This article is from WeChat official account:Cultural aspect (ID: whzh_21bcr)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: Li Jing, Li Jiahui, the original title: “who would have thought that China’s” post-doctoral “actually forced into the most awkward of temporary workers | cultural aspect,” head Figure: vision China
In recent years, Chinese colleges and universities have set off a great academic leap forward movement, which has put more pressure on college teachers, especially young teachers, for scientific research, so that many young teachers laugh at themselves as “green peppers.” However, it is the “postdoctoral” recruited in large numbers by universities that are under greater pressure and more uncertain destiny than young teachers. Why do postdoctoral fellows with their own halo in the eyes of the public fall into a disadvantaged position?
The analysis in this article points out that the postdoctoral faculty system is uniquely created in China, and its original intention is to coordinate the professional tension between researchers and teachers. Faculty postdoctoral fellows have a good academic background and diverse job responsibilities. According to the prevailing rules, they could have obtained formal faculty positions in colleges and universities after smoothly leaving the station. Therefore, the faculty postdoctoral fellows are also positioned as the “green pepper reserve army.”
But under the increasingly fierce competition of university research GDP, faculty post-doctoral students actually become “academic temporary workers” in universities. Many post-doctoral fellows have been under the shadow of negative emotions for a long time, not only with temporary status and marginal roles, but also under huge pressure to publish papers.
The high-intensity assessment pressure overdrafts young people’s bodies and consumes the future of China’s academics. Some colleges and universities refuse to stay after their post-doctoral contributions, which hurts even more. Young people’s confidence and feelings. The author believes that this problem should be solved through external institutional guarantees, optimization of the evaluation system, and transformation of teachers’ post-doctoral self-recognition.
This article was originally published in “Research on Educational Development”, Issue 23, 2019. The original title is “Postdoctoral Fellows under the Construction of “Double First Class”: “Green Pepper Forces” or “Academic Temporary Workers””. The article has been edited and deleted, hereby Edited and issued for you to think about.
“Teacher postdoctoral fellow” under pressure
Since the establishment of the post-doctoral system in my country in 1985, my country has recruited more than 140,000 post-doctoral researchers, and they have become the country’s backbone of scientific research and technology, academic leaders, and scientific leaders. The effectiveness of the post-doctoral system can be seen.
While my country’s heads up into a big country of higher education, some colleges and universities have introduced the post-doctoral system into the school’s personnel reform, and spontaneously implemented a “postdoctoral teacher” policy with local characteristics, that is, newly recruited young teachers must serve as teachers Post-doctorate enters the school, and after leaving the station, it is determined whether or not they can be converted to a full-fledged teacher based on the results of the assessment. According to incomplete statistics, as of June 30, 2019, a total of 67 colleges and universities across the country have implemented a postdoctoral faculty system, of which 53 are “double first-class” colleges and universities.
my country’s higher education has embarked on a new journey. It is necessary to move from a big country of higher education to a strong country of higher education. The construction of “double first-rate” has become a new task of higher education in the new era.
Under the background of “double first-class” construction, what role does the post-doctoral faculty system play in the cultivation of young talents? In August 2018, the “Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of “Double First Class” in Higher Education Institutions” formulated by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Development and Reform Commission provided answers: In order to build a first-class faculty and build a high-level subject team and echelon, it is necessary to Strengthen the training of young backbones such as postdoctoral fellows. Because the system was created by universities in my country, different universities have different interpretations and uses of it, resulting in frequent problems in actual operation, and arousing scholars to reflect on the practice of the teacher postdoctoral system.
There are too many similar studies, most of which focus on policy and system as the research object and problem domain. In terms of research methods, they tend to analyze the literature and focus on examining the teacher postdoctoral system from a grand perspective. In fact, individual faculty postdoctoral fellows are more worthy of being research objects, especially when young doctors are at a loss when facing the employment option of postdoctoral faculty, or feel confused or even regret after entering the station.
In the “double first-class” era, the dynamic selection brings assessment and competitive pressure will only be transferred to teachers layer by layer, and the situation facing teachers postdoctoral may be even more severe. For universities and young doctors, facultyWhat kind of role is it? Based on this, it is very necessary to conduct qualitative research at the micro level. Starting from the concrete individual, this article explores the true situation and inner state of the postdoctoral faculty.
The role expectation, role play and role adjustment of “teacher postdoctoral”
As the theory of social psychology, role theory is widely used to explore people’s psychology, attitudes and social behaviors, and has a great influence in the fields of psychology, sociology, management, and education. Role theory is not a unified and systematic theoretical achievement, but a knowledge system that uses the concept of “role” to study human psychology, attitudes and social behavior. The concept of “role” originated from drama, and now refers to “the general way of behavior required by a certain social identity and its inherent attitude and value foundation”.
