A Study on the Management of Career Development of Young Teachers in Higher Education Institutions from the Perspective of Career Anchors

Yang Rong

Civil Aviation Flight University of China

Abstract: In January 2021, six departments in China, including the Ministry of Education jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening Reform in HEI Teacher Capacity Building for the New Era which emphasizes support for career development of young teachers. From the perspective of the career anchor theory, this paper takes human resource management as a tool to analyze organizational environment at the macro and micro levels to find out how to facilitate career development of young teachers in higher education institutions.

Keywords: career anchors, career development, young teachers, higher education institutions

To implement the strategies issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Ministry of Education,along with five other departments, jointly issued theGuiding Opinions of Strengthening Reform in HEI Teacher Capacity Building for the New Era(Hereinafher the “Guiding Opinions”) on January 27, 2021. The Guiding Opinions focuses on the promotion of reform concerning the higher education institutions faculties in China and specifies the goals and measures for the building of higher education institutions faculties in the new era. It particularly stresses the importance of improving the development and training system for teachers, building platforms for the development of teachers in higher education institutions, strengthening the support for training young teachers, urging higher education institutions to increase the scale and quality of recruitment for training post-doctoral students, establishing a multi-replenishment mechanism for youths,encouraging higher education institutions to exceptionally promote and boldly employ outstanding young talents, and adopting multiple measures to alleviate the concerns of young teachers and give full support to their growth.①The Ministry of Education and other five departments issued a document to strengthen the reform on the construction of the teaching staff of colleges and universities in the new era, China Education Daily, January 27, 2021.While emphasizing the construction of higher education institutions faculties, the Guiding Opinions also shows its commitment to the growth and career development of young teachers, and puts forward policy measures.

The career anchor theory is authoritative in explaining career management. It was put forward by Edgar Schein, who holds that an individual in his or her early work situation can achieve a stable career orientation with self-satisfaction and compensation, which is determined by acquired practical work experience and which must be consistent with the motives, values, and abilities of self-reflection in the experience. Career anchors result from an individual’s interactions with his or her workplace and are in the process of constant adjustment in actual work. The career anchor theory suggests that the plasticity of young novices is mainly determined by the surrounding environment. This assertion suggests that an organization should utilize its organizational environment and effective human resource management to create circumstances favorable to the growth and positioning on its new employees and that such circumstances should have a fault tolerance mechanism on the one hand, and on the other hand, the conditions should promote growth, encourage new employees to find their anchors faster and better by giving them the chance to try.

From the perspective of career anchors, this paper analyzes career development of young teachers in higher education institutions by applying human resource management, and referring to the objectives set by China for career development of young teachers in higher education institutions.

Status Quo of Career Development of Young Teachers in Higher Education Institutions in China

Objectives of Career Development for Young Teachers in Higher Education Institutions

Six departments of China, including the Ministry of Education, issued a document titledGuiding Opinions on Strengthening Reform in HEI Teacher Capacity Building for the New Erain January 2021. It is a systematic document guiding the construction of higher education institutions faculties in China in the new era, a detailed, refined schematization of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council’s strategic deployment concerning the reform on the construction of higher education institutions faculties in China.

As the Ministry of Education explains, the Guiding Opinions mainly emphasizes four aspects,namely the improvement in professional ethics of teachers in higher education institutions, the reform on the personnel system of higher education institutions, the implementation and improvement of the reform on appraisals on teachers, and the improvement in teaching skills. In addition, it puts forward 20 crucial measures for strengthening higher education institutions faculties accordingly.

These 20 measures aimed to realize the four aspects above and can be summed up into the following eight points: specifying the guidance and tasks for building higher education institutions faculties in the new era, improving the moral quality and professional conduct of such teachers, enhancing their professional quality and ability, improving the modern management system for them, ensuring their satisfaction over remunerations, optimizing the talent management and service system, fully supporting young teachers’career development, and strengthening the guaranteeing measures for the construction of higher education institutions faculties.①According to relevant reports on the official website of the Ministry of Education (www.moe.gov.cn.)

As to the support for the growth of young teachers, the Guiding Opinions points out that it is supposed to improve the teachers’ development and training system, to build platforms for the development of teachers, to strengthen the support for the training of young teachers, to encourage higher education institutions to increase the scale of recruitment for the training of post-doctoral students and to establish a multi-replenishment mechanism for the youth. The Guiding Opinion also points out that it is necessary to encourage higher education institutions to exceptionally promote outstanding young talents and make bold use of them, and relieve the concerns of young teachers in various ways, and to fully support the growth of young teachers.②Ibid.This paragraph concisely makes clear the goal of young teachers’ career development and the measures for achieving it.

