Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT:
This paper, presented in first person narrative, looks at the tensions that exist when professional identity in higher education is constructed with and against teaching identity. Using a post-structuralist perspective and an auto-ethnographic approach, the author explores her own experience of seeking to successfully secure tenure. An analysis of the author's written self-representations destined for hiring and evaluation committees is followed by an analysis of spontaneous writing that emerged through the research process. A juxtaposition of the analyses reveals the tensions that exist when academic work follows a previous career. The paper provides insight into the formation of professional identity of one new academic appointee and draws attention to the need to better understand professional identity in higher education.
RESUMÉ: Cet article présenté à la première personne, considère les tensions qui existent quand l'identité professionnelle dans les études supérieures, est forgée avec, et contre, l'identité enseignante. En se servant d'un point de vue post structuraliste et d'une approche auto ethnographique, l'auteur fouille dans sa propre expérience, celle qui est constituée d'une quête vers la titularisation sécurisante. Une analyse d'écrits spontanés qui a émergé à travers la procédure de recherche, fait suite à une analyse de l'auteur d'auto représentations écrites consacrées à l'embauche et aux comités d'évaluation. Un ensemble d'analyses révèle les malaises qui existent quand le travail universitaire vient à la suite d'une autre carrière. Cet article nous montre un aperçu de la formation de l'identité professionnelle d'un des nouveaux candidats universitaires retenus et attire l'attention sur le besoin de mieux comprendre l'identité professionnelle dans les études supérieures.
Introduction
The formation of professional identity is one interest that brought me back to the world of higher education several years after having completed my doctoral degree. I had not sought out a university position upon graduation, as I was involved in stimulating professional work at the time. I reconsidered employment in the academic world because of a desire to take on new challenges and to continue to explore teacher professional identity in a structured and sustained way. Significantly, it is my own professional identity that occupies my thoughts as I attempt to successfully navigate the road to tenure. I have been wrestling with the roles of teacher and researcher; I have been struggling...