Academic Identities in Higher Education: The Changing European Landscape 9781472579508, 9781474220040, 9781472579522

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Academic Identities in Higher Education

Also available from Bloomsbury Academic Working Lives, edited by Lynne Gornall, Caryn Cook, Lyn Daunton, Jane Salisbury and Brychan Thomas Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship, Jon Nixon Higher Education and the Public Good, Jon Nixon Identity and Pedagogy in Higher Education, Kalwant Bhopal Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education, Jon Nixon Reflective Practice in Educational Research, Linda Evans

Academic Identities in Higher Education The Changing European Landscape Edited by Linda Evans and Jon Nixon

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Linda Evans, Jon Nixon and Contributors, 2015 Linda Evans, Jon Nixon and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-7950-8 PB: 978-1-3500-1103-8 ePDF: 978-1-4725-7952-2 ePub: 978-1-4725-7951-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Identities in Transition – Perspectives, Re-formations and Trajectories Jon Nixon Part 1

vii xii

1

Frameworks and Perspectives

1 The Academic Condition: Unstable Structures, Ambivalent Narratives, Dislocated Identities Niilo Kauppi

31

2 Autonomisation and Individualisation: Ideational Shifts in European Higher Education Tero Erkkilä and Ossi Piironen

47

3 Reframing the Long Shadow of Europe: A Case of Identity Formation Terri Seddon

63

Part 2

Academic Trajectories

4 Changing Policy, Changing Identities: Being and Leading Academics in the Developing Swiss Higher Education Sector Nicole Rege Colet

83

5 Academic Identity in Slovakia: A Personal Comparative View Štefan Beňuš

99

6 The Scholarship of Academic Entrepreneurship in Twenty-First-Century Europe: A Swedish Relief Carved from Personal Experiences Eva M. Brodin

115

7 Predicaments of Fusion and Transformation: A Journey from Georgia Liana Beattie

133

8 Competitiveness, Elitism and Neoliberal Performativity: The Formation of a Russell Group Academic Identity Linda Evans

149

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Part 3

Contents

Formations and Re-Formations

9 The Challenges of ‘Homo Academicus’: The Making of Self, Identities and a Sense of Fairness and Justice Romuald Normand

169

10 High-Flyers and Underdogs: The Polarisation of Finnish Academic Identities Oili-Helena Ylijoki and Jani Ursin

187

11 The Changing Conditions of Academic Identity: The Case of the Portuguese Open University Darlinda Moreira, Susana Henriques and Luísa Aires

203

12 Policy, Profession and Person: The Formation of Reflexive Academic Identities in an Irish Institute of Technology Carol O’Byrne

221

13 Laws, Regulations and Economics: Academic Identity Formation in Greek Higher Education Antigoni Papadimitriou

239

Reflections: Academic Identity and the Changing European Landscape Linda Evans

257

Index

273

Notes on Contributors Luísa Aires is a researcher in the Centre of Migrations and Intercultural Relations Studies (CEMRI) at the Universidade Aberta, Portugal, and collaborates at the Centre for Technology Studies and Communication Sciences (CETAC.MEDIA), at the University of Porto, Portugal. She holds a Master’s degree in Educational Technology at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and a Ph.D. in Educational Communication at Universidade Aberta, Portugal. She is a founding member of the Portuguese Society of Educational Sciences and is also a member of the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research (ISCAR). Her teaching responsibilities include courses on leisure pedagogy, interpersonal relations and qualitative research methodology. Liana Beattie is Assistant Head of Area (Professional Development) at Edge Hill University, UK. She was born in Soviet Georgia in the early 1960s. After leaving school she enrolled in a teacher training course at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Tbilisi and, after five years of studies, earned a first class Bachelor’s degree in teaching English as a foreign language. She then completed her B.A. Hons in Education at Liverpool Hope University followed by an M.A. in Education in 2008. She is currently studying for a Ph.D. in Education. Her research interests are mainly in national identity formation and the correlation between social policies and the language of education. Štefan Beňuš is Senior Lecturer in the department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia, and Research Fellow in the Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences. His research centres around two main areas: (1) the relationship between speech prosody and pragmatic/discourse aspects of the message, the interactional system of turn-taking and its relation to dominance and power, prosodic marking of speaker’s emotional state delivering the message, and (2) the relationship between phonetics and phonology with a special interest in the articulatory characteristics of speech. Eva M. Brodin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Lund University, Sweden. Besides her lectureship, she works as an educational

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developer within the field of doctoral education across all faculties and is also affiliated to Stellenbosch University as a Research Associate. Brodin has conducted research on critical thinking in higher education since her doctoral studies in 2002–7, and on doctoral students’ learning since 2009. In 2012 Brodin gained the ‘Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence’ for her article on ‘Conceptualizing and Encouraging Critical Creativity in Doctoral Education’. Thereafter, she has continued to investigate and broaden this field of research. Nicole Rege Colet is Director of Institute IDIP University of Strasbourg, France, and Professor of Educational Psychology inquiring into teaching and learning capacities in research-led universities. In 1998 she founded the faculty development centre of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where she served as its director for ten years while being deeply involved in implementing the Bologna process laying down the core principles and values of the Swiss higher education system. Then followed five years dedicated to academic leadership and change management, before she was called, in 2013, to set up a faculty development centre for the University of Strasbourg, France, inspired by her work carried out in Switzerland. Tero Erkkilä is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include global knowledge governance, public institutions and collective identities. He has published works on accountability, transparency, global governance indicators, university rankings, EU concepts and transnational identity of EU bureaucrats. His recent publications include Government Transparency (2011) and Global University Rankings (edited, 2012). He is currently heading two research projects analysing global rankings and indicators. Linda Evans is Professor of Leadership and Professional Learning at the University of Leeds, UK. A former student of European studies and modern foreign languages, she remains a fluent speaker of French and German, has lived in France as visiting professor at the Institut Français de l’Education and retains strong links with the Francophone educational research community. Her research interests and expertise lie in the broad field of professional working life, and she has published widely on issues related to: professionalism; professional development; workplace morale, job satisfaction and motivation; and educational leadership and management. Susana Henriques is Professor at the Universidade Aberta, Portugal,and Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (ISCTE),

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University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal, and at Laboratory of Education and Distance Learning. She holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Sociology from ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon. She is teaching research methodology, sociology of education and sociology of the scholar organizations at graduate, masters and Ph.D. levels. Niilo Kauppi is Research Professor at The National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France, and teaches political sociology and social theory in the Sciences Po-Strasbourg, University of Strasbourg, France, the University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research focuses on European governance, higher education, political radicalism and social theory. His recent publications include: Transnational Power Elites (edited with Mikael Rask Madsen, 2013), A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe (edited, 2013) and ‘Ranking European Social Science and Stratifying Global Knowledge: The Example of European Political Science’, in Global University Rankings (edited by Tero Erkkila, 2013). Darlinda Moreira is Professor and Dean of the Department of Education and Distance Education at the Universidade Aberta, Portugal. She gained her doctorate in anthropology of education at ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal, and her Master’s degree is in bilingual education studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. Her main interests are in the field of multicultural education, lifelong learning and culture and distance education. Jon Nixon is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong. He also lectures at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and holds an honorary chair at the University of Sheffield, UK. His most recent major publication is Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship (2015). Previous publications include Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education (2012), The Reorientation of Higher Education (edited with Bob Adamson and Feng Su, 2012), Higher Education and the Public Good (2011) and Towards the Virtuous University (2008). He is a founding co-editor of the Bloomsbury Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education series. Romuald Normand is Fulbright Fellow and Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Strasbourg, France, and convenor of the Sociologies of European Education research network (European Association of Educational Research). He is member of the editorial board of the British Journal of Sociology of Education. His research interests are in

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European education and higher education policies. He is currently involved in a Marie-Curie project Universities in Knowledge Economies (UNIKE) and an ERASMUS project entitled Governance and Adaptation to Innovative Modes of Higher Education Provision. Carol O’Byrne is Lecturer at Waterford Institute of Technology, Republic of Ireland. Her research focuses on professional identities in higher education and on the interplay of structure and agency in the working lives of academics, as well as on the potential of key concepts drawn from the work of Margaret S. Archer as a theoretical framework in research into academics’ identities and experiences. Antigoni Papadimitriou is Assistant Professor of Management and Leadership, and Program Director at Hellenic College-Holly Cross, Boston, USA. Her post-doctoral studies took place at the Department of Educational Research, University of Oslo, Norway, and her Ph.D. at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, University of Twente, the Netherlands. Her thesis was titled ‘The Enigma of Quality in Greek Higher Education: A Mixed Methods Study of Introducing Quality Management into Greek Higher Education’. Antigoni’s primary field of interest is the study of higher education, specifically focusing on quality, leadership and organizational change. She is a specialist in mixed methods research. Ossi Piironen is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the Department of Political and Economic Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His academic interests range from conceptual analysis to quantitative measurement. A recurrent theme in his works is the notion of autonomy examined from national, institutional and individual perspectives. His recent publications include the ‘The Transnational Idea of University Autonomy and The Reform of the Finnish Universities Act’ published in Higher Education Policy (2013), and an article, co-authored with Tero Erkkilä, ‘Shifting Fundaments of European Higher Education Governance: Competition, Ranking, Autonomy and Accountability’ in Comparative Education. Terri Seddon is Professor of Leadership Studies at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research examines education and educational work in global transitions, focusing particularly on workplace learning and leadership in tertiary, adult and post-compulsory education. Her recent books are World Yearbook of Education 2013: Educators, Professionalism and Politics (with John Levin) and Learning and Work and the Politics of Working

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Life (with Lea Henriksson and Beatrix Niemeyer, 2009). Terri was a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts on the panel for Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences (2005–7) and also the 2010 Australian research assessment, Excellence for Research in Australia. Jani Ursin is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research has focused on various issues in higher education, especially those relating to quality assurance and university mergers. Currently he is the national project manager of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) international assessment of higher education learning outcomes feasibility study. He serves as the link convener of the European Educational Research Association’s network 22 (Research in Higher Education) and is chair of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers in Finland. Oili-Helena Ylijoki is Academy Research Fellow and Docent of Social Psychology in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her current research interests include higher education research, science studies, time studies and narrative approaches. She is a co-founding member and vice-chair of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers in Finland.

Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments they provided on the original proposal. We would also like to thank Alison Baker and Kasia Figiel at Bloomsbury for their huge support in bringing this project through to completion. At an earlier stage in the project’s development, Camilla Erskine provided much encouragement and wise advice for which we are very grateful. Our final thanks are due to the contributors who worked with us on developing this book long before a formal contract had been agreed with our publishers. We thank them for their trust and patience.

Introduction: Identities in Transition – Perspectives, Re-formations and Trajectories Jon Nixon

As lived, identity is always project, not settled accomplishment. Craig Calhoun, 1994: 27 The idea for this book – the idea, that is, of bringing together early-career, midcareer and senior academics to reflect upon what it means to be an academic in twenty-first-century Europe – was conceived in 2011 in the thick of the post-2008 financial crisis. That crisis and its continuing impact on the higher education sector are reflected in many of the analyses developed in the following chapters. The overall narrative is one of academic agency and resilience. But the agency and resilience are being achieved in the face of austerity measures that have led to increased professional insecurity and student unrest, institutional fragmentation and the increasing privatisation of higher education, social stratification and the re-emergence of Eurofascism and the rise of youth unemployment generally and of graduate unemployment in particular. Such consequences are not, of course, peculiar to Europe. But the European question is again emerging as a major issue on the geopolitical landscape. How academics identify themselves – and are identified – within that landscape is the prime focus. A number of broad assumptions underpin the book. The first assumption is that, while there is no single European identity, Europe does impact upon the identity of those who operate within it. The second assumption is that the higher education systems within which academics conduct their work shape and form how they identify themselves and others. The third assumption is that academic identity is not just shaped and formed, but is itself a shaping and forming influence: a process involving accommodation and agency, action and reaction, adjustment and resistance. This introductory chapter explores each of these assumptions and their relevance to what we are terming ‘academic identities’, a

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category that should be seen not as discrete and impermeable but as one of many complementary elements in the larger process of identity formation. The final section of this chapter explains how the book was and is organised and offers a brief survey of the chapters.

Unfinished Europe It has always been difficult to know where Europe begins and ends. Geographically, it lies somewhere between the Ural Mountains to the east, the Mediterranean to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Politically and economically the central axis of the European peninsula lies along and around the north-south river systems – and their linking overland portages – that opened up the historic trade routes from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and from the Black Sea to the Baltic. Culturally and ethnically it is a rich and complex mix because of the 10,000 years of human migration that Barry Cunliffe (2008) has so meticulously documented in his study of ‘Europe between the Oceans’. Oceans and seas – their tidal flows and endless flux and the rivers that have run down to them shaping the land on their way – have determined the human rhythm of Europe over millennia. They have also provided it with a metaphor – a metaphor of fluidity and change and of erosion and renewal. Zygmunt Bauman (2004) has described Europe as an idea not yet finished, an idea in the making: what he calls an ‘unfinished adventure’: ‘Europe’s culture is one that knows no rest; it is a culture that feeds on questioning the order of things – and on questioning the fashion of questioning it’ (12). But it is also, maintains Bauman, a culture that embodies some distinct values, the most important of which may be the value that we most associate with the European Enlightenment: the value, that is, of endlessly questioning what is to be valued and why. It is because European culture insists upon the importance of the endless process of questioning that the idea of Europe is, as Bauman puts it, ‘an in-principle-unfinished object’ (7). In his reflections upon ‘the new world disorder’ – the ‘reflections of a European’, as he puts it – Tzvetan Todorov (2005) places ‘rationality’ at the head of his list of what for him constitute ‘the main ingredients in the European model itself ’. That claim, he emphasises, should not be taken to imply ‘that Europeans are always reasonable’. Todorov is writing here not about really existing Europe, but about the values that might be pitted against that reality: values that, he argues, might be salvaged from the unfinished idea of Europe. One such value, he argues, is

Introduction

3

that ‘the craziest actions, the most mysterious phenomena, can be apprehended by reason’ (63–4). This emphasis on apprehension by reason introduces the possibility of what Todorov claims as another of the ‘main ingredients in the European model’: namely justice. ‘What’, Todorov asks, ‘would be the right thing to do if we were to put aside our own interests – and thus, what would be the right thing to do universally?’ (65). Todorov is not claiming rationality and justice as essentially and exclusively European. But he does place the French thinkers of the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries – from Montaigne to Rousseau – within a humanistic tradition (what Todorov terms an ‘imperfect garden’) of European thought that prized reason and justice: a tradition against which later post-Enlightenment thinkers may have reacted, but in relation to which they invariably take their intellectual bearings (Todorov, 2002). Both Bauman and Todorov view that tradition – notwithstanding its many shortcomings that later critical and postcolonial theorists have highlighted and explored – as a bulwark against what they and others perceive as a ‘new world disorder’: a ‘disorder’ resulting from Western responses to the perceived threat of global terrorism triggered by the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001, and to the largely unanticipated global financial crisis of 2008 that shook global capitalism to its neoliberal foundations. One aspect of that ‘disorder’ has been the increasing social and economic fragmentation within and between the nations of Europe. The economic disparities between the nation states of Europe now threaten its survival as both a trading partnership and a political alliance. Marie Cuillerai and Maria Kakogianni (2014) point the finger of blame at what they call the ‘Bankocracy’: ‘Bankocracy consists in circulating debt to make money solely from money and time . . . Today, the peoples of Europe are asked to make sacrifices to pay debts of which they do not know the origin, the creditors who own them, or the time when they were incurred’ (original emphasis; 26–7). The result, they argue, is a loss of individual and collective agency and of power and democratic potential: ‘European money is nothing other than the intersection between the new financial transcendence and social deregulation. Everywhere and nowhere, financial power is faceless and impossible to locate. Hence the impression of being dominated by a “system”, a power that one cannot make head or tail of, against which one can neither make demands nor . . . set up guillotines’ (original emphasis ; 27). For some, the key issues focus specifically on the euro – and the way in which the common currency exacerbated the underlying differences between the economies that adopted it. According to George Soros (2012), for example, the

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euro ‘lacked a common treasury that would be able to deal with solvency risk in times of crisis’ (17). It lacked both a robust and coherent rationale of economic inter-dependency and the mechanisms necessary to operationalise that rationale: ‘The fathers of the euro relied on an interpretation of financial markets that proved its inadequacy in the crash of 2008. They believed, in particular, that only the public sector is capable of producing unacceptable economic imbalances; the invisible hand of the market would correct the imbalances produced by markets. In addition they believed that the safeguards they introduced against public sector imbalances were adequate’ (17). For Soros the European Union is a ‘tragedy’ facing us with the stark choice between ‘disintegration or revival’ (Soros with Schmitz, 2014). Readers may agree or disagree with the analysis put forward by Soros, but the fact remains that Europe is deeply divided not only in terms of the economic sustainability of its nation states, but in terms of how those deep divides are to be bridged and indeed whether they should be bridged. (For interestingly different viewpoints, see Beck, 2013; Charter, 2012; Cohn-Bendit and Verhofstadt, 2012; Giddens, 2014; Habermas, 2012; Mair, 2013; Piris, 2011.) The crucial issue here is whether the idea of Europe has any credence when the really existing Europe is increasingly based upon such deep inequalities between nation states – and, crucially, when those inequalities impact upon the culture and society within those states (Picketty, 2014; Naim, 2013; Ross et al., 2012; Stiglitz, 2013). ‘Border’, ‘boundary’ and ‘frontier’ invariably become important items in the political lexicon when inequality impacts on individual lives and communities. What are then at stake are individual and community identities – how they are defined, who is in and who is out, what belongingness means, what constitutes membership: who is ‘one of us’? Who is ‘the other’? What is clear is the re-emergence within Europe of an increasingly exclusionary and polarising response to these questions: a response based, very often, on nationalistic and/or religious fervour. Writing in 2012 Slavoj Žižek described the impact within Greece of the rise of the extreme right-wing party Golden Dawn: ‘At night, black-shirted vigilantes from the holocaust-denying neo-fascist Golden Dawn movement – which won 7 per cent of the vote in the last round of elections, and had the support, it’s said, of 50 per cent of the Athenian police – have been patrolling the street and beating up all the immigrants they can find: Afghans, Pakistanis, Algerians.’ Nor is Greece an isolated example. ‘[A]s Europe tumbled into recession and insolvency’, wrote Jeremy Harding (2012: 5), ‘its concerns about Islam were subsumed within a general anxiety about all new arrivals, whatever their origins or faith’. Among the examples Harding cites are

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the following: ‘In 2008 the Federation of Poles in Great Britain registered a 20 per cent increase in hate crimes over the previous year . . . The same year Italy declared a state of emergency after a round of confrontations between Roma and mobs of Italians . . . After a decade of openness, Spain was involved in a crackdown on irregular migrants while offering a lump sum to legal immigrants, mostly Latin American, to go away if they weren’t in jobs’ (5). Such reactions, Harding argues, ‘cast doubt on the long story that held us together, with its passage through the Enlightenment to liberal democracy, Europe’s unique discovery, which it meant to hand down across the generations’ (3). Europe is no mere backdrop against which identities are formed, but is itself deeply formative in respect of those identities. It is, as Neal Ascherson (2012: 22) puts it in one of his fine metaphorical flourishes, ‘a sponge, a living sponge of squashy texture and uncertain outline, a rich and beautiful collective creature into whose open pores countless visiting organisms swim or stay to breed’. We may love or loath it, but we ignore Europe at our peril. It has provided us with new models of internationalism and new forms of nationalistic fervour; new modes of cultural interchange and a renewal of ethnic entrenchment; hopes of new beginnings and the revival of old animosities. To be in and of Europe in the twenty-first century is to be located in whatever spaces we can find for ourselves within and between these fluctuating polarities: spaces of opportunity and possibility, of growth and well-being, of cooperation and interchange. Vulnerable spaces. Writing towards the end of his magisterial history of post-WWII Europe and shortly before his untimely death, Tony Judt (2010: 796) pointed out that ‘Poles, Italians, Slovenes, Danes – even the British – were now Europeans. So, too, were millions of Sikhs, Bengalis, Turks, Arabs, Indians, Senegalese and others besides . . . The EU was the world’s largest internal single market, the world’s biggest trader in services, and its member-states’ unique source of authority in all matters of economic regulation and legal codes.’ It is, of course, that last clause – with its implicit challenge to national sovereignty – that disturbs many on both the political left and right. But perhaps Judt is here directing us to a larger question: how and under what institutional conditions might we learn to live together? Somewhere between the public spaces of inter-state relations and the private spaces of intimate relationships are the in-between spaces afforded by institutions. Within Europe, institutions of higher education have traditionally provided – and continue to provide – a vital space for human interchange and growth, for collaboration and human flourishing and (to return to Todorov) for reason and justice.

