Migrating selves: reconstructing and renegotiating Black immigrant academic identities

ABSTRACT

This study set out to explore how Black immigrant academics (BIAs) reconstruct their identities within academe. Utilising the research methodology of narrative inquiry, this article explores how BIAs came to see themselves across those communities, which were of primary importance to them in the reformation of their identities. Through the construction of narratives of experience, their lived and told stories emphasised the diversity of their identities that were negotiated with others within personal, historical and situational contexts. The study of BIAs’ lives from their perspective, in which they actively and socially develop their identities, not only provides a lens through which they can be understood as shifting constructions of identity but allows them to rethink who they are and have become and what influence power relations have in promoting or negating their sense of academic self.     

Teaching Identity and Autonomy

Liberal theorists often link autonomy and identity together, since, these liberals argue, an education that bestows a particular identity on children undermines their autonomy. The charge of schools ought to be to teach children to be open to a variety of identities. Encounters with diversity and cosmopolitanism are good, since they encourage students to think deeply about their own identity, while traditional religions and nationalism seek to impress a particular identity on students. This standard liberal account, echoed in some of the essays in this book, underplays the ways in which education is a cultural practice like many others. Moreover, as other essays in this volume point out, there are good reasons to want aspects of a common culture to be transmitted in schools—in democratic states we want citizens to be able to understand one another, and to have some understanding of important historical events in the country's history. Yet schools that teach an honest history of one's country, and that teach about the country's political principles, will impress upon students only a partially shared identity. That this identity be only partly shared is important: it allows for differences among students, differences that ought to be understood, at least to some extent.     

论校长学术身份的“失重”与重构

校长职务的身份结构主要包括学术身份和行政身份。以行政主义为核心 ,以高考意识形态为辅助 ,两种外部力量共同完成了我国校长职务两种身份分离的过程 ,其结果是形成了当代校长职务行政身份凸显、学术身份“失重”的非常态结构。它对学校领导与管理造成的现实后果是 :行政管理取代学术领导 ;权力运作方式强制多于沟通 ;资源分配带有倾斜性。校长学术身份重构主要通过校长管理的制度安排完成     

Academic identities and communities of practice in a professional discipline

This paper explores the dynamics surrounding the formation of academic identities in a context where the nature of academic work is contested both as a result of tensions within the discipline and in response to pressure from both the institution and the field of higher education. It is based on a case study which investigated the process of academic identity formation at the micro level of a department at a South African university. The study revealed a complex relationship between identity construction and participation within the particular configuration of teaching, professional and research communities of practice that defined the academic field in the department. Multiple identity trajectories were evident, indicating the role of individual agency, despite the dominance of a professional community of practice within the department. The arrival of new academics in the department without professional practice experience was found to have created the possibility of a changed notion of the academic within the discipline.     

The Discursive Construction of National Identity in Multilingual Britain

Concerns about identity in educational research and theory have understandably focused on politically salient identity categories, especially class, race/ethnicity, and sex/gender. This focus contributes to political discourse, but offers a simplistic if not totally misleading picture of which identities are observably relevant in educational settings and practice. Politically salient categories are not always relevant in particular educational contexts, and even when they are, their relevance cannot properly be understood without an appreciation for the multiplicity and diversity of identities which become relevant in particular contexts and courses of action. These arguments are illustrated with reference to the case of Mary Daly, the feminist professor who refused to integrate male students into her women's studies courses. A detailed analysis of a news interview excerpt, drawing upon ethnomethodological conversation analysis, suggests how identity can be respecified more widely and more finely by situating identity within natural language use and social interaction.     

