Diversifying Academic and Professional Identities in Higher Education: Some management challenges

This paper draws on an international study of the management challenges arising from diversifying academic and professional identities in higher education. These challenges include, for instance, the introduction of practice‐based disciplines with different traditions such as health and social care, the changing aspirations and expectations of younger generations of staff, a diffusion of management responsibilities and structures, and imperatives for a more holistic approach to the “employment package”, including new forms of recognition and reward. It is suggested that while academic and professional identities have become increasingly dynamic and multi‐faceted, change is occurring at different rates in different contexts. A model is offered, therefore, that relates approaches to “people management” to different organisational environments, against the general background of increasing resource constraint arising from the global economic downturn.     

Constructing a Sense of Purpose and a Professional Teaching Identity: Experiences of Teacher Candidates with Disabilities

Abstract

Using grounded theory, we examined the ways in which undergraduate teacher candidates with disabilities developed a sense of purpose and constructed professional identities. Our findings suggest K-12 experiences with advocacy as well as exclusionary school experiences influenced their emerging professional identities. Resistance to a deficit view of disability was central to teachers’ professional identities and influenced their desire to become “change agents” in their future professions. We describe collegiate experiences that affirmed or presented roadblocks to their career path.     

Understanding higher education-based teacher educators’ identities in Hong Kong: a sociocultural linguistic perspective

While teacher educator identities have received increasing attention over the past decade, there is a lack of research on teacher educators’ professional identities in the complex and shifting higher education contexts. Informed by the sociocultural linguistic perspective, this study investigates two language teacher educators’ professional identities in Hong Kong universities. The findings show that the participants discursively constructed their identities, such as “accidental teacher educator,” “teacher educator-researcher,” “struggling researcher,” “teacher of teachers,” and “inactive researcher” in their professional work. By drawing on the three interrelated processes of identity formation (i.e. adequation/distinction, authentication/denaturalisation, and authorisation/illegitimation), the study adds to our knowledge of the complex and contested nature of teacher educator identity in relation to the ongoing restructuring and reform in higher education. The study concludes with some implications for teacher education and higher education.     

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.     

School management and the struggle for effective schools

Abstract

This article explicates the viewpoints of school managers from various dysfunctional, historically black African schools. The 56 school managers from four Eastern Cape districts addressed several questions pertaining to what is really causing the lapse of management and leadership in various “failing schools”. Both these aspects apparently have a bearing on the performance of learners and educators. This was an explorative, qualitative study. Data was collected through focus group sessions with eight participants per session. All the schools represented are, by admission of the participants, “beset with varying managerial and academic problems” and are also labelled ineffective by the immediate communities. The participants highlighted a number of challenges that plagued their schools. The majority also attributed their schools’ under-performance to a number of aspects, including the lack of vision, absence of emphasis on teacher development, poverty in communities and apparent invisibility of district officials.     

“The Monkey King Meets the Spiderman”: Narrative Inquiry into Chinese Students’ Academic Socialization Experiences in a U.S. University

This narrative study explores four Chinese students’ academic socialization experiences in one research-intensive public university in the US. By drawing upon Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice and Gee’s (2000) theorizing on identity as the synthesized theoretical framework, this research uncovers four Chinese students’ academic socialization stories nestled in the shifting cross-cultural landscape. Meanwhile, this study reveals that the Chinese students’ academic socialization intersects a matrix of factors, which can be categorized into “personal landscape” and “professional landscape.” Last, this narrative case study concluded that the Chinese students’ academic socialization involves the continuous negotiations of their multiple identities embedded in the cross-cultural contexts.     

