that LERU network members have used a range of approaches to ‘reduce bias and increase a diversity perspective’ (p. 26); these involve including students and more junior academics as panel members; having panel roles ‘trained to recognise and counteract different forms of bias’ (p. 26); or adding other categories of observers with or without decision-making responsibilities. Promotion application forms include space to mention personal circumstances that the panel may need to take into account to ensure that promotion decisions are based on merit relative to opportunity. Writing about her experience of applying for promotion to Associate Professor, Bosanquet (2021) describes how she filled in the relevant personal circumstances box, which reflected her understanding of the institution’s view of what would be appropriate and relevant to share: In my application this year, I cautiously wrote: The following application refers to work completed at [this university] since appointment to Senior Lecturer in 2016… [My research] is the output of a 20% research workload (in all roles since first appointment in 2010) and fractional appointments (3 days per week from 2010 to 2016, and 4 days per week from 2017 to 2018). (p. 431)

Bosanquet then unpacks in more detail what she cautiously refrained from sharing in the application, what she ‘wanted to write instead’ (p. 431):

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A full account would include details of little interest to a promotions committee: a life-threatening birth, a daughter with epilepsy, a too-slow PhD, a grandmother bringing a baby for breastfeeds between lectures, a ­relationship on the brink, a teaching-focussed appointment, secondary infertility, a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, an implanted neurostimulator to manage debilitating nerve pain, eight years as a part-time academic, a miracle baby, a university restructure, a relationship on the brink again, a daughter on the cusp of puberty with severe epilepsy unable to attend school for eight months, another university restructure, a pandemic… (p. 431)

The promotion application process can be made more transparent through policies which identify the terms of reference and composition of the selection panel, the purpose of external review, the criteria for appointing independent external assessors with relevant expertise and up-to-date knowledge of developments related to the higher education sector, and who has access to information about life events such as ones described by Bosanquet (2021), quoted above. Providing reassurance that only a very small subsection of the panel will see the personal circumstances section of the application form would encourage applicants to disclose relevant details. Additional support should be made available when completing the application, for example, the opportunity to have a conversation about personal circumstances with an HR colleague or EDI specialist in the institution. Using hypothetical scenarios of applicants for progression on redesigned career pathways could help identify potential points of tension in terms of how the core activity on each pathway is defined, the nature of the evidence required, ways to develop the evidence, and ways to frame it clearly and persuasively for a promotions panel. The hypothetical scenarios should include a representative range of applicants, with varied life circumstances. They can also inform the guidance provided to selection panels to ensure parity and equity in decision-making about promotions across all pathways and discipline-specific cultures in an institution, as well as comparability across the sector. Attention to these differences is particularly (but not only) relevant in the early stages of implementing redesigned pathways, when promotion panels are more familiar with criteria for promoting success in discipline-specific research and when parity of esteem for all pathways is gradually being built.

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6.2.3   The Role of HR Professionals in Career Framework Redesign Alongside senior sponsors and decision-making panels, HR professionals play an essential role in the success of redesigned pathways. They input into all phases of the redesign of academic routes to full professorship, longer-term strategic academic workforce planning, and the implementation of new pathways. HR contribute to pathway redesign through expertise in the legal and contractual aspects of employment, and, importantly, through providing constructive challenge. They also provide challenge to ensure that everyone is treated equally and assure compliance with equal opportunities legislation and with requirements from national or international quality assurance bodies regarding minimum qualifications (e.g., not all pathways require a doctorate for promotion to higher ranks). The HR team within a university generates useful contextual data to ground strategic decisions about academic career framework (re)design and workforce planning (OECD, 2020). They collect and report on demographic data, satisfaction data, and talent management data, tracing the employee lifecycle to identify changes and pressure points. Information of specific relevance to pathway redesign includes academic contract types (e.g., permanent, full time, fractional, fixed term), distribution of academics across pathways as well as across subject / discipline areas, ‘inbreeding’ trends (that is, offering posts primarily or predominantly to graduates from the same university), gender (im)balance across pathways and hierarchical divisions, the ratio of academics to professional services staff, participation in appraisal processes, and in-house or external professional development opportunities, international staff mobility or survey insights into job satisfaction and well-being. In a brief for the Eurydice network (the organisation that provides comparative data about the European higher education area), Crosier (2017) noted that strategic human resource planning midterm or longer term took place in a small number of national higher education systems, despite a clear need for this to address under-representation of women or colleagues with protected characteristics at professorial level or to identify relevant solutions for higher education institutions where a large proportion of staff is close to retirement age. The 2020 pandemic created operational challenges for HR professionals in universities globally (Baré, 2020), for example with regard to having to review policies on paid leave and furlough, guidance on remote line management, staff at risk, or

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redundancies, and supporting the process of implementing these changes. The pandemic is likely to have impacted negatively on available capacity within HR to carry out strategic workforce planning, beyond business as usual activities, despite its continued relevance. In the UK context, but with resonance for other national contexts as well, Crouchman (2022) invites HR professionals to consider how they can make strategic use of the data they return annually to HESA (a statutory activity for all UK HEIs). • Can you use your carefully curated HESA data set as the basis of your charter mark analyses, rather than spending valuable time pulling data from your HR systems at other fixed points in the year? • Can you benchmark yourself to show, for example, that your institution has only half the number of staff on FTCs (=full-time contracts) as the sector average? • Can you use the diversity data held within these figures to set aspirational targets for recruitment of Black academic staff? The questions generate useful insights to be shared with senior management teams in universities so that aspirational targets for a more equitable learning and working environment could be set around academic pathways. Overall numbers of academics on each pathway may not necessarily be equal or closely aligned, but an uneven distribution of academics at various hierarchical levels across academic career pathways (with an overwhelming majority of professorial level appointments on research-­ focused tracks) sends negative signals about parity of esteem, and is something that institutions should reflect on within their context. Parity of resource investment in research, teaching, and scholarship, and professional practice, with ‘resource’ seen as both financial and time- or expertise-­ related, should also be considered to pre-empt colleagues on any pathway being at a disadvantage. Annual promotion data is used by universities to monitor the robustness of promotion processes and identify areas for enhancement, to ensure academic talent in universities is recognised and is supported to contribute to achieving a university’s triple mission in a way that makes most effective use of their strengths. At a minimum, data includes applications and outcome categorised by pathway, gender, and ethnicity. Promotion panel debriefing can also add useful insights with regard to the nature and level of detail of evidence required, the decision-making timeframe, the level of

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attention given to borderline cases, support at the pre-application stage, developmental support for unsuccessful applicants in any given round, increased visibility of journeys to successful promotion and of mentors and sponsors who can support that journey. Useful insights can be gleaned from external reviewer comments as well. Data from annual promotion rounds should feed back into broader strategic workforce planning in universities. With regard to the implementation of redesigned academic career pathways in universities, the appraisal and promotion processes designed with input from academic colleagues and the HR function in the university (as well as processes for recruiting new staff) impact on the extent to which new career pathways bed in. This is highlighted in Winter (2017), who reflects that managing academics (and by extension engagement in appraisal) is a ‘value-laden process of perspective taking’ (p.  8), a way of making sense of individual identity tensions resulting from broader tensions within an institution between commitment to economic agendas and to social-ethical goals in higher education systems. Academics’ engagement in appraisal processes will vary depending on how they perceive the purpose and relevance of these processes (as managerial surveillance of performance or as a vehicle for professional learning and growth, which enhances the quality of worklife and leads to beneficial outcomes for the communities with which academics interact). Variation also occurs due to how well established appraisal processes are within a higher education context (e.g., see Allui & Sahni, 2016, for discussion of these processes and how they are strategically managed by HR in universities in Saudi Arabia). The perspective presented below appreciates that individual values and demographic characteristics will shape the quality of appraisal experiences. Redesigned pathways and pathway-related policies offer an opportunity to mitigate identity tensions where the values and perspectives of individuals and those of institutions may appear to be in conflict. Appraisal processes that are aligned to pathways are intended to support appropriate positioning, with guidance provided both for appraisers and for appraisees on how to balance objectives that cover the breadth of a role. Objectives are a means to focus energy and effort, to prioritise activities that matter to individuals and institutions, and to make sense of role and performance expectations which change as individuals and organisations grow. The nature of academic roles has evolved over time in response to external factors, and academic autonomy may, as a consequence, appear to have been