The research-teaching nexus in nurse and teacher education: contributions of an ecological approach to academic identities in professional fields

In developing graduates for the knowledge society lecturers in higher education may seek to strengthen links between research and teaching. Much of the previous work on the research-teaching nexus is within traditional universities and subject disciplines. In aiming to deepen understanding of the research and teaching nexus this paper focuses on the academic identities of higher education lecturers working in newer higher education institutions and in the professional fields of nursing and of teacher education. A qualitative study, informed by professional identity construction as an ecological concept, was conducted. The findings align with previous studies concerning similarities between lecturers in nurse and teacher education, but they contrast with previous studies concerning differences between these two groups of lecturers. Similarities include the priority given by professional educators to their responsibility for preparing new clinical practitioners; the research-led model as the lecturers’ main approach to the research-teaching nexus; and their difficulties in coping with current demands in academic work. Differences between the two groups of lecturers include the way that ‘practitioner identity’ is positioned within their current academic identities and the way that they position initial education within the wider professional field. These differences indicate different kinds of connections between teaching and research. The paper proposes an ecological approach to understanding the research-teaching nexus.     

Looking for their voice: the formation of identity in the new Israeli principals’ organisation

ABSTRACT

Based on an in-depth analysis of newspaper articles and internal documents, in this article I examine the formation of a new collective and glocal identity for the Israeli principals’ organisation, Manhigim, which was established in October 2018. I show how, in the process of establishing the organisation, the leaders formed a collective glocal identity comprised of three distinct identities, namely a labour union identity, a professional identity, and a political identity. These identities respond to the question, ‘Who are we?’ As such, they have relationships to the past, present, and expected future. Each one of the identities is glocally constructed; that is, it is influenced by global norms and values, but also by local problems and concerns. My findings suggest that, by stressing the global values of autonomy, trust, and partnership, the organisation’s leaders facilitated an interesting reformulation of the principals’ professional identities. Moreover, they positioned the organisation as the most knowledgeable and important actor in the Israeli educational field. As such, the glocal identity legitimises the primacy and acceptance of the new principals’ organisation as an integral part of the system of Israeli education policymakers.     

Learner identity and transition: an ethnographic exploration of undergraduate trajectories

This article considers ethnographic data collected during undergraduate students’ transition to higher education. Drawing on communities of practice theory, the research focuses on the psychological process of identity as a trajectory, considering how reconciliation and negotiation of identities across and between communities influence transition. We aimed to explore the ways in which incoming identity influences participation and higher education learner identity, consider the academic practices which construct the transition experience and analyse those practices in terms of learner identity and participation. The data sources included observations, informal social interactions, one-to-one interviews and document analysis. Data collection took place over the first term of an undergraduate course. A theoretical thematic analysis was undertaken investigating the ways in which identity shaped participation, the practices that influenced participation and how participation subsequently influenced learner identity. We argue that the reconciliation of past, present and future identities is psychologically challenging for students during educational transition and this influences individual trajectories. Some practices assumed an already autonomous learner rather than enabling development of autonomy. Inability to participate in valued (and often implicit) academic practice was seen to negatively influence learner identities, delaying full participation. The focus for transition research could therefore consider enabling systems and practices which acknowledge differences and fully support successful changes in learner identity.     

Student identity construction in online teacher education: a narrative life history approach

This paper explores student identity construction through the narrative life history of one non-traditional student, engaged in teacher education in a non-traditional way – a fully online university degree course. The students within this course are all mature-aged. Most are female, and have already developed personal identities as partners, friends and mothers, as well as professional identities such as teacher aides. Adding the new identity of “student” to these already established roles has an impact on these participants’ actions, beliefs, experiences and hence on their identities. Further, the notion that they are now “pre-service teachers” forces students to consider their professional identity in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways. This paper explores the challenges for one student created by the need to negotiate this complexity. Through this exploration using narrative life history methods, the paper considers the implications of the experience of becoming a student and a teacher.     

Constructing academic identity in the changing Russian higher education context: preliminary perspectives

ABSTRACT

Currently, Russian academics are facing significant demands because of a new, urgent requirement to pursue their research in accordance with international standards. Until recently, these academics were used to working within a familiar community and communicating their research via the Russian language, but now, they are expected to move beyond that and function on a global level, which can challenge their academic identities. A qualitative study was carried out in a research-intensive Russian university. The aim was to explore academics’ experiences and perceptions of the dynamic changes in their academic work with a particular focus on the limitations and pressures they meet in their career path towards global research. The data were collected by means of reflective journals during a course on English for academic purposes. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The results showed that global trends turned out to be unachievable for Russian academics due to the lack of specific knowledge, attributes and skills required to do research globally. This might be the first study from Russia contributing to the literature on academic identity construction. The article provides insights into the experiences and perceptions of Russian academics and offers a research agenda for further investigation to bridge identity shifts in academia. In terms of practical purposes, the results will be used as a source of preliminary data within a broader research project aimed at supporting Russian academics in their research in an international English-speaking academic context.     