Young Teachers’ Supporting Role in the Development of Higher education institutions

Young people are considered an important reserve force for continuous development and expansion of an organization, and they play an irreplaceable role in the development of higher education institutions. In this paper, the term “young teachers” refers to members of higher education faculties under 40 years old. Most of them are still in the early stages of their career development. “Young teachers constitute the majority of teachers in higher education institutions. By December 2017, the number of young teachers under the age of 40 had reached 900,000, accounting for more than 60% of the entire team of teachers in higher education institutions” (Yue & Li, 2020). Considering such a large proportion which is decisive to university development, attention should be paid to career development of these young teachers. Today’s young teachers will become the backbone of scientific research and teaching forces in higher education institutions. Therefore, their career development is of great importance to China’s higher education institutions in the future.

Apart from emphasizing young teachers’ important role in the development of higher education institutions, it is also necessary to adopt a series of measures to support the work and life of young teachers.Such support is an interaction between young teachers and higher education institutions. It will become a benign mechanism once it appears and will be conducive to the conclusion of a “contract of souls” between the two parties. Specifically, it is to provide an appropriate environment for career development of young teachers while showing respect to their personalities. This environment includes both the organizational environment of higher education institutions and the measures of human resource management in such academic organizations.

The Career Anchor Theory and Career Development of Young Teachers

The career anchor theory was put forward by by Edgar H. Schein in hisCareer Dynamics: Matching Individual and Organizational Needsin 1978. In his view, people can hardly give up the values or things crucial in their careers. One will find the center of their career planning once they find the “anchor” in their career development. With a clear understanding of their abilities and talents, they will be able to have clear career planning based on their career motives (He, 2020).

The career anchor theory clarifies the relationship between an employee and their work situation(organizational environment), and the result of the employee’s career development yielded by this relationship. The career anchor theory can be explicated from the following three aspects.

First, career anchors grow from work experience. In fact, career anchors are determined by the actual work that an employee does at the beginning of his career, rather than by his abilities and motives, and other factors. It is impossible for an employee to make a suitable career choice before facing a specific work situation (organizational environment).

Second, career anchors are not such individual factors as talents or values that can be measured by personnel assessment tools. They can reflect an accurate career development orientation in reference to the employee’s proven talents and motives.

Third, career anchors themselves are likely to change. In the course of an employee’s career, some new career anchors may be chosen in accordance with new situations, either by a horizontal shift or a vertical upgrade.

The application of the career anchor theory to career development of young teachers in higher education institutions is suggestive of two points. First, the organizational environment can be optimized to improve the quality of career development of young teachers in higher education institutions. The organizational environment consists of both macro and micro levels. The former refers to the overall framework for career development of those young teachers designed by the management of higher education institutions, while the latter involves specific management measures. Second, career anchors can be shifted or upgraded to further improve career development of young teachers in higher education institutions so that those young teachers can gradually become backbone staff in coming days.

Creating Career Development Paths for Young Teachers

By organically linking the career anchor theory with career development of young teachers in higher education institutions, we can facilitate complementation and improvement of both their career development and organizational environment. The organizational environment here also consists of both macro and micro levels. The path of career development of young teachers in higher education institutions is the top-level design and institutional framework of their career development, which belongs to the category of the macro environment and can be developed from the following three specific aspects.

Classified Development Mechanisms

In reference to the career anchor theory, career development of young teachers begins with their first jobs when they join this profession. Therefore, if there are sufficiently diverse development paths for them to choose within higher education institutions, those young teachers will be more likely to find the right anchor target. The development channels of young teachers can be broadened through the reasonable classification of faculty positions in higher education institutions, which is also one of the necessary links in the reform of the personnel system in higher education institutions.

In the occupational system of teachers in higher education institutions, it is feasible to set up three kinds of posts, which are oriented towards lecturing, academic research, and social service respectively, in reference to the teachers’ tendencies to the professional value and roles of those particular jobs. Accordingly,the teachers can be treated in different ways as lecturing-oriented teachers, research-oriented teachers, and service-oriented teachers in reference to the posts that they have applied for (Jing, 2017). This classification has been widely adopted by higher education institutions. It is an overall generalization of and accurate distinction between the attributes of young members in higher education institutions faculties in China.

