The professional lives of expatriate academics

Investigating the employment motivation, job satisfaction, and dissatisfaction of international high school teachers in China: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

International education has become increasingly challenging to manage in an unpredictable world beset by pandemics, regional disputes, and evolving market practices. The last few decades have seen a huge demand for international education in China, and numerous acclaimed international brand names set up operations in China's K12 schooling sector. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exerted a noticeably negative impact on international high schools and their staff in China, and exacerbated a difficult period of management for these institutions. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the actual operation of these educational workplaces remains under investigated in academic studies. This paper therefore attempts to examine international high schools in China by focusing on their teachers and their associated employment motivation, job satisfaction, and dissatisfaction which has been perceptibly influenced by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a qualitative, case-study approach which adopted semi-structured interviews, an acclaimed British high school, now closed, was investigated. The study found that international high school teachers were driven by diverse work motives such as the school's reputation, values, salary, environment, and chances for career development. Their job satisfaction was also multi-faceted, and their dissatisfaction in certain areas concerning. That is, they derived an early satisfaction from a range of facets, such as the students, class sizes, initial workloads, autonomy and collegiality. However, these early feelings were replaced by a sense of dissatisfaction and noticeable unhappiness resulting from leadership changes and subsequent management practices, increased workload, unmet employment package expectations and obligations, as well as limited professional development opportunities. This study highlights the importance of recruiting well, generating the right starting and longer-term conditions, retaining key staff and managing astutely. The work will be of interest to policy makers, investors, leaders, managers and staff alike. It will also extend educational research in the areas of teacher motivation, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and in particular in China in international K12 settings.

Different measures of international faculty and their impacts on global rankings

This study analyzed how the ranking status has changed at various higher education system levels by applying different definitions of international faculty. Among the four measures (birthplace, current citizenship, and the country of bachelor and doctoral education), this study found that international faculty measured by the country of doctoral studies produced significantly different international outlook scores and thus ranking status from that based on birthplace or citizenship. Specifically, major English-speaking systems such as the UK, Canada, and Australia hire a large number of faculty who are foreign citizens while non-English speaking systems (Italy, Portugal, China, Korea, and Brazil) hire more local academics who have earned their doctoral degree abroad. This suggests that these non-English speaking countries are systematically under-rated in their international outlook scores by the adoption of the birthplace-based or citizenship-based international faculty measures. As an alternative, this study proposes to update the international faculty measure using a combination of citizenship of employment and doctoral training to minimize this systemic bias.

Intercultural adjustment of internationally mobile academics working in Thailand

Non-nationals constitute up to a quarter of the academic staff workforce of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) worldwide. Their motivations to 'work abroad', and their experiences of doing so, are, however, under-researched, especially where migration is to or within the global South. We report a study conducted among internationally mobile academics from a variety of countries working in Thailand. At policy level, Thailand aspires to increase the numbers of international staff and students in its HEIs, but with mixed success in terms of recruitment levels and the reported quality of the experience among these migrants. Conceptually, our study drew on a framework of intercultural adjustment defined as a multidimensional construct comprising psychological, sociocultural and professional/work aspects of the experience. Semi-structured focus groups were conducted to explore experiences of working in Thailand. Thematic analysis of findings showed that reported experiences mainly fell under the category of professional/work aspects of intercultural adjustment, although sociocultural issues were also important. The reported quality of experiences was mixed and generally more negative than positive in the key areas of professional and work adjustment. Specific challenges highlighted by participants related to issues with the work environment, most especially lingual-cultural problems and, crucially, a lack of secure status. We detail and discuss these findings and present recommendations for policy makers and HEIs, aspirant academic migrants, and for future research into global academic migration, particular as it relates to Thailand and other destinations for academic migration.

Repatriation of academics: organizational support, adjustment and intention to leave

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the influence of academic repatriates’ perceived organizational support, adjustment and external employment opportunity on their intention to leave.

Design/methodology/approach

The data were collected from Sri Lankan academics who returned to their home university after completing their work (teaching/research) abroad. The repatriates who involved in teaching and research for one or more years abroad were included in this survey.

Findings

Results indicated that repatriates’ both the perceived organizational support had an important role to play in the prediction of repatriation adjustment and intention to leave. In turn, academics who adjusted to their repatriation better were highly likely to stay at their home university. In addition, repatriates’ perceived organizational support decreased their intention to leave through adjustment. In addition, when repatriates had trouble in adjustment and perceived high external employment opportunities, they reported higher intentions to leave the university than those who perceived fewer external employment opportunities.

Research limitations/implications

This study relied on cross-sectional and self-reported data and was conducted with small number of sample (112).

Practical implications

For the academic institutions, this study will help to clarify their role in managing repatriation adjustment and develop appropriate organizational systems that can facilitate repatriates to better adjust to their repatriation which, in turn, reduces their intention to leave. This study signifies the role of management in retaining repatriates.

Originality/value

This study further contributes to the current discussion on repatriation and moves this discussion to academic repatriates. This study, particularly, discusses the issues of retaining repatriates in a Sri Lankan context as a developing country where attracting and retaining academic repatriates are more challenging tasks for universities.

Job resources and demands for expatriate academics

Purpose

While there is a growing interest in expatriate academics, their specific role as teachers with daily contact to local students seems to have been largely ignored when examining their adjustment and work outcomes. Based on the job demands-resources model the authors predict that good teacher-student relations, as a supportive job resource, will have a positive effect on expatriate academics’ job satisfaction. This effect, however, will be even stronger for individuals experiencing high job demands and challenges in terms of intercultural job adjustment. In other words, expatriate academics that have difficulties adjusting will benefit more from the social support that can originate from good relations to their students. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors surveyed expatriate academics adjusting to a university position in China by use of 124 responses from foreign university employees.

Findings

The authors found that teacher-student relations had a positive association with job satisfaction and that positive teacher-student relations increased job satisfaction more for individuals being slow to adjust.

Originality/value

This is one of the few papers to explore the impact that students can have on expatriate academics and treat this relationship as a potential resource for universities to capitalize upon in socializing their new foreign academic staff members.