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Institutional shaping Institutions shape and form us. They influence the way we dress, the way we walk and sit, the way we address one another; they provide us with structures and systems within which we have designated roles and divisions of labour; they give meaning to our lives through their recognition of our endeavours and failures; they provide us with a sense of purpose. They also, as Mary Douglas (1987) observed, ‘confer identity’ through a process of categorisation and classification that not only impacts on our present self-perception and perception of others but shapes our private and public memories. ‘Even the simple acts of classifying and remembering are’, as she puts it, ‘institutionalized’ (67). Moreover, professional affiliation may reinforce the self-defining function of the institutions within which particular occupational groups are located – such that, for example, the hierarchies implicit in the institutional categories are bolstered by systems of professional status. The institutional contexts within which higher education is conducted vary considerably across the higher education systems of Europe. Regardless of these significant national variations, all these systems have been subject to the institutional changes resulting from the evolution towards mass higher education. All have, in other words, experienced the consequences of the postWWII expansion in higher education as an ongoing process of institutional diversification – a process that is still underway and still impacting on the working lives of academics and the options available to prospective students. This diversity cannot simply be explained in terms of the binary divide between vocational and academic studies. Of course, some institutions do focus more on the latter and others more on the former, but the factors underlying the diversification of – and differentiation within – higher education are more complex and entangled. Institutional approaches to diversity are, as Sybille Reichert (2009: 155) argues, best understood ‘not by the contents of the explicit diversity policies which they may include, but rather by the confluence of the implicit forces exerted by regulations, financial incentives, rewards, quality standards, as well as academic, public and professional values’. That list – ‘regulations, financial incentives, rewards, quality standards, as well as academic, public and professional values’ – defines not only the forces operating on institutions, but also the force-field of institutional diversity within which academic identities are defined. The force-field pulls in different directions: towards harmonisation and hierarchy, collaboration and

Introduction

7

competition, conformity and difference. Moreover, the elements comprising these binaries are not, as might be expected, mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing, with academics and institutions harmonising around new and emergent hierarchies, collaborating strategically within systems that rely increasingly on competition, and conforming to the emergent norms of differentiation. For example, and as Antti Pelkonen and Tuula TeravainenLitardo (2013: 53) point out, ‘the adoption of New Public Management and the overall strengthening of market-oriented policies have tended to converge policies across countries’ – and that convergence of policies has, in turn, affected a convergence of both institutional interests and academic priorities. Central to that process of convergence has been the complex interplay between system and culture – an interplay that finds notable expression in the Bologna process. That process is usually taken to have its origins in the Bologna Declaration of 1999, which was signed by ministers of education from 29 countries and established a ‘European Higher Education Area’ (European Commission, 2010; Reinalda and Kulesza, 2006). However, the Bologna Declaration has its origins in the earlier Sorbonne Declaration of the year before. The latter had been initiated by the then French minister of education and supported by his British, German and Italian colleagues. The origins of the Bologna Declaration in the earlier Sorbonne Declaration, although often overlooked, are relevant because they locate the Bologna process in a pan-European as opposed to European Union framework. The decision of the four ministers who drew up the Sorbonne Declaration to go down this pan-European route was, as Reinalda (2013: 44) acutely observes, ‘clever and far reaching’: ‘clever’ because it recognised the need for cultural change at the institutional level as well as systems-wide change; ‘far reaching’ because it is arguably only by changing the culture of institutions that systems-wide change is sustainable over time. As the Bologna process has developed it has continued to rely not on ‘hard law’ but on the ‘soft law’ of guidelines, indicators and the sharing of best practice. This may well account for the fact that it has managed to implement two of its main ‘action lines’: a comparable degree system comprising a three-cycle system of Bachelor, Master and Doctoral study supported by the promotion of mobility and cooperation in quality assurance. As Sybille Reichert and Christian Tauch (2005: 41) noted, many institutions of higher education have realised the early ambitions of the Bologna process by integrating its proposals into their policy and practice and by so doing have managed to transform what might have been a ‘top-down agenda into their own bottom-up interpretation

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of desirable change’. The extent to which this ‘bottom-up agenda’ has actively involved academics is open to question. But it has undoubtedly impacted on their work regimes and, by so doing, affected their working lives and professional routines and practices. Paradoxically, it is the global university rankings that – with the explicit aim of differentiating institutions according to hierarchies of excellence – have done most to bring about institutional convergence. Although university rankings at a national level have existed for some time in the Anglo-American countries, global university rankings have existed for little more than a decade. (The first Shanghai ranking was published in 2003 followed by the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking in 2004.) Nevertheless, the vast majority of institutions of higher education – across Europe and globally – are now united in the competitive struggle to position themselves favourably in the world rankings. The tacit assumptions on which the rankings are based – assumptions regarding, for example, what constitutes ‘excellence’ – nudge institutions towards the implied ideal. Those institutions then nudge their academic staff – by means of target-setting, incentives and disincentives, monitoring and auditing, and so on – towards the kind of academic performance deemed most likely to reinforce that ideal and render it professionally desirable and achievable. (See Erkkilӓ, 2013; Erkkilӓ and Kauppi, 2013; Hazelkorn, 2011; Kehm and Stensaker, 2009.) The increased diversity of higher education resulting from the shift to mass higher education has meant that control, supervision and accountability have now largely replaced the forms of collegial trust that hitherto determined the norms of academic life. In a more or less stable past, universities could rely on trust coalescing around accepted norms; in the much less stable situation pertaining in the present and foreseeable future, institutions are replacing those normative forms of trust with instrumental and bureaucratic systems. That, as Stensaker and Gornitzka (2009: 139) argue, creates a vacuum of need: ‘What is needed is to find a more proper balance between the instruments available to create trust and opportunities for developing stronger normative trust in the system.’ The instruments available fail to match the trust and opportunities required. There is a fundamental mismatch. It is within that mismatch that, in the 2002 UK BBC Reith Lectures, Onora O’Neill (2002) positioned her ‘question of trust’. According to O’Neill, it is precisely those systems of public accountability – introduced to restore trust in public institutions and professionals – that have created a ‘crisis of trust’ and fostered a ‘culture of suspicion’ (18). She argues that ‘the new culture of accountability provides incentives for arbitrary and unprofessional choice’,

Introduction

9

claiming by way of example that ‘[l]ecturers may publish prematurely because their department’s research rating and its funding require it’ (56). Moreover, the ‘new accountability’ not only changes but distorts the aims of professional practice and in so doing impacts directly on professional identity by ‘damaging professional pride and integrity’ (50). Ironically, given that it purports to be promoting greater public accountability, the audit culture – O’Neill argues – distorts the traditional relation between professionals and their publics by reinforcing the mechanisms of central control: ‘underlying this ostensible aim of accountability to the public the real requirements are for accountability to regulators, to departments of government, to funders, to legal standards. The new forms of accountability impose forms of central control – quite often indeed a range of different and mutually inconsistent forms of central control’ (original emphases; 53). As a means of managing the consequences of increased institutional diversity – and ensuring that those consequences are beneficial – the ‘new culture of accountability’ has proved not only inadequate but deeply dysfunctional. Diversity, O’Neill argues, has become divisive – and what might have been a healthy heterogeneity has, through the mechanisms of centralized control, been reduced to a bland conformity. O’Neill is focusing on the professional classes generally, particularly as these relate to the public and non-profit sector. However, her argument has particular relevance for those working in an academic capacity within higher education settings. As Harold Perkin (1989) argued in his still highly relevant history of the professional classes, the rise of neoliberalism during the 1980s shifted the ideal of professionalism from the public to the private sector professional, from the professional values of welfarism to those of cost effectiveness, from self-regulating professions to bureaucratically accountable professions. Some of those shifts were no doubt necessary and desirable. But they do mean that many academics in constructing their identities are understandably wary of the increased emphasis on academic professionalism with its paraphernalia of target setting, outcome measures and performance criteria. Some would go so far as to agree with Edward W. Said (1994: 55) that the particular threat to the to the intellectual today, whether in the West or the non-Western world, is not the academy, nor the suburbs, nor the appalling commercialism of journalism and publishing houses, but rather an attitude that I will call professionalism. By professionalism I mean . . . not rocking the boat, not straying outside the accepted paradigms or limits, making yourself marketable and above all presentable, hence uncontroversial and unpolitical and ‘objective’.

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Narrative identities The cultural and structural constraints briefly outlined in the previous section raise a number of general questions: How does agency come into play when the structures are so constraining? Is self-determination possible when the conditions are so over-determined? Such questions have informed much of the recent debate within the broad field of identity, identity formation and related ethical and political issues. (See, e.g., Appiah, 2005; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Giddens, 1993; Honneth, 1995.) They also point to issues that have particular relevance for the more specific debate on academic identity: if the conditions under which academics operate tend towards homogenisation and centralised control, how are academics able to achieve individualised identities? Such questions are an acknowledgement that identity is a process of mediation between individual agency and the contingent circumstances within which individuals seek to exercise that agency. It is what Zygmunt Bauman (1992) calls ‘the incessant (non-linear activity) of self-constitution that makes the identity of the agent’: ‘In other words, the self-organization of the agents in terms of a life-project . . . is displaced by the process of self-constitution.’ Such self-constitution, he goes on to argue, ‘has no destination point in reference to which it could be evaluated and monitored. It has no visible end; not even a stable direction’ (original emphases; 193–4). Our identities are narrative in form, but the form remains open-ended, resistant to closure, susceptible to endless elaboration. Ernest Gellner (1994) used the metaphor of ‘modularity’ to express what he saw as the emergence of a new late modern version of identity: ‘It is only modern modular man who is both individualistic and egalitarian, while nevertheless capable both of effective cohesion against the state and performing an amazing, indeed bewildering, diversity of tasks’ (102). What Gellner characterizes as ‘modern modular man’ comprises a complex bundle of individualism and egalitarianism, cohesion and diversity, solidarity and difference. Values and dispositions that in former times might have been seen as dichotomous are no longer mutually exclusive. Consistency is no longer the defining feature of identity. From this perspective, academic identity is a bricolage, an assemblage, a pragmatic accommodation to contingent events. It is necessarily provisional and unfinished. For many the shift that Gellner is here highlighting is experienced as dislocation and disorientation. That experience may be intensified by the loss of a sense of community that in the past was very often associated with

Introduction

11

religious faith and affiliation. The experience of change may then be interpreted as a symptom of the moral disorder resulting from what is seen as the malign spread of secularisation. Under such circumstances the urge to retreat into the old certainties may be very strong. The rise of religious fundamentalism and the resurgence of nationalism and irredentism are often seen as expressions of this urge (Emerson and Hartman, 2006; Gellner, 1992; Sabanadze, 2010). More generally it finds expression in feelings of powerlessness and disillusion, withdrawal and disengagement, atomisation and loneliness. Change is thereby avoided and denied rather than embraced and affirmed. For younger generations – particularly those brought up in the West – change is perhaps more likely to be experienced not as a dislocation and disorientation but as the received state of affairs. Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim (2002: 156–71) have coined the term ‘freedom’s children’ to describe this generation. They argue that the alleged decline of values entirely misinterprets the process of identity formation and reformation as currently experienced. ‘Freedom’s children’, they argue, understand that ‘co-operative or altruistic individualism’ is not a contradiction in terms (original emphasis; 162). On the contrary ‘[f]reedom’s children practice a seeking, experimenting morality that ties together things that seem mutually exclusive: egoism and altruism, selfrealization and active compassion, self-realization as active compassion’ (159). The supposed decline of values, maintain Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, is just another instance of the age-old fear of freedom – in this case, the fear of the ‘internalised freedom’ that is the defining characteristic of ‘freedom’s children’ (original emphasis; 158).

Identity and relationality Paul Ricoeur (1992) captured the relational dynamic at the heart of identity in the phrase ‘oneself as another’ (soi-meme comme un autre): the unique subject (‘oneself ’) that is always the object of others’ perceptions (‘as another’). But since that dynamic is temporal – subject, that is, to the contingencies and exigencies of time – it is necessarily narrative in structure: narrative not as chronological sequence alone, but as the ‘entanglement of the history of each person in the histories of numerous others’ (161). The underlying plot of what Ricoeur termed ‘narrative identity’ was precisely that ‘entanglement’ of identity as selfhood (or ‘self-constancy’) and identity as sameness (or ‘character’). ‘Narrative identity’, as he put it, ‘makes the two ends of the chain link up with one another: the permanence in time of character and that of self-constancy’ (166).

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Relationality crosses the categories of private, public and social: a point that is hugely important in relating relationality to the notion of ‘academic identity’. Academic identities are formed in a professional world that serves – and is accountable to – the public. However, they also rely upon the social glue that informs institutional life and the sense of collegiality that is one of its main constituents. The private world of intimacy – to which the professional world is often contrasted – also feeds into the rich mix of relationality that constitutes academic identity. It does so partly through the need for work–life balance – the balance, that is, for time spent in the private domain and time spent in the professional domain – but also because the private and intimate inevitably seep through into the public and professional. The insights gained in one domain inform the other, in such a way that identity is always multiple and pluralistic. The private, the public and the social are in many ways complementary within the construction of academic identity. But they also – and in ways that have particular relevance for the notion of ‘academic identity’ – jar and collide. That collision is partly a result of the way in which across much but not all of Europe the public and non-profit sectors have become increasingly privatised and partly because both the public and private domains have become increasingly socialised into a mass consumerist culture. The public domain has been hollowed out through privatisation and socialisation. Institutions of higher education are now, at best, public and privately funded and, at worst, entirely reliant on private funding, while students are increasingly self-funding consumers or privately sponsored clients. Privatisation and the consumerist culture that supports it have skewed the relationships within and across institutions of higher education and between those institutions and their publics. This skewing of relationships has had a profound effect on the formation of academic identities. (For recent perspectives on the deleterious effects of privatisation, see Brown with Carasso, 2013; Hind, 2010; McGettigan, 2013; Meek, 2014.)

Identity and practice Our actions define us: actions of which we are the agents. We own our actions but cannot ever fully own their outcomes, since the latter are necessarily the consequence of other factors than our original intentionality. In the case of academic identity, those actions focus on the particular components of academic practice: research, scholarship and teaching. A key issue for academics is how those components cohere within the context of their own working lives – and,

Introduction

13

more specifically, how they might cohere around what Caryn Cook and Lynne Gornall (2014) term ‘a new collegiality’ based on inter-collegiality and on interprofessional and multi-professional ways of working. They argue the case for, among other things, ‘a high value on “lateral” non-hierarchical relations’, ‘the need for active discourse and interaction to sustain working relationships’, and an ‘emotional commitment to working together which may contrast with organisational or sector norms in the host institutions’ (275). These, they argue, are some of the conditions necessary for ensuring the coherence of academic practice and the flourishing of academic identity. Karen Littleton and Neil Mercer (2013) have argued along not dissimilar lines for what they call ‘interthinking’ as a major element in ‘putting talk to work’ within the academic workplace. A crucial distinction here is that between work and labour. Hannah Arendt (1998) famously defined that distinction in terms of necessity and durability: labour is based on human necessity and leaves nothing behind; work produces artefacts that are durable and in excess of immediate need. The value of work resides in its potential for fabrication, which consists in reification – the making of things, which in their totality comprise our human world. The work of one generation constitutes the legacy that future generations inherit. Labour has no such legacy: no purpose other than that of basic survival. Work, however, is purposeful by virtue of its productivity. Its purposes are instrumental. Academic practice undoubtedly involves what Arendt understood by work. Much of it is productive or aspires to be so. Indeed, research is increasingly funded and assessed on the basis of its productivity. But there is a great deal of academic practice that is not primarily – if at all – concerned with product. It is fundamentally concerned with legacy and is undoubtedly purposeful, but its purposes are not entirely instrumental and its legacy cannot be defined wholly in terms of what it produces. The ends and purposes of teaching and learning are, many would argue, necessarily beyond whatever pedagogical goals and targets may be set. (See, e.g., Collini, 2012; Fanghanel, 2012; Kreber, 2013; Nussbaum, 2010.) While it is no doubt true that the purpose of a higher education course is to obtain the qualification relating to that course, it is also true that obtaining that qualification cannot define the entire purpose of the higher education experience offered by that course. This point is crucial to our understanding of academic identity, which cannot be defined in entirely instrumental terms: in terms, that is, of pre-specified outcomes and destinations. Academic identity is – to come full circle – a process that is uncertain in direction and indeterminate in outcome.

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Identity and plurality Although defined by its routine practices and the institutional settings within which those practices are pursued, academic identity cannot usefully be divorced from the plurality of identities that make up the self. We are, as Amartya Sen (2009) puts it, ‘quintessentially social creatures with different types of societal interactions. Proposals to see a person merely as a member of one societal group tend to be based on an inadequate understanding of the breadth and complexity of any society in the world’ (247). Academic identity is not a discrete subcategory, but a constitutive element of whatever it means to be a whole person engaged in academic work. We focus on the bits and pieces of ourselves that make sense within particular settings and with reference to particular intentions and motivations. We take from the past what is relevant and salient, jettisoning what is less so, and retrieving those bits and pieces that as time passes gain renewed relevance and salience. The downside of this process is that we may feel the need – or the pressure – to compartmentalise our lives, to establish non-negotiable boundaries, to resist fluidity by insisting on fixity. Sen (2007) sees this as form of self-violation which can lead to that violence being directed towards others: ‘The incitement to ignore all affiliation and loyalties other than those emanating from one restrictive identity can be deeply delusive and also contribute to social tension and violence’ (21). But there are alternatives to this ‘restrictive identity’: one of which is, as Sen puts it, to recognise ‘the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of vehement division that allegedly cannot be resisted. Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when our differences are narrowed into one devised system of uniquely powerful categorization’ (16–17). Our various identity categories – friend, lover, parent, party member, professional, spouse, worker, and the like – need to be permeable if they are to be functional. We learn across as well as within these categories. ‘We have’, as Kwame Anthony Appiah (2005: 215) puts it, ‘always been a travelling species’. As such, we pick up our identities – our plurality of ‘belongingness’ and ‘membership’ – on the way. In doing so we gather the values, practices and rituals and the ideas associated with those different and sometimes conflicting identities. One of the ideas traditionally associated with academic identity is that of ‘the examined life’: seeking significance in the world around us, defining ourselves meaningfully and purposefully, accounting to ourselves and others for our actions and opinions, existing in what Charles Taylor (1991) has called ‘a

Introduction

15

horizon of important questions’ (40). It is concerned, that is, with the integrity – and autonomy – of life lived well and lived as a whole: academic identity as a sub-category necessarily spills over into the general category of multi-layered identity. It is in the uncomfortable and vulnerable spaces between the ideals of academic integrity and autonomy on the one hand and the institutional realities of academic Realpolitik on the other that this book is located. Academic identities reach inward to the personal and intimate and outward to the public and institutional. All the chapters that follow testify to the complex interplay between the personal, professional and public in the formation of academic identity. The various institutional contexts within which academics forge their identities are, as we have seen, of fundamental importance. They mediate – or not, as the case may be – the diverse interests that are involved. As so many of the following chapters argue, those interests have become increasingly inward-looking in their emphasis on institutional efficiency, costeffectiveness, self-efficiency and competitive edge. But, as many of those same chapters argue, there are alternatives: outward-looking and publically oriented institutions of higher education that allow all academics the autonomy to flourish. The challenges are enormous in a period of mass higher education and still shrinking resources. But the stakes have never been higher.

The organisation and structure of the book The following chapters tell stories, provide reflections and analyses, and point to new possibilities and imaginaries. Some of those stories, reflections and imaginaries focus on the autobiographical, some on the institutional and some on broader contextual factors. The mix is different in the case of each contribution, but all the contributions have in common that attempt to relate identity to institution, institution to system, and system to larger geopolitical concerns. Decisions regarding the overall organization of the book – and the sequence of chapters – were reached retrospectively following the receipt of draft chapters. Chapters were commissioned with a view to gaining an international spread of contributors from across Europe and, as far as possible, from across disciplines. There was no attempt at comprehensive coverage, although the aim was to include contributors from the less well-represented regions of Eastern and Southern Europe as well as the national regions of Central and Northern Europe that tend to be more fully represented in the literature. Nor was there any

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attempt to establish a framework for comparative analysis. Readers may choose to make comparisons between, for example, what academic identity means in one national region as opposed to another, but that was not the purpose of this book. The aim was to gain a range of accounts of what academic identity means within the current context and how it is shaped and formed by the particular systems within which academics work. That overall aim guided the final selection of contributions and the deliberately ‘light touch’ approach to the editorial task. The editorial process necessarily involved decisions of what to include and what to omit, owing to the constraints of space and the desire to maintain a sense of cohesion. Contributors were chosen not because they were specialists in the field of academic identity, but because they showed a willingness to reflect upon the process of academic identity formation within the context of their own working lives. They were encouraged to produce first drafts without the guidance of an over-arching framework or indeed an editorially grounded argument within which to locate their analyses. The main editorial steer was that contributors might wish to draw on their own experience of becoming an academic and that in doing so they should be aware of the complex interplay of institutional, socio-cultural and political factors in the process of identity formation. As the foregoing analysis suggests, identity is neither entirely determined by outside factors nor an unconstrained expression of unfettered agency. The contributors to this book come from different national regions and disciplinary backgrounds and are located at very different points within the academic hierarchy. What they have in common is a desire to make sense of their academic identities with reference to their own professional experience, the institutional contexts within which they have worked, the national and transnational systems within which they have operated, and the broader geopolitical context within which higher education is currently located. They each come at that ‘making sense of ’ from different starting points: some focusing on the autobiographical case and using that as a reference point to survey the broader landscape; others taking the full measure of that landscape in order to locate themselves within it; and some fusing the horizons of self, institution and landscape in unforeseen ways. The layering of case and context differs in each of the contributions comprising this volume. Because authors come from different intellectual backgrounds and disciplinary traditions their contributions are couched in different terminologies and frames of reference. Moreover, the majority of authors are writing in their second or even third language. No attempt has been made to impose

Introduction

17

uniformity of style on the contributions, although authors have been at pains to present their arguments in such a way that they are accessible to a wide and varied international readership. The hegemony of English across the European and indeed global academic landscape is an issue touched on by several of the contributors and relates to the broader question of language and symbolic power: ‘it is’, as Pierre Bourdieu (1992: 38) put it, ‘in relation to a market that the complete determination of the signification of discourse occurs’. The market in this case is heavily skewed towards standard English. Nevertheless, nonnative and non-standard English usage is constantly speaking back to received standard usage thereby modifying not only the lexicon but also the structures and rhythms of the language. It is hoped that readers will see in the diversity of ‘voice’ and register that is evident across the following chapters a reflection of the plurality implicit in academic identity.