The lecturing-oriented posts “focus on teaching jobs, including the presenting of theoretical and practical courses and the guiding of practice. The assessment on the development of involved teachers should be concentrated on the particular teaching jobs they have done, and their abilities to lecture, and the posts should be open to the teachers of common courses or basic courses, and the teachers over the age of 55”(Chen & Guo, 2020). Lecturing-oriented teachers do the most basic but highly important jobs in higher education institutions. They interact with students face-to-face and are responsible for setting good examples,imparting knowledge, and solving problems in practical academic activities. Their efforts are concentrated on theoretical and practical education of students and the development of curricula.

The academic research-oriented posts “support the assembly of teachers in higher education institutions around leading talents and existing research (innovation) teams and platforms in related disciplines that the institutions specialize in, and equip the institutions with talents, research (innovation) teams and platforms,and facilitate the implementation of an echelon development plan.” Academic research-oriented posts are another branch of the development channel for teachers in higher education institutions, who should invest major efforts to lead their teams to constantly catch up with or take the lead in theoretical or technological frontiers of relevant disciplines and undertake or participate in national key projects.

Social service-oriented posts “mainly target social services and the transformation and promotion of scientific and technological achievements. The appraisal of teachers’ development focuses on their abilities to offer social services, contributions from transformations, and social influences. The posts are confined to research institutes” (Chen & Guo, 2020). Social service-oriented posts emphasize the basic orientation towards the conversion of theories into real productive forces. For the faculties of science and engineering,the focus is on the conversion of scientific and technological achievements and the industrialization of new and high technologies. For the departments of humanities, it is to promote the full integration between the research on the philosophy of social sciences and such basic engineering as related to public policies and institutional design, which involves the development of the socioeconomic development of China.

At the national level, all of the three kinds of posts in higher education institutions have received the same attention. In the national systems of support for the training of high-level talents, the assessment and review regarding relevant honors such as the Yangtze River Scholar Award, have covered all three types of teaching posts in higher education institutions. At the macro level, China has offered all-round support for the development paths of young teachers in higher education institutions.

Finding the Right Direction of Career Development

According to the career anchor theory, the key to the right goal and objective of one’s development is to find the objectives and goals of the anchor in the process of work. If the career of a teacher in higher education institutions can be “divided into an adaptation period, a development period, and a formation period,” young teachers are undoubtedly in the adaptation period. It is the responsibility of higher education institutions to help young teachers in their adaptation period to find the right direction for their career development. To achieve this, there are two ways.

The first is to strengthen “general education.” Young teachers should develop their professional ethics soon after they join this profession, regardless of their disciplinary backgrounds. The reason is that, for teachers in higher education institutions, especially for the younger among them, “Teachers’ professional ethics is the first lesson they should take after joining this profession, and it will cultivate their sense of belonging, sense of responsibility, and sense of identity to their posts. Therefore, it is of great significance to the teaching career and working efficiency of young teachers” (Liang, 2019). The education on teachers’professional ethics points out the direction of young teachers’ career development, strengthens and protects the framework of the organizational environment, and ensures the proper growth of young teachers as individuals.

The second is to give young teachers more opportunities to “try.” According to the career anchor theory,young teachers in the adaption period are experiencing the process of searching for their own career anchors.Young teachers as individuals will encounter considerable difficulties but have less possibility to succeed if they are not supported in such seeking. If higher education institutions can provide more opportunities for young teachers to try, it will effectively make up the shortboard of the barrel to a certain extent in the process of young teachers’ looking for career anchors. How to provide the opportunity for “trying” should be reflected through an institutional mechanism, under which a project system is one of the most effective means to solve such problems.

The project system, as it is called, is based on specific projects can enable young teachers to constantly approach their career anchors through various projects at different levels. Young teachers need to improve their strength and levels by participating in various projects regardless of their career types, whether it is lecturing,scientific research, or social services that they choose in the future. Therefore, incorporating young teachers into the development modules of project systems in advance allows such systems to play an effective role as a touchstone or incubator in the early stages of career development. The implementation path of a project system consists of three stages: project team building, project operation, and post-project evaluation. The project teams should have experienced members as the leaders to ensure that the project implementation is under control,and members from as many disciplines as possible. Such a multiple disciplinary mode provides opportunities for young teachers to try. The operation of projects based on the matrix organizational form can integrate interdisciplinary advantages within a higher education institutions institution to boost effective implementation of projects. One of the main tasks of post-project evaluation is to evaluate and select project participants, and thus help young teachers improve the timeliness of identifying proper career anchors by constantly participating in projects and strengthening the working environment’s recognition of their achievements.

