Bertalan Magyar

▪ sociology and economics of education
▪ education-to-employment transition
▪ education policy and evaluation
▪ sustainable teacher workforce planning
▪ advanced quantitative and mixed methods research techniques
▪ questionnaire design and secondary analyses

My research programmes involve the following three main themes: (1) graduate employability concerns affecting post-school life transition of students, with particular attention to post-higher education pathways into work; (2) teacher retention and mobility issues in Australia, with a particular focus on outlining the potentials of professional development programmes for smoothing the integration of early career teachers into the profession; (3) post-school life challenges of young people, with a focus on socio-economic issues that hinder ‘smooth’ work-transitions.

The first topic is mainly the continuation of the issues I explored in my doctoral work, while the second and third themes revolve around issues I have been keenly interrogating since joining Monash. The second theme (teacher retention) relates to issues in Australian teacher education, including attrition of early-career teachers, non-retiring related career suspension of experienced teachers, teacher socialisation, professional development, and the public perception of the teaching profession. My third research theme is about interrogating key issues in Australian youth studies. In particular, I am interested in finding realistic ways to foster industry-school partnership to be a part of progressive career education which aims to open a window for students to the world of contemporary work. I believe industry-school partnership-based progressive career education requires a somewhat new way of thinking about the relationships among teaching, learning, employability, and ‘work skills’. Supportive school leadership is essential to foster this kind of collaborations across Australia.

I joined Monash as a postdoctoral fellow at the end of 2019. With a background in Sociology and Political Science, my education-focused research tackles the manifestation of social inequalities across all segments of the broader education system. I completed my doctoral studies in Sociology at the University of Auckland. My thesis (“A Mixed Methodological Interrogation of the Undergraduate Student Experience, Socialisation, and Fields of Study in 21st Century New Zealand”) is available via an online repository (link here). I have been involved in a number of projects in the Faculty of Education, Department of Sociology, Business School, and Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics at the University of Auckland. Outside academia, I worked in market research and carried out analyses for local governments. In my academic work, I aim to deploy multidisciplinary approaches and multi-method research techniques to ensure that the invariably complex research problems are adequately addressed by using all available analytical tools.

▪ social and economic contexts of educational inequalities
▪ graduate outcomes and employability
▪ education policy and teacher education
▪ international educational assessment
▪ mixed-methods research design
▪ advanced quantitative analyses of large-scale data