Perspectives Following this chapter, the three chapters comprising Part One provide some differing perspectives on – and frameworks for – thinking about academic identity. In each of the chapters, the authors are writing from their own experience of particular academic institutions and national systems, but they also offer synoptic insights that foreshadow some of the issues raised in later chapters. While differing in some of their underlying assumptions and emphases, they share a common concern with how the interplay between identity, institution and system shapes and/or distorts the values and practices of academic work. The purpose of these chapters is not to establish a fixed point of view, but to highlight the plurality of viewpoints available in trying to make sense of how academic identities are being formed and how they might be reformed. As directeur de recherche at the French National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS), Niilo Kauppi is located at the heart of the French and indeed European academy while remaining outside its mainstream university structures. Chapter 1 is written, therefore, from an insider/outsider perspective. While focusing primarily on the French academic system, Kauppi argues that bureaucratically led and market-driven reforms have had a hugely dislocating effect on academics across Europe. He highlights the way in which the dominant discourse surrounding, for example, academic ‘mobility’ reinforces existing academic hierarchies. Far from providing a route to advancement, the lure of mobility can, he argues, result in early and mid-career academics floating between different systems without ever establishing themselves within a

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particular system. Similarly, reforms that were justified on the grounds that they would enhance autonomy and excellence have had the entirely opposite effect: ‘it seems more autonomy has destroyed autonomy and that more excellence has destroyed excellence’. If Kauppi focuses on the dislocations implicit in the discourse of neoliberalism, Tero Erkkilӓ and Ossi Piironen explore in Chapter 2 the impact of its policies. Their perspective is defined with reference to their previous work as political scientists and their main frame of reference is the impact of global rankings on academic and institutional identity. They argue that the policy responses to these ranking exercises – notwithstanding their explicit emphasis on institutional autonomisation – have put the long-term sustainability of institutions at risk. They do so through a process of individualisation whereby institutional success is seen not as a collaborative and collective achievement but as a consequence of individual and competitive attainment. The vital link between academic and institutional identity is thereby fractured. Academic identities become atomised and institutions become little more than the sum of their atomised parts. ‘[A]cademic institutions’, argue Erkkilӓ and Piironen, ‘are building their strategies on practices that undermine their institutional legacies’. Terri Seddon in Chapter 3 writes from the perspective of a sociologist of education based in Australia, but with an interest in what she terms ‘the long shadow of Europe’ reaching well beyond geographic Europe. She shows how that shadow falls on universities in Australia, but also how those same universities are oriented towards Asia. So, she asks, what does this positioning mean for academic identity formation? She uses a conceptual frame that focuses on the notion of ‘contextualised epistemologies’ to track her own academic identity formation and to explain how she navigates the challenges of learning how to become an academic writer in Australia. She addresses – from a very different perspective – issues of mobility and global transitions that are highlighted in Kauppi’s earlier chapter. She argues for what she calls an ‘epistemological platform’ that is explicit about discipline, objectification, and context in any attempt at investigation and explanation. It is only from such a platform that she can position herself and locate herself within and against ‘the long shadow of Europe’.

Trajectories Part Two focuses more specifically on autobiographically oriented accounts – or trajectories – of academic identity and the factors contributing to its formation.

Introduction

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Each of the chapters is grounded in literatures appropriate to the account, but the emphasis in this section is on particular narratives within specific national systems and institutional settings. Nevertheless, there are common themes that echo issues raised in Part One: issues relating, for example, to academic mobility and the internationalisation of higher education, the impact on academic identities of a competitive ethos reinforced by ranking exercises, and the significance of interdisciplinary ways of working within rapidly changing modes of knowledge production and transfer. In Chapter 4, Nicole Rege Colet provides a personal and autobiographical account of academic development and the changes that have occurred within the Swiss higher education system as a result of implementing the Bologna process. Her story starts with a description of that system before and after Bologna and the transformations that have taken place over a comparatively short period. Sounding a theme that recurs throughout this section she focuses on the importance of achieving a balance between research and teaching – in her case within a dual system of research and professionally oriented institutions. She explores the implications of such a dual system for those working within it and explains how her own academic identity was formed through a process of reaching out beyond ‘considerations about personal transformation to reflections on building up systems and communities’. Štefan Beňuš in Chapter 5 also focuses on the interdependence of research and teaching, but within the academic environment of Slovakia and with particular reference to a specialist area – the study of human speech – that draws on both the humanities and sciences. Having had considerable experience of working in the United States, Beňuš offers another insider/outsider perspective. Defining his own academic identity as ‘distributed’, he shows how the experience of academic mobility can provide new opportunities and perspectives. He discusses issues relating to global ranking with particular reference to the circumstances pertaining in Slovakia – but also broadens the debate on academic identity to reflect on the relation between higher education and Slovak society. He discusses this relation in terms of the financing and resourcing of higher education and highlights the ways in which the social norms that impact upon the higher education system within Slovakia inflect on the one hand towards the values of Western capitalism and, on the other hand, towards the residual but still influential values of Soviet collectivism. He sees higher education as having an important role to play in mediating some of the tensions surrounding these different normative orientations.

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Chapter 6 has a very different geopolitical and intellectual focus. Eva Brodin explores in this chapter the viability and sustainability of what she calls ‘academic entrepreneurship’. Discovery, integration, application and teaching – which, she argues, are constitutive elements of ‘academic entrepreneurship’ – are threatened by ‘the amplified standardization’ of the Swedish higher education system as she has experienced it. Reforms aimed at the rationalisation of that system – and the development of fewer and larger university campuses – has, she claims, led to a polarisation of research and teaching and a consequent fragmentation of academic identity. Her account shows how, in her case, the autonomy required for the exercise of ‘academic entrepreneurship’ is threatened by a policy emphasis on institutional ‘standardization’ – an emphasis that far from promoting academic autonomy has resulted in academic and institutional fragmentation. Drawing on her own experience as a citizen of Georgia in both its Soviet and independent periods – and of her subsequent migration to the United Kingdom – Liana Beattie traces in Chapter 7 some of the factors that have led to the formation of her academic, linguistic, national and transnational identities. She tracks the relation between language and politics within her own personal and professional life and explores the various fusions and transitions that have contributed to how she perceives herself as an academic now based in a UK university. Emphasising the transcultural nature of identity for academics like herself who have experienced both national and political border crossings – and for whom the transcultural is still a lived experience – she shows how that experience has informed her work and outlook as a teacher and as an academic and how, for her, academic identity is a continuing journey. The question of how to gather the past into the present in such a way that the present generates insights and understandings that one can carry forward into the future is central to Beattie’s account of her own continuing identity formation as an academic and as a person. Chapter 8 focuses on the experience of academic identity formation within a UK research-intensive university. This, like the previous chapter, is an account of border crossings, but in this case the borders are culturally defined horizons of expectation within a highly class-based society. Linda Evans highlights the tensions and contradictions she has experienced in working in an institutional context characterised by what she terms ‘competitiveness and elitism’ – tensions and contradictions that occasion personal and professional dilemmas regarding life choices and value affiliations. She explores the legacies and resources available to her in confronting those tensions and contradictions. In doing so,

Introduction

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she raises a fundamental point about identity formation in general and academic identity formation in particular: namely its vulnerability to circumstance and contingency, but also its potential for resistance and reconstruction. In highlighting some of the structural and systemic influences and determinants involved in the formations of academic identity, this chapter foreshadows some of the issues explored in Part Three.

Re-formations Part Three focuses on the process of institutional and systemic formation and re-formation as this impacts on academic identity. The accounts within this section are primarily concerned with the interplay between academic agency and institutional and systemic structure. They focus on how within different national contexts institutions are shaping academic identity to their own prefigured norms and how academics are accommodating themselves to and, in some cases, resisting those norms and the structures and systems they have generated. In Chapter 9 Romuald Normand explores some of the challenges facing those who like himself are working within the French academic system – a system that, he argues, is beset by tensions and contradictions. The crucial issue for Normand is the relation between justice – as a fundamental republican principle – and the notion of ‘the common good’ as the sine qua non of the res publica. With the loss of the common good has come the erosion of those principles of justice that – as Normand sees it – have traditionally provided the bases of the French higher education system: a system rooted in republican values and now beset by reforms and reorganisations that – in their commitment to competitive individualism – deny the efficacy of those values. Institutions are now not only reshaping and reforming academic identities but distorting them – and that distortion, as this chapter shows, is being experienced by academics as value-dissonance. Chapter 10 shifts the geographical focus to Finland. Oili-Helena Ylijoki and Jani Ursin examine the ways in which Finnish academics are making sense of academic work and identity in response to current changes within their higher education system. From evidence based on interviews with Finnish academics they distinguish eight ‘types’ of response, which they characterise as identity ‘types’. Thus, adopting the identity of what they characterise as ‘rebel’, ‘loser’, ‘overloaded worker’, ‘precariat’ or ‘cynical bystander’ involves a negative, resistant and resigned stance towards the current working conditions and one’s

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position, whereas being a ‘winner’, ‘mobile careerist’, or ‘change agent’ glorifies the current changes, entailing a positive, bright and enthusiastic attitude towards the academic work settings. Their central argument is that these identity types are strikingly polarised and that this polarisation runs counter to the welfare state ideology – with its professional orientation towards an ethics of public service – that has been deeply rooted in Finnish policy-making not only within higher education but across all sectors. Writing in Chapter 11 from within the Portuguese context, Darlinda Moreira, Susanna Henriques and Luisa Aires show how higher education institutions have been affected by dramatic budget cuts that have had a direct impact on the quality of higher education, the financial resourcing of research, students support, as well as on the professional development and self-development of academics. In addition, advances in communication technology have been radically transforming the different dimensions of academic life. They write as academic women working within the Department of Education and Distance Education in the Portuguese Open University (Universidade Aberta), who have lived through these immense economic and technological changes. Focusing on their own institution they show how those changes have impacted on pedagogical approaches, content and teaching materials, and the student population. Given what they see as the central importance of professional development within this context of change, they analyse the social adjustments involved in relating national frameworks and systems to the particular needs and circumstances of their own institutional setting. Carol O’Byrne also writes from within a national context – the Republic of Ireland – that was severely affected by the financial crisis of 2008. In Chapter 12, she draws on her own empirical research evidence to explore the nature and evolution of academic identity within the vocationally oriented (Institute of Technology) sector of Ireland’s higher education system. Her analysis suggests that academic identities are influenced not only by the overlapping contexts of sector, institution and department within which academics are located but also by the communities in which they are members and the value affiliations associated with those communities. However, she also argues that academic identities are strongly shaped by the manner in which the individual academics choose to interpret and fulfil their professional roles – how, that is, they interpret and make sense of the functions that as academics are assigned to them. From this perspective academic identities are necessarily reflexive, in that they mediate between the academic as functionary and the contexts within which those functions are performed.

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The final chapter of Part Three – Chapter 13 – offers a broad survey of the current situation within the Greek higher education system. Antigoni Papadimitriou focuses on the regulative, economic and socio-cultural factors affecting that system and discusses some of the ways in which these factors are impacting on academics. Although academics remain a professionally prestigious group within Greece, policy interventions resulting in large part from recent austerity measures have impacted upon their social position and their sense of professional identity. A particular issue for Greek academics is that under the new framework they have very little if any capacity to negotiate either their responsibilities or their remuneration. Routines and salaries are as stipulated. This lack of negotiating power clearly strikes at the heart of traditional notions of academic autonomy and freedom and, argues Papadimitriou, has pushed some academics towards expatriation with a view to achieve an adequate income to support themselves and their families. The issue of mobility that was highlighted by Kauppi in the opening chapter of Part One thus resurfaces in the final chapter of Part Three as one of economic migrancy among the academics of Southern Europe. In the concluding chapter Linda Evans – as co-editor of this volume – responds to the foregoing chapters. While the purpose of this introductory chapter has been to locate those chapters within a broader contextual and analytical framework relating to academic identity, the purpose of the concluding chapter is to push the debate forward while keeping it open. Coming down strongly on the side of self-determination as the defining feature of identity, Evans characterizes European academic identity as multilingual in its appreciation of linguistic diversity, outward-facing in its propensity for academic-related mobility, and intellectually pioneering in its disposition towards pushing forward the boundaries of knowledge. In the closing paragraphs of her chapter – and of the book – she provides some personal reflections on her own experience of becoming a European academic.

Conclusion ‘As lived’, wrote Craig Calhoun (1994: 27), ‘identity is always project, not settled accomplishment.’ It is – as I have argued throughout this introductory chapter – a reflexive process involving both the defined and self-defining self. Experientially, the balance is constantly shifting between these polarities. The reflexive task is to remain seriously critical of the balance being struck. ‘That

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means among other things’, argues Calhoun, ‘paying attention to the agonistic, fractured, problematic aspects of identity’ (19) – aspects that are explored from a variety of perspectives and through different interpretive lenses throughout the following chapters. The notion of ‘academic identity’ that emerges highlights both the creativity and fragility of identity – its capacity for self-realisation, on the one hand, and the inevitability of self-limitation on the other; its inflection towards both self-identity and objectification by the other; it’s mediation between the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ and its consequent location within our inter-subjective world of social reality. It is with the tensions, ambivalences and aspirations of academic identity that this book is primarily concerned.

References Appiah, K. A. (2005), The Ethics of Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Arendt, H. (1998[1958]), The Human Condition. Second Edition. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Ascherson, N. (2012), ‘Memories of Amikejo’, London Review of Books, 34(6) (22 March): 17–22. Bauman, Z. (1992), Intimations of Postmodernity. London and New York: Routledge. — (2004), Europe: An Unfinished Adventure. Cambridge: Polity. Beck, U. (2013), German Europe (Trans. R. Livingstone). Cambridge: Polity. Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002), Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Bourdieu, P. (1992), Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brown, R. with Carasso, H. (2013), Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education. London and New York: Routledge. Calhoun, C. (1994), ‘Social Theory and the Politics of Identity’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, pp. 9–36. Charter, D. (2012), Au Revoir, Europe: What If Britain Left the EU? London: Biteback. Cohn-Bendit, D. and Verhofstadt, G. (2012), For Europe: Manifesto for a Postnational Revolution in Europe. CreateSpace (self-published). Collini, S. (2012), What Are Universities For? London: Penguin Books. Cook, C. and Gornall, L. (2014), ‘A New Collegiality in Collaborative Work and Practice’, in L. Gornall, C. Cook, L. Daunton, J. Salisbury and B. Thomas (eds), Academic Working Lives: Experience, Practice and Change. London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury. Cuillerai, M. and Kakogianni, M. (2014), ‘Bankocracy: Greek Money and the “New Idea” of Europe’, Radical Philosophy, 186(July/August): 23–8.

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Cunliffe, B. (2008), Between the Oceans: 9000BC – AD 1000. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Douglas, M. (1987), How Institutions Think. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Emerson, M. O. and Hartman, D. (2006), ‘The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism’, Annual Review of Sociology, 32: 127–44. Erkkilӓ, T. (ed.) (2013), Global University Rankings: Challenges for European Higher Education. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Erkkilӓ, T. and Kauppi, N. (2013), ‘Setting the Policy Agenda for Higher Education Reform: Global University Rankings, European Union and OECD’, in N. Kauppi (ed.), A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe. Colchester: ECPR Press, pp. 127–46. European Commission (2010), Focus on Higher Education in Europe 2010: The Impact of the Bologna Process. Brussels: European Commission. Fanghanel, J. (2012), Being an Academic. London and New York: Routledge. Gellner, E. (1992), Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London and New York: Routledge. — (1994), Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals. London: Hamish Hamilton. Giddens, A. (1993), The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press. — (2014), Turbulent and Mighty Continent: What Future for Europe? Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Habermas, J. (2012), The Crisis of the European Union (Trans. C. Cronin). Cambridge: Polity. Hazelkorn, E. (2011), Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education: The Battle for World-Class Excellence. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Harding, J. (2012), ‘Europe at Bay’, London Review of Books (9 February): 3–11. Hind, D. (2010), The Return of the Public. London and New York: Verso. Honneth, A. (1995), The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Judt, T. (2010), Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. London: Vintage Books. Kehm, B. M. and Stensaker, B. (2009), University Rankings, Diversity, and the New Landscape of Higher Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Kreber, C. (2013), Authenticity in and through Teaching in Higher Education: The Transformative Potential of the Scholarship of Teaching. London and New York: Routledge. Littleton, K. and Mercer, N. (2013), Interthinking. Putting Talk to Work. Abingdon: Routledge. Mair, P. (2013), Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso. McGettigan, A. (2013), The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education. London: Pluto. Meek, J. (2014), Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else. London and New York: Verso.

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Naim, M. (2013), The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be. New York: Basic Books. Nussbaum, M. C. (2010), Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. O’Neill, O. (2002), A Question of Trust. The BBC Reith Lectures 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pelkonen, A. and Teravainen-Litardo, T. (2013), ‘Convergence and Divergence in Research, Higher Education and Innovation Policies: An Analysis of Nine European Countries’, in T. Erkkilӓ (ed.), Global University Rankings: Challenges for European Higher Education. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 53–74. Perkin, H. (1989), The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880. London: Routledge. Picketty, T. (2014), Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Trans. A. Goldhammer). Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press/Harvard University. Piris, J.-C. (2011), The Future of Europe: Towards a Two-Speed EU? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reichert, S. (2009), Institutional Diversity in European Higher Education: Tensions and Challenges for Policy Makers and Institutional Leaders. Brussels: European University Association. Reichert, S. and Tauch, C. (2005), Trends IV: European Universities Implementing Bologna. Brussels: European University Association. Reinalda, B. (2013), ‘Global, Asian and European Backgrounds of Global University Backgrounds’, in T. Erkkilӓ (ed.), Global University Rankings: Challenges for European Higher Education. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 36–50. Reinalda, B. and Kulesza, E. (2006), The Bologna Process – Harmonizing Europe’s Higher Education: Including the Essential Original Texts (2nd revised edition). Opladen and Farmington Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich Publishers. Ricoeur, P. (1992), Oneself as Another (Trans. K. Blamey). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Ross, A., Dooly, M. and Hartsmar, N. (2012), Equalities and Education in Europe: Explanations and Excuses for Inequality. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Sabanadze, N. (2010), Globalisation and Nationalism: The Cases of Georgia and the Basque Country. New York: Central European University Press. Said, E. W. (1994), Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. London: Vintage. Sen, A. (2007), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin Books. — (2009), The Idea of Justice. London: Allen Lane. Soros, G. (2012), ‘How to Save the Euro’, The New York Review (23 February): 17–18.

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Soros, G. with Schmitz, G. P. (2014), The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival. New York: Public Affairs. Stensaker, B. and Gornitzka, A. (2009), The Ingredients of Trust in European Higher Education, in B. M. Kehm, J. Huisman and B. Stensaker (eds), The European Higher Education Areas: Perspectives on a Moving Target. Rotterdam and Taipei: Sense Publishers, pp. 125–39. Stiglitz, J. E. (2013), The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. New York and London: Norton. Taylor, C. (1991), The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Todorov, T. (2002), Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. — (2005), The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European (Trans. A. Brown). Cambridge: Polity. Žižek, S. (2012), Save Us from the Saviours, London Review of Books (7 June): 13.

Part One

Frameworks and Perspectives

1

The Academic Condition: Unstable Structures, Ambivalent Narratives, Dislocated Identities Niilo Kauppi

Nobody does the job for which we were formed and that we love. We spend our time fighting to do the job for which we get paid. French university teacher, EducPros Poll 2014, my translation1 Why do we bother with academic identity? Why should we be interested in the question? Why should we ask academics anything about their academic identity? Students engaging in qualitative research and interviews are frequently advised not to take what people say about themselves at face value. People will always try to present themselves in the best possible light, forgetting nasty episodes and remembering the more positive ones. When pressed on nastier points they will hide and attempt to camouflage their real motives, even lie to themselves. So why bother with what academics say about their academic identity? The short answer is that although academic identities are generally of considerable interest to academics but hardly to anyone else, radical changes have been taking place in academia since at least the 1980s. Academic identities, conceptions of one’s worth and place in society, as well as one’s sense of responsibility have been dramatically transformed. For that reason, academic identity might be of interest even for some non-academics. They might find parallels in their own lives. Were Immanuel Kant still with us he would not be surprised by these dramatic transformations. Since the 1980s the classical contradiction between freedom and authority, which he dissected in Der Streit der Fakultäten ([1798]1988), 1

Published by letudiant.fr and the weekly L’Express, http://www.letudiant.fr/educpros, is a French website devoted to higher education.

