Interviste
Interviews
a cura di Annamaria Di Fabio
Università degli Studi di Firenze
Intervista a Peter McIlveen – PhD research supervisor in the area of agriculture, land and farm management; education counseling; health, clinical and counseling psychology; industrial and organizational psychology and vocational psychology. He is at the School of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist Education, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia.
1) Your professional experience is in clinical, educational, and workplace settings. Now, your research and teaching is focused on workforce development, including the attraction, motivation and retention of workers in occupations that are vital to society (e.g., teachers, farmers). Can you explain how this path was born?
There are two important philosophical points to answer this question. First, food, clothing, and shelter are basic human needs. These things are human rights. Second, work is a definitively human behavior. Most people work with people and for people. Human work is essentially relational; work is about people. When I worked in clinical mental health services, so many of my patients were unwell because of work and relationships. In the contemporary world of work, one cannot understand work without an understanding of its relational qualities. Professor David Blustein (Boston College) and his Psychology of Working framework inspires my research and teaching that is directed toward improving individuals’ experiences and engagement in work. Blustein’s Psychology of Working is the paradigmatic and ethical foundation of my research team, ACCELL. We aim to use our psychological expertise to enhance the production of food and fibre, and to enhance people’s employability. I was raised in a rural community and personally understand the importance of work in people’s lives, particularly those who produce the food that we eat and the clothes that we wear. Agriculture is the future of humanity. Thus, my research team is focused on those occupations that are vital to society. My research team is the Australian Collaboratory for Career Employment & Learning for Living (ACCELL): www.accell-research.com
2) What are the main research questions of this area?
The sustainability of food supply is a major concern to the world, and hunger is a target of the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). A key to the solution to that problem is the supply of labour needed for agricultural production and distribution (McIlveen, 2015). Although there has been an immense decline in hunger affecting approximately 173 million people since 1990, worldwide one in every eighth person continues to suffer (United Nations, 2014). Social science research can make a significant contribution to the economic development of agricultural science and engineering industries that are intrinsic to the labour supply of agriculture. My research team is addressing this agricultural research agenda from the perspective of vocational psychology and career development. With respect to our research into agriculture, the main research questions are the following: What psychosocial factors attract individuals to agricultural science and engineering careers, specifically in rural and remote regions? What psychosocial factors contribute to retention figures in agricultural sciences and engineering, and do these factors interact with attraction or motivational processes? I think that answering these research questions is a new goal for psychology and for humanity.
3) What are the implications that such research can determine at the level of interventions?
First, we must change attitudes toward work and its place in our lives. Work is about people. Of course, people work to meet basic needs of survival. But more than that, people work to create meaning and community with one another. Next, we must change educational attitudes toward work and learning. Education is not only for work. Education is about democracy and growth of humanity. We must not allow education to become a servant. Education is a right in its own right. We must first prioritize the need for work and the need for education as human rights. Humanity is reliant on work and education to survive. Our research provides new perspectives on how to change education and work to suit their real purposes as uniquely human endeavours. For example, researchers in my team have designed new career assessment tools to assist students and teachers to make better choices for career decisions about what to do after senior high school. Some of these interventions are directed toward agriculture and engineering. In other areas, we are creating educational materials to support farmers and farm workers to better engage in their work and be more satisfied.
4) What psychological paths and what new challenges do you see for the future?
The great challenges facing humanity are about sustainability. As humans, we all share one planet with limited resources. As humans we have enormous talent and intelligence to solve the greatest of problems—we have do so before and we can do so again. Humans create these problems and humans can solve these problems. Therefore, the science of humanity—psychology—can and should make a contribution to how the world creates its own sustainability. Beyond the basic of food and fibre, work is a gift of meaningfulness in which all people should share. How can psychology contribute to efforts to ensure that meaningful, decent work is present in the lives of fellow human beings? That is the great question we must answer.
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© 2017 Edizioni Centro Studi Erickson S.p.A.
ISSN 2421-2202. Counseling.
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