When individuals acquire a certain social identity, they begin to play corresponding roles. Different disciplines form rich concepts on this topic, such as role expectation, role playing, role conflict, role adjustment, etc. In fact, the social identity of faculty and post-doctorate also exists in the role expectation, performance and adjustment. Therefore, this study mainly borrows the three concepts of role expectation, role playing and role adjustment in role theory to form role expectation-role-playing-role adjustment Analytical framework to examine faculty and post-doctorate.
The role expectation of the postdoctoral faculty mainly refers to the expectations of the colleges and universities for their specific behaviors; role-playing is the process of performing role behaviors according to the expectations and requirements of the faculty postdoctorate, according to their own understanding and understanding of the role; Role adaptation refers to the process of making individual role-playing meet the requirements of the society for the role of postdoctoral teachers.
This research mainly adopts the method of qualitative research. It collects the policy texts of colleges and universities regarding postdoctoral faculty through in-depth research on-site through network retrieval, and in-depth interviews with 10 post-doctoral faculty or closely related universities in the “double first-class” construction universities Faculty and staff, walk into their complex inner world, listen to their true views, and reproduce the details of the work and life of the faculty postdoctoral fellow, in order to gain a clearer understanding of the faculty postdoctoral fellow.
Based on the above requirements, we contacted the interviewees by “snowballing” through academic relationships, and finally determined 10 interviewees, basically involving post-doctorate faculty and other relevant personnel from various colleges and universities. According to the statistics in Table 1, the interview sample includes 10 people, 6 males and 4 females, including 6 people who have had post-doctoral experience in “double first-class” universities, 1 person who has refused to work as a faculty postdoctoral fellow, and faculty postdoctoral cooperation 1 tutor, 1 leader and 1 administrative staff of the personnel office of the university.
From the interview sample information, it can be seen that the sample’s gender ratio is balanced.The level of institutions is “double first-class” universities. The subjects of the interviewees cover natural sciences and humanities and social sciences, and they have relevant experience or understanding of relevant policies for teachers’ postdoctoral studies. The results of their interviews are useful for understanding the roles, responsibilities and true status of teachers’ postdoctoral fellows. It has high credibility and representativeness.
As a postdoctoral faculty member of “green peppers”
Based on 35 postdoctoral policy texts for university teachers, using the “word frequency” function of NVivo11 software, the “word frequency” statistics of all the original materials of the text and the export of the “word cloud” pictures are due to the size of the font in the “word cloud” It is directly proportional to the frequency, so it can directly show the frequency of specific words or sentences in the text. “Faculty post-doctorate” has been mentioned the most times as the subject of this research. “School”, “Assessment”, “Research”, “Management”, “Teacher”, “Research”, “Discipline”, “SCI”, “EI” and “Teaching” centered on the distribution of “Faculty Postdoctoral” The frequency of words such as “” is also high, indicating that there is a certain relationship between them and teachers and post-doctoral fellows. However, the shortcoming of the “word frequency” function is that it is unable to learn the specific categorical relationships, and it is necessary to use the “reference point” for in-depth statistical analysis to further present the research results.
(1) Where did it come from: the selection and motivation of teachers and post-doctoral fellows
The selection of faculty and post-doctorate takes into account the conditions of scientific research potential, age, graduate school, ideological and political and health status.
First of all, both the number of material sources and the number of reference points can show that the potential of scientific research is a priority element for the selection of postdoctoral faculty, including the applicant’s past achievements, graduation years, etc. Among them, the past scientific research results mainly examine its future scientific research potential from many aspects such as the number of articles, the level of articles and publications, the tasks undertaken, and the writing of books. For example, the “Administrative Measures for Postdoctoral Staff of S University” requires two or more academic papers signed by the first author or corresponding author to be published in the core journals of the subject at home and abroad. This is actually the scientific research of the colleges and universities recruiting postdoctoral faculty. The lowest threshold. In order to ensure that the postdoctoral faculty members are still academically sensitive to the frontiers of the discipline and are in a good state of scientific research, applicants are required to be no more than 3 years before obtaining a doctorate in terms of graduation years.
Secondly, the age is generally stipulated to be under 32 years old, and very few require no more than 35 years old, “Because young doctors are more dedicated, ambitious and pursue scientific research, the original intention of post-doctoral faculty is to serve teachers The team replenishes fresh blood”.