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eroded. Carefully framed appraisal conversations help pre-empt use of academic freedom and flexibility in academic roles that is not sufficiently in alignment with a university’s mission, while fully supporting individuals in their aspirations. Identifying appropriate sources of developmental feedback supports professional growth and benefits all involved. Appraisal conversations are also opportunities for appraisers and appraisees to explore whether switching pathways would support an individual’s professional aspirations and an institution’s strategic priorities more fully, and to identify appropriate sources for continued professional learning. Importantly, institutions develop HR policies which recognise the importance of flexibility in academic appointments. Austin and Trice’s (2016) discussion of flexibility covers ‘shifting between part- and full-time employment’, transferring from tenure track to contract-renewable appointments, and ‘the option of leaving or re-entering the faculty career (for example, if family responsibilities require a significant period of absence)’ (p. 67). Job sharing, dual career appointments, and late career entry are also flagged up as aspects to consider. Immigration policies in a given national context will impact on universities’ ability to recruit international staff and grow their careers (Finkelstein & Jones, 2019), with HR colleagues needing to continuously upskill on government policies and practices. The legal landscape will also control aspects such as retirement age, the nature of contracts, the degree of job security, forms of discrimination, or unfair dismissal. A valuable process for HR professionals to work with in relation to the academic employee lifecycle is the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research Award (European Commission, n.d.). While the award focuses specifically on researchers, it has resonance for any academic career path. Applying for the award includes carrying out assessments of existing practices and policies in an institution in order to develop a thorough contextual understanding and implement carefully tailored action plans.

6.3   A Note About Frameworks as Ongoing Projects The last of the 12 principles we offered in Sect. 6.1 emphasises that career frameworks are subject to ongoing renewal. Factors external to a university and ones internal to a specific institution or common to several will impact on the lifespan of a framework. Frameworks will need to be

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rethought to offer an enhanced professional experience to academics and an enhanced experience of engaging with a university for its students and its external stakeholders. The principles we offered in this chapter are intended to help generate career frameworks with a resilient core structure that minimises the disruption of constant change but allows sufficient flexibility to integrate new elements that capture more fully the richness of academic work, its relevance and impact. Developing an academic identity is equally complex for academics who join with prior experience of other national higher education contexts or who facilitate student learning on offshore campuses. The situation of the latter is discussed in the next, final chapter in this volume. The closing chapter also considers ways in which career framework redesign projects can be evaluated for the benefit of individuals and institutions. It offers temporary closure to the vignette scenarios, introduced in Chap. 3, of five academics at different stages in their careers, as well as a note of hope about the future.

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CHAPTER 7

Provisional Wrap-Up and an Invitation to Continue the Academic Pathways Conversation

7.1   Opening Note As discussed throughout the volume, learning and development are at the core of what universities do, whether supporting students’ academic, personal, and professional growth, conducting research that pushes the boundaries of knowledge and practice, or using their intellectual, financial, and estates-linked capital to make an impact within their immediate localities or more geographically distant communities. The view of university learning put forward in the Harvard University (2022) report on The Future of Climate Education at Harvard University, which resonates with the discussion in the present volume, is one of leveraging strengths from within as well as beyond the university. The report states the intention to build a ‘robust community of climate educators that matches the desires of [their] students’ (p. 11) and that supports their aspiration to generate climate learning and impact that reach as far as possible beyond campus boundaries. To achieve this, Harvard University is drawing not only on academic staff but also on a community of campus-based scholars who ‘have real-world expertise relevant to climate challenges but who do not hold teaching appointments’ (p. 11), on alumni, community partners, potential employers, and a range of other external organisations. While the Harvard University (2022) report does not mention academic career pathways explicitly, recruiting new members of staff is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Sterling et al., Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7_7

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highlighted as a priority in implementing Harvard’s newly developed climate education strategy. Learning, either about the climate or about other societal challenges that need addressing as a priority in a systemic way, is likely to lead to more meaningful outcomes if the academic, personal, and professional strengths of campus-based scholars are recognised through carefully designed academic career frameworks which are appreciative of a broad range of experience and expertise. Our volume supports this view, calling explicitly for career pathways to be aligned to universities’ mission to facilitate learning and development with relevance within and beyond campus walls. The choice to start this final chapter by mentioning climate change is purposeful. Attention to climate is linked to building a socially just, equitable society and cuts across national boundaries, as highlighted in connection to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015), a blueprint for developing sustainable responses to existing and yet unknown societal challenges. Climate change requires a systemic, cross-­ disciplinary, and cross-functional response. Climate-related changes have been compounded and inequalities brought into starker contrast by the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, attention to climate can offer solutions that catalyse recovery across a broad range of sectors and enhance quality of life. Academic career pathways that recognise the value of different contributions are more likely to lead to ‘sustained, mutually respectful and mutually beneficial’ relationships (Harkavy et al., 2017, pp. 357–358) within a university and between a university and its external stakeholders. Variety in pathways leads to fuller implementation of universities’ ambitions to take a solutions-focused approach to climate change, integrating local, regional, national, and global insight (Civic University Network, 2022; UUK, 2021). It supports universities in achieving a key ambition that Julie Sanders highlights in relation to climate, namely to ‘work with integrity and at scale’ and ‘balance global ambitions with the principles of global social justice and sustainable development’ (UUK, 2021, p. 15). It responds to the need highlighted by Malmberg and Schwaag Serger (2021), among others, for universities to ‘be visionary and able to develop’ (p. 24) so that they can respond appropriately to as broad a range of societal challenges as possible and ‘stay relevant and purposeful’ (p. 24) in a pandemic-transformed world. This call has global relevance. In the UK, where the authors of this volume are based, an increasing number of universities are recognising and rewarding a broader range of experience and expertise among their academic staff, to ensure successful

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delivery across all strands of their triple mission. Bournemouth University, an early and the only detailed case study publicly available to date, which we discussed in Chap. 2, chose to acknowledge variety in roles through an Academic Career Framework built on the principle of Fusion. As explained in Bournemouth University’s REF 2021 Code of Practice submission, Within the Fusion model individuals have responsibility for different combinations of research, education and professional practice and these can, and often do, change on an annual basis. We do not have separate career pathways; instead we have an overarching and inclusive Academic Career Framework based on Fusion which outlines the typical outputs for each element of Fusion expected from academics through the range of roles from lecturer to professor. (Bournemouth University, 2020, p. 14)