Change and Upgrading of Targets of Career Anchors

Finding the right direction of career development mainly takes place in the adaptation period of young teachers’ career development, but shift and upgrading of the goals of career anchors span across the development and formation periods. According to the career anchor theory, anchors are not immutable, and can be re-determined when career development reaches a certain stage. Lateral shifts and vertical upgradings of anchored targets can happen in the development and formation periods only. Neither shifts nor upgrading of career anchors can be achieved without young teachers’ being given the opportunity to “try” in their careers.

The first is the shift of career anchors. Young teachers can preliminarily determine their own career anchors by seeking them in the adaptation period. This process can be regarded as a microscopic and individualized search theory in labor economics. It means that the selection of career anchors has some objective deviation, and the career anchors chosen by young teachers in their adaptation period may be falsified in their later career, and thus need to be reestablished. This process is the change of career anchors,which is relatively passive to some extent. With respect to career development of young teachers and with reference to different training systems for faculty members, the shift of career anchors can appear as the adjustment of the direction of career development, that is, the change from the current type of the development of another. This also demonstrates the need for organizations to provide environmental support to ensure career development of young teachers.

The second is the upgrading of career anchors. Young teachers will have built a good foundation for the upgrading of career anchors once they find their proper career anchors and begin to continue their in-depth development. The upgrading of young teachers’ career anchors also requires the support of the organizational environment of higher education institutions. “To make a planning by dynamically combining professional development of individuals with transformational development of higher education institutions” is the only way to ensure the consistency between individual and organizational objectives, and to the anchored objectives of individuals through the fulfillment of organizational goals. The upgrading of career anchors is not necessarily universal. Instead, it may be limited to some individuals. It is not only a selective process but also reflects the relative initiative of upgrading. As to individuals, the upgrading of career anchors can be shown as “the realization of knowledge capital through academic success such as the accumulation of academic achievements, the obtainment of higher-level diplomas, and the experiences of studying abroad,or the realization of symbolic or social capital through occupational compliance or growth modes, or the accumulation of good academic reputations, the establishment and expansion of academic relations or networking” (Luo, 2019). In a word, it means to grow up from a novice to an authoritative expert in a certain field.

Measures to Design Career Development Paths for Young Teachers

Through the analysis on the mechanisms of different development channels for young teachers in higher education institutions, the right development direction for them, and shift and upgrading of the objectives of career anchors, we can design the paths, i.e., the macro environment for their career development.

Expanding the Talent Pool of Young Teachers

The Guiding Opinions issued by the Ministry of Education and other departments specifically requires the diversification of the recruitment mechanism for young teachers, designating post-doctoral staff, students studying abroad, and outstanding young foreign talents as a pool of young teachers.

The expanded pools of young teachers in higher education institutions mean the enrichment of such factors as elements of culture in colleges and universities, including cultural backgrounds of young teachers,the framework of their academic relations, and the thus yielded research paradigms. The influx of this large number of new factors is bound to influence and change the existing culture and produce the “catfish effect.”Current practice has also proved that the “catfish effect” can create positive incentives to the members of the organization so long as the supporting measures are appropriate.

The expanded pools of young teachers can also support the establishment and development of the classified development mechanisms of teachers in higher education institutions. Young teachers from different sources can make higher education institutions the integrating bases of education, teaching,scientific research, and achievement transformation. This can help higher education institutions with their identification and development of talents in the process of young teachers’ growth and thus improve the certainty and return rates of human capital investments.

Determining the Mechanisms for Classified Trainings and Performance Appraisal

Higher education institutions can set up specialized departments to guide career development of teachers and make an overall planning for classified trainings of young teachers. By the mechanisms for classified trainings, faculties can follow the principle that the college or university concerned makes out a plan while faculties complete the particular tasks under the plan, design and implement classified trainings and performance appraisal of young teachers according to actual situations.

From the perspective of classified trainings, the training of lecturing-oriented teachers should focus on professional ethics and teaching skills, to improve their professionalism and teaching abilities with such measures as “setting up famous teachers’ studios as role models and support and organizing the teaching staff to exchange ideas” (Jing, 2017, March 16).

The cultivation of academic research-oriented teachers should be concentrated on frontier development and team building. Higher education institutions should utilize the strengths of their advantageous disciplines to build teams of talents and choose disciplinary leaders to facilitate the establishment of scientific research teams. By doing so, they would stay current with the frontier levels of pertinent disciplines, give full play to the role of leading characters, and finally reach the goal of building first-class teams. To achieve this goal,it is necessary to “l(fā)ay an emphasis on project funding and academic training of disciplinary leaders and the cultivation of outstanding experts of various disciplines at all levels” (Jing, 2017, March 16).