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has entered a new stage. While academics continue being ‘business men or technicians of learning’ (14) subject to the whims of government (authority), the battleground has shifted with globalisation and neoliberal technologies of power. As a result the space where ‘reason is authorized to speak openly’ (17) has further shrunk and the value of independent thinking (freedom), so prized by Kant, has plummeted in the academic stock market. In this sense, placing ‘rationality’ as one of the main ingredients of the European model (Todorov, 2005) is dangerously misleading. It is rather the struggle between independent thinking and the attempts to govern it that defines European ‘rationality’ – its limits and possibilities. Globalisation and neoliberalism have had a powerful impact on academic identities and the university as an institution. They have led to growing uncertainty and mistrust, to a concentration of power in the hands of university presidents, administrators in ministries and politicians, and to the accumulation of resources by a few institutions that are deemed excellent, widening the gap between first-class and second-class institutions and scholars. Neoliberal reforms subordinate science to political and bureaucratic interests. In this process, key concepts of academic activity are redefined. Because of a lack of understanding of scientific inquiry, these dominant interests require transforming quality, excellence, autonomy and freedom – banners that have united all academics for centuries – into governable objects, measurable or calculable numerical objectifications such as rankings and impact factors (Kauppi, 2013). It has meant removing from academics the right to define excellence. Paradoxically this mania for making science ‘understandable’ to ‘anyone’, of making science ‘useful’, has meant shattering the traditional scientific ethos. Nothing seems to stop the triumph of neoliberalism in academe. But while the regime’s bureaucratic reform frenzy produces the academic identities it needs, countries, disciplines, departments and individual identifications vary in terms of the extent they appropriate or resist its well-known precepts (see Nixon’s introduction to this volume). Resistance to these forces of change is unevenly distributed. In Europe, where higher education is mostly publicly funded, more resistance can be observed from the humanities and the social sciences, from countries in whose self-image globalisation plays a modest role, from individuals operating uniquely in their national contexts, while less resistance will be found from those disciplines that are linked with economic development, business, or the international, from those countries that are dependent culturally and economically on globalisation processes, and from individuals who invest heavily in the international. The argument of this essay is that neoliberalism,

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through its bureaucratically led reform frenzy, produces not only identitarian uncertainty amid a politically more or less unorganised academe but also a scientifically legitimised ambivalent discourse that confuses more than clarifies the mission of the university and research. In terms of national higher education systems, France has been presented (and has presented itself) as a cultural exception to the triumph of neoliberalism. But has it really succeeded in shielding itself from the onslaught of neoliberalism? As it is often at the margins of social phenomena that the conditions enabling its existence are visible, analysis of the French case can be particularly instructive (see Evans and Cosnefroy, 2013, for a perceptive presentation of the French system of higher education). It shows what form resistance can take.

Tensions in French academe A prestigious national tradition of cultural ‘exportation’ has legitimised resistance to ‘Anglo-Saxon dominance’, including the hegemony of English, and the transformations under way. Indeed neoliberalism cannot be disassociated from broader historical ‘culture wars’ between France and the United Kingdom/ United States. There has been for some time a clear sentiment that France as a cultural power is in decline, despite the fact that some elements of French culture, luxury products such as perfumes, its cuisine and wines, are important export items especially in East Asia. Therefore, and in contrast to attitudes in many other European countries, reforms of academe are in general not viewed in a positive light as they are seen as being imposed from the outside and being part of American cultural hegemony. But even in France opposition to the neoliberal academic regime has been selectively reactive more than proactive. With the appropriate reservations on the reliability of the tools used to measure quality and excellence, a majority of politicians and university administrators have embraced the precepts of global visibility and competition. This has led to the adoption of grade degrees (the canonical LMD License (or Bachelor), Master, Doctorate) and the fusion of institutions of higher education to cut costs and to improve positions in global rankings (Assemblée nationale, 2013; Hansens, 2011; Kauppi, 2013). University personnel and the public have been more divided (Nourry, 2014). Lower level administrators have been going along with this movement, while teachers and researchers (a distinction that has to be made in France where teaching and research institutions are separated into universities/grandes écoles and research

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institutions such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientific (CNRS), the French publicly funded National Scientific Research Council) as well as public opinion have been very critical of the reforms. This has led to the usual politics of petitions, strikes and protests. As for the official motives for the reform, the internationalisation of higher education and the global competition between countries and higher education institutions top the list. These motives are very clear in the new French law for higher education and research (Assemblée nationale, 2013: 5): ‘Our higher education and research system is too complex and difficult to read . . . Our system has become illegible not only for national stakeholders and users, but also for their counterparts in Europe and the world. Simplicity is a necessity expected by everyone, which will greatly contribute to our national and international attractiveness’ (my translation). The four goals of this new law, which for the first time in French history unites all the laws dealing with higher education and research, are the following: (1) democratise higher education, improve student success, increase the percentage of university diplomees to 50 per cent of the age group; (2) provide more visibility to French research in the face of big economic and social challenges, in harmony with the EU program Horizon 2020; (3) reinforce cooperation between the various actors involved in higher education and research and reduce institutional complexity, unite collegiality in the university and excellence for all; and (4) amplify the presence of French research in European programs and the international influence of French universities, schools and laboratories, encourage the mobility of students, teachers, administrative and technical personnel, and increase the attractiveness of our sites. The goals also include becoming part of the EU’s ‘U-Multirank’ system.2 This should enable France to ‘get rid of our dependency on international classification systems that are not adapted to the culture and academic history of research in Europe’ (Assemblée nationale, 2013: 16), a goal that unites protagonists and opponents of the law worried about loss of French national prestige. The overall aim is to correct the modest success of France in rankings such as the Shanghai ranking and more broadly to ‘clearly replace our country into a European and international process’ (Assemblée nationale, 2013: 16). Despite the explicitly stated political will to simplify the organisation of French higher education, the new French law of reform, known as the ‘Fioraso

2

U-Multirank is a ranking system for comparing performance across institutions of higher education. It is supported financially in its initial years by the EU.

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law’ following the minister in charge of education, Geneviéve Fioraso, has led to a great deal of confusion and has exacerbated tensions (Nourry, 2014). In a few days a protest on the web gathered more than 11,000 signatures. Academics are asked to compete internationally but at the same time their budgets are being cut. Given the official espousal of neoliberal policy for higher education and research, the horizon of possibilities for proactive alternatives is quite limited as attempts in formulating alternative developments that would not be a return to the ‘good old days’ have failed to materialise. Neoliberal precepts have hijacked the future: at the moment there simply are no credible, coherently formulated political alternatives. As in most European countries, the sense of disempowerment among French academics has been aggravated by the homogeneity of the academic scene: once the only financer, the state, cuts its budget there are no alternatives but to protest against these measures. But, while for academics in some other European countries such as the United Kingdom resorting to financial support from businesses or even privatising higher education as in Poland are viable options, for French academics this would be unimaginable. Higher education is seen as a public service provided by the Republican state, not as an economic service. (See Romuald Normand’s contribution to this volume – Chapter 9.) Notwithstanding the gloomy situation within the academy, a 2014 French moral barometer in higher education and research found that for a large majority of its 2,000 respondents academic work was still a source of satisfaction (EducPros Poll, 2014). This result is quite similar to that obtained by the UK Times Higher Education Best University Workplace Survey 2014, which inspired the French survey: 81 per cent of British respondents expressed satisfaction, as 82 per cent of the French respondents did. Pride in working in their establishment was somewhat stronger in France (three-quarters positive responses) than in Britain (two-thirds positive responses). The similarity breaks down however when it comes to salary. If 61 per cent of British academics feel that their employer offers a decent wage, the reverse is true in France, where only 25 per cent of respondents share this view. Similarly, while 63 per cent of the THE respondents are enthusiastic about the future of their establishment, only 37 per cent of the French share this feeling. The negative impact of work on health is more strongly felt in France than in Britain (51% of respondents, against 32%), while concern for the well-being at work seems neglected in the eyes of the French (only 33% believe that their institution is interested in their well-being), which is less so in Britain (46%). Finally, visions of the future differ widely from one country to another. If 63 per cent of the

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British are enthusiastic about the future of their establishment, only 37 per cent of the French share that feeling. Overall, academics on both side of the Channel still seem to be satisfied with their work. Divergences concerning the future and the institution might be attributed to a general collective psychological makeup, the French being considered more pessimistic and sceptical than the British. In terms of the broader transformations of academic life divergences could have to do with a general siege mentality in France, a nearly-alone-against-the-world situation, combined with a sense that things are only getting worse, partly because of what is happening outside of France. France has not escaped a more general depreciation of the value of academic work, and more specifically teaching. As a French university teacher expressed it, there is ‘(a) lot of stress, little time to devote to research, many administrative tasks . . . The teacher-researcher job is conducive to fragmentation. With two pitfalls: wanting visibility at all costs and chasing the best indicators . . . There is a growing dichotomy between teachers and researchers who are genuinely researchers, and others who run the Faculty and departments or invest in property, such as serving on the boards . . .’ (French university teacher, EducPros Poll, 2014, my translation). As in other European countries bureaucratically led reforms are one of the main reasons that academics have come to feel like strangers in their own house: ‘The institutional instability of the past 10 years has led to instability in my daily tasks, in the content of these assignments and in the forms they take. Hardly have I identified an assignment than a given task disappears or radically changes. This instability is the source of a generalized stress that can only lead to disengagement. This stress is not related to the actors but, from my point of view, is structural’ (French university teacher, EducPros Poll, 2014, my translation). According to some the result has been an explosion of burnouts (Nourry, 2014). The low morale is especially clear in the humanities and the social sciences. In the same poll, academics in the arts, letters, languages and social sciences were on average less satisfied with their condition compared to academics in law, economy and management – 39 per cent compared to 61 per cent. But compared to academics in many other European countries French university teachers and researchers have it well. At least some jobs are still tenured, although the overall tendency is to limit the number of permanent positions and increase the number of temporary positions. I am no doubt privileged, a state-employed and tenured research director at CNRS, working on my own research projects, teaching at the Master’s level in three different European countries, and involved in administrative work at the department

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level in Strasbourg and in scientific management as vice-chair of a European professional organisation, European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). This insider/outsider position gives me an interesting perspective on academe that highlights the often contradictory multiplicity of selves. In France I am part of a shrinking group of people who are favoured by the educational system, those holding permanent positions but outside the university. Indeed the European academic scene is all but homogeneous. In several countries publicly funded research institutions, such as the CNRS in France, the Academy of Finland, the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the academies of science in some Eastern European countries, play a key role not just in research but also in higher education as most researchers are affiliated with universities and teach in them. However, their career development and salaries are dependent on these nationally funded research organisations. This has been one of the problems with the Shanghai ranking, which does not fully take into account research done outside universities, and explains the reactions of some politicians in Germany and France. The main difference with my previous job as research fellow in another, more neoliberal European national research organisation, the Academy of Finland, was that in Finland I had to reapply for my position every three or five years, with no guarantee whatsoever that the position would be renewed. Worrying about what would happen after the term is over was the first thing on my mind during those 13 years of service. I have to say that this transformation from successive fixed-term positions to a permanent one has had a tremendous effect on not just my professional life but also my family life. Having a permanent job in these neoliberal times is possible only in a country where neoliberalism is not considered as the greatest thing since sliced bread. But even in France, the pressures to use one’s time doing administrative work as head of department or equivalent and fulfilling one’s teaching responsibilities, instead on doing research, are very strong. One of the stains on the otherwise rather rosy picture of academic work in France is that there is, as elsewhere in Europe, a growing population of temporary, precariously positioned teachers and researchers. The development of this academic lumpenproletariat is one of the signs of the triumph of the neoliberal regime. Without job security, academics face severe limitations on the time and resources needed to conduct research. They teach or do research for relatively low wages. It seems that in all European countries academic systems, as they have evolved through the pressures of public steering and ‘performance’, clearly favour a shrinking group of full-time, permanent employees at the expense of the growing number of vulnerably placed academics. In many

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European countries that are eager to take part in the global higher education rat race, being a ‘precarious’ academic has even become a ‘career’ that ends in ‘retirement’. This is a state of affairs that is in blatant contradiction to the ‘knowledge society’ hype.

Primary and secondary worlds Professional identities never operate in isolation from other identities and habitats. In my experience, one characteristic of French academic life in contrast to some other European countries is the fusion of professional identity and other identities, political and social, or that of several secondary worlds. As a consequence integrating a new workspace means not only that the individual has to adapt to the new professional working environment but that the pressures to adopt similar political outlooks and styles of life are quite strong. This tribal mentality clashes with the neoliberal push for individualism that finds resonance in both the traditional ‘genius culture’ of scientific work and the French highly meritocratic academic environment (labelled as the oxymoron ‘aristocratic meritocracy’). The tribal mentality is a reaction against the emphasis on individualism found in today’s academe and might also be a linked to the rapport between professional identity and national identity – a link that is quite strong among French academics, perhaps due to the fact that the job market has been relatively closed to the outside world for such a long time. This is in many ways a pity. While I live in what many consider the geographical and even cultural centre of Europe, there seems to be a deep void in this centre. I feel European only in specific situations in which I am encouraged to activate certain practices: when I communicate with my non-French students from mostly what was called Eastern Europe, when I travel to other parts of Europe for meetings of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), when I take part in meetings linked with projects that are funded by the EU or other European countries, or when I travel to other European countries to teach. In distinction to the EU, Europe refers then to a specific space set (Recchi and Kuhn, 2013), to places where I have been or that I visit today and in the future. What unites these instances is the existence of a common symbolic reference that brings together disparate locations – although in reality I might feel culturally closer to North American students than to students from let’s say the Ukraine, having spent several years working in American universities and being married to an American.

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When I travel outside Europe for conferences or work, Europe takes a quite different symbolic form that is more identitarian. I will be considered to be European and certain qualities will be attributed to me, even if I do not feel they suit me. In the European context I will just be a Finn working in France, which is perhaps because of the rarity of the combination – something quite nondescript unless ‘Finn’ is equated with ‘Nordic’ or ‘Scandinavian’. On the European map of cultural stereotypes these are categories that trigger stereotypical associations with Vikings, IKEA and blond women, whereas for most Europeans being a Finn does not trigger specific stereotypes. In contrast, in the United States being European has a vague sense of distinction, and is associated with cultural sophistication, in the good and the bad sense. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, being European was not unusual. But in contrast the only wine bar on the main street of Bloomington, Indiana, with about 50,000 inhabitants and home of Indiana University, was in the minds of the locals frequented only by ‘gays and Europeans’. This was because they served red wine and not Bud Light. Working in the French academic context means that both Europe and the EU are distant. Given that the EU has wholeheartedly embraced neoliberal precepts in its programs to reform European higher education, it is not seen among French academics as a solution to the problems in French higher education that relate mostly to a lack of funding and social recognition. On the contrary, more EU input into French academe means a worsening situation, since increasing EU-level scientific funding has been seen as an excuse to decrease the level of domestic funding. For these reasons, in my everyday experience as a French state employee, Europe in the form of the EU is, globally, more a negative point of reference than a positive one. Everyday work reality is dependent more than anything else on a more general rapport with the local French (or Alsacian) context and French administrative structures. While my location, Strasbourg, is on the French–German border, the effect of this proximity on my academic work is weak. My employer, CNRS, has common funding schemes with the German equivalent, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), and the University of Strasbourg takes part in cooperation with some German and Swiss universities in the European Confederation of Universities on the Upper Rhine (EUCOR) programme.3 But the national character of higher education systems hampers these projects. At the level of the individual teacher and researcher, this means that career 3

Founded in 1989, EUCOR or the University of the Upper Rhine, is a tri-campus organization involving five French, German and Swiss universities cooperating in the fields of training, research, administration, culture and sport.

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ambitions and energy is directed towards the national capital, Paris. Cooperation with colleagues a few dozen kilometres away but in another country is still unappealing partly because few French academics speak German – but partly, also, because communicating in English, while easier for many, is still considered by many as recognising that the French have lost against the ‘AngloSaxons’. This is the reality of these grand ideas of knowledge transfer and the development of European science. On the border of France and Germany, the deteriorating situation of academic life is visible at every level, starting from the micro level of the individual scholar to European institutions at this highest level. The European Science Foundation (ESF) was created in 1974 to develop independent European science, under the auspices of its members, the national science organisations. Because of France’s active role in its creation its headquarters were set up in Strasbourg. The ESF has contributed in a dramatic way to the creation of a European science through funding projects. Forty years later, times have changed. A competing organisation, Science Europe, has picked up the baton. Located in Brussels, it is more tightly controlled by leading financers, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, and will no doubt be more useful for the EU in terms of producing the ‘evidence-based’ research it needs (Simon, 2014). The European Science Foundation, however, was a relatively independent organisation made up of national research councils, representing a Kantian ideal that is under fire from all sides.

Mobility and Europe as unfinished adventure As Terri Seddon rightly points out in her contribution to this volume (Chapter 3), there are essentially three types of academics in terms of mobility: those who do not move, those who move occasionally, and those who move frequently. Since the 1990s, there is less of those who do not move at all across national borders. Even in France scholars are encouraged to be international, although it may mean little more than presenting a paper once in a while in an international conference – ‘international’ can mean a conference organised by French scholars on French soil with a couple of foreign, that is non-French speaking, invitees or a few French-speaking scholars working outside France. There is a growing group of those who move occasionally, that is who participate in conferences or who otherwise spend short periods outside their country of residence. These are favoured by all kinds of mobility funds such as teacher

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exchanges. And then there are those who move frequently, constituting real transnational careers. The group I belong to is the last one: those relatively few but growing number of academics with transnational careers. I studied in Finland and France. After defending my dissertation, I spent altogether 25 years in different research institutions – 6 years as a postdoc in the United States at Indiana University’s Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies and at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, 10 as a research fellow at the Academy of Finland, and 9 as a research director at CNRS in France. European officials misleadingly present mobility as the magical solution to the depreciation of academe. The fact is that for mobility to be a positive factor in the development of European universities would require the existence of a European-wide infrastructure, comprising a European job market and a European system of social services including pensions, which do not exist at the moment. While some EU members – the most neoliberal such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and perhaps Germany – might form, among at least some of the social sciences, the beginning of what might be called a European job market, most national contexts are still closed and self-sufficient, sometimes even divided into several linguistic subgroups as in Belgium, Finland and Switzerland. Consequently, given that career development is dependent on integration in national higher education systems, mobility outside of the national context can in reality become a trap for the individual academic. From his/her point of view mobility can lead to a double absence: an absence from the circles both in the country of origin and in the country of residence. Participating in common projects will be more difficult, as will the accumulation of the necessary social capital for career advancement. This means that the idea of diffusing new knowledge and learning from best practices in other contexts will be dependent on those in commanding positions in national institutions. And to get into those positions one needs to stay put. Individuals in commanding positions might see new knowledge and best practices more as a threat to their own positions than as a positive force in the development of science. Setting up cooperation across borders might be seen as an attempt to bypass national networks and power relations. In other words mobility can be a serious handicap because it is not necessarily considered as being an asset in academic competition, despite the official rhetoric. The first victims of this real life experiment are those younger scholars and Ph.D. students who take the rhetoric seriously, or who genuinely believe in transnational cooperation at the professional or the

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personal level. More senior scholars already integrated in national systems can accumulate transnational experience because they already have access to considerable resources. Currently the European academic scene is full of individuals who have studied in another context than their country of origin. This existential dislocation has serious consequences for these individuals who are not necessarily able to fully integrate into any single system. Therefore mobile academics are misleadingly presented as something they are not: a new European, transnational elite. The Europe of the twenty-first century is not that of the fourteenth century. Several centuries of nationalisation of academic life lie between these two periods. While science is universal, and the university as an institution is organisationally similar all over the world (Meyer, 2010), every country has its own kind of university. As neoliberalism has individualised academic competition to the level of individual higher education institutions, a weakening of the national systems through a bifurcation into first- and second-class institutions inside national systems can be observed. The benefit of this has been that it has highlighted the structural tensions and power relations that have existed for a long time inside national systems between these institutions. This development has also shattered the uniform image of academic national life. The ‘horizontal’ networking between sometimes self-appointed ‘first class research universities’, such as Oxford or Helsinki, has put into motion a dynamic that undermines the methodological nationalism typical of part of the European university system, notably in the larger countries like France, Germany and the United Kingdom. What is the effect of mobility and neoliberalism on academic identity? Identity is a nebulous concept. According to the traditional view, identity is a quality that enables us to say that two entities are similar, that they are identical, or it is a characteristic of an individual that sets her apart. From a more sociological point of view an identity is a (dynamic) relationship between qualities that evolve in various practices and social interactions. Identity is like an onion, you can peel away qualities and in the end you have – nothing. But even here a certain consistency is assumed. Consistency is more difficult to achieve when habituation and adaptation are made more difficult. For an individual academic assailed by neoliberal reforms there are two sources of instability that, in many ways, reinforce one another. At the transnational level moving from one academic culture to another without having time to appropriate and adapt leads to dislocation. Inside the national education

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systems when bureaucratically motivated reforms follow one another in rapid succession, the individual academic’s ‘system 1’, as Daniel Kahnemann calls it – that is intuitive thought that is based on experiences – has difficulty in adapting to the changing environment (Kahnemann, 2011). The combined effect of these processes – different types of evolving working environments – creates tensions and consequently complicates the development of epistemic communities and the acknowledgement of alternative beliefs (Weiner, 1958: 91–112), the bases of any kind of creative intellectual work.