The choice of whether to recognise the academic, personal, and professional strengths of academic staff through a Fusion-type academic career framework or through differentiated pathways is made in line with a university’s mission, strategic priorities, and financial situation. Frameworks that resonate with the experiences of members of academic staff through carefully planned, ongoing consultation and evaluation are more likely to succeed in creating sustainable, self-sustaining learning cultures to benefit all. These frameworks embrace new forms of collaboration and draw on a university’s capacity to respond to external and internal drivers of change which are increasingly ‘more complex, fast-paced and fluid’ (Estermann & Kupriyanova, 2018, p. 11), leveraging institutional enablers for learning in an agile, flexible way. The integrative ethos of the Bournemouth University Fusion framework is also apparent in the approach taken at the University of Birmingham, although the Birmingham career framework differentiates between three named pathways. The Research and Education pathway bears the closest resemblance to a traditional academic contract as defined by HESA (HESA, n.d.). The Education pathway does not carry ‘and Scholarship’ in its label to pre-empt creating an unnecessary distinction or unfair comparison between scholarship and research. The third pathway, Enterprise, Engagement, and Impact, was added to reflect more fully the variety of activities in which academics are involved. Three equally important thresholds facilitate progression from one career stage to another. These are citizenship, defined as ‘kind acts and willingness to support one another, [that] can have a such a positive impact on the entire University’

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(Sterling, 2022a), pathway specialism, and overall excellence. Flexibility of movement between pathways allows academics to change the course of their careers in line with new interests (and the needs of the institution). A development programme for new, early career academics is in place, which involves, among other things, creating ‘an effective cohort peer support group from the start’ (Sterling, 2022b) with mentorship from senior academic and professional services colleagues. Attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion runs like a golden thread in the framework and there is strong commitment to evaluate the impact of the framework and share outcomes openly within the university (Sterling, 2022b) as well as supporting framework redesign endeavours within the sector more broadly (Sterling & Blaj-Ward, 2022). Whilst there are three distinct career pathways, impact has been fully embedded throughout, that is, there is a focus on the positive outcomes that arise as a result of what academics do. The principles we laid out in Chap. 6 aim to support the design of academic career frameworks that are robust enough to weather new higher education policy storms (across national higher education systems) and to flex around evolving institutional needs expressed in cyclically renewed institutional strategy documents. As reflected throughout the principles, we see an ongoing need for conversation among key stakeholders to support pathway implementation and redevelopment. We view framework redesign not as a one-off event but as a continuous process. The principles we list echo Estermann and Kupriyanova’s (2018) caveat that ‘impact comes in waves and backlashes can be felt of various fronts’ (p. 10). Positive impact is the outcome of successful alignment of academic staff to new frameworks that are themselves aligned to institutional priorities, and is achieved through the concerted effort of a broad range of stakeholders who maintain good relationships and trust. In this chapter, we spotlight one context of academic practice which can enrich discussion of academic career frameworks, their resilience and adaptability, namely, transnational education and ways in which pathways and the career development offer designed for academics attached to a main university campus might extend to offshore settings. We also discuss approaches to evaluate redesigned career frameworks in line with universities’ values and missions. We offer illustrative examples of impact, building on the vignettes of individual academic experiences we introduced in Chap. 3. We look to the future, suggesting aspects that may need further development work.

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7.2   Academic Career Pathways in Transnational Education Contexts Redesigned academic pathways are experienced differently across disciplines, career stages, and demographic characteristics, as discussed throughout the volume. An additional potential source of difference is whether academics are attached to a campus that is traditionally considered to be a main campus or, conversely, to an offshore one, the latter located in a country other than the one where the main degree-awarding institution is based. We explore this in relation to education-focused pathways and practice/entrepreneurship ones, which are the focus of this volume. Cross-border higher education took an upward trajectory at the start the twenty-first century (e.g., British Council and Universities UK International, 2020; Universities UK, 2022), with offshore provision set up either by global elite universities with clearly stated research aspirations or by institutions with a stronger teaching focus. A variety of partnership types exist—‘offshore campus’ is used here as an umbrella term to cover a multitude of arrangements that have greater or lesser input from regulatory frameworks and academic or commercial partners in the host countries. C-BERT (2020) lists 305 international branch campuses, set up by institutions in 35 countries across all continents with a presence in 83 different host countries. The C-BERT resource lists actual physical campuses; offshore provision covers a broader range of partnership types, with a variety of staffing arrangements (David & Amey, 2020; de Wit & Altbach, 2021). Wilkins and Annabi (2021) and Neri and Wilkins (2019) draw attention to the variability in the experiences of academics on offshore campuses, with some being fully supported to develop a research profile and participate in collaborative scholarly networks and others juggling heavy and contingent teaching loads with limited access to career progression opportunities, depending on terms and conditions under which they are hired. To compensate for lack of career progression, Neri and Wilkins (2019) note that institutions adopt strategies such as ‘availability of research funding, teaching awards, secondments and development opportunities to create a shared sense of purpose, direction and unity with the home institution’ (p.  67). Academics’ experiences and development vary according to the type of relationship between the main and offshore campus, the legal and policy frameworks which influence the terms and

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conditions that international and local academics are offered, and the size, planned growth and longevity of the offshore campus. Visa regulations may limit engagement of offshore campus academics who are not nationals of the main campus country in educational and professional development activity. Higher education quality assurance bodies may make formal recommendations about professional development for academics on offshore campuses. Curricula are usually designed by the degree-awarding provider and implemented locally by teams of academics who may or may not have experience of teaching at the home institution, in the national higher education system within which the home institution is embedded, or indeed in the system to which the offshore provider belongs (Lamers-Reeuwijk et al., 2020). In these cases, it will be not only students but also academics who need support to transition to an academic and local culture that may be new to both. Colleagues with developer roles in these contexts have a complex task to mediate between different sets of expectations about effective learning facilitation and may not feel fully prepared or resourced for this. As a fictive character in Trowler et al. (2012), who was assigned the role of Academic Link Person for Overseas Partnerships, notes: Communicating with my own colleagues in the department is hard enough – and getting harder by the minute as nobody has time for pleasantries any more – so how am I going to keep in touch with people thousands of miles away with very different cultures and educational philosophies? Easy to say ‘video conference’, but that’s yet another job to do. (p. 248)

Education-focused academic career pathways offer ample scope for academics to work with educational developers to contextualise and localise curricula, and to compensate for any real or perceived disparity across campuses in different national contexts in terms of student support resource available (Swenddal et al., 2022). Compton and Alsford (2022) reflect on a professional development course (PGCert-HE) which engaged a mixed cohort of lecturers from a main campus and two offshore ones, and echo Fremstad et al.’s (2020) and McGrath’s (2020) call for development interventions to build collaborative communities of practice across institutional contexts. Tran et al. (2022) express a similar view, noting that such collaborations would support the development of a ‘real transnational experience’ (p.  14) for students by making the curriculum more relevant for a local context without compromising on the achievement of

