Changing professional identity in the transition from practitioner to lecturer in higher education: an interpretive phenomenological analysis. Issue 3 (2nd July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wood, Colin; Farmer, Mark D.; Goodall, Dawn
• Is Part Of: Research in post-compulsory education. Volume 21:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 229
• Page End: 245
• Publication Date: 2016-07-02
• Subjects: New lecturers -- practitioners -- transitions -- academic identities; Post-compulsory education -- Research -- Periodicals; Education, Higher -- Research -- Periodicals; 374
• DOI: 10.1080/13596748.2016.1195173
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1359-6748

Abstract

Abstract: This research explores the experiences of five professional practitioners from disciplines including teaching, youth work, sport and health, who had become lecturers in higher education. Their experiences are considered using interpretative phenomenological analysis and tentative conclusions are reached on the meaning of such experiences for the individuals. The work extends previous studies to consider the relationship between knowledge and influence and how institutional preference for knowledge gained from research impacts on the validity of knowledge derived from professional experience. The research finds shared feelings associated with inauthenticity and loss arising from concerns that the contribution of the professional in higher education is undervalued. The research challenges the assumption that professional practitioners adopt the professional identity of a lecturer in higher education, instead finding that they create their own professional identities in the liminal space between the professional and academic domains, but points to difficulties associated with constructed nature of such professional identities within the institutional structure of a higher education institution.