Conclusion Neoliberal reforms have been very successful in transforming both the university as an institution and the academic identities of those who work in such institutions. They have transformed the Kantian ideal of the university from one of freethinking and research to commissioned thinking and research. They have succeeded in subordinating internal goals to external ones, breaking relatively stable cognitive and institutional structures. This has had an impact on the skills and requirements required of academics. It has broken the homogeneity of national higher education systems, creating a split between first- and second-class institutions. For a variety of reasons in some national contexts, such as France, there has been some resistance among some academics, but even there the conformity that these policies rely on has been the rule more than the exception. How is this possible? Why have these policies done so well? Partly because academics are divided and no coherent, proactive alternative exists. Academics are paid to teach and do research not politics. Another reason is that among the political class there is no real support for resistance to the reforms. The new laws of the French Socialist government prove that rightist and leftist governments follow the same higher education and research policy. But an additional answer might lie in the ambivalence of the narrative used to promote and legitimise reform. The neoliberal reforms teach us one thing: the ambivalence of concepts and their strategic usage to promote symbolic and material interests in the name of something they are not. Reforms are made in the name of autonomy and excellence. But it seems more autonomy has destroyed autonomy and that more excellence has destroyed excellence. This contradiction is not due to the point that any single-minded pursuit of values necessarily leads to its contrary as

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Žižek simplistically argues (2001). It is rather that politically and economically powerful interests such as national governments, international organisations (EU, OECD, etc.) and university administrators have succeeded in changing the habitual meaning of concepts such as autonomy or excellence. They have succeeded in redefining them in such a way that using them actually leads to the promotion of values that are contrary to the old values that academics have traditionally associated with them. To be more precise, although the same concept (autonomy, excellence) is used, what it means, the form of the content to use Hjemslev’s term (1961), has changed. Since the 1980s the triumph of neoliberalism has in fact emptied familiar forms (autonomy, excellence) of their old contents (quality, novelty) and replaced these with new contents (ranking, impact factors) while simultaneously giving the impression that the old content had not changed. This swapping enables the promotion of policies that are in contradiction with the values they supposedly promote. The lack of awareness of language corruption has certainly contributed to the success of neoliberalism, as it has enabled reformers to freely play on the mismatch between form and content. But this linguistic strategy has not taken place in a social vacuum. The massive character of the transformations under way and the contradictory nature of the vocabulary used to steer and legitimise them might explain why the linguistic dimension has not been singled out. The smoke and mirrors of language corruption has gone hand in hand with the introduction of a range of contradictory social practices that range from those touching individuals (identity requirements, pressures of professionalism) to those involving large-scale organisations such as universities (increasing performance with shrinking resources). What are the alternatives? If going back is not a realistic option, linguistic counter-strategies might involve using quotation marks when using key concepts such as excellence, thereby indicating the distance between old and new content or inventing new concepts to construct an alternative reality. However, purely linguistic strategies are effective only if linked with transformations in social practices, in what academics do in their everyday activities. A lot of coordinated political work will be needed to establish a narrative that is convincing with respect to both language and practice. This will require a more politically organised academe. World-renowned academics – as legitimate interlocutors with university administrators and politicians – will be needed to take the lead in this vital task.

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References Assemblée nationale (2013), Projet de loi relatif à l’enseignement supérieur et à la recherche no. 835. Available at http://assemblee-nationale.fr/14/projets/pl0835.asp [accessed 1 June 2014]. EducPros Poll (2014), Available at http://EducPros.fr [accessed 2 June 2014]. Evans, L. and Cosnefroy, L. (2013), ‘The Dawn of a New Academic Professionalism in the French Academy? Academics Facing the Challenges of Imposed Reform’, Studies in Higher Education, 38(8): 1201–21. Hansens, P. (2011), Les personnels administratifs et l’Université de Strasbourg: Analyse qualitative des perceptions face au changement. Master’s thesis, Institut d’études politiques Strasbourg. Hjemslev, L. (1961), Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Kahnemann, D. (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Penguin. Kant, I. ([1798]1988), Le conflit des facultés en trois sections. Paris: Vrin. Kauppi, N. (2013), ‘Ranking European Social Science and Stratifying Global Knowledge: The Example of European Political Science’, in T. Erkkilä (ed.), Global University Rankings. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 166–77. Meyer, J. (2010), ‘World Society, Institutional Theories and the Actor’, Annual Review of Sociology, 36: 1–20. Nourry, M.-A. (2014), Loi Fioraso: la résistance s’organise dans les universités. Available at http://EducPros.fr [accessed 2 June 2014]. Weiner, P. P. (ed.) (1958), Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance). New York: Dover Publications. Recchi, E. and Kuhn, T. (2013), ‘Europeans’ Space-Sets and the Political Legitimacy of the EU’, in K. Niilo (ed.), A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe. Colchester: ECPR Press, pp. 191–222. Simon, F. (2014), EU Twisting Facts to Fit Political Agenda, Chief Scientist Says, Euractiv Newsletter (2014), EurActiv Newsletter: Science & Policymaking [email protected] [accessed 27 May 2014]. Todorov, T. (2005), The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European. Cambridge: Polity. Žižek, S. (2001), On Belief. Abingdon: Routledge.

2

Autonomisation and Individualisation: Ideational Shifts in European Higher Education* Tero Erkkilä and Ossi Piironen

In this chapter, we analyse the changes in ideas concerning the governance of higher education in Europe and their implications for academic identities. We consider the transnational policy ideas of competition, ranking, autonomy and accountability as being the core of the dominant policy narrative regarding European higher education (Erkkilä and Piironen, 2014).1 These are not disparate ideas and practices. They form an interrelated entity that is represented in the policy statements of the European higher education establishment. Building on an ideology of competition, the above policy ideas are also bound to influence academic identities and the discourse on ‘European’ higher education. Based on our analysis of European Union (EU) documents, we identify ideational shifts in European higher educational policy, and discuss their implications for academic identity. We pay particular attention to the process of quantification – embodied in university rankings, journal impact factors and assessments of research performance – that is driving changes in academic values and identity. We draw attention to two developments relevant to academic identity building and emanating from the above shift: the autonomisation of institutions and individualisation through empowering, conditioning and performancebased segregation. Autonomisation refers to the current drive for the financial and organisational autonomy of institutions, implying new responsibilities for research performance and funding that are maintained with novel accountability * The authors thank Caroline Werner and Mark Waller for their help in textual editing and proofreading. This study has been funded by the Helsinki University Network for European Studies and the Academy of Finland. 1 See Sum, 2009; Hall and Soskice, 2001; Cerny, 1997; and Porter, 1990 on competitiveness.

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measures. Individualisation is identified with the current emphasis on individual achievements and standardised measures for assessing them. This can also be understood in terms of short-term, project-based employment contracts that have become characteristic of academic employment practice in many countries. According to Guy Neave (2009), public management reforms have caused a shift from formal regulation to the evaluative steering of universities, which has individualised the institutional status of universities. Institutional status is explicitly linked to institutional services and performance. This also applies to researchers currently being rated on the basis their performance. The pursuit of world-class institutions has led to a search for star researchers, while at the systemic level there has been a shift towards more individualised forms of research, such as the ‘principal investigator’ and tenure track models. We contend that this individualisation has been shaped in part by the creation of self-sustained and competing entities, be they universities or individuals, whose value is defined by their performance. While this development has accompanied calls for increasing ‘organisational autonomy’, it does not entail greater academic freedom. On the contrary, universities and researchers are governed through this autonomy (Rose, 1999), leading to economic reductionism in the evaluation of their work. We propose that such individualisation also has consequences for academic identities, which are inevitably altered. The relationship between universities and academics is increasingly characterised by performance rather than a long-term commitment to shared values and principles. This is also linked to the new culture of accountability, which requires the continuous production of publications and degrees, instances of ‘mobility’, success in fundraising, as well as appearances in traditional media and new social media. Everything is counted and compared, success and failure are laid bare, and competitive environments are thereby created. Such competition might be considered a harmless sport, if it did not ultimately have financial implications for institutions and individuals – directly through instruments of performance management and indirectly in terms of reputational implications. Despite these processes of adversarial autonomisation and individualisation, decision-makers and managers emphasise collaboration among institutions, privileged projects and individual researchers. In reality, such networks turn out to be weak and ephemeral, as academic work is increasingly perceived as a competitive rather than a collaborative endeavour. Because the emphasis of institutional strategies is increasingly on leading individuals, the attempts at recruiting and harnessing them might mark a shift from institutional values and culture. If universities perceive their success

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as hinging on high-performing individuals, and make their recruitment a primary strategic goal, there will be little left of universities as institutions. In other words, if a university is merely the sum of its top individuals, does this not undermine the institution and its values? Star-filled football squads rarely make good teams. Academic enquiry is a collective endeavour that benefits from common purposes and social values as opposed to brute individualism. Below, we outline key concepts of the shifting fundaments of European higher education (Erkkilä and Piironen, 2014) – competition, accountability, autonomy and ranking – and their relationship to the reframing of academic identities in Europe. We then turn to the possible consequences of these shifts in terms of autonomisation and individualisation, and discuss the impact on academic identities. In conclusion, we look at the outcomes of individualisation for communal identity and commitment, as well as in terms of the diminishing time horizon through shortening timeframes of planning and research. While simple experience tells us that haste produces poor results, Dick Pels (2003: 45) gives relative ‘lack of haste’ a more fundamental role as a necessary condition for scientific autonomy: ‘Its primary condition of felicity is absence of haste, or a systematic and critical deceleration of thought and action, which sets science apart from the demands of urgency, immediacy, simultaneity and publicity imposed by more speedy cultures such as those of politics and business.’ If Pels’s argument is valid, the implications must concern not only scholarly achievements but also – profoundly – academic identities. The above-mentioned ideational shifts and the related systemic and structural changes are also tending to influence the professional mind-set of academics. Building on a Foucauldian perspective, we see the new calculative accountability measures rendering academic researchers as governable objects (Miller and Rose, 1990). Here the power dynamics are embedded in the mentalities of governing and reflexivity over perceived norms. As individual researchers are exposed to the new calculative logic of competition in higher education, they often adhere to the perceived norm involuntarily. We see the same in the convergence of institutional strategies in terms of competition. Our systematic analysis of the institutional strategies of European universities shows a convergence in the rhetoric and rationalities used in promoting excellence in the 27 institutions we have examined (Piironen and Erkkilä, 2014).2 The notions of competition, individualism and financial autonomy in these strategies are closely linked to the 2

Our selection of strategies was based on three country groups of institutions from the United Kingdom, Germany and Nordic countries (Piironen and Erkkilä, 2014). We also based our selection on the performance level of the universities, as assessed in the major university rankings.

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demand for measurable outputs in research performance. The new calculative measures of accountability have also influenced academic work, making it governable. Most alarmingly, academics themselves have internalised these new values and norms in their working practices.

Competition versus collegiality Academic research is increasingly perceived as social activity based on competition between universities and between individuals. An alternative approach would be to see academic work as a collective and collaborative effort. The emphases on competition are tightly linked to economic policies, visible at both national and EU levels. This has shifted the focus of academic research and higher education and as a result has implications for how academics perceive themselves and are perceived. In an earlier analysis, we examined the ways, in which competition, competitive environment and competitiveness are utilised in EU policy documents (Erkkilä and Piironen, 2014). We showed how universities’ competitiveness is linked to the national and regional competitiveness believed to foster economic goals, such as growth, employment and welfare. We pointed out how global university rankings had increased the concern for a perceived loss of competitiveness at all levels: following the publication of the Shanghai Ranking, concern for the relative performance of European universities has dominated EU policy initiatives for higher education. The focus on competitiveness was part of a larger discursive shift that highlighted the need for new policy concepts, such as autonomy, accountability and ranking (Bacchi, 1999). Institutional autonomy in this context was conceptualised in economistic and market-oriented terms rather than in terms of institutions influencing and shaping policy and practice. Accountability was represented as the economic accountability of universities to society overall. To ensure accountability, the performance of universities has to be transparent, implying a range of new monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, including international benchmarking by university rankings. Unfortunately, as Onora O’Neill (2002) stated over a decade ago, managerial accountability measures may actually generate public mistrust of academic performance such that academic practices are adversely affected. In the field of European politics, the concern for regional competitiveness has clearly bypassed the earlier projects of enlargement and the creation of

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single markets at the turn of the millennium. The European Council in Lisbon recognised that the EU ‘is confronted with a quantum shift resulting from globalisation and the challenges of a new knowledge-driven economy’ (European Council, 2000; see also High Level Group, 2004: 24). The Council also agreed on a new strategic goal for the EU ‘to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’ (ibid.). This link between knowledge and growth had already been made by the 1997 Commission Communication Towards a Europe of Knowledge, and it has since constituted the defining idea of the contemporary higher education policy doctrine in Europe. In November 2004, the Kok Report affirmed the inadequate implementation of the Lisbon Agenda and made propositions for its streamlining (High Level Group, 2004: 12). Europe was seen to be behind the United States in the key indicators of the knowledge society (20). The message was that, for the sake of economic competitiveness, Europe had to accelerate its efforts to compete within the field of research and innovation. The global university rankings have served as a tool for identifying this policy concern, and have informed the perceived remedies for addressing it (Erkkilä, 2014). There have been proposals, not only by policymakers and institutional executives but also by academics, for enhancing the competitiveness of European universities by streamlining administration, attracting private funding and providing students with the kind of education that suits the needs of the labour market (see, e.g., Ritzen, 2011). European calls for improved competitiveness have moved from the systemic to the institutional level (European Commission, 2003). The main problem, according to this interpretation, is the inability of European universities to attract sufficient talent, which is leading to decreasing levels of excellence, particularly vis-à-vis the United States. The argument is laid out in the 2011 Communication: ‘Although some Member States are a very attractive study destination, the EU as a whole needs to attract the best students and researchers if it is to compete with the US’ (European Commission, 2011: 6). Proposals have varied from increased research and innovation funding – half-heartedly implemented after the financial turmoil of 2008 (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2013) – to managerial reforms of higher education systems throughout Europe (European Commission, 2011). The proposed reforms for institutional autonomisation are indeed justified in terms of improved competitiveness: The challenges faced by higher education require more flexible governance and funding systems which balance greater autonomy for education institutions

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Academic Identities in Higher Education with accountability to all stakeholders. Autonomous institutions can specialise more easily, promoting educational and research performance and fostering diversification within higher education systems. But legal, financial and administrative restrictions continue to limit institutional freedom to define strategies and structures and to differentiate themselves from their competitors. The efficiency of higher education institutions and so the effectiveness of public investment can be enhanced by reducing restrictions: on raising private revenue, on capital investment, on the ownership of infrastructure, on the freedom to recruit staff, on accreditation. Investment in professional management can provide strategic vision and leadership while allowing teachers and researchers the necessary academic freedom to concentrate on their core tasks. (European Commission, 2011: 9, original emphases)

In the European University Association’s (EUA) policy positions, European university executives have also forcefully advocated reforms that strengthen the position of universities as strategic actors in a competitive environment: Financial sustainability, increased autonomy, appropriate governing structures and strong management and leadership capacities are key elements in order for universities to fulfil their multiple missions and respond to the current challenges in an increasingly complex and global environment. EUA’s work in these areas aims at developing and advocating common policies for European and national policymakers to provide the conditions and frameworks to establish strong, autonomous, well funded and financially sustainable universities. Diversification of missions and activities, financial strains caused by rising costs, new stakeholder demands, global competition and the global economic downturn all contribute to the increasing complexity of steering and managing universities. Work in this area supports universities in their efforts to improve governance and management structures in order to act more strategically and become more efficient and effective, in particular by identifying ways in which leaders can enhance their steering capacity.3

As a result, the logic of competition has crept into the domain of education policies, defining not only the field of action in which higher education institutions are located but also their institutional identities as separate entities whose primary function is to compete for survival. At the institutional level, increased ‘awareness’ of the importance of competitiveness is often translated in terms of ‘internationalisation’ and 3

EUA, Governance, Autonomy & Funding, http://www.eua.be/eua-work-and-policy-area/ governance-autonomy-and-funding.aspx [accessed 30 May 2014].

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‘attractiveness’. It is thus not surprising that the institutional strategies of European universities focus primarily on competition for top researchers, students and funding. Competition has traditionally been a central element in the academic research but accompanying it was a different narrative of scientific work as communality and collaboration. That alternative narrative seems to have been set aside in favour of competition between self-sustaining institutions and between individuals. While all universities seem to base their concepts of success on recruiting and fostering talent, when success appears to rest almost exclusively on the shoulders of key individuals the institutional characteristics of universities seem to be negated. Universities’ strategies contain very few references to institutional tradition or organisational culture as guarantees of good performance. In other words, the institutional setting becomes seemingly irrelevant, as individual researchers are the sole focus of strategic work. References to ‘common purpose’ are sometimes present in institutional strategies, but these are usually contradictory. For instance, as part of its efforts to enhance a ‘sense of common purpose’, Swansea University, in the United Kingdom, aims at developing ‘a culture that better shares and celebrates in our University community’s successes’ (Swansea University, 2014: 27). Such ideas are, nevertheless, meaningless when the very same documents stress the need to identify, attract and reimburse ‘talent’ and ‘performers’, and to employ sticks and carrots to enhance the individual performance of the faculty. In our analysis of the institutional strategies of 27 European universities, 13 universities held an explicit strategic goal to recruit talented individuals elsewhere. Moreover, 15 universities expressed a strategic need to specifically support talented individuals, often through performance management and competitive salary.4 In other words, attachment to the institution is judged in terms of individual success rather than a shared set of values or a common sense of identity. The competitive logic builds strongly on that of quantification and ranking. Quantification reduces the complex field of higher education and makes universities seemingly comparable. Also, the quantification of academic publications and ranking of publication outlets has brought a calculative logic to academic work. In the next section, we look at the rise of global university rankings that we argue has led to the increasing individualisation of academics.

4

For a more comprehensive analysis of institutional strategies and the composition of data, see Piironen and Erkkilä, 2014.

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Rankings and the production of an atomistic higher education landscape The first global university ranking was published in 2003 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This ‘Shanghai list’ was followed by another global ranking produced by the UK Times Higher Education Supplement in 2004. Though universities in the Anglo-American context had been subject to rankings previously, this was the first time that the global landscape of higher education was being mapped and, consequently, constructed in this way. In the European context, the global rankings have contributed to the construction of what is seen as the policy problem of European higher education. The core of this problem is the poor ranking of European universities within the overall global rankings (European Commission, 2005a; 2011). The rankings are based on the same atomistic background philosophy as the ideology of competition: they reproduce a political imaginary where universities live to compete against one another globally for funding, students, researchers, publications and even Nobel prizes. Since the mid-2000s, higher rankings and competitiveness have been ideationally linked in the policy work of the European Commission, where competition is seen as both a condition for and outcome of the ranking exercises (European Commission, 2005b; 2011). The response to rankings has been twofold. Actors are happy to acknowledge the deficiencies and imbalances of the rankings (Rauhvargers, 2011), but refer to them in their goal setting. This has led to the reproduction of certain Anglo-American institutional practices that are seen as recipes for success, and the consequent failure to recognise the particular institutional histories and contextual aspects of the model and the problems inherent in adopting it within different institutional and national contexts. Anne Herbert and Janne Tienari (2013) question the plausibility of introducing the tenure-track model in the Finnish context by showing how the same recruitment instrument can have very different meanings in different sociocultural contexts. While in the United States the model is designed to protect academic staff from political pressures and short-termism, it is seen by Helsinki-based Aalto University’s middle-level academics as an instrument for managerial control, elitism and ‘cramping of creativity’. Though global rankings expose geographical differences and though they can spur systemic – regional and national – interpretations, we argue that the methodological individualism inherent in the ranking practice reinforces institutional atomisation. Problems and solutions are thereby located at the level of the individual institution. Both the European-level strategies (European Commission, 2005a; 2006b; 2011) and nationally implemented higher education

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reforms (see e.g. de Boer et al., 2008) evidence a strong thrust towards the autonomisation of universities with a view to putting more European institutions on par with their rivals in other continents – the relative positions assessed partly in terms of global university rankings. A possible problem with competition-oriented hierarchical orderings is that they represent reality as a zero-sum game. Should quality, performance or achievement come to be understood first and foremost in comparative terms, there is a possibility that even the single conceivable justification for managerial reforms – the naïve belief that atomistic competition raises the overall level of academic performance – will be sacrificed as competition becomes increasingly intense. In the present atmosphere, there is a clear and present danger that the key question, ‘how is the overall quality of research improved most effectively?’ gives way to a belief that increased competition will provide a solution to the problem of ‘underperformance’. There is no indication that members of faculties actually do think about research in these terms. It matters less to most scholars where research is done as long as it is interesting and serious (and as long as one’s personal income is secure). However, competitive thinking is clearly driving the policies and practices of policymakers and institutional managers all over Europe. So, to some extent university rankings are aligned with and reinforce existing competition practices associated with institutional autonomisation: higher education institutions today have engaged in a fierce competition not only for scholarly achievements but also for financial resources, talent and prestige. Setting up structures that impose competitive practices has impacted academic work and individual academic identities. There is a clear ideational input from the Anglo-American higher education system, where performance and competition for talent have become extremely pronounced. This is currently seen as a desirable model for European higher education – which, as a result, now stands at a crossroads.

