The Coronavirus crisis will have a huge impact on all of our (working) lives. As with all UK universities’ staff, IER staff are now working from home and trying to work normally as best as possible. However there will be significant challenges both undertaking research and juggling domestic responsibilities. All of our funders have been contacted and made aware of this situation. We know that all of you will be facing similar challenges and wish you well over the next few months. Please take care and stay safe.
Congratulations to Professor Jenny Bimrose on the Lifetime Achievement Award
Professor Jenny Bimrose was awarded the Rodney Cox Lifetime Achievement Award at the CDI’s ‘UK Career Development Awards’ held on 11 March. The presentation was made by Dave Cordle, the CDI president, on behalf of the CDI’s board of directors. The award is in recognition of Jenny’s sustained and significant contribution to the careers sector in which she has worked in for over 40 years. Jenny recently retired from IER, but has continued her research in the careers field. The award was sponsored by C&K Careers. You can read more on Jenny’s career and her recent publications in this University of Warwick press release.
Research report: The role of parents in providing careers guidance and how they can be supported
It is a widely accepted notion that involving parents in careers education and guidance (CEG) is highly desirable. Although parents and carers undoubtedly influence the career development of young people in their care, with a range of consequences, robust evidence of what, when and how parental behaviours constructively support their children’s learning about career progression remains elusive. Sally-Anne Barnes, with Jenny Bimrose, Alan Brown and John Gough, have been undertaking an international evidence review to understand how parents and carers can be better supported by schools and colleges to feel more informed and confident in how they support education and career choices. This has been undertaken with the support of the Gatsby Foundation and the JP Morgan Chase Foundation. This study has produced a wealth of experiential evidence on the engagement of parents, as well as an overview of what is happening in practice. The evidence report has now been published and it is available on the IER website. Sign up to find out more or join an upcoming webinar.
Barnes, S-A., Bimrose, J., Brown, A., Gough, J. & Wright, S. (2020). The role of parents and carers in providing careers guidance and how they can be better supported: Evidence report. Coventry: University of Warwick.
Article on job quality and job satisfaction among male part-time workers in the UK
The article co-authored by IER's Clare Lyonette addresses two sizable gaps in knowledge concerning male part‐timers: are men's part‐time jobs of lower quality than men's full‐time jobs? Are male part‐timers more or less job‐satisfied compared to their full‐time peers? For both questions, we examine whether men's part‐time employment varies by occupational class. The article is motivated by the large body of work on female part‐timers, even though male part-time work has been increasing in recent years. Its theoretical framework is rooted in one of the most controversial discussions in the sociology of women workers: the “grateful slave” debate that emerged in the 1990s when researchers sought to explain why so many women expressed job satisfaction with low‐quality part‐time jobs. Innovatively, this article draws upon and challenges those contentious ideas to provide new insights into male, rather than female, part‐time employment. The results provide clear evidence of low‐quality male part‐time employment in the UK, when compared with men's full‐time jobs. Men working part‐time also express deteriorating satisfaction with jobs overall and in several specific dimensions of their jobs. Male part‐timers in lower occupational class positions retain a clear “lead” both in bad job quality and low satisfaction.
You can find more information on the topic of this article in this blog post.
Warren, T. and Lyonette, C. (2020) ‘Ungrateful slaves? An examination of job quality and job satisfaction for male part-time workers in the UK’. British Journal of Sociology 71 (2): 382-402.
Labour market information for SEN students in Kent and Medway
This month Sally-Anne Barnes presented at the Kent and Medway Careers Conference organised by the MY Trust. The conference focused on 'How can we improve outcomes for SEN students who do not have an EHCP through our career programmes?'. The whole day comprised presentations from those working with SEN students through a range of initiatives. Sally-Anne presented on how to find and use labour market information (LMI) to understand the labour market with a particular focus on using LMI in practice and assessing sources who use LMI for All data in their websites. The final part of the presentation gave attendees the opportunity to reflect on the types of LMI that could be useful for SEN students. The whole day was aimed at getting attendees to think about the Gatsby benchmarks and reflect on their learning in terms of the benchmarks.
