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This study looks at the educational experiences, from the preschool years to advanced professional training in STEM fields, of a targeted sample of 10 (7 male, 3 female) early college entrants in China who later became professors at prestigious USA research universities. The purpose of the study was to find out (1) what some identifiable endogenous factors were about these individuals that facilitated the success of their accelerated learning and development; (2) what kinds of exogenous factors (e.g., environmental opportunities, resources, support) they experienced from childhood to adulthood that enhanced the successful acceleration experience; and (3) how these endogenous and exogenous factors facilitated their developmental transitions every step of the way, especially from the role of a student to that of an aspiring scientist. These questions are addressed in light of evolving complexity theory. Retrospective interviews were used for data collection. Thematic analysis of the codes from interview data yielded a conceptual map. A distinct set of endogenous and exogenous factors at different developmental junctures were identified, and their dynamic interplay was delineated to account for accelerated trajectories toward a scientific research career. The theoretical significance and practical implications of the study for talent development in science are discussed.

As the number of individuals age 65 and older increases, so does the need for those prepared to work with this population. Doctoral-level preparation in the field of gerontology creates a uniquely prepared contingent who advocate, conduct research, instruct future generations, and serve the older adult population directly. Women are especially likely to pursue gerontology doctoral degrees, yet little is understood about the unique challenges and opportunities they face. The purpose of this reflection was to examine the experiences of three women who pursued doctoral-level gerontology education and faculty positions at different life stages to explore their challenges and opportunities through their educational process and early career experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental leaves are, besides unemployment, the main reason for career breaks in early career. Despite the progress in recent decades towards more equal sharing of childcare between mothers and fathers, the labour market risk due to parenting remains mainly with women. In this article, we analyse how parental leaves relate to early career trajectories of young Finnish men and women. Using longitudinal register data for 2005−2016 from the Finnish Centre for Pensions, we perform a multi-trajectory analysis of the labour market attachment of a cohort born in 1980. Based on working days and earnings, we find five distinct career trajectories for both men and women, with the majority being well attached to the labour market by their mid-30s. While men and women on average have similar employment lengths, the gender gap in earnings is already 30 per cent in this early career phase. One of the causes may be found in the highly unequal division of family-related career breaks; the duration of mothers’ family-related leaves in this cohort was 13 times longer than fathers’ leave spells. Long home care leaves were particularly common among mothers with low education levels and weak attachment to the labour market. Efforts towards a more equal division of parental leaves are needed in order to combat gender inequalities that already emerge in early career and potentially cause life-long disadvantages for women’s careers, earnings and pensions.

Research on job precarity and job instability have largely neglected the labor market trajectories in which these employment and non-employment situations are experienced. This study addresses the mechanisms of volatility and precarity in observed work histories of labor market entrants using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997. Several ideal-typical post-education pathways are modeled for respondents entering the labor force between 1997 and 2010, with varying indicators and degrees of precarity. A series of predictive models indicate that women, racial-ethnic minorities, and lower social class labor market entrants are significantly more likely to be exposed to the most precarious early careers. Moreover, leaving the educational system with a completed associate's, bachelor's, or post-graduate degree is protective of experiencing the most unstable types of career pattern. While adjusting for these individual-level background and education variables, the findings also reveal a form of "scarring" as regional unemployment level is a significant macro-economic predictor of experiencing a more hostile and turbulent early career. These pathways lead to considerable earnings penalties 5 years after labor market entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Finland, doctoral employment outside the academy has been increasing. Universities can no longer absorb the numbers in the doctoral labour force and research and development (R&D) policy emphasises the need for specialised research capacity in non-academic sectors; the highest academic degree is assumed to add value. However, the transition from doctoral programmes to employment outside the academy has been limited due to the social dynamics within labour markets. This article explores the careers of doctorate holders and the motives non-academic organisations have for