Institutional repercussions There is a broad consensus within European higher education that academic autonomy should be strengthened (Piironen, 2013). The main reason for this new found excitement is in the simple chain of causal ideas stating that the institutional autonomy of universities – through improved institutional and scientific performance – leads to success, which in turn strengthens national competitiveness, economic growth and welfare (see also Nokkala, 2012: 61).

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This peculiar conceptualisation of autonomy potentially contradicts more traditional notions of academic freedom. The notion of institutional (i.e. financial) autonomy has nevertheless come to dominate the recent European discussion (Erkkilä and Piironen, 2014). This novel understanding draws on the New Public Management tradition and is thus geared to advance managerial reforms in higher education (Christensen, 2011; Neave, 2009; Piironen, 2013). In the present European context, arguments to strengthen universities’ institutional autonomy evolve from economistic premises: since competition is either beneficial or unavoidable (or both) universities must be given the means necessary to compete successfully. However, according to this argument, ‘the means’ do not come in the form of taxpayers’ hand-outs supposedly offered on a silver platter and to be wasted by unaccountable academic hangers-on divorced from the rest of the society. Instead – so the argument goes – the right course is to empower institutions to become flexible and calculative market operators bearing full responsibility for their own survival. On paper, this means enhancing the institutional capabilities required to make strategic choices about internal organisation, academic activities, hiring and firing, financing, and the internal allocation of resources. In reality, it means increased supply and demand-type conditioning by markets and societal pressures – a real threat to academic freedom. Decreasing the share of public funding, for example, will make universities more vulnerable to market fluctuations. This is because donations are harder to acquire during economic down-turns, and they will become more dependent on issues of prestige, public visibility and attractiveness, for example, in fundraising, and recruitment of staff and students. Even autonomy in choosing one’s research problems freely is in danger, if the share of competed-for (external) funding increases at the expense of public funding. University autonomy is now discussed primarily in institutional terms. This encourages managerial efficiency rather than collegial deliberation. It perceives obstacles to autonomy as emanating from the excessive public regulation of financial and organisational matters rather than from public mistrust, governmental censure or the commodification of higher education. (See e.g. European Commission, 2005a; 2006b; 2011; European Universities Association, 2001: 7.) Autonomy is increasingly seen as a managerial property of the university leadership, not as an advantage belonging to the entire academic community. Institutional strategies are presented as the showcases of the universities’ enhanced autonomy. They are meant to anthropomorphise and unite institutions

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by highlighting their distinctive identities and anti-systemic character, selfsufficiency and strategic resolution. But problems ensue. First, our empirical assessment of institutional strategies indicated a measure of isomorphism, both in form and substance (Piironen and Erkkilä, 2014). Nothing in those strategies communicates distinctiveness, or for that matter autonomy. Instead, in trying to anticipate consumer and stakeholder preferences, they evidence a high level of dependence on external, non-academic conditioning. In the end, institutional profiling is limited to the identification and support of strong research areas and the setting up of spearhead projects. Second, it is improbable that strategic planning would unite and engage the faculty any more than before. Quite the contrary, for the majority of the academic staff, managerial autonomisation has meant increased occupational insecurity and disillusionment with employer responsibility. The diminishing sense of collegiality is therefore visible within the workplace that now values individuals solely through their measurable performance. New measures of accountability that emphasise performance portray a power mechanism that functions through its calculative logic.

Accountability: Creating countable objects The calls for increased autonomy are often accompanied by demands for ‘accountability’ (Neave, 2009). The concept of accountability is relatively new and can be linked to the rise of New Public Management reforms starting in the early 1990s in Europe (Mulgan, 2000). Having previously existed in the realm of accounting, accountability became a concept in vogue to describe the new non-hierarchic means for controlling government. In sum, this conceptual shift indicates changes in the perceived mechanisms of accountability that now stress performance (outcome) over responsibility for process (Erkkilä, 2007). While the idea of accountability through results had been implemented in universities already before the use of global rankings (Shore, 2008), the appearance of rankings has certainly heightened demands for accountability. In the policy discourse of the European Commission, accountability arose in the early 2000s in the context of the knowledge economy as a guarantee of efficient management that – it was argued – should be open to professionals from outside academia (European Commission, 2003: 17). Since the mid-2000s, accountability has been identified as one of the drivers of ‘modernisation’. Increased accountability and autonomy are seen to support interdisciplinary and applied research

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(European Commission, 2006a). Universities and academics are now seen as being accountable to society for economic performance and, as a result, a direct and measurable contribution to employment, welfare and economic growth is expected (European Commission, 2005a: 9; 2011). Universities’ accountability to society is seen to require ‘quality assurance’ and performance assessments (European Commission, 2005a: 7). This requirement for quantification has also filtered from the institutional to the individual level. The amount of publications, degrees produced and theses supervised are ultimately aggregated data on the activities of individual employees. The process of collecting the data has made the research output of individuals an issue of concern. This has created a new ‘governable’ domain (Miller and Rose, 1990). At the institutional level, attention to output translates into personal goals regarding the number of publications and the supposed status of publication outlets. Max Weber (1978) saw bureaucratic practices as resting largely on the calculative logic of bookkeeping, on which the new accountability measures also ultimately rest. Weber was highly critical of bureaucracy, because he considered that it causes a shift in ethics and values. Weber considered responsible organisations and individuals as functioning on value rationality (Wertrationalität). Bureaucratic logic left no room for such rationality, but instead compelled individuals to act upon instrumental rationality (Zweckrationalität): a rationality that no longer allowed for free ethical choices by individuals but forced them to abide by its own bureaucratic logic. In our view, Weber’s concern may apply to the ‘modernization’ of higher education in Europe. As we have noted, accountability is tightly linked to the autonomisation of institutions. This can refer to managers’ autonomy, as organisations are geared towards global competition, marking a shift of focus from the national higher education system to the performance of individual institutions. The performance of institutions is also increasingly linked to the funding and status of institutions. This in turn marks a shift from ex ante accountability through formal rules towards ex post accountability through output (publications, degrees, public appearances etc.). Such autonomisation is likely to lead to the prioritisation of certain research areas or ‘spearhead’ projects. But such autonomy is more apparent than actual as it rests heavily on the calculative logic that exhibits the problems that Weber identified. In reality, the newly ‘autonomised’ universities and research centres are tightly controlled through the performance management schemes that create hierarchical power relations, which Weber referred to as the ‘iron cage’ that leaves no scope for ethics and politics.

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The same applies at the individual level. While individualisation can be seen as an attempt at ‘empowering’ individuals and focusing on single researchers as assets in global competition, it increasingly makes the domain of individual achievement ‘governable’ by establishing standardised measures and distinguishing individuals in terms of status, position, salary and career prospects. Academic identities are at stake, as the new logic of governance becomes internalised into the new professional order. This influences the professional mind-set of individuals that now see their role in the academic community and society through personal performance that consists of countable entities. It marks a shift away from the identification pattern that builds on critical thinking and collaboration.

Conclusion There have been major ideational shifts in European higher education in the past decade. Higher education is increasingly linked with economic competitiveness and innovation policies. The university rankings have helped to frame the research performance of European universities as a policy problem. As a result there is a push for the autonomisation of universities and research institutes, where the identification of special research areas and spearhead projects creates new disciplinary hierarchies premised on, among other things, the supposed distinction between ‘useful’ and ‘useless’ knowledge (see Flexner, 1939). Ultimately, this will adversely affect the self-steering capacity of academic enquiry as well as its potential for renewal, since the selfregulative quality of scientific research is becoming increasingly embedded within the norms of academic practice. A parallel development is that of individualisation, which is also strongly linked to performance. In current European strategies, recruiting and fostering individual researchers is seen as crucial to the enhancement of universities’ research performance. Academic career paths are also designed according to this logic, most apparent in the spread of the tenure track model within the European context. While individual performance can be framed positively as a motivating factor, often linked to career development and reward in terms of remuneration, it may have the downside of becoming an alienating element in the academic community. As institutions are now fighting for better positions in the rankings, they often come to stress the role of individuals to the extent that the role of institutional and academic tradition is being minimised. Tradition is

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often a matter of tacit knowledge and organisational memory, shared through conventions and even ceremonies. But if a university’s success is the direct outcome of its individual staff members, then what is the role, if any, of the institution? If one can create ‘excellence’ simply by buying talented individuals, is it then not irrelevant where they work? Somewhat counter-intuitively, the academic institutions are building their strategies on practices that undermine their institutional legacies. In their public strategies, many universities focus on top individuals rather than on the full staff complement. However, academics themselves are perceived as having scant commitment to their universities beyond fulfilling performance goals. The relationship between academic institutions and the individuals working for them is often characterised by short-sighted economic calculus rather than long-term commitment. The same may apply to academics’ relationship to research, as the demands for publications and quantifiable results do not necessarily encourage engaging long projects. Such short-termism is likely to affect academic careers and even research. If competitive structures, managerial practices and (over)individualist discourse are allowed to thrive, a cultural change, a change in identities and mindsets, will surely take root within academia. We advocate countering such a development. In many ways, collaboration is a counter-discourse to the above development. Understanding academic work as collaboration involving a global research community would allow one to perceive academic work differently. Seen from this perspective, scientific progress would be a collective effort that is not the sum of the actors engaging in it but rather a social process that cannot be reduced to individuals. For this system to perform at its best, we need a reappraisal of professional values and academic identities.

References Bacchi, C. L. (1999), Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage Publications. Cerny, Philip G. (1997), ‘Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization’, Government and Opposition, 32(2): 251–74. Christensen, T. (2011), ‘University Governance Reforms: Potential Problems of More Autonomy?’, Higher Education, 62(4): 503–17. de Boer, H., Jongbloed, B., Enders, J. and File, J. (2008), Progress in Higher Education Reform across Europe: Governance Reform, Volume 1: Executive Summary Main Report. Twente: Center for Higher Education Policy Studies.

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Erkkilä, T. (2007), ‘Governance and Accountability – A Shift in Conceptualisation’, Public Administration Quarterly, 31(1): 1–38. —(2014), ‘Global University Rankings, Transnational Policy Discourse and Higher Education in Europe’, European Journal of Education, 49(1): 91–101. Erkkilä, T. and Piironen, O. (2014), ‘Shifting Fundaments of European Higher Education Governance: Competition, Ranking, Autonomy and Accountability’, Comparative Education, 50(2): 177–91. European Commission (2003), ‘The Role of the Universities in the Europe of Knowledge’, COM(2003) 58 final. Brussels: European Commission, 5 February. — (2005a), ‘Mobilising the Brainpower of Europe: Enabling Universities to Make Their Full Contribution to the Lisbon Strategy’, COM(2005) 152 final. Brussels: European Commission, 20 April. — (2005b), ‘Annex to the Communication from the Commission. Mobilising the Brainpower of Europe: Enabling Universities to Make Their Full Contribution to the Lisbon Strategy. European Higher Education in a Worldwide Perspective’, SEC(2005) 518. Brussels: European Commission, 20 April. — (2006a), ‘Europe Needs Modernised Universities, Says European Commission’, Press release, IP/06/592. Brussels: European Commission, 10 May. — (2006b), ‘Delivering on the Modernisation Agenda for Universities: Education, Research and Innovation’, COM(2006) 208 final. Brussels: European Commission, 10 May. — (2011), ‘Supporting Growth and Jobs – An Agenda for the Modernisation of Europe’s Higher Education System’, COM(2011) 567 final. Brussels: European Commission, 20 September. European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2013), ‘Funding of Education in Europe 2000–2012: The Impact of the Economic Crisis’, Eurydice Report, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. European Council (2000), ‘Presidency Conclusions, Lisbon European Council, 23 and 24 March 2000’, Lisbon: European Council. European University Association (2001), ‘Salamanca Convention 2001: The Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area’, Geneva: European University Association. Flexner, A. (1939), ‘The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge’, Harper’s Magazine, (179): 544–52. Hall, Peter A. and Soskice, D. (2001), ‘An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism’, in Peter A. Hall and Soskice, D. (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–70. Herbert, A. and Tienari, J. (2013), ‘Transplanting Tenure and (Re)Construction of Academic Freedom’, Studies in Higher Education, 38(2): 157–73. High Level Group (2004), ‘Facing the Challenge: The Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Employment’, Report from the High Level Group chaired by Wim Kok, November. Miller, P. and Rose, N. (1990), ‘Political Rationalities and Technologies of Government’, in S. Hänninen and K. Palonen (eds), Texts, Contexts, Concepts: Studies on Politics

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and Power in Language. Helsinki: The Finnish Political Science Association, pp. 166–83. Mulgan, R. (2000), ‘Accountability: An Ever-Expanding Concept?’ Public Administration, 78(3): 555–73. Neave, G. (2009), ‘Institutional Autonomy 2010–2012: A Tale of Elan – Two Steps Back to Make One Very Large Leap Forward’, in B. M. Kehm, J. Huisman and B. Stensaker (eds), The European Higher Education Area: Perspectives on a Moving Target. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 3–22. Nokkala, T. (2012), ‘Institutional Autonomy and the Attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area – Facts or Tokenistic Discourse?’, in A. Curaj, P. Scott, L. Vlasceanu and L. Wilson (eds), European Higher Education at the Crossroads: Between the Bologna Process and National Reforms. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media, pp. 59–81. O’Neill, O. (2002), A Question of Trust: The BBC Reith Lectures 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pels, D. (2003), Unhastening Science: Autonomy and Reflexivity in the Social Theory of Knowledge. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Piironen, O. (2013), ‘The Transnational Idea of University Autonomy and the Reform of the Finnish Universities Act’, Higher Education Policy, 26(1): 127–46. Piironen, O. and Erkkilä, T. (2014), ‘Global University Rankings and Shifts in Institutional Strategies’, Paper presented at the ISA Annual Convention, Toronto. Porter, Michael E. (1990), Competitive Advantage of Nations. London: Macmillan Press. Rauhvargers, A. (2011), Global University Rankings and Their Impact: EUA Report on Rankings 2011. Brussels: European University Association. Ritzen, J. (2011), A Chance for European Universities: Or: Avoiding the Looming University Crisis in Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Rose, N. (1999), Powers of Freedom. Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shore, C. (2008), ‘Audit Culture and Illiberal Governance: Universities and the Politics of Accountability’, Anthropological Theory, 8(3): 278–98. Sum, Ngai-Ling (2009), ‘The Production of Hegemonic Policy Discourses: “Competitiveness” as a Knowledge Brand and Its (Re-)contextualizations’, Critical Policy Studies, 3(2): 184–203. Swansea University (2014), Strategic Plan 2012–2017, http://www.swansea.ac.uk/pspu/ media/Strategic-Plan.pdf [accessed 18 May 2014]. Weber, M. (1978), Economy and Society (Vol. 1 and 2). Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Reframing the Long Shadow of Europe: A Case of Identity Formation Terri Seddon

The ‘European landscape’ casts a long shadow on academic work that has effects way beyond Europe as a geographic space. As an academic in Australia, I recognise this shadow in my biography, my university and in Australia’s preoccupations with becoming a knowledge economy. Yet as Australia orients itself towards the ‘Asian century’, I also see how Europe’s shadow and its contradictory trajectories that tension academic and entrepreneurial knowledges are also being reoriented. What does this positioning mean for academic identity formation? I approach this question of academic identity by reflecting on my current book project. I speak as a researcher in Australia who works on Australia, but in my heart I am only partly of Australia – although there is much that I love in this southern land. The book project began in 2009, when I floated a provocative title past a publisher. But I am struggling to write, and now, in early 2013, I fear I must again revise the submission date. This is a stressful situation. While being grateful to my generous publisher for accommodating my elasticated time frames, I am also puzzled: Why is this book writing so hard? Why does my brain spin ’till it hurts? Why do I find points of purchase, only to find them melting into further messes? My aim in this chapter is to unpack the problem of knowing and identity that sits at the core of my writer’s block. Reflecting on who I am as an academic writer provides a way of grasping what it means to know, do, and be an academic who both desires writing and must write as a function of her employment in contemporary dilemma-driven universities. This self-reflexive review treats my case study of writer’s block as a form of epistemological paralysis and recognises

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how this case is embedded in our times. It is a form of writing that, I hope, will also unlock my book project. I begin by reflecting on the slippery context in which I am attempting to write my book. Then I introduce the notion of ‘contextualised epistemologies’, which has developed since the 1960s through debates about the nature of social science research. Using this discussion, I then track the contextualisation of my social scientific academic practice, highlighting significant social and cultural turning points in order to draw out their epistemological implications. Finally, I consider what all this means for my book and for dealing with critics that lurk in and beyond Europe’s shadow.

The long shadow of Europe The title I floated past my publisher in 2009 promised an analysis of contemporary education – but it has been hard going. I don’t usually experience this kind of writer’s block. Even in complex projects I’ve not had the sense of there being nowhere from which to stand and speak; whereas in this book project, the space in which I write feels like a fog as things slip in and out of view. I don’t have this problem when speaking, but, somehow, writing ups the stakes when producing knowledge; it’s all there in words on a page, for perpetuity, or until the hard drive gets lost or the webpage changes. My core problem is that, over time, the platform on which I place my feet in order to write has shifted, slid, melted, and must be re-found over and over again. And every time I reconstruct that platform I hear imagined critics on my shoulder telling me that this version is no better than the one before, because it doesn’t address their particular concerns and interests. Who are these critics? Reflecting on the voices with whom I joust in the isolation of my academic writing space, I recognise them as part of the European academic landscape, which casts a long shadow over Australia. But others now join them. There are utilitarian and pragmatic voices – government, industry and a corporatising university – that ask me why I am wasting so much time on such an arcane book project. There are also the voices of international research students, post-colonial and feminist scholars, and those who, I imagine, have more time to read than I. They ask me why I am trying to construct this platform for my work without considering their ideas and traditions; they prick my conscience with the implied accusation of being poorly read, outdated, white, Eurocentric, and even English, which as Australian author Drusilla Modjeska (1994) commented is ‘rather like being a man’. These different voices triangulate

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my space-time as an academic in Australia, but their voices also create a polyglot boundary zone, which I must navigate in order to know, do, and be an academic who writes. The critics who demand the most from me as an academic embody the traditions and political culture of Europe. Australia developed as a settler society with a Westminster tradition of government. Its universities are premised on Enlightenment traditions and the Eurocentric practices that were imported to new worlds. I worked until recently at Monash University – described as the last of the old, rather than the first of the new, Australian universities. Graduates collected their degree testamurs in mediaeval gowns, and the university has just appointed its first ‘provost’. Eurocentric Enlightenment traditions pervade the intellectual culture of the university with an emphasis on both selfless service and making a difference. Yet these Enlightenment identities and traditions are also under pressure: at Monash, in Australia and in Europe. First there is the pressure of neoliberal reforms, which reflect the way Eurocentric centres of power have attempted to navigate social changes accompanying economic and cultural globalisation. These politics turn traditions of intellectual experimentation towards design of new social and administrative technologies. Fordism and Keynesianism have transmogrified into corporate managerialism and its audit cultures. At Monash, these reforms became visible in the budget. They also reframed the culture as one of a ‘university of transformation’ (Davison and Murphy, 2012). The composition of the academic world is also shifting with these globalising processes. Australia is no longer a simple extension of Europe, a white outpost in the Pacific. It is a multicultural space where European – particularly English – institutional traditions are strong, but are also actively transforming. My ambition for my book project was to write about contemporary educational change and also make suggestions about the kind of agency remaking education as a capability. In particular, I wanted to explore how educators can ‘make a difference’ in transforming times. The difficulty was finding the core of this problem. Policy was agentic by driving increased teaching efficiency in skills formation, while my faculty debated the relation between teaching and research. These tired dialogues were all captured by the discourse of neoliberalism. They were boundary politics remaking education but offered no purchase on my questions about educational agency. Slowly it dawned. The boundary central to educating is between knowledge and practice: what is at stake is identity formation. Education mediates how knowing and doing are embodied, and how this way of being – a particular identity – is oriented and disciplined to produce future knowledge and practice.

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The distinctive capability enacted through twentieth-century national education systems was about making these identities: future worker-citizens who belonged to and territorialised nation-states. Research on lifelong learning showed that contemporary reforms were remaking ‘learner’ identities and the work practices of ‘educators’ in ways that were less centred by belonging and less nationalised (Kuhn, 2007). But how these ‘knowing-doing identities’ were made entailed more than professional praxis, because what educators knew and did was also institutionalised. Understanding these frames framing frames meant investigating how educational spaces and their contents were made through boundary politics: why particular learners, educators and preferred knowledges were selected and distributed by becoming institutionally embedded. And here was the problem: how can I ‘know’ these effects of education reform? Knowledge and practice make a difference in the world but they are mediated by particular knowledges that always come from somewhere and through some process of producing and authorising knowledge claims. Yet authorised knowledges in contemporary education are, increasingly, exchange values: knowledge that is cost efficient; knowledge with an instrumental gloss. Does it matter that the use-value of knowledge as knowledge is a secondary issue? How can we ‘know’ when research into the effects of education reform and the remaking of future worker-citizens draws on instrumentalising knowledge frames that are also sliding with the times? Battling the sense that this was an impossible project, I clarified the research design. What I wanted to know was how education, melting towards a condition of ‘liquid learning’, was affected by ‘educational work’. What was the effect of educator’s agency in an instrumentalising educational space that made workercitizen identities? I have an interest in this question because it is their embodied knowledge and practice that will make my, and our, future. I also recognised that my writer’s block was a consequence of how I was located in a neoliberalising Australia anchored by Europe, but looking to Asia. Moving through this mess required a contextualised epistemology that also provided words to translate my knowledge claims between all those imagined critics.