In general, the interviewees were more dissatisfied with the role of teacher postdoctoral fellow, and there were some extreme emotions in the interview content. Among them, the interviewees M003, M004, and M007 showed more “very negative” emotions, indicating that the three interviewees, as teachers’ post-doctoral experiencers, have accumulated more negative emotions during the process of standing, which is different from them. There is a close relationship between the personal situation of the three post-doctoral fellows who did not leave the station or did not stay on campus.
(1) Temporary role identity
The postdoctoral faculty and the university sign a work agreement instead of a labor contract. The working time is only two years. In this sense, the postdoctoral faculty is a part-time staff of the university, which makes it difficult to maintain and guarantee the work enthusiasm. Eight people with post-doctoral experience in teachers said that very few of the post-doctoral faculty they were acquainted with eventually remained, and the post-doctoral faculty was just a part of the work experience of most people. Compared with in-service teachers, the situation of post-doctoral faculty not being on-the-job often leads to a lack of security and sense of belonging. Six interviewees said they felt inferior and inferior to their postdoctoral faculty status. “A stable and well-established job is our first choice when looking for a job for young Ph.Ds. If you can’t reach this goal after finishing your Ph. I feel inferior to my identity, and I don’t even dare to tell my relatives and friends that I am a postdoctoral teacher.”
(2) Edge of role status
Teachers and post-doctoral fellows are treated as employees of the unit only when they are needed for their work. In addition to the temporary nature of the work, the work content changes frequently and often loses balance in teaching, scientific research, and transactional work. “This role is embarrassing and marginal. It belongs to the floating population. Even college invigilators will arrange more postdoctoral fellows than ordinary lecturers. Therefore, the role and responsibilities of this position are not clear, and a lot of work is done in vain.” M004 recalled the experience of teachers’ post-doctoral fellows and said: “Because of the college’s differential treatment, college administrators do not consider these teachers’ post-doctoratething. As long as there is tedious transactional work, they will assign tasks to teachers and post-doctoral students. “In addition, due to disciplinary differences, compared with liberal arts, science and engineering teachers rely more on hardware and software such as laboratory platforms, research teams, and other hardware and software. They are also often difficult to provide or honor because of their status and status. They often face individual combat. There is even no laboratory or office available. As M002 said: “The pressure and assessment requirements for us are high, but the conditions provided for us are very low.
(3) Role promotion scientific research orientation
The work agreement of the faculty and post-doctorate will involve the final way out. Generally, the assessment level determines whether it can be transferred to the school’s official teachers, and the assessment requirements are chasing the number and level of scientific research results. Undoubtedly, the original intention of the young doctors’ postdoctoral work was to stay in school and become a formal teacher. However, the increasingly fierce scientific research championships made more young people feel powerless and even frustrated.
After the launch of “Double First-Class”, colleges and universities know that young postdoctoral fellows are in the best period of scientific research and creation, so they continue to raise the retention requirements for teacher postdoctoral staff, and regard teacher postdoctorate as the creator of academic GDP. Faculty postdoctoral co-supervisor M008 emphasized: “Dynamic selection of’double first-class’ must be guaranteed for those who have been selected, and those who have not been selected must fight desperately. The competition is becoming more and more fierce. Assessment and retention indicators”. “Under the’double first-class’ dynamic assessment mechanism, the assessment standards for post-doctoral faculty have been improved a lot. Some colleges and universities require post-doctoral faculty to be selected as’four youth’ talents (national talent program) before they can stay in the school to teach.’
Respondent M007 mentioned that his school’s retention conditions have reached the school’s associate professor standard. As everyone knows, the academic championship not only overdrafts the body of young scholars, hurts their emotions, but also contributes to the future of consumer academia. “I think this is a great harm to our young scholars. At that time, the college leaders did not regard me as a teacher’s reserve force to train, but held an assessment attitude:’You can only stay if you meet the conditions; If the conditions are not met, you must leave’.”
How to bridge the gap between expectation and reality?
Under the background of “double first-class” construction, teachers and post-doctorate actually play the role of “academic temporary workers”, which is inconsistent with the expectations of colleges and universities for their “green pepper reserve army”, that is, there is a role gap. In order to bridge and eliminate the role gap, the process of making the role-playing of faculty and post-doctorate meet the requirements of universities for their role is called role adjustment, which mainly includes external adjustment and self-adjustmentsuitable.
(1) External adjustment: perfect system guarantee for teachers and post-doctoral fellows
External adjustment means that universities put forward new role expectations for teacher postdoctoral students that meet individual requirements, or improve external conditions for teacher postdoctoral development policies. As the Director of the Personnel Department of Zhejiang University pointed out, “Some changes in the teaching staff postdoctoral system during the implementation process will make young talents feel uncomfortable.”