Shifting Identities and Blurring Boundaries: the Emergence of Third Space Professionals in UK Higher Education

This paper adds to earlier reviews by the author of the changing roles and identities of contemporary professional staff in UK higher education, and builds on a categorisation of professional staff identities as having bounded, cross‐boundary and unbounded characteristics. Drawing on a study of 54 professional managers in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, it describes a further category of blended professionals, who have mixed backgrounds and portfolios, comprising elements of both professional and academic activity. The paper goes on to introduce the concept of third space as an emergent territory between academic and professional domains, which is colonised primarily by less bounded forms of professional. The implications of these developments for institutions and for individuals are considered, and some international comparisons drawn. Finally, it is suggested that third space working may be indicative of future trends in professional identities, which may increasingly coalesce with those of academic colleagues who undertake project‐ and management‐oriented roles, so that new forms of third space professional are likely to continue to emerge.     

A SYSTEMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLICATIONS RELATIVE TO THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

“The accent in cultural history is on close examin‐ ation — of texts, of pictures, and of actions — and an open‐mindedness to what those examinations will reveal, rather than on elaboration of new master narratives.”

Lynn Hunt (Ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), p. 22.

“[Films] are a legitimate way ... of representing, interpreting, thinking about and making meaning from the traces of the past ... that seriously deals with the relationship of past and present.”

Robert A. Rosenstone (Ed.), Revisioning History (Princeton, N.J., 1995), p. 3.

One of postmodernism's major lines of development collapses the boundaries and hierarchical distinctions between elite or academic culture and popular culture, giving us new opportunities to cross boundaries separating history from literature and the arts, the “academic” from the “popular”, the archival from the imaginative. I embrace the freedom that postmodernism offers to entertain new ideas, play different kinds of language games, challenge established “ways of seeing”.

I propose here that we extend the range of what we regard as historical “source” to include film, and that film be accepted by historians of education as a legitimate form of textual representation and important evidentiary “source” for our exploration and interpre‐ tation of culture and of education. What follows is an attempt at integrating film into the historiography of education. For illustrative purposes, I've chosen Peter Weir's “Dead Poets Society” ("DPS”, 1989) for my text. I don't presume to give “the” meaning of “DPS” for understanding recent American educational history, but to suggest some of its possible meanings, which, given the problematic nature of “meaning” in our postmodern epoch, is about all we can hope for, but which may be enough to continue the conversation about movies after the movie is over.     

Structuring the Institution for Improved Effectiveness ‐ A University Perspective

This paper examines the involvement of academic staff in the management and administration of Australian higher education institutions, particularly universities.

An early focus is on the maelstrom of change from 1960 until the mid 1970s when change was generally equated with expansion and growth often without integrative forward planning. Three positive outcomes of this period of change are identified: an expansion of the passive concept of administration to include management and entrepreneurship as legitimate activities in the operation of universities and colleges; a greater involvement by academics in institutional management because, among other reasons, of the availability of enlarged data bases and heightened competition for diminishing resources; and the increasingly definitive forms of professionalisation among career administrators.

The deficient preparation of academics for management roles in Australian universities and colleges is contrasted with evidence of increased participation by administrators in management development activities including graduate programmes. Trigger films which are designed to provoke opportunities for learning in a peer group situation are presented as a particularly powerful remedy for this deficiency.

An evaluation of the TERC trigger film, “Decisions in Academic Departments”, by a small group of professional administrators from eight countries is then analysed. Such trigger films provide a stimulating and easily used resource for the improvement of management and administration in higher education.     

Changes in Professional Degree Programs in the USA: An Environmental Analysis of Professional Education Requirements

American universities, colleges and schools are uniformly moving toward modernisation and innovation in their academic programs. Nowhere is this more evident than in professional degree programs. The impetus behind the move is overall to produce quality graduates prepared for the changing environment and its demands of the 21st century. Another impetus is survival in the academic competition for students and revenue. A force that affects both impetuses is technology, both the technology of professional practice and the technology of educational delivery.

This paper is in two parts. The first part provides a comparison of changes in four professional degree programs in U.S. institutions, Accounting and Engineering at the baccalaureate level, and Business and Law at the graduate level. The second describes early efforts in the application of “total quality management” to curriculum planning and implementation.     