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learning outcomes. This is particularly useful in light of Merola et  al.’s (2022a) finding that student satisfaction on offshore campuses was lower compared to satisfaction expressed with regard to main campuses. Conversely, potential for the offshore campus to feed into conversations about pedagogy that benefit the main campus is highlighted by Merola et al. (2022b), who note that academics on branch campuses with better online infrastructure were able to input into delivery of teaching on main campuses during the pandemic and thus began to be seen less as an outpost and more as members of an equally participating campus of a global university. Pathways that focus on professional practice, enterprise, public engagement, and knowledge exchange are equally relevant on offshore campuses. These campuses benefit local economies through employing local staff (academic and non-academic), addressing local labour market needs through specific courses, and creating greater demand for local services through attracting students to the area (British Council, 2021). They also help develop and enact the civic missions of universities through acting as ‘soft landing spaces’ (UPP Foundation, 2019, p.  15), connecting businesses and civic partners in the locality of the main campus to their counterparts in the vicinity of the offshore campus. The extent to which offshore campuses are embedded within the local setting and have capacity and expertise at senior level and among their academic staff to interpret, apply, and shape policies, regulations, and legal frameworks across national contexts (Parry, 2022) for the benefit of all stakeholders will impact on their success. Offshore-delivered courses which are accredited by professional bodies, and which carry work placement requirements will benefit substantially from academics who have links with local industry and professional practice, in addition to exposure to multinational workplaces. Local practitioners are uniquely well positioned to unpack and contextualise professional knowledge such as building regulations, standards, or codes of practice. Practice / entrepreneurship academic career pathways on offshore campuses have potential to impact positively not only on student learning but also on local professional practice, creating professional development opportunities for local practitioners either informally or through credentialled courses. Academic career pathways that emphasise different aspects of academic work contribute to building a rich and vibrant academic staff base for offshore provision and help create student learning experiences that are equivalent to main campus ones. In an article published before more

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nuanced career pathways began to be implemented, Wood and Salt (2018) reflected on the connection between research and career progression and on how this could potentially either deter academics from the main campus to engage in offshore teaching or, conversely, limit opportunities for academics recruited specifically for offshore provision to progress in their careers. More nuanced pathways are one way to address these challenges and ensure that high-quality academic staff are recruited and retained, particularly given that offshore courses tend to include subject areas such as business, science or technology with practical application. In cases where the UK-based institution has a strong research ethos, a case can be made to ensure that education-focused pathways have a broader scope than teaching-only contracts. A focus on pedagogy for academics teaching on offshore campuses, however, should not come at the expense of maintaining currency of discipline knowledge and conducting discipline-­specific research, with student and external participation where feasible and appropriate. The value of learning at university is reflected in students’ ability to engage with existing knowledge and develop new solutions to complex problems, generating new knowledge in the process. Rigidly demarcated education-focused pathways that are closer to teaching-only roles or have a narrow scholarship of teaching and learning remit without scope for academics on these pathways to develop their discipline interests run the risk of reducing rather than enhancing learning value. Specific reference, in career advancement policies and criteria, to global engagement linked to education and societal impact has the potential to contribute to institutions achieving their globally oriented missions (Proctor, 2019).

7.3  Evaluating the Impact of Redesigned Academic Career Frameworks Redesigned academic career frameworks are intended to impact positively on individuals, institutions, and society but their potential to do so should not be assumed to simply materialise when the framework is launched. Evaluation is required, given that the contexts in which frameworks are implemented are not static. As is the case with any other change initiatives in higher education, the impact of redesigned academic career frameworks can be evaluated from different angles. These angles can be explored individually, or they can be combined to offer a comprehensive picture of the outcomes (rather than simply the measurable outputs) of career

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framework redesign. From the point of view of academics, impact can be traced through an increase in career success, professional satisfaction, and well-­being. From the point of view of students, through the extent to which they perceive they have been given access to life-relevant learning experiences that set them on a path to a fulfilled life, professionally and personally. From the point of view of institutions, impact equals an enhanced reputation, which provides leverage for those institutions’ strategic ambitions. From the point of view of external stakeholders, impact (i.e., visible prosperity and cohesiveness) results from a more seamless integration between the campus, neighbouring communities, and globally dispersed alumni and partnership networks. Successful design and roll-out of practice / entrepreneurship pathways may be visible in an increase in range and depth of collaborations with external partner organisations with a commercial, civic, or cultural focus; generating income through secondments in industry or collaborative projects; better employment outcomes for students and positive feedback from the employing organisations with regard to students’ work readiness; or credit for policy development in key sectors of society. Combining metrics and qualitative data helps build a comprehensive view of impact. Referring specifically to the higher education sector, Pulkkinnen et al. (2019) offer a useful reminder that ‘reform efforts are both costly and demanding’ (p. 7), and that it is important to monitor the extent to which the desired change is achieved and make adjustments where necessary. The timescale of framework implementation and its likely lifespan, the ways in which HR policies are enacted (i.e., interpreted and reconstructed) rather than straightforwardly implemented in different contexts, and turnover at senior management level within universities have a bearing on how monitoring and evaluation are set up, given that these processes add to costs and can in themselves shape implementation and enactment. As with any change initiative in the higher education sector (Buller, 2014), framework implementation may meet with some resistance internally due to competing agendas within an institution, and this should be monitored and addressed to ensure implementation does not derail. Evaluation should also be built on a strong awareness that the environment in which career frameworks are implemented is impacted by external factors beyond an institution’s control. Redesigned academic pathways reflect an institution’s strategic ambitions and its planned future direction of travel. Evaluation of a career framework within an institution should start with establishing its desired

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outcomes, its proposed lifespan, and impact timescale. Framing evaluation as an ongoing, cyclical process, integrated as fully as possible with framework implementation activities will ensure that resource is concentrated in areas where it is likely to lead to the most relevant outcomes. Evaluators should be both internal and external to a university. An external perspective is necessary to pre-empt blind spots in career framework redesign and evaluation and should complement the internal perspective (recognising that the latter offers greater understanding of the culture within an organisation). The full range of stakeholders in careers framework redesign and implementation should also be involved in decisions about evaluating frameworks, as opposed to simply having their views collected as evidence of impact. To gauge the full impact of a careers framework, a longitudinal design is necessary. Career experiences are unlikely to be linear and new frameworks are designed to recognise and support non-linearity more fully than traditional ones. Changing frameworks may not have an immediately visible positive effect but may take time to bed in. Benefits from an equality, diversity, and inclusion perspective are among those that may not be evident in the short term. The experience of redesigning the academic career framework at Bournemouth University according to the Fusion principle, shared in Bennett’s (2015) report, included establishing baseline data through interviews and focus groups facilitated by an independent consultant to ‘explore how the new career framework has impacted on individual academics changing their aspirations, performance/efficiency, academic development and delivery’ (p. 14). The insights were shared with Organisational Development for subsequent monitoring and use. Although a follow-on report is not publicly available, Bournemouth University’s (2017) TEF submission makes extensive reference to Fusion and its ambition to enhance ‘teaching quality, the academic learning environment and outcomes for students’ (p.  3), and the holistic ethos of Fusion is also highlighted in Bournemouth University’s (2020) REF 2021 Code of Practice. The outcomes of the ambition to generate ‘a strong student experience that is focused on societal need’ (Bennett, 2015, p. 18) will not have come to full fruition by the time the 2017 TEF submission was compiled and a connection between Fusion and the success of the REF 2021 impact case studies or the KEF results can only tenuously be made. Gathering evidence for external accountability purposes, however, creates an audit trail that can potentially generate useful insights into the contribution of different career pathways to the success of university activity. Existing evidence

