This book is about promising research advancements that sparked directly or indirectly from intellectual contributions by distinguished internationally recognized mathematics educator and researcher, Edward A. Silver. The features of this book include: (1) A focus on the research areas that have benefited from Dr. Silver's intellectual…

Postdoctoral scholars constitute a sizeable population within the academic workforce. Given the intended role of a postdoc position as a time of advanced training and professional development for a future academic career, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, it is important to understand whether and how well…

The complexity and challenges of higher education (HE) in recent times have been widely discussed in HE literature, as have concomitant demands on university teachers and their professional learning needs. Much attention has been paid to new academics in these conversations, but less so to international PhD and post-doctoral researchers, who are…

Internationally, career prospects for postdocs, whether salaried on a Principal Investigator's (PI) grant or a fellowship, are precarious. Yet, many aspire to permanent research-teaching positions, and to achieve this goal they often strive to gain PI funding to demonstrate their research potential. Like many developers in research-intensive…

Experiential learning is an effective educational tool across many academic disciplines, including career development. Nine different institutions bridged by the National Institutes of Health Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training Consortium compared their experiments in rethinking and expanding training of predoctoral graduate students and…

With a focus on possible gender differences, this study used 2003-2013 data from the "Survey of Doctorate Recipients" to examine individual, institutional, and early employment factors that contribute to career paths of recent doctorates who enter postsecondary academic appointments. Findings showed some noteworthy differences by gender…

Postdoctoral scholars are a critical labor source within academia, and a postdoc appointment has become a prerequisite to most academic science careers. A small but growing body of literature examines postdocs' career experiences and outcomes. The present research adds to this literature by seeking to understand how STEM postdocs exhibit science…

In the last decades, a vast number of post-industrialised economies have experienced a growing participation of women in higher education. However, men and women still differ with regard to their subsequent academic careers and labour market prospects. While several studies have disentangled the cumulative process of gender inequalities along the…

Many barriers have prevented women from advancing in academic STEM careers, especially women of color. Few studies have focused on the career paths of Latina STEM scholars and challenges they face as both women and as members of an ethnic minority group. We are investigating the career paths of former Latina UC President Postdoctoral fellows in…

The Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education (CADRE) offers advice on becoming a successful researcher in the field of STEM education and a portrait of an early career researcher support program. The advice offered throughout the guide comes from experienced researchers who are part of the National Science Foundation's Discovery…

Doing a "postdoc" following a doctorate is becoming more and more common worldwide as the pre-tenure job market continues shrinking in relation to the number of PhD graduates. Yet, behind statistics and descriptions of collective experience, how individuals experience the postdoctoral period is largely unknown, especially how they use…

While postdoctoral researchers (postdocs) are an increasingly important and productive group of employees in academia, they lack further career prospects and embeddedness within their organizations. This paper provides a rare glimpse into this relatively unexplored but important group. A comparative study of two Dutch universities included a…

The number of postdoctoral researchers has increased dramatically in the past decade. Because of the limited number of academic staff openings and the general levels of salary, the role and value of the postdoctoral appointment are changing. Using a sample of respondents with continuous data in the 1999 through 2008 "Survey of Doctoral…

What are the motivations, needs and interests of academics entering mid-career? To answer this question, we drew on data from our longitudinal research program to examine the career trajectories of thirteen social scientists and scientists, five or more years post-PhD, in research-teaching positions. We used an identity framework to understand how…

This article reports on a study that investigated whether postdoctoral training contributes to scientists' and engineers' attainment of tenure and full professorship in research-extensive universities. It was found that training does not assist scientists in climbing the career ladder faster nor does it help them to secure more…