Reconstructing Identities in Higher Education

The rise of 'Third Space' professionals

Celia Whitchurch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136226373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Reconstructing Identities in Higher Education: The Rise of Third Space Professionals draws on studies conducted in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to explore the roles and identities of a growing number of staff associated with broadly based institutional projects such as student life and welfare, widening participation, learning support, community partnership, research and business partnership, and institutional research. Thus, at the same time as professional staff are acquiring academic credentials, some academic staff are moving in a more project-oriented direction. This has effectively created a Third Space between professional and academic spheres in which lateral interactions, involving teams and networks, occur in parallel with formal institutional structures and processes, and give rise to new forms of management and leadership. Yet such developments have tended to occur 'under the radar', and have not been fully articulated.

The concept of Third Space is offered as a way of exploring the knowledges, relationships, legitimacies and languages that characterise those who work in less boundaried roles, and the implications of these developments for both individuals and institutions. The ability to problematise and accommodate a series of paradoxes and tensions, for instance between formal and more open-ended structures and relationships, would appear to be at the heart of working in Third Space. Individuals also grapple with the fact that Third Space can, at one and the same time, be a safe haven for experimentation and creativity, and also a risky space in which there is likely to be contestation and uncertainty.

The text is addressed to professional and academic staff who, by design or default, for long or short periods, find themselves working in Third Space environments; to those to whom such staff may be responsible, including senior management teams; and also to researchers interested in changing identities in higher education.

Part 1

Chapter 1

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Introduction

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The expanding role of institutions within mass higher education systems in global markets has resulted in a significant literature on changing academic identities. Less attention has been paid to a modulation of professional identities, or to roles that have arisen between professional and academic spheres of activity, in what Whitchurch has termed Third Space environments (Whitchurch, 2008a). In such environments staff with both professional and academic backgrounds have become involved in broadly based projects arising from both public service and market agendas. The former include, for instance, widening participation and community regeneration, and the latter business partnership and knowledge transfer, although there is likely to be an iterative relationship between the two strands, and projects such as employability could be seen as serving both. Such staff are likely to work collaboratively in multi-professional teams, with memberships drawn from inside and outside their institution, and to spend time in outreach or off-campus settings. Their roles may not fit neatly into existing organisation or career structures, and although hierarchical line relationships continue to exist, these may be less significant in day-to-day working than lateral networks that can be activated at short notice. However, the implications of such developments for individuals and their institutions have not been fully explored, articulated or conceptualised.

Binary perceptions

Activity in higher education institutions has been defined traditionally in relation to the three broad categories of teaching, research, and either service, administration or knowledge transfer (sometimes known as ‘third leg’ activity). The concepts of ‘Mode 1’ and ‘Mode 2’ (Gibbons, Limoges et al., 1994) add a further dimension, Mode 1 representing pure disciplinary knowledge, and Mode 2 applied knowledge relating to ‘real world’ problems and professional practice. Activity that does not fall precisely into teaching, research or service/administration/‘third leg’ has tended to be described as ‘non-academic’, these categorisations being reflected in employment statistics. Central to the academic/non-academic binary is a perceived split between collegial approaches, implying academic autonomy and freedom, underpinned by the contribution of higher education to the advancement of knowledge; and functional activity, such as planning and budgeting, that is geared to what are seen as management goals. This binary is reflected in an extensive literature (for instance Marginson and Considine, 2000; Fulton, 2003; Walker and Nixon, 2004; Deem et al., 2007; Kogan and Teichler, 2007; Enders and de Weert, 2009a, 2000b; and De Boer et al., 2010); in the concept of the institutional ‘centre’ and academic ‘periphery’ (Clark, 1998); and of ‘managed’ and ‘managerial’ professionals (Rhoades, 1996, 1998). A key problematic arising from this literature is a perception that ‘non-academic’ activity invariably equates with ‘management’, and that the latter term necessarily implies market-oriented and ‘managerial’ approaches, accompanied by a shift in the balance between ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ roles. However, when these concepts are unpacked in relation to staff who have roles that include professional, academic and management elements, and who would be likely to work in Third Space environments, the situation can be shown to be more complex than this.

Much of what has been written about academic and professional identities in higher education has tended to focus on narratives of exclusion. In relation to academic staff, examples include Macfarlane (2007); Kogan and Teichler (2007); Rhoades (2007); Stromquist (2007); Winter (2009); and Locke and Bennion (2011); and in relation to professional staff, Dobson and Conway (2003); Szekeres (2004; 2011); Wolmuther (2008); Burke (2008); and Allen-Collinson (2009). Allen-Collinson, for instance, found practices of ‘negative labelling, rendering invisible, and stigmatising and blaming’ (Allen-Collinson, 2009: 952) in relation to research managers. There has been, therefore, a tendency for both academic and professional staff to see the other as more powerful, and themselves as marginalised. This sense of exclusion, together with perceptions of fragmentation and de-professionalisation, has contributed to a binary view of academic and non-academic activities, roles and identities. This is also reflected in the view that a diversification of roles has caused separation rather than convergence:

New functions at the borders of academic core activities, management activities and external relations are created that contribute to a further division of work and thus to increased specialisation.