Pains and gains of working in Chinese universities: an academic returnee's journey

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, an increasing number of overseas Chinese PhD graduates have returned to China to develop their career. For these academic returnees, one of the challenges is to (re)construct an academic identity in a familiar context that is also strange because they have been absent for a few years. In this autobiographical paper, the researcher describes and reflects upon the pains and gains experienced when re-entering and working in Chinese universities as a PhD returnee, revealing the process of his academic identity (re)construction when adjusting to different academic assessment policies. This writing offers an individual perspective on the challenges to returnees’ academic identity (re)construction and argues for the need to set up in-between spaces for inter/cross-disciplinary academic discourse between returnees and local scholars at Chinese universities. This paper aims to contribute to pedagogic debate on the development of more open research practices in Chinese universities.     

新疆南疆地区维吾尔族青少年国家认同与民族认同比较研究

民族认同与国家认同是民族地区青少年需要面对的双重认同问题,树立正确的民族认同观与国家认同观直接关系到民族文化的传播和国家的稳定。在对新疆南疆地区2116名青少年进行比较研究后发现：南疆地区维吾尔族青少年的国家认同较民族认同相比表现得更为积极,与汉族青少年相比,他们的国家认同较低而民族认同较高 国家认同的形成会提升维吾尔族青少年的民族认同 来自县镇和城市的青少年群体在国家认同和民族认同上都较高,而农村的相对较低 父母亲的文化程度越高,子女的国家认同与民族认同就越高。     

Changing academic identities in changing academic workplaces: learning from academics’ everyday professional writing practices

In this article we examine issues of academic identity through the lens of academics’ everyday workplace writing, offering a complementary perspective to those already evident in the higher education research literature. Motivated by an interest in the relationship between routine writing and aspects of professional practice, we draw on data from interviews with 30 academics across three different universities. Our discussion is illustrated with excerpts from interview data, and is organised around three emerging themes: ‘reconstructing academic identities in a shifting academic workplace’, ‘considering new articulations of disciplinarity’, and ‘moving on from the golden age’. We conclude that the reconstruction of academic identities, through engagement with established and emerging workplace documents, may well be enabling academics to build new identities within the changing university.     

Senior management perspectives of mathematics and statistics support in higher education: moving to an ‘ecological’ approach

This article explores the perspectives of three senior managers in higher education institutions in England regarding their mathematics and statistics support provision. It does so by means of a qualitative case study that draws upon the writing of Ronald Barnett about the identity of an ‘ecological’ university, along with metaphors associated with the notion of organisations as living ‘organisms’, suggested by Gareth Morgan. Using these ideas as a heuristic sheds light upon the view that whilst outwardly universities appear to represent a uniform landscape, mathematics and statistics support alternatively, can be seen as different ‘species’ within the higher education system. The study illustrates how three universities occupying contrasting ecological ‘niches’ are responding to the challenges they face by providing and planning different forms of learning support for mathematics and statistics. In conclusion, it is recommended that senior managers reflect upon the possibilities offered by the idea of ‘ecological’ identities in order to explore how they might respond strategically to a rapidly changing environment. This includes adapting various solutions and the further development of innovative ways of supporting students’ transitions throughout the academic lifecycle. In addition, an ecological approach could also aid the formation of the co-creational relationships and networks required for the future success of those developments.     

