• PDF / 966,831 Bytes
• 15 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
• 21 Downloads / 275 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT

---

1 Introduction Research in higher education has concentrated on a number of areas, which include the values and collective identities of academic faculty, their role in higher education governance, faculty norms and socialisation processes, and the impact of change in higher education on academic roles (Rhoades 2007). While many authors advocate the types of research methodology that should be used in such investigations, few question how academics come to possess the constructs and ideas that inform their professional identity. Academic identity generally relates to teaching and research activities that are subject or disciplined based (Deem 2006, p. 204). While the academic department (or a sub-unit of it) is usually the main one for academic staff, faculty members also operate within research, curriculum development, or teaching programme teams (Trowler and Knight 2000). Discipline-based cultures are the primary source of faculty members’ identity and expertise and include assumptions about what is to be known and how tasks to be performed, standards for effective performance, patterns of publication, professional interaction, and social and political status (Becher 1989). Each discipline has its own concept of success as a vehicle for prestige. Despite these differences, the academic profession possesses a set of common values across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, such as “academic freedom, the community of scholars, scrutiny of accepted wisdom, truth seeking, collegial governance, individual autonomy, and service to society through the production of knowledge, the transmission of culture, and education of the young” (Kuh and Whitt 1986, p.  76). In the same vein, reward structures in the academic profession across disciplines are based on prestige and symbolic

M. Clarke () · A. Hyde · J. Drennan University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] B. M. Kehm, U. Teichler (eds.), The Academic Profession in Europe: New Tasks and New Challenges, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4614-5_2, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

7

8

M. Clarke et al.

recognitions such as publications and awards. Faculty members learn the academic culture according to their discipline and specific department through a socialisation process (Mendoza 2007, p. 75). However, changes in higher education have added a further complexity to identity formation within higher education. Professional identity is not a stable entity; it is complex, personal, and shaped by contextual factors. Rhoades (2007) points to the fact that there is a lack of sufficient case studies to facilitate an understanding about the conditions and experiences of those working in the higher education system. The concept of professional identity is complicated by competing definitions. Rhoades (2007) suggests that in order to understand higher education, the relationships and interactions among the multiple professions within the orga