recruiting such graduates. The data come from a survey of doctorate holders (N = 1183) and interviews with 26 employers. Based on the analysis, there was little place for doctorate holders outside the academy, except in R&D roles. When employed to undertake work outside R&D, they carried out special, demanding tasks or had a particular role related to their academic status. Professional functions such as those undertaken by medical doctors, engineers and teachers were the most common, but career patterns varied from one employment sector to the next. Employers considered industry-specific competence to be important, and the status of the doctoral degree and the membership in the academic community were expected to advance collaboration with universities and enhance the professional status of the organisations that hired doctoral graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study uses the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN 1988–2013 to showcase methodological issues of converting panel data into career trajectories. Three metrics are proposed to describe career trajectories: calendar year, age of respondent, and subsequent career year starting from the first job. I present the POLPAN data in each of these metrics and discuss their benefits and limitations. The article then deals with the issue of selecting a single job that best describes the respondent’s occupational position when the respondent holds two or more different jobs. One possible solution is to select a single job using an original five-step algorithm. The problem of multiple jobs can also be solved by defining the career trajectory through occupational scales. A total of six such scales are available in POLPAN. The study further shows how data on career trajectories can be supplemented with data about job interruptions caused by unemployment, birth of a child, military service, or other reasons. A separate section is devoted to Converter-2015, a computer application that converts the original wide-format POLPAN data to the long format required in longitudinal analyses. I also propose an additional new “presentation” format, which helps identify job career patterns. The paper ends with a discussion of data quality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Half a century ago, two 18-year-olds arrive at university, are randomly paired as chemistry lab partners and become fast friends. Their careers and even family lives entwine, and both go on to join the pantheon of Canada's great statisticians. This all begins at a time when North American university education, and access to it, is growing explosively. It begins at a small startup university, an upstart start-up that eschews conventional wisdom, finds a way to mine a seam of the brightest high school students and innovates--catching important waves and becoming a mathematical sciences powerhouse. In this interview, we explore these stories and some lessons that might be learned from them. Unfortunately lurking variables confound the easily implemented 'put them in chemistry class in random pairs' as a prescription for producing top-flight statisticians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a largely unrecognised group of educational professional leaders. It seeks to develop an understanding of AP/DPs working in New Zealand secondary schools who considered themselves career AP/DPs. The investigation explored the characteristics and career paths of these leaders who view their position as a vocation and terminal career. Based on findings from a nationwide survey, career AP/DPs, when compared with AP/DPs who aspire to full principalship, experienced a serendipitous and much slower career progression, were less educationally qualified, and were less likely to be employed in larger, high decile schools. It was also found that female career AP/DPs made the decision not to seek principalship at a much earlier age than did males. It is suggested that the education system, in general, and principals, in particular, have important roles to play in ensuring that career AP/DPs receive the support necessary to fulfil their career goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on the career pathways of women presidents has been dedicated to the traditional career path and the paucity of women in positions leading to a four-year college or university presidency. This leaves little research on women who achieved the position by following a nontraditional trajectory. This qualitative study explores the career trajectories of six women presidents who described their journeys to the highest leadership position as "nontraditional" or "unusual." Using Bateson's (1989) concepts of improvisation and adaption to examine their professional and personal experiences, the presidents unveil they were responsive to new opportunities, responsibilities, and challenges leading to their presidencies. Their backgrounds led them to develop an understanding and appreciation of institutional and organizational practices and cultures, community relations, campus relations, and a sensitivity to the importance of relationship building with an array of stakeholders. The study concludes by discussing the necessity of considering broader career frameworks to identify and increase the number of potential women candidates for the presidency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ministerial recruitment strategies in Communist Romania are a symmetric replica of the elite selection patterns in parliamentary democracies. Starting with the