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can provide clarity and precision when framing evaluation questions or can spark new connections. The higher education sector would benefit from additional case studies of framework redesign, which mirror and expand on the level of detail included in Bennett (2015). Case studies of framework redesign and individual experiences can add to the trail of impact as frameworks are being implemented (as opposed to generating insights to be acted on at the end of the evaluation), by creating a space for structured reflection through the use of qualitative data collection and analysis. Evaluation approaches that have a sound ethical underpinning ensure that all categories of academics benefit from initiatives designed to enhance professional experience. One example is waitlist control groups (which can access the benefits of an approach after comparison is made with a group that experienced the approach) to establish whether mentoring schemes for postdoctoral students are perceived to offer the necessary level of support for career progression (Aldercotte, 2018). Another example that Aldercotte puts forward is to use awareness of promotion processes as a means to evaluate the impact of equality- and diversity-linked policies and interventions. We highlighted in Chap. 6 the role of HR departments in monitoring equality data related to promotions as well as supporting the process of feeding back to unsuccessful applicants. HR also have oversight of fixed-­ term staff progression to permanent pathways. Broader evaluation questions that institutions may wish to consider in order to ensure their frameworks are fit for purpose are included in Table 7.1. These arise from the principles we listed in Sect. 6.1 and are accompanied by the assumptions that underpin them, to help unpack the broader questions into specific components of an evaluation plan. The evaluation questions in Table  7.1 are framed from the vantage point of an institution redesigning its academic careers framework. While the volume acknowledges the value of a concerted, institution-wide evaluation effort, it also recognises that implementation may inevitably be uneven across different areas. Making good evaluation practice guidelines available and enabling each area to tailor its approach to evaluation is more likely to result in evaluation efforts that have immediate impact on people, performance, and culture within a university. Sharing good practice across all areas will happen organically to a certain extent. Central resource to coordinate the sharing process, however, will ensure that good practice reaches as wide an audience as possible rather than remaining contained within narrower clusters within an institution. Lastly, but very importantly,

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Table 7.1  Broader evaluation questions for redesigned academic career frameworks and the assumptions that underpin the questions Evaluation questions

Assumptions

How has the level of involvement of existing members of academic staff in the process of redesigning career frameworks and in the ongoing development of the frameworks contributed to their sense of ownership of and satisfaction with these frameworks? To what extent is the redesigned framework likely to facilitate progression for existing members of academic staff and what proportion of external appointments may need to be made to ensure an equitable distribution across the various stages of a career pathway and across all pathways?

Career framework implementation is more likely to succeed if academics ‘own’ the criteria rather than criteria being imposed top-down

How effectively are existing members of academic staff supported to make sense of progression thresholds and expectations and to gather relevant evidence of performance at each level? What outcomes have resulted from the flexibility that pathways provide for lateral movement across pathways and role enrichment? What level of consistency has been achieved across an institution in terms of pathway positioning and progression? To what extent have practice / entrepreneurship pathways led to an increase in recruiting academic staff with rich professional experiences from other sectors and how has this enhanced student learning experiences and / or created a ripple effect of good pedagogic practice being adopted and adapted across subject areas?

Frameworks should enable progression, with thresholds set at appropriate levels for progression to happen without compromising academic excellence. Insufficient internal progression may signal insufficient academic development opportunities within an institution, lack of clarity in criteria, or insufficient support for academics to unpack these Career progression should be viewed as a process of continuous learning and growth rather than a one-off event

Pathways with porous boundaries allow academics to adjust the course of their careers and make a fuller contribution in line with their changed circumstances Notwithstanding disciplinary differences, career frameworks should support parity in decision-making, and this may be difficult to achieve in large and complex institutions Practice / entrepreneurship pathways will enable recruitment of academic staff who can facilitate greater connections between academic curricula and university-external professional practice

(continued)

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Table 7.1 (continued) Evaluation questions

Assumptions

What benefits have accrued to departments and schools, in addition to individuals, through the introduction of new pathways? In what ways has the introduction of redesigned academic career pathways led to more effective ways of connecting different functional areas within the university which are responsible for building relationships with internal and external stakeholders? To what extent have new pathways led to more meaningful performance appraisal conversations? How has the introduction of new pathways in an institution contributed to increased collaboration with other colleagues in the sector?

Redesigned career frameworks are intended to promote and reward collegial behaviour, to be inclusive, and to build team capacity to deliver institutional objectives The redesign of academic career frameworks impacts on other functional areas in the university, on processes and workflows, and can lead to new (and more effective) forms of collaboration. The impact on multiple internal constituencies should be acknowledged Meaningful appraisal processes are essential in supporting institutions to achieve their goals Realignment or re-prioritisation of academic work across pathways may facilitate cross-institutional collaboration, especially if this is explicitly supported in promotion criteria

evaluation needs to align with the natural rhythm of an organisation in terms of performance appraisals and promotion processes or new staff recruitment, while responding with agility to unplanned insight gathering opportunities. The evaluation questions we have offered have a practical orientation and are designed to support action that makes an immediate difference within the universities where the evaluation is carried out. They can, however, be easily reframed as broader research questions explored collaboratively with other institutions within the same or different national contexts, to yield the comparative data we signalled in our opening chapter as lacking.

7.4  Impact Illustrations Institution-level and sector-level data are most meaningful and impactful when presented alongside individual experience narratives. The five vignettes in Chap. 3 offered fictional illustrations of different stages in individual academic careers, where choices about career trajectories can be

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supported through redesigned pathways for the benefit of individuals as well as institutions. Below we develop the scenarios further, building on the assumption that institutions where the vignette protagonists work have redesigned their academic career frameworks using the principles we laid out in Chap. 6, drawing on insights throughout the volume and carrying out iterative evaluation that feeds organically into the redesign process. While evaluation is likely to yield a range of insights, some revealing scope for improvement, we showcase below positive scenarios—the outcomes that redesigned frameworks should aspire to. Lynne completes her PhD and leaves academia to lead the community engagement section of a successful multinational design firm. Her workplace enables her to maintain connections to the university where she conducted her doctoral research and to align her professional objectives to those of the organisation. The design firm has family-friendly policies and offers generous amounts of paid leave to support learning, professional development, and well-being. Meanwhile, one of Lynne’s colleagues at the design firm joins the university on the practice / entrepreneurship pathway. With Lynne’s guidance, the colleague sets up a new degree course with strong industry relevance. Lynne offers input into the validation documents, looking specifically at the way the course enables students to develop research and innovation mindsets. The course distinguishes itself through high student employability rates and external accolades for student projects, while the course team disseminates pedagogic insights at international conferences. Three years after she has set it up, Erica’s collaborative writing and career support space for women has enabled an impressive range of published outputs. At the same time, it has facilitated academic and professional services promotions at various levels within the institution as well as through academics joining other universities. Erica has inputted into two HR policies in her university, one related to staff development, the other to volunteering, and is the founding editor of a hybrid journal which publishes academic pieces alongside more practice-oriented writing and student contributions. A colleague that Erica has mentored leads the women’s staff development network within the institution. The network cuts across the academic / professional services divide and has expanded its remit to run collaborative learning and reverse mentoring projects with a girls’ only secondary school and with a charity that focuses on supporting vulnerable women. A second mentee has developed a series of activities to facilitate learning about contributing as a charity board member. These are