Triangulating contextualised epistemologies Questions about epistemology revolve around the best way of knowing the world. But social changes re-contextualise social science discourses, as well as

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my views on a ‘science of the social’. These puzzles over what it means to know were anchored not just in my academic identity but also in my everyday life. From childhood I had been mobile: changing places and developing ways of thinking and acting that continuously problematised what I felt I could claim as knowledge. It meant that contexts and contextualisation were somehow part of life, not just an academic procedure. Between 2009 and 2013, I gave myself the space and time to identify three different props that proved useful in triangulating my sociological practice in education. The first prop was disciplines. Interdisciplinary discussion is the norm in a field like education, and the value of disciplinary differences becomes submerged in more porridge-like educational discourse, which is often unreflective about its knowledge roots and inheritances. I began the work of redefining principles that could guide my knowing by interrogating the social and its historical processes of concept formation, the ‘redisciplinarization’ of social research (Bonnell and Hunt, 1999), and explorations of narrativity, which form and authorise knowledge cultures (Somers, 1994). The second prop was the practice of objectification. Historian Sally Newman suggested that my problem of writing was like the debate between history and historiography. The article she gave me provided words that enabled me to recognise the significance of methodological choices in defining the boundaries of inquiry. The intellectual movement between past and present creates a space for inquiry, which is filled by ‘recapitulating the past as a form of knowledge’ (Spiegel, 2007: 5). The final prop was a clarification of contextualised epistemologies as interplay between context of explanation and investigation. Reed (2010) cuts the problem of doing sociology to highlight the necessity of an epistemological break that establishes a tangible object of inquiry (i.e. objectification). This move clarifies the object’s relation with the context of investigation and the context of explanation, and the requirement that researchers account for both. It reveals methodological choices that locate one’s research. The effect is to reorient sociological practice towards localities and also formalises contextualised epistemologies. The sociology of locality provides a way of objectifying aspects of social life as a basis for inquiry. It grasps both a space of investigation and a space of explanation. Such research revisited ideas about structure and agency but also emphasised how cultural scripts mediated these processes and their effects. Recognising localities as outcomes of intersecting social and cultural practices problematises taken-for-granted assumptions about ‘areas’: entities and identities

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assumed to have spatial coherence, persistent boundaries and properties. The nexus between established areas and mobile things was a ‘boundary zone’. These zones of intersecting social logics incubated boundary politics and effects, remaking the space, its border regime that governed the spatialisation of contents and patterns of inclusion, exclusion and cross-border mobility. Methodologically, the process of making and remaking the everyday world becomes knowable through its effects and how they are located spatially and temporally. Particular localities are constituted through relational configurations of knowledge and practice, action, interaction and mobility. These boundary politics materialise ‘agency’ as identities-entities consolidate meanings and form individuated and collectivised actors with particular capacities for action (i.e. potentials) and actual capabilities or ‘powers to act’. How do these three props help me write a book about educational change? First, I recognised that my writing project was about generating ‘esoteric’ meanings that informed ways of understanding how and why meanings ‘orient other’s actions’. My research task was to produce narratives and ‘vocabularies’ that were premised upon specific explanatory schema anchored explicitly in particular disciplinary discourses (Somers, 1994). My book was a project in ‘critical interpretivism’ (Reed, 2008). Second, to objectify my object of inquiry it was necessary to clarify the context of explanation and context of investigation. My investigative space was Australia as it enters the Asian century: a locality or ‘space-time’ that lies in the shadow of Europe as a white settler society and colonial outpost but, buffeted by global changes, is actively remaking its capacities and capabilities as a knowledge economy oriented to Asia. This political project means the educational space that I inhabited was filled up with neoliberal discourse that made it difficult to really ‘know’ how this area was shifting and with what effects. This difficulty in ‘knowing’ was compounded by educational research that tends to privilege educators’ meanings in research outputs, without fully disaggregating the discursive currents that run through their knowledge and practice. So, unable to fully trust discursive representations of education, I shifted my context of explanation. Rather than defining the object of explanation in terms of education or educators’ work per se, I treated these identities-entities as outcomes and effects of boundary politics. In my book project, my object of study was the remaking of educational boundary politics, which I tracked through their effects. Finally, defining this object of study iterates back into the context of investigation. Studying the sedimenting effects of boundary politics means

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clarifying key agencies, and how they are formed and intervene to remake educational spaces, but whose vocabulary do you use? Australia, its education, and its educational work are conflicted spaces – a mess of historically anchored discourses anchored territorially by nation-state formation that was deeply framed by empire relations but was also disrupted by travelling ideas from elsewhere. And when I, too, am embedded in that Australian space, can I trust my own words? The advantage of being an insider is that I can ‘know’ Australia in a particular way, but the weakness is that I may just be echoing the powerful discourses that surround me. Academic identity and how I mediate the relation between local and esoteric knowledges is central to this epistemological conundrum. My formation as an academic constituted my identity as a ‘researcher’, but what this term meant depended upon how it was disciplined. Educational researchers become embodied as a range of identities: ‘professional’, ‘teacher’, ‘manager’, ‘researcher’. To write this book I had to know who I was, and how I was disciplined (and disciplined myself) as ecology of knowledge and practice. I also had to clarify the warrants that justified why I was disciplined that way and why I exercised my research capabilities as a disciplined enactment of my knowledge and practice in this book project. This reflexive work of re-disciplinarising my academic identity was necessary because it provided the preconditions for confidence as a researcher who writes. Unpacking the disciplinary mix that locates, frames, and inflects my sociological practice meant reflecting on my occupational field and my academic discipline. I take up this task in the next section.

The context of investigation Moving towards a ‘science of the social’ As an academic I’ve always been troubled by the idea of ‘science’ and what it means to do a ‘science of the social’. I use the term ‘science’ to underline quality questions about epistemology: the criteria that define better or worse scientific products, and also the implications of the way these criteria are defined and used in processes of assessing knowledge. These issues of knowledge quality are both intellectual and pragmatic. They relate to both its narrative value as ‘knowledge about the world’, and its discursive effects in using words, for example, in securing funding and other resources that enable research. I also see my academic practice as a process of maintaining and sustaining the capacity

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for knowledge building: it means clarifying and justifying institutional claims that knowledge is a valuable social practice and a contribution to societies, as well as institution-building to secure that research capability. Questions about epistemology revolve around the best way of knowing the world, but my experience has shifted my views on what that means. As a student in natural science my training was all about observing the world and carefully collecting and interpreting evidence. Hypothesis-making and testing was formalised in a scientific method. I took great delight in the elegant ways in which knowledge could be produced and used in the world. Doing A-levels1 at school, I became fascinated by the sheer parsimony and insight of Mendeleev’s periodic table. The persistence and durability of Linnaeus insights in the classification of plants and animals became evident later. It was the beauty of these knowledge productions that captured my interest. Yet as an undergraduate I baulked when dissecting a frog that was clearly reacting to (feeling) my cuts, and I was shocked by the demonstrator who pragmatically thrust scissors through its mouth to cut off the top of its head. Poor frog! But it showed that building knowledge scientifically was more than a technical process premised on positivist assumptions. I began to recognise that the project of science and its product, good quality knowledge, is socially embedded and shaped by its social context. It took time for this sense of dis-ease with science to surface, and much longer to translate that insight into formalised intellectual claims. As a zoology graduate I first encountered the debates about natural and social science when I embarked on an education degree course at Macquarie University, Sydney, in 1979. There I learned about paradigm wars between quantitative and qualitative methodologies and began to correct the limitations of my undergraduate studies. These discussions in education began to reveal the deeply empiricist, dispassionate, character of my science training, as well as the heat of the social science quest for how best to know the world. Resolving this prior way of being cool and education’s passionate commitments to making a difference were central to my academic formation. But the resolution was also located by space-time and cultural scripts: 1970s education; Sydney, Australia; challenges of mobility; and being an outsider – nationally and epistemologically. Research is a liberation that comes with discipline. As an honours student I was initially allocated to the group of staff asking questions about what works in

1

GCE A levels remain part of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish post-compulsory education assessment system and are the main examination used by UK universities for selection of students.

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education, but then shifted towards another group that asked ‘why?’ questions. They answered these questions with words that opened up moral and political understandings. Their sociological discourse provided concepts and ways of knowing the world, which addressed my need to make sense of the place I inhabited – Australia and its education – as a recent arrival from England and the natural sciences. Contextualisation remains central to my academic practice, but questions about ‘science’ continue to trouble me. I retain a conviction that a ‘science’ of the social should provide some kind of explanatory schema to enhance understanding of the world. It means my academic identity was an epistemological settlement between post-positivism and critical interpretivism, rather than an easily named, firm foundation as an X, Y or Z type of academic. My academic practice privileged and worked through concepts, despite occupational norms in education and university discourses that emphasised practice and applications over concepts and their interrogation.

Recruitment to place: Between occupational field and academic discipline Shifting from England to Australia coincided with a growing global disenchantment with education. My first teaching appointment in 1975 at a Catholic girls school in Canberra coincided with my arrival from England, where I was born, educated and completed a one-year teacher education programme at Bristol. It also coincided with the dismissal of Australia’s Whitlam federal government on 11 November 1975. This event was tied up with global politics: the 1974 oil crisis, stagflation and questions about the adequacy of national education systems. This historic turning point is marked by a ‘great debate’ about education as an instrument for addressing social problems. It was framed by erosion of the prevailing Eurocentric regime premised on a social democratic consensus, forged after World War II (1939–45). The effects were felt globally in education, fuelling disenchantment with education that re-made it (education) as a market (Jones, 2003). Key events included evaluations of redistributive educational programmes, like Headstart in the United States, James Callaghan’s Ruskin College speech in 1976 and the shift towards neoliberal welfare state reforms under education ministers like Margaret Thatcher. Political rhythms in Australia were somewhat out of sync with those in the United States and the United Kingdom. Yet a landmark newspaper headline from 1985 stands out in my

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memory: published in The Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s broadsheet in Australia, Greg Sheridan’s (1985) article about Australia’s teachers screamed, ‘Vipers in the Nation’s Classrooms’. I became uneasy about these debates, not because I was unable to cope with change but because their effects confronted my moral commitment to education. Education was always part of my world, and I took it for granted as a ‘good’. I was born to teacher parents – the first of their families to enter tertiary education – and married an engineer whose parents were also firstgeneration teachers, so my domestic space was framed and normalised by an educational culture. I had also seen how education made minds, hearts and souls by giving individuals access to the discursive resources – the knowledge and ways of using words, which made their agency more or less powerful in its effects (Bonnell and Hunt, 1999). The social benefit of education seemed obvious, until it was contextualised. I saw education as a transformative social project and a fundamental infrastructure for sustaining and renewing knowledge and practice that cultured and civilised societies. Education developed individuals’ and communities’ capacities for work, living together, and using power responsibly as citizens (Connell, 1995). It was a means of making sustainable societies, and it made publics – coordinated collectivities – with the cultural and social capabilities to govern themselves and renew their societies and democratic living as conditions changed. By the mid-1980s I was engaged in doctoral studies. As a recent arrival in Australia, returning to study helped me make sense of my shift in environment. My interest in environments had previously taken me into the natural sciences, and a minor thesis on greeting behaviour framed by the discourse of ethnology. Environments were fascinating because they had practical effects on their contents and generated particular effects through which those contents could be known. Turning this around analytically revealed the world-making effect of knowledge. And it was the concepts and explanations, more than the commentaries on science, that inspired me as I learned about the periodic table, the classification of plants and animals, and their social effects. Accidents of supervision recruited me into the sociology of education, but it was the concepts that proved useful in navigating the complexities of investigation and everyday life. My scholarly formation was tensioned by three key relationships: the first, with my supervisor, Rachel Sharp, introduced me to Bernstein, Marx and historical sociology through debates between Althusser and E. P. Thompson; the second with academic visitor Frigga Haug pressed me

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to engage more actively with feminist theory and the power of cultural practices that create ‘actors’ and ‘victims’ as they live contradictions in their everyday lives (Haug et al., 1987). Finally, towards the end of my doctorate, Raewyn Connell brought me back into education with a research assistant job, helping her with an encyclopaedia entry on the topic ‘teachers’ work and political action’ (Seddon and Connell, 1988). My doctoral thesis was a contextual analysis of educational restructuring in the 1930s depression (Seddon, 1993). I used the debate between structuralism and culturalism, Marxism and Feminism to re-read historical accounts and empirical data related to educational change. The key concept was the ‘state’, and I examined how state practices mediated ‘schooling’ and ‘settlement’, using New South Wales secondary education in the 1930s depression as the research site. I made a case for a ‘federation settlement’: a societal agreement that was realised through, and also framed, schooling–state–society relations. Its effects were evident in how education and the work of teachers were resourced, regulated and governed. I contextualised this settlement by suggesting that it was forged through late nineteenth-century troubles, 1920s moral panics and welfare state innovations as means of moving through 1930s depression. The effect, consolidated and authorised in the 1950s, was the Wyndham scheme: a form of comprehensive schooling. Looking back conceptually, the thesis was a kind of ‘speaking back’ to Rachel, Frigga and Raewyn.

Analytical procedures in a transforming boundary zone The job I took in 1988 was not particularly troubled by the froth and bubble of the great education debate. I turned my doctoral discipline to the task of replacing my feet professionally in education as a social project, as both ‘educator’ and ‘researcher’. But over ten years of market reforms invaded this academic space and troubled my educational commitments. As a ‘parent’, I retained earlier ambivalences about education and its effects, encouraging overcompliance and conformity in children rather than a robust but respectful ungovernability of spirit. But the later 1990s became tough as I navigated school choice as a parent, and managerial work in a greedy workplace. Confronted personally by the effects of market reform, and viscerally by their disciplining effects, I found myself doing discourse in new ways that ate away at my moral commitments and confidence in knowing and doing education. Recognising this ‘corrosion of character’ (Sennett, 1998) fuelled my concern to understand what had happened to me and to education.

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As a researcher, I found these neoliberal changes in working life challenging to my discipline. Contextual analysis proved useful as an initial approach. I examined lifelong learning reforms as an object of research, seeing them as just another shift in the context of education. Yet unlike other ‘objects of inquiry’, these reform agenda shifted proximity and presence, from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’, in my workplace, and with ‘me inside’ their governmentalities. My disciplinary formation had not equipped me to deal with this experience of being swallowed up by my object of research. Finding a place to stand in order to regain a critical researcher perspective was the challenge, but the process also enabled me to think ‘outside the square’ of established education research. The research challenge was to distance from the object of research: teachers’ work in neoliberal education workplaces. The solution was comparative analysis. It provided research distance when neoliberal regimes were examined in different environments, making each locality strange relative to the other. The whole point about ‘lifelong learning’ is that ‘learners’ are repositioned discursively as the active and responsible self-service agency in learning spaces. Yet this common sense lexicon institutionalised through lifelong learning reforms was more than a simple inversion of established twentiethcentury social logics of ‘public education’ that discursively foregrounded the ‘teacher’ and the task of nation building. The social and political project of state education identified the ‘teacher’ as the active identity and the national education system as the space that contextualised that labour: framing, resourcing, regulating and therefore governing the educational space, which yielded learning. That discourse was of a specifically structured and cultured educational assemblage that rested on public agreements about the knowledge and practice to be conveyed between generations. These educational choices made publics that secured civil societies by forming socially stratified identities with individual and collective capacities for social justice and social renewal (Dale, 2010; Williams, 1976). By contrast, lifelong learning identifies the ‘learner’ as the active party in educational spaces. But these spaces reached well beyond the familiar organisations of schooling and their national knowledge cultures. Within this broader horizon, ‘learners’ were not just children and adolescents but also younger and older adults. Their learning needs and preferences were framed more by adult concerns related to getting a job, securing an occupational and social position, and managing a life made hard by global changes and neoliberal reforms. The effect of this re-spatialisation repositioned twentieth-century

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public education within global human capital supply chains, which cut through and between national territories. What is learned is no longer defined by a particular national knowledge culture, but by different jurisdictions. Governments, firms and social institutions made different interventions, and their effects were evident at national, supraand sub-national scales. Established nationalist educational spaces were managed corporately, but still largely governed by public agreements. But they existed alongside emergent learning spaces that formed nodes within wider global human capital supply chains and particular circuits of labour. These spaces were governed through complex mixes of public and private agreements, and they channelled flows of mobile bodies and ordered distinct cultural characteristics: people who were migrants, travellers, expatriate workers, professional elites, refugees. These identities were displaced as a consequence of individual choices or being subject to non-voluntary imperatives. National territories were where these human capital flows were transformed and relayed into industries, and also spun off into movements in civil society.

Producing knowledge transnationally Mobility reveals the effects of these global transitions. As a professional working inside the neoliberal reform processes remaking the national education system, it was easiest just to respond to the technical challenges of change. But travel was a reminder of the moral and political dimensions of change and how change effects differentially affect particular places and categories of people. Work in Europe, Kazakhstan and South Africa, and travel in Bhutan, Thailand and Vietnam, showed Australia to be a neoliberal enthusiast. In other places, different ways and rhythms of living were being defended and sustained. Two key projects at a transnational level created the critical, cultural and conceptual spaces to problematize different enthusiasms for lifelong learning reforms. CROSSLIFE: Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Lifelong Learning and Work (VET culture, 2013) was a six-country European Commission–funded curriculum development project (2005–8). Its ambition was to develop a transnational doctoral education programme to revitalise academic apprenticeship for global times. The second was an associated book project intended initially as a teaching resource for CROSSLIFE, but it took on a life of its own as the transnational editorial collective began a transnational dialogue about global transformations and their disturbing effects in human service work (teaching, nursing and social work) (Seddon et al., 2010).

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These two projects created small-scale, but significant, research spaces for inquiry and theory building. They were micro-ecologies of knowledge and practice that permitted close engagement with nationally specific lifelong learning orders because the researchers served as ‘travelling ideas’. They carried specific national and occupational discourses about lifelong learning reforms into the research space where dialogue in a more or less safe space made it possible to share national, discipline and occupational knowledge traditions, puzzle over meanings, and explore translations and their implications. These weren’t always easy places, but they were energising, enjoyable and productive places that produced knowledge, and also transgressed discursive norms emerging in each of our neoliberalising national education systems. Disciplinary discourses provided an architecture for our talk together. As we discussed core texts we found social science discourses were inflected by occupational and national locations. Australian sociology of education was strong on post-structuralism; culture-mediated structure-agency frameworks grounded Nordic sociology of occupations. We discovered a shared heritage in 1970s feminist texts by Frigga Haug and Margaret Stacey, and recognised how they still provided important resources for disrupting policy discourses and taken-for-granted national and occupational thinking about education and work. We turned these strategies towards academic texts. Sennett reads differently through Australian and European eyes: the social logics of individualism, masculinism and democracy through a weak state are striking when compared to the social logics of Finland and Germany. We used these emerging insights to edit chapter drafts, work up more explicit statement about our methodology and also re-narrate neoliberal reforms. Our counter-readings are sensitive to and explicit about disciplinary discourses, and this strategy generated a vocabulary to better capture the effects of global transitions. Three points stand out. First, reading Sennett (1998) provided the concept of ‘flexible capitalism’ and its principle: ‘no long term’. We translated this into ‘liquid learning’ to capture the condition of globally distributed lifelong learning and what Bauman (2005: 305) describes as its ‘inferno culture’. Second, editing case studies of human service work in disturbed neoliberal workplaces, we found authors presented narratives of disturbance but little evidence of politics associated with these ‘grief stories’. We encouraged chapter authors – researchers located by human service occupations – to stop thinking through conventional disciplinary vocabularies of politics, developed in industrial relations and political disputation. Instead, we advised them to read their case through their experience of practical politics in their working lives. Their revised

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texts revealed how human service professionals came together ‘out of inner need’ (Sennett, 1998), and also actively created spaces and ways of relating that enabled them to say ‘we’. This ‘politics of we’ was often small scale, ephemeral, but it was an indicator of collective action, in reality and in the imagination. Finally, the labour involved in making space for the politics of ‘we’ was distinctive. It combined relationship work, care and knowledge in ways that framed, endorsed and authorised identities. This form of labour resonated with the forms of work in education, which prompted us to coin the concept of ‘educational work’. This was the object of inquiry in our subsequent transnational project, The Teaching Occupation in Learning Societies (ARC, 2009 DP0986413) and a key concept in the book project that I have struggled to write.