mid-60s, all the major traditional pathways to power formally mirror mechanisms of the elite selection and differentiation, which are commonly encountered in Western democracies. During the Communist regime, "atypical" credentials such as education (international degrees), academia, and the economic experiences also increased the likelihood of a promotion in public office. Starting from the notable differences between the Romanian elites and those in other Communist countries in the region, the paper argues that intertwined patterns of "Westernisation" and patrimonial-type credentials contributed to the consolidation of the Romanian Communist Party and hindered, in the aftermath of the regime change, the first attempts at elite renewal and democratisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is the gender gap so large in researchers’ career progression? Do men and women have different priorities in their academic careers? This study explores men’s and women’s academic work to shed light on the strategies of male and female researchers. The online survey collected data on Andalusian researchers to determine possible differences in academic work that may explain the gender gap in the higher ranks of academia. The results reveal that men’s and women’s research performance mainly follows the same patterns, but they do differ in the diversity of women’s priorities, goals and working styles. This may explain women’s vulnerability that leads to their minority presence at the top. These results underline the importance of incorporating new approaches in academic careers based on non-linear trajectories departing from the ideal concept of career paths based on masculine hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thomas Edison is widely considered to be one of the greatest inventive geniuses who ever lived. Therefore, his total output of 1,093 patents was used to study the trajectory of his creative career, including both failures and triumphs. The study specifically examined 2 hypotheses about how the creative process operates across the career course. First, creativity will incorporate some form of blind-variation and selective-retention. Second, creative productivity will be enhanced by engagement in a "network of enterprises." To test these 2 hypotheses, the 1,093 patents were first assigned to 8 separate subject areas: (a) miscellany, (b) telegraphy and telephony, (c) phonographs and sound recording, (d) electric light and power, (e) mining and ore milling, (f) batteries, (g) motion pictures, and (h) cement. The patents were then tabulated into both 1- and 5-year age periods according to Edison's chronological age at the time each was executed. Quantitative analyses were then applied to determine the age-wise trends and clustering of the patents across the course of his 64-year career. In addition, direct comparisons were made to a nomothetic baseline predicted by a mathematical model of creative productivity. The quantitative analyses were complemented by qualitative treatments of Edison's creative career. All told, the 2 hypotheses received considerable empirical support. Tellingly, the inventor's phenomenal triumphs notwithstanding, he could not avoid even catastrophic failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores and unmasks factors in the Zimbabwean school curricula that predispose or channel girls into particular occupational trajectories, in particular occupations or careers traditionally stereotyped as feminine. As a qualitative research study of the culture of the schooling system within this country, it employs the views of a sample size of 20 Sixth Form girls who were purposively selected. The study also examines the impact of the pupils’ gender and their teacher attitudes and expectations towards them as girls on their resultant career trajectories. The design adopted is an exploratory case study that utilises the focus group interview for data collection from four secondary schools conveniently sampled from the Ngezi District of Zimbabwe. The study establishes that as part of the hidden culture and curriculum, teachers’ perceptions, attitudes and expectations of pupils’ gender roles exert a significant influence on their academic achievement and career aspirations. This study concludes that effective intervention strategies are an imperative if the Zimbabwean school curriculum is to be made gendersensitive.

The doctorate has traditionally been perceived as preparation for an academic career (teaching and research). However, the evidence suggests that this assumption no longer holds true since internationally more than half of all PhD graduates leave the higher education sector. Though there has been considerable research examining the ways in which the PhD prepares people for academic careers, how individuals perceive and navigate the transition to post-PhD academic and nonacademic careers is largely unexplored. Drawing on an eight-year longitudinal qualitative research program, this paper examines the career trajectories of 40 individuals after their PhDs: Canadian and UK social scientists and Canadian scientists. Nine broad career trajectories emerged. The evidence emerging from the somewhat novel methodology suggested the power of a nested contexts perspective, one attentive to the interplay of national, disciplinary and institutional influences in career opportunity structures. At the same time, individuals' horizons for action, their efforts to craft their positions to achieve their goals, played a powerful role as regards the choice