On the one hand, based on the analysis of the postdoctoral management policy of university teachers, it is found that the expectation of the role of postdoctoral teachers in universities is too much emphasis on scientific research behavior, which violates the original intention of holding postdoctoral teachers as young teachers. If only faculty postdoctoral fellows are trained as a new force in scientific research, what is the difference from scientific research postdoctoral fellows? On the other hand, through the technical processing after the interview, it can be seen that the postdoctoral faculty is relatively dissatisfied with this role, especially emphasizing the “nondescript” of the status and the “inferiority” of the status.
In response to the “changing taste” situation, the focus of the external adjustment of colleges and universities is to improve the classification system of teacher postdoctoral, clarify the role of teacher postdoctoral, and ensure the professional development of teacher postdoctoral.
At present, most colleges and universities in our country have implemented or are formulating teacher classification development system, which is generally composed of three types of teachers: teaching, teaching and research, and research. Similarly, as a reserve force for the teaching team, not everyone must become a comprehensive talent who can perform teaching, scientific research, and serve the society at the same time. Instead, they should be developed with specific emphasis on classification. To put it simply, different universities can, based on their own missions and conditions, and on this basis, determine the post-doctorate as a teaching, teaching and research-based, or research-oriented postdoctoral faculty, and then sign the corresponding type of employment contract. (Instead of a work agreement), incorporated into the dynamic management of the teaching team. Different types of postdoctoral teachers correspond to different training plans and assessment standards, and their jobs can be adjusted twice according to the assessment results.
At the same time, schools and colleges should earnestly assume the responsibility of human resources management, improve the incentive mechanism, especially strengthen humanistic care, and solve many “worries” of teachers and post-doctoral students. American psychologist Frederick Herzberg proposed that there are two different types of motivating factors. One is to call the factors that prevent people’s dissatisfaction as “health factors”, and the other is to call people’s satisfaction. The factors are called “motivating factors”.
Health care factors are factors related to the working environment or conditions. Improper handling of these factors can lead to dissatisfaction among employees and even severely dampen their enthusiasm. This is the source of individual dissatisfaction with the role of teachers and postdoctoral students. School and college leaders, cooperative mentors, and management personnel should ensureThe various treatments of post-graduates are truly implemented to ensure the equality of their working environment, and strengthen the humanistic care of post-doctoral teachers in study, work and life, so as to enhance the sense of security and belonging of post-doctoral teachers.
(2) Self-adjustment: Deepen the role cognition of teachers and postdoctoral fellows
Self-adjustment refers to an individual’s further understanding of the role of faculty and postdoctoral students, understanding the background and underlying reasons for the expectations of colleges and universities, and coordinating the process of role-playing in line with role expectations.
First, individual faculty and post-doctoral staff should not stick to the outdated concept of “in editing and on-the-job”, and need to keep abreast of the latest trends in the reform of national public institutions, and actively respond to and integrate into it. As early as the 1990s, the reform of the personnel system in colleges and universities began some new attempts, such as breaking the “iron rice bowl” and fully implementing the open recruitment and employment system. In 2017, it was proposed that the establishment of colleges and universities will be completely abolished in 2020, and college teachers generally Implement a contract system. Under such a general trend, “teacher postdoctoral” is only a form of the contract system for university teachers, but a certain evaluation period is needed to reduce the risk of employment in universities and improve the overall quality of new teachers.
Secondly, individual post-doctoral faculty members need to conduct a rational evaluation of themselves, rationally position their roles according to their own conditions and abilities, formulate appropriate career development goals and plans; appropriately simplify their “role clusters” and be aware of teaching , Scientific research, and social services are only the functions of universities, but not the functions of every university, let alone the responsibilities of every teacher. You need to constantly seek a balance in the fields of teaching, research, and service.
Third, the individual postdoctoral faculty members should complete their roles and responsibilities with an optimistic and motivated attitude, strengthen professional responsibilities, and actively participate in the development of schools, colleges, and disciplines. During the postdoctoral work of teachers, individuals should learn to control negative emotions when faced with various contradictions or tedious and complicated work, so they should learn to control negative emotions, soberly recognize their responsibilities as a reserve teacher, and maintain a rational choice of roles.
This article is from WeChat official account:Cultural aspect (ID: whzh_21bcr)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: Li Jing, Li Jiahui, originally appeared in “Education Research” 2019 No. 23, formerly titled “” dual class “teachers postdoctoral under construction:” green pepper force “or “Academic Temporary Workers”.