我国高校教师差异化聘用格局的表现、成因及评价

教师是高校的核心战略资源。近年来,高校教师差异化聘用趋势明显。差异化聘用表现为三种模式:一是不同职业发展轨迹下长聘轨教职和普通轨教职差异聘用;二是不同薪酬分配模式下年薪制教职和岗位薪酬制教职差异聘用;三是不同合同聘期下终身教职和任期教职差异聘用。差异化聘用源于一系列强制性因素和诱致性因素的共同作用。强制性因素主要是政府主导的教师聘用制改革所带来的自上而下的强力推动;诱致性因素主要是教师身份趋于多元,以及大学职能扩展和绩效管理所带来的自下而上的路径探索。差异化聘用三种模式交叉、共存,体现了教育公益、教师私益和高校绩效管理的有机结合,值得肯定。但也应警惕可能引发的过度市场化倾向、“精英”“普通”教师疏离、效率与学术不平衡等负面效应。     

L'enseignement du dessin dans les écoles centrales (1795‐1802)

The “Ecoles Centrales” were originally created by the Frena Convention in order to contribute to the education of the elite but the art classes were in fact assiduously attended by working class pupils.

By confronting the various teaching methods used by art teachers in the “Ecoles Centrales” with those in use at the end of the “Ancien Régime”, we shall study the appropriateness of their teaching methods compared with the aestheticand educational theories prevailing at the turn of the century. We shall also examine whether the art class effectively provided the students’ needs for professional experience.

Despite a commonly accepted idea, the teaching methods which originated from the academic tradition are not necessarily incompatible with working doss students. However, if a few teachers set/ lay down the basis for a changing in tìx teaching of elementary drawing by introducing geometry, it is more to rationalise the very first learning steps rather than attempt to implement methods adapted to the graphic training of workers and craftsmen.     

Top Team Structures in UK Higher Education Institutions: Composition,Challenges, and Changes

Higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide have been undergoing significant levels of structural change for a number of years, ranging from minor re-alignments of roles and responsibilities to radical changes such as the creation of new roles and new models of operating. This article discusses some initial findings from a recent UK-focused research project that investigated the challenges and changes associated with the composition of “top management team” (TMT) structures in HEIs. Using the key findings from desk research and empirical investigation in a sample of UK institutions, the article identifies some of the key changes in the roles and responsibilities of the TMT, and identifies examples of good “practice” or “process’ within institutions.

     

The rise of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">blended professional</Emphasis> in higher education: a comparison between the United Kingdom,Australia and the United States

This paper builds on earlier work by the author to explore the international dimensions of a study of the changing roles and identities of professional staff in higher education (Whitchurch 2008a, b). It further develops the concept of the blended professional, characterising individuals with identities drawn from both professional and academic domains, and examines the institutional spaces, knowledges, relationships and legitimacies that they construct. Comparisons between the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States are used to provide indicators of possible futures for this group of staff, including their positioning in the university community, the challenges they face, and the potentials that they offer to their institutions.     

Becoming a teacher educator: evidence from the field

This article makes a contribution to understanding the challenges new teacher educators face in establishing their professional identities in Higher Education. The data collected for the study allowed the researchers to analyse the tensions and conflicts arising for 28 teacher educators in their first 3 years of working on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses in England. The findings of the study show that, despite having previous successful careers in school teaching, the majority of the interviewees took between 2 and 3 years to establish their new professional identities. They faced challenges in two key areas—developing a pedagogy for HE-based ITE work and becoming research active. Meeting both of these challenges required significant adaptations to their previous identities as schoolteachers.     