The key to the training of social service-oriented teachers lies in output and synergy. On the one hand,higher education institutions should attach importance to the establishment of a linking mechanism between themselves and enterprises or industrial alliances so that they can offer timely support to relevant industries in urgent need and transform advanced theories and technologies into real productive forces through the enterprises. On the other hand, higher education institutions should strengthen their collaboration with local governments, industry associations and other public institutions, and provide support through intellectual output for public or industrial policymaking, regional development, and other public services. Where it is feasible, young teachers should be selected and sent to do these jobs through temporary postings, providing services in the fields of administration, agriculture, education, medical care, and poverty alleviation to “prepare the pools of experts at various levels and provide core think-tank services for local economic and social development” (Jing, 2017, March 16).

Like the mode of classified trainings, performance management of young teachers should also be made by different types but with the emphasis on performance appraisal of corresponding posts.

For lecturing-oriented teachers, a performance appraisal should focus on teaching effects and teaching skills and give comprehensive appraisal in the form of students’ evaluation of teaching, peer review, experts’opinions at lectures, curriculum building, and effects of teaching reform.

For academic research-oriented teachers, a performance appraisal should evaluate their abilities to do scientific research, through objective indicators such as the number of papers from scientific research projects and academic achievements.

For social service-oriented teachers, a performance appraisal should be concentrated on the commercialization of scientific and research findings and the intellectual support for local economic and social development. It should be made by referring to the commercialization rates of scientific and technological achievements, the output value of scientific and technological promotions, and the undertaking of commercial projects.

Faculties should strengthen communication with young teachers in setting specific performance objectives and performance appraisal methods, so that they can have a clear understanding of their own performance objectives. After such an evaluation, attention should be paid to performance feedback, and the teachers who rank low in the performance appraisal should be given a performance guidance.

Giving Adequate Incentives to Young Teachers

The incentives for young teachers should be broad enough to include not only salaries but also career promotion, living security, and other aspects, which are all conducive to their career development.

The reform of income distribution systems should be accelerated to set up and evaluate positions based on the classification of teaching posts in higher education institutions, improve the performance management mechanisms, and work out reasonable salary systems to prevent insulate young teachers from undergoing a sharp change of career anchors due to income issues.

The professional title evaluation should follow the central government’s instruction on reform, take actual performance as the yardstick, and abandon the old practice of making promotion decisions by seniority in higher education institutions. The appraisals in performance management should be applied to the professional title evaluation objectively and justly, and the professional titles should be treated as the factor to drive young teachers in choosing career anchors.

Higher education institutions can refer to the employee assistance program model and the actual situation to provide practical guarantees in housing, children’s education, medical care, and other aspects. By doing so,they can alleviate young teachers’ concerns and enable them to work at ease.

Bridging Different Career Paths

Classified training, performance appraisals, and incentives are all designed to effectively encourage young teachers to find their proper career anchors in the organizational environment. Considering that career anchors are exposed to the possibility of changes, it is necessary for higher education institutions to bridge different career paths in the following three manners.

The first is the internal shift among the three types of teaching posts. It means opening smooth channels for the flow of young teachers among lecturing-oriented, academic research-oriented, and social service-oriented posts, providing expedience for young teachers to find suitable career anchors as soon as possible. This kind of shift is relatively less difficult to realize, but is of great benefits,especially for young teachers.

The second is the shift from teaching posts to administrative ones. This kind of shift can be divided into two forms: One is through selection and appointment by the management; the other is the re-fixation of career pathways. This paper focuses on the latter. In the case that young teachers find themselves unsuitable for any of the three kinds of teaching posts in their career development but fit for administrative work, higher education institutions can consider internal moves within the scope of human resource planning. Factors involved in such a position change, including the conversion of payments between different posts, performance appraisals, and professional title evaluations, should be handled professionally.

The third is the withdrawal from the higher education institutions system. This is a “sharp change” of career anchors for young teachers. As young teachers are usually bold and ambitious, it is inevitable that some of them may come up with the idea of leaving this field for opportunities in some other industry.Therefore, higher education institutions should establish and improve a complete withdrawal mechanism for teachers with reference to different types of employment.

Conclusion

Currently, there is an increasing need for diversifying the paths of teachers’ career development in higher education institutes, and the paths are apparently becoming more and more complex. Higher education institutes can help young teachers upgrade and transform their career anchors by paying attention to the macro and micro levels of the organizational environment, respecting the patterns of their career development, and supporting them to anchor their career development direction.