(Enders et al., 2009: 49)

However, binary perceptions tend not to take account of the ways in which individuals interpret their given roles as defined, for instance, in a job description or specification. Thus an individual on a non-academic contract, especially if they have academic credentials and experience, might interpret their role in an ‘academic’ way. There is therefore a sense in which understandings of ‘academic’ or ‘non-academic’ identities depend on the interpretation of roles, reflecting Castells' view that ‘identities organize the meaning while roles organize the functions’ (Castells, 1997: 7).

Binary perceptions tend to polarise academic and non-academic activity, with the result that the two are often seen as being in tension with each other. However, such perceptions do not accord with evidence of increasing alliance between professional and academic staff, and a loosening of boundaries in the delivery of academic agendas:

[E]nhancing collaborative teamwork between classes of workers (administrative, professional, academic, technical) is one side of new management. It is required by and grows with the external networking on which universities depend to play a useful and sustainable part in networked knowledge societies.

(Duke, 2003: 54)

On a day-to-day basis, positive relationships may exist, for instance, between a dean or head of school and a faculty or school manager as they implement policy locally (Hare and Hare, 2002; McMaster, 2005; Hogan, 2011). This situation can be compared to the negative rhetoric of politicians about another party when they campaign publicly, although they work day-to-day in all-party committees in which cross-party friendships are forged. It is as if there are two parallel spaces: one a political space, in which policy is debated and fought over, and the other a more pragmatic space where policy is negotiated and implemented.

It is also possible for dissonance to arise in perceptions of professional staff as individuals who support local interests, and as a collective representing institutional or even government agendas:

[N]on-academics are seen both as the enemy and as invaluable partners. They are professionals, many have academic qualifications. There are split views about professional staff: on the one hand they are there to help you, but as ‘the administration’ in the other building, which gets involved in things like branding, and saying to you, ‘do this, do that’, the systems of compliance, they are seen as hindering.

(Dartington and Khaleelee, 2010: 3)

The situation is further complicated by the fact that although academic staff may see themselves as increasingly burdened with ‘non-academic’ activity, they may also, at times, be ambivalent about delegating this:

[A]cademics want to govern themselves but they rarely want to manage; they are often poor managers when they do manage; and yet they deny rights of management to others.

(Dearlove, 1998: 73)

The same point is made in a US context by Lewis and Altbach (1996: 256–7), and in a Norwegian context by Gornitzka et al. (1998: 42).

A note about ‘administration’ and ‘management’

In a UK environment, and to some extent in Australia, staff on non-academic contracts have tended to be perceived (and described) generically as ‘administrators’ and/or ‘managers’. Early UK commentators referred to a university's supporting infrastructure as its ‘academic civil service’ (Sloman, 1964; Lockwood, 1986) or ‘academic administration’ (Shattock, 1970), with administrative staff as ‘guardians of the regulations’ (Barnett, 2000a: 133) and a source of continuity (McNay, 2005: 43). The concept of ‘management’ came to the fore after the publication of the UK Jarratt Report (Jarratt, 1985), when commentators began to note an ‘upgrading of managerial capacity’ (Scott, 1995: 64). Others saw ‘Administrators position[ing] themselves in an expanded role as managers having authority over a broader domain of organizational decision-making, as well as in representing the organization's purposes and priorities to the environment’ (Gumport and Sporn, 1999: 132). Since then, the term ‘administrator’ has tended to become devalued, being used increasingly to refer to procedural and even clerical tasks, carrying implications of unwanted bureaucracy. This is reflected in the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data (HESA, 2011), where ‘administrative assistants’ are categorised with ‘library assistants and clerks’ (Category G) as opposed to ‘managers’ (Category A) or ‘non-academic professionals’ (Category C). Nevertheless, there continues to be some equivocation about the two terms, in that ‘administration’ is at times favoured as being supportive of academic agendas, as opposed to ‘ascendant managerial knowledge practices’ (Prichard, 2000: 199). Both remain contested in the literature, and this contributes to a lack of understanding about the roles of professional staff. It should also be noted in this context that in the US the most senior institutional managers, including presidents, are referred to as ‘academic administrators’, and the term ‘administration’ is therefore associated with institutional policy and governance at the highest level.

Being a professional in higher education

Early discussions of professionals in higher education, for instance, Warner and Palfreyman (1996); Holmes (1998); Allen and Newcomb (1999); Association of University Administrators (2000); Skinner (2001); Conway (2000); Lauwerys (2002); Dobson and Conway (2003); and Carrette (2005), tended to focus on increased functional specialisation and the development of good practice. Within this literature there is also evidence of an unresolved tension between a collective process of professionalisation and the specialisation of individual roles leading to fragmentation of the collective. Thus, Allen and Newcomb see the establishment of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) series
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Series editors' introduction
• Preface
• PART 1
• PART 2
• PART 3
• Appendix
• References
• Index