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integrated into a credit-bearing undergraduate module but also offered as a micro-credential to external participants. Under Yasmin’s leadership, the legal advice centre she was hoping to scale up has distinguished itself not only locally but also nationally and internationally. Two other universities in different countries have sought Yasmin’s guidance to set up pro bono provision within their contexts. Yasmin has contributed to a particularly challenging case which eventually saw the reversal of a decision to displace a local community and paved the way for meaningful conversations about clean energy sources. Her projects had substantial student involvement, enhancing their readiness for the world of work. Several early career colleagues that Yasmin has mentored have been able to secure roles that enable them to contribute directly to the legal profession and indirectly through facilitating student learning. To support his full professorship application, which was successful, Alfie took up a 12-month secondment with a government body, providing expert input into policy development. This allowed him to consolidate and diversify his professional network. The relationships he built during his secondment enabled him to put together a successful case for a new ST(R)E(A)M research, learning and impact centre. The centre brings together academics on all pathways, doctoral students, professional services colleagues, and external stakeholders to work on multifaceted projects. These projects have substantial potential to generate positive outcomes for various strands of academic activity in an integrated way and without diluting the STEM core. The first two projects attract international interest, funding, and acclaim; one of these focuses on constellation mapping, the other on water purification. Meanwhile, Faraz supported an early career colleague to develop collaborative, inclusive learning activities. The part-mentoring, part-coaching approach he adopted accelerated his colleague’s progression within the School. He encouraged her to set up a Women in Construction forum, to become the Athena SWAN champion in her School, and to secure a textbook contract, with a major publisher, on sustainable procurement in construction which she is co-authoring with Faraz. Faraz is about to take retirement. He has a second writing project in the pipeline—a history of local bridges and, while he does not meet the university’s criteria for an emeritus professorship, his experience has sparked conversations within the institution about continuing to tap into the expertise that academic staff have built over the years and offering appropriate recognition for this.

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7.5   A Note About the Future The fictional experiences of Lynne, Erica, Yasmin, Alfie, and Faraz illustrate the purpose of redesigned academic pathways to recognise an individual’s valuable contribution but also open up new ways for an individual to contribute on a different level, to create greater positive impact within their immediate and extended stakeholder communities, with impact flexibly defined. They speak to the value of informal, collaborative learning and development within these communities, tellingly captured in a quote from a participant in Koris and McKinnon’s (2022) study: For me, personally, the critical moment… was the realisation that to learn, we do not need gurus and all-knowing experts or lecturing professors. The community of enquiry and the collaborative process seemed to be far more enriching than all the traditional training courses I had participated in before. This was a revolution for me, and it transformed my way of understanding the education process. (Participant D) (p. 128)

The context of Koris and McKinnon’s study was a collaborative, Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange programme for academics from European universities on how to design and implement cross-national projects. The study took place in 2019–2020, with the second half coinciding with the start of the pandemic. Among other things, the project led to reflection on the pandemic-induced change in development needs and to a reaffirmation of the value of significant networks and informal development in higher education (Roxå & Mårtensson, 2015). Redesigned career frameworks are more likely to be robust and relevant if the redesign and implementation process draw on the energy of collaborative, informal, cross-functional global communities to seed and sustain the work of socially responsible universities in a post-pandemic twenty-­ first century. The pandemic has both tested the resilience of universities and created opportunities for universities to renew their commitment to society and reaffirm their relevance. Writing for an audience of organisation theory scholars, Howard-Grenville (2021) shares her concern that unless the rigorous research academics carry out is used to effect action, ‘scholarly work might ultimately add up to little that matters to the wider world’ (p. 3). A sizeable amount of work on career pathways still needs to be carried out, and there is scope for organisational theory scholars to input into this work, informing and being informed by it in mutually

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beneficial ways. Universities are building the road towards a transformed higher education future as they walk it. The pace of redesigning career frameworks and the pace of learning and growth that this process will catalyse in students, in university staff, and in others will inevitably vary. New academic pathways will be embraced by some, while appearing to others to deviate from the norm in the scholarly community. A recommendation that Howard-Grenville (2021) makes to the organisation theory scholarly community and that resonates with academic career framework redesign is that there should be a collective commitment to care, to ‘work from a place of being attuned to what needs attention and repair’ (p. 9), exercising courage to embrace approaches that are ‘perhaps not a fit with normal tools of scholarly enquiry’ (p. 10), and to nurture curiosity and openness to alternative interpretations. A mindset built on care, courage, and curiosity and echoing what Baice et al. (2021) refer to as an ethics of ‘generosity, respect, reciprocity, negotiation, and encouragement’ (p. 80) would benefit those involved in the renewal of career frameworks— academics and other stakeholders in the redesign and implementation process—using learning from the pandemic to create meaningful legacy. Transitions into retirement and opportunities to maintain post-retirement ties as highlighted by Cahill et  al. (2022) among others should also be included in conversations about pathway redesign. The various discussion threads throughout the volume converge into the 12 principles, laid out in Chap. 6, for redesigned academic career frameworks. Frameworks that aspire to best fit for a pandemic-transformed third decade of the twenty-first century are underpinned by a robust evidence base and oriented towards a university’s ambitions for the future. They offer opportunities for both vertical and lateral role enrichment. They respond to an identified need and are the outcome of collaborative role and responsibility (re)design. They allow for comparability and transferability across the sector and internationally, while keeping equality, diversity, and inclusion firmly at their core. They promote and facilitate collaborative learning. Senior sponsors maintain visibility throughout the framework implementation process, ensuring balance between the need for institution-wide consistency in criteria and necessary flexibility when applying criteria across specific organisational units. There is clear recognition in frameworks of the value of a broad range of evidence to document performance and enable progression. Fair, responsible, open, transparent, and holistic HR policies and processes accompany the frameworks. The professional development offer wraps around redesigned frameworks, is

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holistic and integrates all relevant areas of activity. Importantly, there is openness to reviewing how frameworks are experienced and could be enhanced, to ensure that institutions stay agile. Writing shortly before the pandemic, Connell (2019) looked in ‘the mirror of the market’ and cautioned about a negative scenario of the future of universities: all universities become proper firms, owned by investors and managers. All operations work is outsourced, and all of the teachers are sessional. Staff are appointed by managers. Curricula are trimmed back to fee-earning vocational programmes. Teaching is done online by the cheapest labour available in global markets, under automated surveillance. The most profitable universities have no campuses at all, just brands, managers, and online systems. National hierarchies of university-firms exist, under a global hierarchy of English-language universities. Only those at the top conduct research. All the research they do depends on military or corporate funding. (pp. 168–169)

Reassuringly, she contrasts this scenario with an alternative vision of ‘the good university’ arising out of collective, collaborative action focused on ‘real equity in access, creative teaching, consistent truthfulness and tangible social engagement’ (p.  191). An earlier study (Clegg, 2008) notes that universities ‘are imaginary spaces as well as lived and experienced ones’ (p. 339); examples of imaginary university spaces which distil and reframe lived experiences are available as academic fiction pieces in the Postdigital Science and Education journal. In the same journal, two Canadian scholars, Houlden and Veletsianos (2022), reflect critically on how writing about fictional futures can help reach clarity and set a direction of travel towards real change. Houlden and Veletsianos note a disproportionately high number of pessimistic educational future fictions (i.e., ones exploring ‘disconnection, lack of autonomy and sovereignty, and technological, corporate, state, and/or authoritarian control’) than hopeful ones which centre on ‘connection, agency, and community and individual flourishment’, and argue in favour of redressing the balance. To a certain extent, the social and economic disruption created by the Covid-19 pandemic could justify pessimistic narratives, given that the pandemic has led to reduced public funding and philanthropy for universities and has decreased capacity in some industry partners to engage in collaborative projects, as noted by Croucher and Locke (2020) in the Australian context but with resonance across the world. On the other hand, efforts

