Conference Agenda

Against global neoliberal trends, the tenure-track system has spread widely in higher education. In China, its adoption—beginning in elite universities and subsequently expanding to non-elite institutions—has reshaped academic careers. The system typically follows an “up-or-out” or “up-or-transfer” model: pre-tenure academics must be promoted—usually to associate professor—within six years to secure permanency; failure often leads to dismissal or reassignment. Evaluation criteria are rigid and metric-driven, prioritizing publications and grants (Liu et al., 2025; Si, 2023). Many universities often over-hire, intensifying competition even among high-performing scholars (Li & Horta, 2024). This structure exerts heavy pressure on early-career academics, particularly straining work–life balance (Zhang et al., 2024). While existing research focuses on tenure’s impact on research output (e.g., Yang et al., 2024), the subjective experience of career sustainability remains underexplored. This study addresses: (1) To what extent do pre-tenure academics in Chinese universities experience their careers as sustainable? (2) What barriers, if any, do they encounter in pursuing more sustainable careers?

This study adopts the Sustainable Careers Model (De Vos 2024; De Vos et al., 2020), conceptualizing sustainability as a dynamic balance of performance, well-being, and employability within China’s competitive academic context. We operationalize it through three interrelated dimensions: health (physical/mental capacity to meet job demands), happiness (subjective career satisfaction and life-wide fulfillment), and productivity (measurable output and future employability) (Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006). Unlike models that emphasize individual agency, this framework foregrounds structural and temporal contexts—such as the workplace, family, and time—as critical to career trajectories.

In the last decades, higher education has gone through substantial structural and cultural transformation, including increasing precarity, intensified workload and performance expectations, and heightened competitiveness along with decreased job security. These changes particularly negatively affected early career academics, who are transitioning from being post-graduate students to faculty members. Early career academics, globally, are frequently employed on short or fixed-term contracts and burdened under unrealistic expectations for teaching, research, and institutional service (Cilli et al., 2023; Hollywood, et al., 2020). Previous research consistently showed that early career researchers struggle with high levels of stress, anxiety, and burnout (Cilli et al., 2023; Hollywood, et al., 2020).

Within this context, the concepts of well-being and mattering offer a valuable lens for understanding early career academics’ experiences. Well-being, although there are numerous definitions depending on context, refers to how people feel and function on an individual and societal level (Michaelson et al., 2012). Parallel to well-being, mattering refers to individuals’ perceptions of being valued, recognized, and significant to others (Prilleltensky, 2020; Rosenberg & McCullough, 1981). Research show that well-being and sense of mattering are significantly related (Flett et al., 2019; Paradisi et al., 2023). Indeed, it is argued by James (1890; as cited in Paradisi et al., 2023) that even when a person has a good sense of worth, but is not valued by others, they “cannot experience a complete sense of well-being”. In the same vein, Oyserman et al. (2007) suggested that mattering is “fundamental to well-being” (Flett et al., 2019). Despite this robust association, mattering and well-being have received comparatively limited association in research related to early career academics’ professional and instructional experiences.

Teaching constitutes a central component of academic work in higher education, and it is inherently relational and emotionally demanding. Conceptualizations of instructional quality extend beyond content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge to include instructors’ attitudes, passion for the topic, dynamism, and resourcefulness (Donohue & Bornman, 2021; Sogunro, 2017). Previous research suggest that effective instruction is shaped not only by technical competence, but also instructors’ emotional presence and ability to create meaningful engagement with students (Donohue & Bornman, 2021; Schunk et al., 2008).

For early career academics, teaching may, at the same time, represent an additional site of strain. Literature indicates that early career academics usually experience stress and burnout because of unrealistic expectations regarding teaching and research, as well as career progression and recognition (Hollywood et al., 2020). Although there are many studies on early career academics’ well-being, little is known about how they perceive their sense of mattering and well-being, and how it affects their instructional practices. The purpose of this study is to explore early career academics’ experiences of mattering and well-being, how they perceive the influences on those experiences, and how they understand the relationship between their mattering, well-being, and their perceived quality of instruction. Rather than establishing causal relationships or evaluating objective teaching outcomes, the study adopts an interpretive perspective focused on early career academics’ subjective sense-making processes.

The study addresses the following research questions:

1. How do early career academics describe their experiences of mattering and well-being within higher education institutions?
2. What institutional, relational, and work-related factors do early career academics perceive as shaping their sense of mattering and well-being?
3. How do early career academics perceive the relationship between their mattering, well-being and their perceived quality of instruction?