The two dimensions of Italian academics’ public engagement

Abstract

The article aims at investigating Italian academics’ Public Engagement highlighting its two dimensions, namely “Local Community Engagement” (LCE) and “General Political Engagement” (GPE). It is based on the results of a national survey on academics’ third mission activities carried out in the year 2015/2016 collecting information from a representative sample of 5,123 respondents working at 62 universities, with a response rate of 34.2%. In addition to detecting distinct dimensions of academics’ Public Engagement, data analysis shows that Italian academics are much more involved in LCE activities than in GPE ones. Although both LCE and GPE are influenced by many common factors, such as academic rank, discipline and being involved in other third mission activities, they also display peculiar traits: LCE activities are more likely to involve academic women while GPE are more likely to be carried out by older academics; LCE activities appear to be context-dependent while GPE activities are not. Hence, the article offers a contribution to a better understanding of the different goals of Public Engagement activities and of their spatial dimension.

Is public engagement gendered? An analytical proposal using some evidence from Italy

“…Among these, the gender factor is the most ambiguous because it is not clear if it discriminates the participation in these activities, and if so, in which direction. In fact, in some studies, being male is positively associated with the engagement (Bentley and Kyvik, 2011;Besley et al, 2012;Crettaz von Roten, 2011;Kreimer et al, 2011), in others, it is negatively associated (Jensen, 2011;Jensen et al, 2008), and in others, it is not associated (Anzivino et al, 2018;Dudo, 2012). This ambiguity does not exist for the other personal and academic characteristics.…”

“…Age is usually positively associated with public engagement, as well as academic rank, seniority and belonging to some academic fields. In fact, being aged, senior or full professor increases the probability of being involved in public engagement activities (Anzivino et al, 2018;Bentley and Kyvik, 2011;Jensen, 2011;Jensen et al, 2008;Kyvik, 2005;Scamuzzi and Tipaldo, 2015;Thune et al, 2016), and all studies show that social science and humanities' scholars -when these disciplines are included -are more involved in public engagement activities than those belonging to STEM disciplines (Anzivino et al, 2018;Burchell et al, 2017;Jensen, 2011;Kreimer et al, 2011;Kyvik, 2005;Rainie et al, 2015;Thune et al, 2016).…”

Can you do all in one professional label? Complementarity, substitution, and independence effects in academic life

“…The interplay between knowledge transfer and academic citizenship can in fact be traced back to individual and contextual factors (Schmidt & Graversen, 2018;Vogelgesang et al, 2010). At an individual level, engagement in knowledge transfer and academic citizenship has been related to previous accomplishments (e.g., Tagliaventi et al, 2019), research awards (e.g., Lutter & Schröder, 2016), grants obtained by research councils (e.g., Schmidt & Graversen, 2018), international collaborations (e.g., Cañibano et al, 2020), visiting scholarships (e.g., Jonkers & Cruz-Castro, 2013), discipline (Moosmayer, 2011;Crespi et al, 2011), gender (e.g., Anzivino et al, 2020), and academic rank (e.g., Salter et al, 2017). Taking context features into account, university size (e.g., Abramo et al, 2011), university and department orientation to research (Salter et al, 2017), and department heterogeneity (Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2013;Stewart, 2006) have been shown to be influential.…”

Academic excellence and community relevance: Can we have it all?

“…The problem with the above, similar to many other intuitive examples for the prisoner dilemma game (O’Connor, 2019), lies in its lack of fit to the facts. Studies show that academics who publish more also obtain higher levels of public engagement (Anzivino et al, 2021; Besley et al, 2013; Entradas et al, 2019; Jensen, 2011). The evidence—not only historical but also current—shows that the presumed excellence–relevance trade-off is wrong.…”

“…Yet one cannot miss the critical overtones among many faculty members experiencing a crushing trade-off between the university’s goals of social relevance and research excellence. The sad result is mediocre levels of social engagement among faculty (Anzivino et al, 2021)—and relatively low levels of trust in science among the general public, particularly in lower socioeconomic communities (Wellcome Global Monitor 2018, 2019). 1 Various factors are used for explaining the problem of trust, yet in this article our main focus is justice.…”