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towards recovery and reconstruction offer ample opportunity for hopeful narratives to be created ‘so as to achieve a multiplier effect, spreading hope back through the university sector globally’ (Kenway et al., 2014, p. 261), through new curricula and innovative collaboration opportunities supported by recognition and reward of a broader range of academic experience and expertise. Hope is also threaded throughout Hartung et  al.’s (2017) article about the academic precariat in Australia. Hartung et al.’s collective biography reveals the complexity of early career academic experiences and puts this methodological approach forward as a strategy to resist ‘being reduced to disembodied neoliberal subjects beholden to the economics of the university’ (p. 54). While academic career frameworks tend to focus on permanent roles and may not be able to mitigate fully against precarity, their redesign can and should spark conversations about how to recognise, reward, and develop the expertise of staff on temporary contracts, also referred to as ‘contingent faculty’ in the literature (Buller, 2021). If the redesign is carried out collaboratively across the higher education sector and is fully integrated into debates about sector funding and accountability, it is more likely to lead to much needed systemic change. Career framework redesign is a far-reaching and complex project, with potential to make Connell’s (2019) hoped-for ‘good university’ of the twenty-first century a reality. We emphasise the word ‘potential’; the frameworks offer scope for academics to construct and negotiate their professional lives, but the extent to which the potential is actualised is very much dependant on a collective endeavour. Discussion throughout the volume shows that there is no one-size-fits-all pathways model in the sector to adopt, but there is good practice to learn from to ensure that all stakeholders within and outside a university derive the fullest benefits from it. The 12 principles we detailed in Chap. 6 and reiterated further above in brief reflect existing good practice and will help universities generate their desired positive impact within and beyond campus boundaries. They acknowledge the multiple meanings and purposes of universities and facilitate what Grant (2019) describes as ‘living daily in our universities as if they are already, now, what we believe they should be’ (p. 20). We invite the readers of our volume to take up Grant’s challenge to ‘act now to make the good happen in all sorts of everyday ways’ (p.  20). We appreciate career framework redesign is a resource-intensive and far from straightforward journey, but we argue there is great value in the redesign exercise. The value lies both in the longer-term impact the framework will achieve as well as throughout the actual redesign process. The redesign process in

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itself builds bridges between different stakeholder categories who may appear to have competing agendas and serves as a reminder to universities that ‘there is always more which binds the community than separates it  – something which can be easily forgotten’ (Sterling, 2022b).

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Index

A Ableism, 105, 108, 135 Academic artisans, 50 Academic career frameworks benefits for individuals, 60 benefits for institutions, 101 document analysis of ~ in this volume, 27 explicit link to university strategy, 7 implementation of, 142, 158 level of detail in documents, 33 principles for redesign, 129–141 rationale for redesign, 1–5, 12, 15 structure of, 6 in transnational education contexts, 159–162 Academic citizenship, 36, 44, 64–66, 107, 108, 115, 117–119, 142, 157 Academic developer, 86

Academic development/professional academic development, 10–12, 34, 64, 66, 75, 78–80, 90, 93, 102, 109, 110, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121, 136, 139, 142, 164 Academic discipline, leadership of, 44, 54, 57, 59, 116 Academic discipline, link to identity, 27, 83, 162 Academic freedom, 10, 26, 27, 130, 149 Academic housework, 36 Academic identity, 21, 22, 26–31, 38, 49, 86, 110, 118, 150 Academic performance, 34, 63, 107, 137, 164 Academic Professional Apprenticeship (APA), 56, 76, 87, 109 Academic promotion, see Career progression

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Sterling et al., Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7

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Academic role (HESA definition), 21–38, 89, 129, 130, 132, 133, 140, 148, 149, 157 Academic writing, 46, 55, 65, 92, 168 Adjustments, 103, 105, 106 Advance HE, 32, 53, 59, 76–79, 84, 103–106, 117, 118 Alfie (vignette), 57, 60, 65, 169, 170 Allies/allyship, 105, 107 Alumni, 59, 60, 77, 90, 155, 163 Anchor institution, 89 Appraisals, 61, 64, 76, 110, 167 Apprenticeship Levy, 109 Artificial intelligence (AI), 80 Athena SWAN, 33, 103, 104, 169 Aurora (Advance HE), 104, 117, 118 Australia, 7, 29, 46, 66, 75, 77, 84, 86, 132, 173 Austria, 5 B Belonging, 26, 77, 80, 91, 102, 103, 135 Birmingham Academic Career Framework, The, 157 Bulgaria, 113 C Canada, 55, 75, 86, 104, 105 Career break, 44, 62 Career progression, 13, 30, 33, 45, 59, 78, 90, 91, 104, 109, 113, 119, 131, 132, 138–140, 159, 162, 165 Caring responsibilities, 55, 106 Charities, 55, 57, 92, 168 Chile, 77, 105 China, 140 Civic engagement, 43, 44, 48, 66, 161, 163

Civic mission, 7, 118, 161 Climate change, 156 Coaching, 51, 58, 64, 102, 108, 109, 111–115, 118–120, 169 Coaching culture, 109 Co-creation, 9, 133 Collaboration across academic pathways, 3, 5, 36, 44, 147, 170 Collaboration across institutions to develop career frameworks, 6, 134 Collaboration among different categories of stakeholders (e.g., staff, students, external partners), 2, 10, 12, 38, 43–49, 91, 109, 131, 136, 150, 163 Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE, Advance HE), 79 Collaborative learning community, 119, 136, 170 Collective institutional memory, 11 Collegiality, 13, 27, 32, 36, 38, 44, 64–66, 77, 119, 136, 137, 167 Concertina careers, 45 Continuing professional development (CPD), 87, 110, 140 Contractual arrangements, 51, 52, 146 Co-production, 24, 91, 157 Criteria for pathway positioning and progression grading, 25, 143 substantive categories, 32, 61 type of evidence required, 32, 49, 77, 145, 147, 171 Cross-disciplinarity, 57, 93, 119, 131, 137, 156 Cross-functional teamwork, 49, 85, 119, 156

 INDEX 

181

D Decision-making panels, 135, 136, 139, 141–149 Denmark, 5, 77, 113 Digital fluency, 78, 79 Digital innovation strategy, 78 Disability, 103, 105–108 Disability Confident scheme (UK), 105 Disability disclosure, 105 Discipline-specific cultures and practices, 145, 162 Diversifying Leadership (Advance HE), 118 Doctorate/PhD, 38, 52–54, 56, 57, 59, 61, 88, 111, 114, 139, 146 DORA, 138 Dual professionals, 45, 47, 48, 63, 73, 84–88, 113

Erica (vignette), 65, 73, 92, 168, 170 Ethics, 171 Ethics committee, 132 Ethnicity, 118, 147 European Universities Association (EUA), 2, 7, 8 Eurydice network, 146 Evaluation of redesigned career frameworks, 141, 162–167 Evaluation of societal impact, 92 Evaluation of teaching, 77 Evaluation questions (for career frameworks), 165–167 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), 132 External referees/reviewers/assessors, 133, 135, 144, 145, 148

E Early adopters, 142 Early career, 31, 51, 59, 61, 62, 110, 112, 158, 169, 173 Educational developers, 59, 160 Educational research, 29, 81 Education-focused pathways, 14, 29, 32, 34, 35, 43, 44, 73–83, 92, 114, 120, 130, 133, 159, 162 Emerging scholars, 61, 131, 136 Emeritus positions, 169 Engineering, 29–31, 48, 62, 110 Enterprise and entrepreneurship, 3, 4, 13, 14, 84, 91 Entrepreneurial universities, 89, 92 Environmental consciousness, 91 Equality Act 2010, 103 Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), 33, 52, 60, 62, 102–108, 131, 135, 158, 164, 171 Equality impact assessment (EIA), 62, 135, 165