New Approaches to the Study of Interpretation in Reading

Abstract

The Median Test was employed to test null hypotheses relevant to the perception of the college experience and variables related to academic motivation. Statistically significant differences were found for academic motivation variables, i.e., direction of aspirations, influence of precollege peer group, influence of the home, independence In planning, persistence, and self-control in terms of the type of “philosophy” of education endorsed by a random sample of 280 entering freshmen at a private midwestern university. The dominant perceptions, or “philosophies” endorsed were the “academic”, the “vocational”, or the “collegiate”. In general, on those academic motivation variables where statistically significant differences were obtained, the “collegiate” were lower while the “academics” were higher. The “vocational” tended not to depart from the grand population median value. Implications for student personnel workers in higher education are indicated and suggestions for further study are made.     

Designing the framework conditions for assuring academic standards: lessons learned about professional, market, and government regulation of academic quality

The new demands of mass systems of higher education and the emerging environment of global academic competition are altering the traditional institutions for assuring academic standards in universities. As a consequence many nations are experimenting with new instruments for academic quality assurance. Contemporary government control of academic quality assumes three primary forms: “oversight” or direct regulation; “competition” or steering of market forces; and “mutuality” or professional self-regulation structured by the state. The challenge confronting all nations is to design a policy framework that effectively balances the forces of the state, the market, and the academic profession to assure academic standards in universities. Based upon the strengths and weaknesses observed in 14 policy analyses of innovative national instruments of professional self-regulation, market-based regulation, and direct state regulation for assuring academic quality in universities, we outline the essential components of a national framework for assuring academic standards.     

Profession, “performance”, and policy: teachers,examinations, and the state in England and Wales, 1846–1862

Abstract

When historians discuss the impact of examinations on elementary education in mid-Victorian England and Wales they typically focus on the Revised Code of 1862. The Revised Code is famous for instituting a policy of “payment-by-results” for teachers in state-supported voluntary schools. “Payment-by-results” made government grants to schools – and, by extension, for teachers’ salaries – contingent upon student attendance and pass rates in reading, writing and arithmetic. As this article emphasises, however, “payment-by-results” was not the first, or even the most significant, instance in which competitive examination was used by the state as an instrument for establishing the pedagogical fitness and salaries of teachers. Less often explored by historians is the formative role that state-mandated competitive examinations for teachers played in developing a professionally aspirant body of schoolteachers and, consequently, the schoolteachers’ later role in developing competitive examination as a broad-scale national accreditation apparatus. But while the use of competitive examinations came to shape modern British academic and professional life in fundamental ways, the strengthening effects that they had for certain occupations and institutions, such as physicians, civil servants and middle-class secondary schools, were in fact ultimately denied to state teachers and the elementary education sector generally. With the introduction of “payment-by-results” in 1862, competitive examinations were converted into an instrument that weakened rather than strengthened teachers’ professional identity and policy influence. This article explains how the nineteenth-century English state structured examinations and examination results to manipulate the professional status of teachers in order to suit state priorities during different stages of national development. This historical narrative is framed in reference to present-day examination-based reforms of teacher compensation systems such as performance-related-pay and value-added modelling.     

Professional development for leaders of a large teaching team: A dual role

Abstract

Academics who lead large teaching teams of often inexperienced sessional staff have a dual role in professional development. They are both provider and participant. Academic leaders need to develop skills to fulfill their role effectively as the primary professional development provider for their team through opportunities to enhance skills in a range of areas; these areas include team leadership, team management and teaching for learning. In this scenario, there is a multilayered structure of provision of development opportunities. One level is that provided by the team leader and directly related to the needs of the team members and the requirements of the subject. The second level caters for the needs of the team leader in developing skills to effectively perform all the responsibilities of their role. Provision of professional development opportunities that cater for these may be the responsibility of the School, Faculty, Department or Staff Development Unit, depending upon the Institutional context. This paper will present a case study of the professional development programme offered to a large teaching team by an academic team leader. Some implications and issues arising from the case study that need to be addressed by professional developers and academic team leaders to enable and support the improvement of student, staff and organizational learning through professional development programmes will be discussed.