A co-creation shift in learning management: work design for institutional commitment and personal growth

Some higher education management departments have started to implement customer service orientation strategies in their marketing activities in order to solidify value exchange perceptions, differentiate themselves, and improve retention rates. However, if students are to get the most out of their academic experiences, they need to become meaningfully and psychologically involved in their studies. This research study explored the specific job context of students within the higher education environment by testing the structure of the “work of students” by utilizing job design theories. The ensuing conceptual Student Engagement Work Design Model (SEWDM) and the empirical findings provide a roadmap of how the engagement elements of autonomy, feedback, skill variety, task identity, and customer services can be utilized by universities when attempting to predict institutional commitment and personal growth needs. A co-creation approach to management education is definitely more complicated to promote and implement, but it has the larger payback as costs can be lowered through the careful design of the students’ work so it will be motivational—with students helping to create a better educational experience for their peers, the faculty, and the community resulting in more positive word-of-mouth promotions.     

Higher education change and professional-academic identity in newly ‘academic’ disciplines: the case of nurse education

This article is a study of the competing academic and professional identity frameworks of lecturers whose discipline has only recently become part of the business of higher education. The article engages with important questions about higher education change and purpose, standards and parity among disciplines. Taking a critical ethnographic approach, it combines policy discussion of shifting higher educational and nurse education regimes with an insider investigation into the attempts of a group of new nurse lecturers in a pre-1992 English university to make sense of their work and identity in an already contested site. These experiences and perceptions are analysed from the perspectives of autonomy, status and rival knowledge regimes. By underlining the diversity of lecturer experiences in these terms, the article contributes to discussion of new stratification. It suggests that despite the apparent merging in many respects of professional and academic frameworks, higher education practitioners in such newly ‘academic’ disciplines can still find traditional professional identities more reliable conferrers of meaning than academic ones.     

论大学教师学术创新力的基础:学术自主能力

随着创新型国家战略目标的提出,大学教师要提升其学术创新能力,为创新型国家建设提供成果,而学术自主能力对大学教师学术创新力的提高起着关键作用。本文在探讨了学术自主概念内涵后,提出学术自主能力主要包括学术意识自主和学术行为自主两方面。在学术意识自主方面,大学教师要具有自我判断和自我控制的能力。而自我决定能力和自我行动能力则体现了学术行为自主。自我判断能力指大学教师从事学术研究所具有的自觉创新意识状态;自我控制能力是指大学教师在从事研究的过程中受到研究人员本身无法控制的多种因素影响时,能够抵制外界环境的影响,遵守学术规范,潜心进行学术创新研究的能力;自我决定能力指大学教师能够遵守学术内在的发展规律和自身逻辑性,并能自主进行学术创新研究的能力;自我行动能力是指在学术研究过程中,能够参加社会活动、自由言论和出版自己研究成果的能力。     

Constr(i)(u)cting Lesbian Identities in Physical Education: Feminist and Poststructural Approaches to Researching Sexuality

The article explores some assumptions and limitations of current research about lesbians in physical education. Research has explored the identity management strategies used by lesbian teachers (Griffin, 1992b; Sparkes, 1994; Woods, 1992), based upon liberal and radical feminist assumptions that a “lesbian identity” exists in some essential form (Jaggar, 1988). Materialist feminist theory refuses any “essential” lesbian identity, but acknowledges the social construction of particular lesbian identities within specific historical conditions, illustrated in the work of Cahn (1994). Poststructural theorists (Bryson & de Castell, 1993; Butler, 1990; Pronger, 1990, 1992) also reject the existence of essentialized identities, and argue instead that “effects” of sexualities are continually being performed at the surface of the body. I argue this poststructural assumption, that lesbian identities do not really exist, is compatible with a politics “as if” they existed (Riley, 1988). Finally, the paper calls for a shift in research focus away from individual lesbian identity toward how institutional discourses constrict and construct lesbian identities.     

无线自组织网络中一个组匿名通信方案

为了满足Ad Hoc网络的一些应用场合对身份匿名的要求,如自组匿名电子选举、自组匿名民主评议委员会等,提出一个身份匿名方案。首先,要匿名通信的节点组建一个通信组,再用它们的真实身份协商出一个秘密组密钥和组参数。然后,根据协商出来的秘密组参数各自生成自己的组内可认证的组身份,最后以该组内身份进行组内通信。同时给出了组更新和组内身份匿名撤销的方案,并对整个方案进行了安全性和匿名性分析。