F Faraz (vignette), 65, 169, 170 Finland, 5, 10, 28 Formal training, 12, 79, 108, 109 Fractional roles, 52, 88, 106, 144, 146 France, 139 Funding for professional academic development (development resource), 23, 90 Fusion (Bournemouth University), 24, 157, 164 Future scenarios, 79, 172 G Gender, 33, 57, 103, 104, 111, 113, 117, 119, 146, 147 Germany, 134, 139, 140 Graduate outcomes (student employment outcomes), 2, 77, 163

182 

INDEX

H Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), 22, 23, 75, 147, 157 Hong Kong, 86 Hong Kong manifesto, 138 Hope, 173 HR Excellence in Research, 149 Human resource (HR) function and policies, 129, 146, 163, 165, 168, 171 I Identity labour, 31 Identity work, 21, 22, 27, 28, 31, 57, 113 Immigration policies, 149 Impact in society (civic, economic), 43, 82, 120, 129, 162 Inclusive culture, 107 India, 104, 116 Induction for academic staff, 111 Informal learning (informal professional academic development), 50, 109, 120, 161 Institutional maturity model, 103 Intellectual leadership, 117, 118 Interconnectedness of academic roles, 25 Interdisciplinarity, 52, 85, 93 International mobility of academics, 6, 62, 104, 146 Intersectionality, 4, 104 Ireland, 104, 113 J Jisc, 74, 78, 79 Job advertisements, 61, 62 Job crafting, 44, 49–52 Job satisfaction survey, 132, 146 Jordan, 113

K Knowledge exchange, 3, 13, 43, 44, 48, 63, 66, 73, 74, 84–92, 142 Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF), 1, 14, 84, 85, 90, 91 Knowledge Exchange Framework perspectives, 63, 90, 91 L Leaderful teams (Bolden), 116 Leadership development, 58, 63, 118, 119 Leadership of education-focused projects, 80 Leadership of learning and teaching, 35, 36, 117 Leadership of research, 57, 58 Leadership role, 58, 102, 117 League of European Research Universities (LERU), 144 Learning organisations/learningful workplaces (Senge, 2006), 12, 44, 108, 109 Leiden manifesto, 138 LGBTQ+, 104 Lifespan of career framework, 149, 163 Linear careers, 38, 45, 113, 140, 164 Lynne (vignette), 65, 168, 170 M Malaysia, 77 Management and leadership (academic discipline), 54 Managerialism, 9, 10, 148 Mentees, 112, 113, 168 Mentoring culture in organisations, 112, 114 Mentoring, mentorship, 54–56, 58, 83, 84, 92, 102, 108, 109, 111–116, 118, 120, 136, 158, 168

 INDEX 

Mentoring networks and schemes, 112, 165 Mentors, 53, 54, 64, 77, 107, 109, 111–113, 148 Merit relative to opportunity, 144 Metrics, 9, 81, 90, 106, 137, 138, 163 Mid-career, 45, 57, 61, 86, 113, 114 Monitoring framework implementation, 140, 171 Multiversities, 9 N National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS, Advance HE), 78 Neoliberalism, 8, 173 Netherlands, The, 5, 6 Networks for professional development, growth and support, 25, 53, 64, 76, 101, 155 New Zealand, 66, 132, 135 O Offshore campus (international branch campus), 159–162 Onboarding, 44, 109–111, 138 Outputs/publications, 106, 114, 132, 136–138, 144, 162, 168 P Pandemic (Covid-19), 2, 24, 27, 62, 101, 104, 106, 108, 112, 116, 118, 120, 134, 135, 145–147, 156, 161, 170–172 Parity of esteem, 60, 61, 73, 130, 145, 147 Pathways definition of~, 31 differentiation by substantive focus, 32

183

Pedagogic research, 34, 81 Pedagogies of care (Motta and Bennett), 59 Performance appraisal, 63, 76, 148, 167 Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF), 132 Peru, 77 Place/locality, 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, 43, 47, 48, 53, 56, 60, 62, 73, 76, 78, 89, 90, 158, 161, 170, 171 Porous boundaries of pathways, 61, 132, 166 Portfolio careers, 38 Positioning on pathway, 4, 5, 60, 61, 83, 102, 106, 107, 118, 148, 161 Pracademics, 45 Practice/entrepreneurship pathways, 14, 25, 35, 73, 84, 85, 87–89, 91, 114, 163 Principles for framework design, 21, 22, 28, 32, 35, 130, 164 Probation, 110, 140 Professional bodies/associations, 30, 54, 56, 57, 87, 88, 161 Professional development ecosystem, 86 Professional Standards Framework (Advance HE), 59, 76, 78 Professorial appointments, 26, 58, 89, 117, 147 Public engagement, 3, 13, 35, 43, 48, 58, 73, 84–92, 138, 161 Public SoTL, 82 Publish and flourish, 46 Publish or perish, 55, 108 Q Qatar, 86 Quintuple helix, 2

184 

INDEX

R Race, 103, 104, 111, 113, 118 Race Equality Charter (REC), 103, 104 Re-onboarding, 44 Research Excellence Framework (REF), 1, 4, 132, 157, 164 Retirement, 169, 171 Role swap, 102, 109, 115, 116 Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), 48, 62, 77, 78 Russia, 77 S Saudi Arabia, 148 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), 34, 73, 80–83, 162 Secondments, 102, 108, 109, 115, 116, 133, 159, 163, 169 Serendipity, 93, 115 Significant networks (Roxå & Mårtensson), 170 Singapore, 77 Societal engagement, 23, 34, 91, 92 South Africa, 11, 105 Sponsor (careers framework), 33, 141, 142, 171 Sponsor (Diversifying Leadership programme), 118 Staff turnover, 101, 138 STEM, 57, 113, 119, 169 Stempathy, 58 ST(R)E(A)M, 169 Strength-based scholarship (Fung), 35, 65 Student employability, 53, 74, 84, 168 Student-staff collaboration, 11, 36–37, 131, 135 Succession planning, 102, 113 Sustainable careers, 64

Sustainable Development Goals (UN), 156 Sweden, 5, 31, 77 Switzerland, 77 Systemic approach, 3, 31, 63, 114, 135, 156 T Teaching awards, 159 Teaching Cultures Survey (Graham, 2022), 77 Teaching excellence, 36, 54, 56, 75, 77, 78 Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), 1, 164 Teaching expertise, 35, 56, 73–80, 87 Teaching-only roles, 13, 23, 73, 81, 162 Teaching qualifications, 59, 75, 76 Third space, 85 Trade union, 134 Traditional academic roles (teaching and research), 3, 4, 13, 22, 31, 32, 34, 36, 86, 90, 110, 157 Transnational education (TNE), 158 Trial-and-error learning, 79 Triple mission, 3, 7, 23, 130, 147, 157 Turkey, 113 U UKPSF (superseded by revised framework), 59 UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 103 United States (US), 14, 24, 29, 77, 104, 105, 107, 119, 134 Universal design, 106

 INDEX 

Universities UK, 1, 3, 7, 13 University mission, 53, 103, 134, 142, 149, 156, 157 University typologies, 7 V Visa regulations, 105, 160 W Waitlist control groups, 165

185

Well-being, 33, 77, 102, 105, 107, 114, 116, 140, 146, 163, 168 Workforce planning, 146, 147 Writing-focused development, 52, 62, 63, 88 Y Yasmin (vignette), 56, 57, 60, 65, 73, 92, 169, 170