of different opportunity structures. The results support the conceptualization of career trajectories as an integration of both subjective and objective perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Tracking athletes' performances over time is important but problematic for sports with large environmental effects. Here we have developed career performance trajectories for elite triathletes, investigating changes in swim, cycle, run stages, and total performance times while accounting for environmental and other external factors. Methods: Performance times of 337 female and 427 male triathletes competing in 419 international races between 2000 and 2012 were obtained from triathlon.org. Athletes were categorized according to any top 16 placing at World Championships or Olympics between 2008 and 2012. A mixed linear model accounting for race distance (sprint and Olympic), level of competition, calendar-year trend, athlete's category, and clustering of times within athletes and races was used to derive athletes' individual quadratic performance trajectories. These trajectories provided estimates of age of peak performance and predictions for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Results: By markedly reducing the scatter of individual race times, the model produced well-fitting trajectories suitable for comparison of triathletes. Trajectories for top 16 triathletes showed different patterns for race stages and differed more among women than among men, but ages of peak total performance were similar for men and women (28 ± 3 yr, mean ± SD). Correlations between observed and predicted placings at Olympics were slightly higher than those provided by placings in races before the Olympics. Conclusions: Athletes' trajectories will help identify talented athletes and their weakest and strongest stages. The wider range of trajectories among women should be taken into account when setting talent identification criteria. Trajectories offer a small advantage over usual race placings for predicting men's performance. Further refinements, such as accounting for individual responses to race conditions, may improve utility of performance trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to debates on graduate migration, by discussing graduate migrants' career trajectory development, using structure-agency perspectives to explore career path management in a host country. Drawing on qualitative research with Polish graduate migrants in the UK, it demonstrates diverse attitudes towards career trajectories of those who obtained their degree from home country universities, and enrolled into some form of further education in the host country. This paper outlines three Polish graduate types in the UK, based on the time, type and motivations for further training in the UK. These are: Continuers, Switchers and Late Awakeners. It argues that graduates have become accustomed to life's uncertainties, and recognise the need to take diverse and flexible routes to advance their careers, including further education and various types of employment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public policy programs have come to attract students with increasingly diverse backgrounds and career aims, but curricular changes have been modest. Using a data set on MPP alumni from Harvard's Kennedy School, we analyze career trajectories through different sectors and specializations, examining relationships among trajectories, perceptions of public service, and particular skill needs. Although government remains an important destination, we find a predominance of idiosyncratic paths and a diversification of employment trajectories over time. Perceptions of employment as public service and reports of skill use vary significantly by sector. Although certain general skills (communication, systematic thinking about problems, and workload management) are widely used, there are notable differences in other skill areas (policy design and political analysis are more used by government and nonprofit workers; economics is more used in the private sector). Programs may want to consider these differences in skill use in prioritizing what is taught, and how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As work and employment transitions become more frequent and difficult, the demand for formal career guidance increases. Women are likely to experience structural labour market disadvantage and may benefit from formal support that is sympathetic to their particular needs. Yet the traditional psychological paradigms that dominate career guidance practice have assumed homogeneity. To contribute both to broader debates about careers services for adults and the development of more relevant theoretical frameworks for career practice for women, results are presented from an international, comparative qualitative investigation of the career trajectories of older women (aged 45 to 65) in Australia, England and South Africa. These results confirm a need for career guidance that is nuanced and differentiated for women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the gender-based challenges endured by the secondary school girls of Zimbabwe. It highlights the factors that are responsible for the predisposition of girls in feminine occupations or careers. It examines the impact of attitudes and expectations of teachers towards girls involved in career trajectories. It mentions the influence of teachers' perceptions, curriculum and pupil's gender on academic achievement and career aspirations of girls.

Contemporary creative work has emerged as a focus of international academic and policy attention since the late 1990s, the period in which the cultural and creative industries achieved recognition as a highly successful new sector. Commentators have noted the problems faced by many contemporary creative workers because of the precarious and ill-paid nature of much of the work in the sector. This article proposes that associations with the creative arts provide an important resource for the occupational identification for these workers, yet also a significant source of conflicts. Analyses of interviews with creative workers who were recruited from the students and alumni of UK art colleges (Higher Education Institutions in Arts and Design) suggest that meanings derived from the creative arts and taken up in educational contexts and elsewhere continue to shape these workers' understandings of creative work, including the process of creative working, the trajectory of a creative career, and what constitutes success in creative work. The importance of these meanings is explored and detailed through a consideration of participants' identifications using a narrative-discursive analysis of interview data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The study presented in this article focused on the instable career paths of older workers. The study, which is based on the life course approach, had two objectives: 1) identify the main variables which, through their interactions, characterized end-of-career paths; 2) piece together, from the beginning of the career onward, the sequence of key events, transitions, and turning points in the career trajectories that preceded these paths. The results, based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with 32 Canadian workers 45years and older, showed that these participants'' particular career path was characterized by considerable interdependent precariousness whose effects accumulated and intensified as the workers aged. The results also show that this career path was preceded by two distinct career trajectories: one named “fragmented,” which was punctuated by discontinuity and breaks of all kinds, and the other called “severed,” which was characterized by the sudden loss of a career job. Finally, the link between the end-of-career path seen here and the trajectories that preceded it sheds at least some light on the processes that can lead to an instable end-of-career path. These processes were condensed in our discussion into two distinct career biographies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Psychology is a very popular undergraduate major. Examining wage data from a range of degree holders reveals much about the expected career trajectories of those with psychology degrees. First, regarding baccalaureates, psychology and other liberal arts graduates—compared with those from certain preprofessional and technical undergraduate programs—generally fall in relatively low tiers of salary levels at both starting and later career points. Salary levels among baccalaureate alumni groups correlate with averaged measures of salary satisfaction, repeated job seeking, and perceptions of underemployment. These patterns seem to stem from the specific occupational categories (job titles) entered by graduates in psychology compared with other graduates, calling into question the employability advantage of so-called generic liberal arts skills. Second, psychology master’s degree holders also generally fall in a low tier of salary among their science, engineering, and health counterparts. Third, psychology college faculty (including instructors) fall in low tiers of salary compared with their colleagues from other academic fields. Such broadly based indications of the relative economic disadvantages of psychology degrees have implications for career counseling in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: In this paper we consider the potential of autobiographical narratives for accessing ‘storied knowledge’ in research around geographies of health voluntarism. We firstly consider what is meant by elicited autobiography and how the narrative approach has been used in research more broadly. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in Manchester, UK and Auckland, New Zealand we then demonstrate how this approach has helped us to map out and unpack the career journeys of mental health activists working within and across the voluntary and statutory sectors. Through our autobiographical narratives we illustrate how this approach has enabled us to elicit important insights into the triggers and trajectories underpinning mental health activism and how events and moments in time have provided critical junctures in these trajectories. We consider places as sites of significance in activist career paths; and as central to the researcher-participant gestalt within which the autobiography is elicited and recounted. The autobiographical process, we suggest, offers reflective insights into mental health activism that might not otherwise be gained using more conventional methodologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article focuses on 520 persons - the 139 psychiatrists (102 men and 37 women), the 196 psychologists (103 men and 93 women) and the 185 social scientists, nurses and others (105 men and 80 women) - who were either successful applicants to the NHS Forensic Mental Health Programme over the 12-year period (1996-2007 inclusive) of its existence or had applied to the three Responsive Funding Schemes offered in 2003, 2004 and 2005 by the Programme. These persons are considered to be representative of the current forensic mental health research community in the UK. The article considers their demographic characteristics, their employment status and their academic qualifications. In terms of the future of forensic mental health research, the study suggests that the problem in the UK is likely to be maintaining the interest of these researchers in forensic matters rather than a dearth of talent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the origins and discusses the results of a study of youth transitions to work in England and Germany in the late 1980s, at a time of dramatic social, economic and political change. The novel design involving quantitative and qualitative data collection from young men and young women on the same 'career trajectories' in two comparable labour markets in England and two in Germany, generated insights into the way vocational training systems in the two countries were being experienced by young people and how the vocational training systems were adapting to change. The German system for managing the transition through apprenticeship with cultural roots going back the Middle Ages was directed at instilling a broad range of civic attributes of which occupational identity was the central part. In contrast the English system was focused exclusively on equipping young people with the skills that would enable them to gain and retain employment. During the transition process itself the identity of German trainees was closer to that of student compared with trainees in England where that of worker was dominant. At times of massive economic (and in Germany, political) upheaval, both countries learned from each other in attempting to adapt their systems to meet young people's needs with mixed results. The policy challenges raised by the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]