Opening up ‘education’ for scrutiny Western history essentially begins with a decisive differentiation between the present and the past. Like modern medicine, whose birth is contemporaneous with that of modern historiography, the practice of history becomes possible only when a corpse is opened to investigation, made legible such that it can be translated into that which can be written within a space of language. Historians must draw a line between what is dead (past) and what is not, and therefore they posit death as a total social fact, in contrast to tradition, which figures a lived body of traditional knowledge, passed down in gestures, habits, unspoken – but nonetheless real – memories, borne by living societies (Spiegel, 2007: 4). Fast forward to my book project. Spiegel suggests that historical practice depends upon the time boundary that excises the past from the present. This rupture surfaces what was unwritten, and then uses history writing to make it visible. Re-thinking my book project in this way means I am grasping things that are seemingly unseen: aspects of neoliberal reform, and education’s historic social contribution that formed civilised societies. In writing the book, I surface these unseen elements in order to challenge the excision of state education, its contributions and the unspoken logics of lifelong learning reforms from public dialogue. Methodologically, I translate their absence in contemporary education policy and professional discourses – so it seemed they never existed – into something that had not been written about. A similar objectification of sociological practice delineates the context of investigation and the context of explanation. I speak back to those critics on my shoulder by explaining that my context of explanation is Australian educational

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formations, while my context of investigation is transnational, located some place between Europe and Australia, education and other human service work, and various sociologies. This transnational space of knowledge production produced useful concepts in previous research, and I use them rather than neoliberal policies or nationalist professional and research discourses to analyse education. This transnational knowledge work provides a basis for speaking back to critics that claim to know the world from their particular places. It also reveals the idea of a ‘discipline’ not as some mythically pure academic space, but as a conversation about ‘knowledge from somewhere’ (Harding, 1991). This insight gives me confidence about my academic practice that was anchored by sociological knowledge about the world and ways of using word, but is also read through changes in the world, mobilities and my own mobility. Grounded in this way, the effects of intellectual work in specific places, and using and being compromised by tools, time frames and techno-scientific imperatives, materialise as I write. So all those imagined critics are welcome to their thoughts. I do what I do because of who I am and the terms and conditions in which I write. As this case of academic identity formation reveals, these processes make ‘traitorous identities’ (Harding, 1991), particularly in globalising times. These are academics whose knowledge and practice is not encaged by academic discipline, occupational field or national traditions but, rather, unfolds as a distinctive ecology; an assemblage that makes, evidences and argues about knowledge claims.

References ARC (2009), The Teaching Occupation in Learning Societies: A Global Ethnography of Occupational Boundary Work. Australian Research Council Discovery Project, DP0986413. Bauman, Z. (2005), Liquid Life. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Bonnell, V. E. and Hunt, L. (1999), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connell, R. W. (1995), ‘Education as Transformative Work’, in M. Ginsburg (ed.), The Politics and Culture of Educators Work. New York: Garland. Dale, R. (2010), ‘Constructing Europe through Constructing a European Education Space’, in M. Simons, M. Olssen and M. A. Peters (eds), Re-Reading Education Policies: A Handbook Studying the Policy Agenda of the 21st Century. Rotterdam: Sense, pp. 369–86.

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Davison, G. and Murphy, K. (2012), University Unlimited : The Monash Story. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Harding, S. G. (1991), Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Haug, F. et al. (1987), Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory. London: Verso. Jones, K. (2003), Education in Britain: 1944 to the Present. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kuhn, M. (2007), Who Is the European? – A New Global Player? New York: Peter Lang. Modjeska, D. (1994), The Orchard. Sydney: Picador. Reed, I. (2008), ‘Justifying Sociological Knowledge: From Realism to Interpretation’, Sociological Theory, 26(2): 101–29. — (2010), ‘Epistemology Contextualized: Social-Scientific Knowledge in a Postpositivist Era’, Sociological Theory, 28(1): 20–39. Seddon, T. (1993), Context and Beyond: Reframing the Theory and Practice of Education. London: Falmer. Seddon, T. L. and Connell, R. W. (1988), ‘Teachers’ Work’, in T. Husen and N. Postlethwaite (eds), International Encyclopedia of Education, Supplement Volume 1. Oxford: Pergamon. Seddon, T., Henriksson, L. and Niemeyer, B. (2010), Learning and Work and the Politics of Working Life: Global Transformations and Collective Identities in Teaching, Nursing and Social Work. London: Routledge. Sennett, R. (1998), The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: Norton. Sheridan, G. (1985), ‘The Lies They Teach Our Children: Vipers in the Nation’s Classroom, The Australian 2–3 February: 1, 12. Somers, M. R. (1994), ‘The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach’, Theory and Society, 23: 605–49. Spiegel, G. M. (2007), ‘Revising the Past/Revisiting the Present: How Change Happens in Historiography’, History and Theory, 46: 1–19. VET culture (2013), CROSSLIFE, 2005–8, http://peda.net/veraja/uta/vetculture/ academic_apprenticeship/crosslife [accessed 17 April 2013]. Williams, R. (1976). The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Part Two

Academic Trajectories

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Changing Policy, Changing Identities: Being and Leading Academics in the Developing Swiss Higher Education Sector Nicole Rege Colet

This chapter represents a highly personal, autobiographical perspective on academic identity in Switzerland – the country where I grew up and spent most of my working life (though my current post is in a French university). It is a story of change: a changed and changing external context, and change on a personal level, which was needed to adapt to this context. It highlights frustration and disappointments as well as progress and, above all, development. My personal context is that of an English-speaking Oxbridge environment amongst the scientific expatriate community in Geneva, where my father, holding his newly obtained Ph.D. in physics, decided to pursue a research career in nuclear physics at CERN (the European organisation for Nuclear Research), and to move his young family to Switzerland. I attended Swiss state schools, and eventually studied educational psychology at the University of Geneva after discarding plans to read classics at Cambridge. My doctoral research on interdisciplinary teaching in higher education was the first scholarly piece of work on higher education to be carried out at Geneva – where educational research, at that time, mainly addressed primary, secondary and teacher education. I was therefore an obvious choice to launch the university’s teaching and learning centre, and I readily accepted the invitation to do so. From this new role role, I was encouraged to develop the first academic staff development centres for Switzerland’s francophone research-led universities.

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Significantly, at this time, Switzerland had just signed the Bologna Declaration – a key turning point in the development of its higher education sector, and, as I explain below, a catalyst for academic role diversification and, with this, identity shifts. I was recruited as a change agent operating in higher education, and for a decade worked on educational development promoting innovative teaching and learning, before taking up leadership roles, such as director of a newly appointed teacher education university in the Italianspeaking region of Switzerland. These roles – held at a period of significant reform – afforded me privileged access both as an observer of the change process in Switzerland, and as an influential contributor to the shaping of a new landscape. Being both English and Swiss, working in four languages, dealing with linguistic, disciplinary, social, political and cultural diversity on a daily basis, and maintaining a strong interest in interdisciplinarity, my professional role involved bridge-building across cultures and academic traditions, and exploring the evanescent boundaries as the European landscape of higher education rose from the fog. My personal trajectory involves inquiry into academic leadership – however that may be defined (Evans, 2014a,b). My recent study of leadership and organisational learning has introduced me to new conceptual and theoretical frameworks, for, as an educational psychologist relying on cognitive psychology, I had mainly focused on learning and teaching approaches, designing innovative curricula, teaching practices and the professional development of teachers. Branching out into the field of leadership capacity and innovation led me to other management-related fields, where I explored issues related to organisational and strategic development, and the implementation of change and decision-making processes. So, in order to relate my examination of academic identity shifts in Switzerland, I shall be drawing on my professional experience in building up networks and communities of practice in educational development in higher education, moving across the country and negotiating language barriers, and weaving an interdisciplinary web of ideas and perspectives into a new (for me) framework for understanding academic development. I also draw upon my personal experience, weaving my English origins with my continental European upbringing. I shall begin by explaining why Switzerland – a country geographically located at the heart of Western Europe, whilst not part of the European Union (EU) – is a particularly interesting backdrop against which to set the scene for considering what influences and underpins academic identity.

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A laboratory at the heart of Europe In many respects Switzerland serves as a small laboratory for observing the impact of the shifting context of European higher education on academic identity. Here one may observe and analyse how a country copes with the European context at large and uses this as a reference point for structuring its internal development. This section sketches the Swiss political, historical, linguistic and geo-cultural backdrop that frames my analysis of my own academic identity formation. And for this I shall turn to an inspiring – albeit unusual – book: La Suisse mode d’emploi (Kucholl et al., 2011). Switzerland’s population (of less than eight million) often sees itself as inhabitants of a tiny country (covering just over 41,000 km2) located under a bell jar in the middle of Europe, holding a microcosm of European diversity. Linguistic and cultural diversity is a defining feature of the country, which comprises three main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French and Italian. All layers of political, social and cultural life in Switzerland are influenced by the tectonic clashes between these regions – where persistent challenges are made to the predominance of the German-speaking community that represents two-thirds of the population. As a rule, in meetings of representatives of the various regions, attendees are required to express themselves in their regional language while others are expected to understand them. Having attended many such meetings, I wonder if most of the quiet disputes we had were simply due to linguistic misunderstanding, exacerbated by reluctance to admit to the political incorrectness of being unable to fully understand other languages and cultures! National identity is elusive, since the Swiss prefer to embrace the country’s federal structure, with its 26 cantons, each of which has a high degree of independence: its own constitution, parliament, government, courts, and education and health-care provision. Political life in Switzerland often involves balancing cantonal prerogatives with federal regulations, whilst – within increasing globalisation – pursuing greater cooperation between cantons; strong cantonal independence has perpetuated a perception of Switzerland as an alliance of 26 independent states. It is therefore at the canton level that identity and sense of belonging are strongest, with little sense of a shared national culture. The common historical background, the shared political values such as federalism and direct democracy and a strong connection to Alpine symbolism form the backbone of what is often named ‘Swissitude’: a conflation of the two words ‘Swiss’ and ‘attitude’ – and which, according to some politicians, needs to be fostered in the interests of promoting national identity.

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Direct democracy and citizen participation are core values of political life in Switzerland. The Swiss take pride in their enfranchisement: they hold frequent elections on many issues, and enjoy the right to call referenda or to vote on constitutional amendments. The Swiss concept of citizenship is rooted in a tradition of militia work. Being a politician at any level is not considered a professional occupation (although remuneration for such work is quite generous); rather, it is perceived as responsible citizenship, and participation in public and institutional affairs is considered a duty. This sense of duty spills over into academic life, with academic citizenship being taken seriously. In the context of education – specifically, higher education – acceptance of the Bologna process in 1999 represents a sea change in Switzerland. Within the Swiss higher education sector, Bologna upset the equilibrium that delineated academic working life – and, with it, academics’ roles and responsibilities. In the next sections I sketch out a picture of the impact that, from my perspective, this turning point in the history of the Swiss academy had on the identities of those employed within it.

Bologna comes to Switzerland: The changing landscape of Swiss higher education The story goes that in June 1999, Charles Kleiber, the Swiss secretary of state for education and research, was attending the ministerial meeting in Bologna on higher education. The evening before the ‘signing-of-the-declaration-day’ he called back home to ask Ruth Dreyfuss, then minister in charge of higher education and research, what he should do in the name of Switzerland. She is supposed to have answered enthusiastically, ‘Sign it! This is a wonderful opportunity for making sense of Swiss higher education’. The Bologna Process is generally accepted as a momentous event in the history of European higher education. It has certainly made its mark on the Swiss higher education landscape and its lexicon: people refer to ‘before Bologna’ and ‘after Bologna’ as chronology markers, implying deep – even irrevocable – change to institutions, organisations and people. I, too, apply this terminology in my outline of the change that, from my perspective as an ‘insider’, the Bologna Process effected in Switzerland. Before Bologna, academic education started at the upper secondary level and was distinct from vocational training, which was carried out through apprenticeships and in professional schools. Higher education was located in

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Switzerland’s ten research-intensive universities and the two federal institutes of technology. It was highly decentralised and concentrated in the country’s urban regions. The ten universities were governed according to cantonal constitutions and regulations and financed on the basis of a matched funds system, with funding coming from both the cantons and the state (through federal subsidies per capita for covering the costs of studies). Due to the duality of the system and a strong inclination to favour professional training, higher education take-up before Bologna was particularly low in comparison with other OECD countries (OCDE, 2011). A rough estimate puts the average national rate of an age group going through higher education at around 35 per cent, with huge regional variations (EDK, 2011; 2014); in rural mountain areas, for instance, the rate could be as low as 9 per cent. Moreover, it was 1998 before the Italian-speaking region of the country was given its own university. This pre-Bologna picture is one of a regionalised and dispersed system with little or no coordination between universities, and which resulted in huge differences in relation to organising research, teaching and learning, and pursuing an academic career. Each university could autonomously decide, inter alia: programme length and content, diploma titles, student assessment procedures, and tuition fees. There was, amidst this diversity and idiosyncrasy, a nascent awareness that a national higher education policy was needed for capacity-building directed at meeting the challenges of a burgeoning knowledge society and economy. As far as academic working life was concerned, university-based research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Reflecting the principles of academic freedom, research foci and scope were determined by the researchers themselves, and academics could freely apply for funding for their research projects without having to report to their university for support. Although academics in the research-intensive universities were, on paper, expected to research and teach, in reality, the priority was always research, and teaching loads were low with 40 per cent of work time dedicated to research, 40 per cent to teaching and supervising graduate students, and the remaining 20 per cent to administration. Academic freedom also extended to teaching, since curricula were subject to few requirements. Teaching practice varied and was mainly focused on scholarly content delivery with little or no concern for students’ learning experience. Tenured professors represented scholarship and power, since all universities were governed and managed by them. The percentage of administrative personnel working in higher education was low and only

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involved minor positions; senior management (i.e. the rectors’ office) comprised solely professors. This was a period defined by high funding availability for what was elite provision. Accountability and professional responsibility were unheard of. Most academics were very loyal to their alma maters and eschewed collaboration with neighbouring universities, which were considered potential rivals. Cantonal and regional traditions strongly influenced the sense of belonging and spilled over to shape academic identity. In a sense people were used to living in fragmented realities, managing diversity and complexity within a closed context. Thinking outside the box was not a priority, and creativity and innovation did not feature on people’s agendas. This ‘golden age’ of academic freedom and higher education for the privileged few was overturned by the signing of the Bologna Declaration. In 2001 the Rectors’ Conference of the Swiss Universities was charged with coordinating the implementation of the principles of the Bologna Declaration in order to reform higher education and unify the system (CRUS, 2014). This was achieved by founding the Bologna network, bringing together universities’ representatives. I represented the University of Geneva. Our first job was to lay down the principles for organising higher education on the basis of a common framework. This led to the Bologna directives, comprising rules and regulations about duration of study programmes, diploma titles, and the use of the European Credit Transfer System ECTS system. As a result, Switzerland adopted a new system based on three study cycles: the Bachelor, the Master and the doctorate. The universities were all obliged to completely reform their programmes and to comply with the new framework before 2010. The changeover was daunting and had to be carefully planned; the purpose of the teaching and learning centres that were slowly being established within the universities, suddenly stood out. There was much scope for academic development services to play a key role in reforming Swiss higher education, promoting and supporting a shift from a content delivery, teacher-centred approach to a student-centred one focusing on learning experiences. The emerging constituency of academic developers saw an opportunity to enter the stage and play important roles in sharing their expertise. At this time, too, a national accreditation agency was founded to introduce quality assurance procedures. The death knell had sounded for the era of complete academic freedom and absence of accountability. And more changes were imminent. Whereas, traditionally, the landscape of Swiss higher education had featured only research-intensive universities, today it comprises three types of institution: the traditional research-led universities;

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the universities of applied sciences and arts; and the universities for teaching education (SER, 2014). The Bologna Process has had a huge impact on Swiss structures and organisations, affecting the standing of higher education institutions (and their cantonal prerogatives) and necessitating the reviewing of governance and management and national education policy. The repercussions included major programme reform and innovations in teaching practice (Rege Colet, 2010b; Rege Colet and Durand, 2004) and – most significantly – a federal law (entered into the statute books in early 2013) that delineates higher education (introducing criteria and regulations governing the conferment of university status). The latter placed higher education organisation and provision under the jurisdiction of a newly created ‘official’ post of minister for higher education. Marking the establishment of Switzerland’s first ever national educational system, this represents a milestone in the development of the country’s cohesion. Now, post-Bologna, co-operation between universities is encouraged – and, in particular, between universities of applied sciences and the traditional universities. In order to build research capacity in these new universities of applied sciences, a specific research funding scheme was introduced initially (and has now been discontinued), as an incentive to their academics to take their first steps in research and development. There are more opportunities to secure external research funds, although competition between universities and academics is becoming fiercer, fuelled by fears that the research-led universities will win most of the funding. But what are the implications of these changes for academics? What does it mean to be an academic in this new Swiss context? And what is the effect of the Bologna-initiated reforms on academic identity?

Being an academic in post-Bologna Switzerland: Issues of academic identity One of the most sweeping changes imposed on academics by the reforms to Swiss higher education is the need to adopt dual identities: as researchers and teachers – with expectations of being able to excel in both domains, and in many cases also to take on managerial responsibilities (Fanghanel, 2012). Yet, as is the case in many academic environments, there is little researcher development provision for academics (Rege Colet and Berthiaume, 2009; 2012), and that which does exist is concentrated predominantly on early career researchers, based on acceptance that expertise as a researcher is acquired through doctoral

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education and does not need to be augmented at the post-doctoral stages of an academic career (Evans, 2009; 2010; Gordon, 2005). Similarly, in Switzerland – as in France (Aschieri, 2012; Evans and Cosnefroy, 2013) – there persists a prevalent belief that there is no need to follow a professional development programme in higher education teaching. It is believed that experience acquired as a higher education student serves as adequate preparation to teach – which is rather like claiming that a frequent flyer should be able to pilot a plane! As a result, no formal training is required to teach in a research-led university; a doctorate is the only requirement. Research-focused development as teachers – and, with it, their development of identities as teachers – are not supported by the system that promotes such dual identities. Most universities offer an elective programme in academic teaching, but take-up is low, and there is little incentive for teachers encountering problems with their teaching to seek out support and advice. The target participant constituency remains doctoral students who are aiming for an academic career and who are aware of the importance of building up their teaching and research expertise (Rege Colet, 2009a). For teachers in universities of applied sciences, of whom few hold doctorates, the situation is slightly different; the most promising are encouraged to take up doctoral studies in order to increase the research profiles of their institutions. According to a specific law that applies only to universities of applied sciences, all teachers are expected to obtain a qualification in higher education teaching – although there is little provision of courses and programmes that lead to such a qualification; it is most often acquired through recognition of workplace and experiential learning as a teacher (Knight et al., 2006; Sharpe, 2004). The evolution of the Swiss higher education system has had a direct impact on professional profiles, irrespective of the type of institution that academics represent. In the traditional research-intensive universities most academics saw themselves, first and foremost, as researchers obligated to teach. However, the implications of the Bologna Process and the European concern for the quality of students’ learning experience in higher education, coupled with a significant increase of student numbers, placed teaching quality high on Switzerland’s change agenda. This is a trend that has been replicated in many European contexts, with the result that higher education institutions are being pressured to enhance the quality of teaching and of their higher education provision in general (Barnett, 1995; Bell et al., 2009; Evans and Cosnefroy, 2013; Musselin, 2008). In Switzerland, from the mid-1990s teaching and learning quality became a priority for strategic development, within the Bologna-imposed European

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framework (Rege Colet, 2010a). Bologna turned the spotlight in Switzerland onto academic career management, supported by professional development provision (Rege Colet, 2009b). This re-prioritisation served as leverage for developing the nascent teaching and learning centres of universities that had been established at the turn of the twenty-first century. The Swiss Faculty Development Network (SFDN) was founded, and adopted a framework stating the guiding principles and underpinning values for academic development in research-led universities that was inspired by the Staff and Educational Development Association framework (SFDN, 2001). Change agents operating in institutions were able to delineate the scope of academic development and promote systematic inquiry into academic expertise and professional development. With this reprioritisation, the gradual process of academic identity shift was set in motion. Bologna kick-started the questioning of professional identities that had been formed, thrived and were embedded in the norms and expectations of the pre-Bologna Swiss higher education sector. How does one survive or succeed as an academic when there is a constant battle for resources but also the ongoing issue of professional recognition? Slowly but surely the notion of academic development, and recognition of its importance, has been seeping through the sector. Over the past ten years academics in research universities have had to face extensive changes in their professional practice, as they now have to take on new responsibilities and deal with the complexities of a changing context. Mechanisms for acquiring research funding are becoming more and more complicated as competition intensifies, funders raise their standards and expand their lists of criteria, and interdisciplinary approaches and cooperation become key features of innovation. Teaching in higher education has become more complex, requiring a wide range of skills and the tempering of expectations (Berthiaume and Rege Colet, 2013). It is not enough to do research; the research must be internationally recognised (Rauhvargers, 2011). Nor is it enough simply to teach; learning outcomes must be achieved and academic achievement must militate against high drop-out rates. Student satisfaction must be high and so must employability. Managerial responsibilities are not limited to everyday classroom management; academics are expected to deal with financial matters and human resource issues and to contribute to strategic planning. All these changes represent new challenges (Lanarès and Poteaux, 2013). The goals are the same for academics coming from the vocational and professional sector, but for them the biggest challenge is to develop their

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expertise in research. By tradition they are predominantly teachers who, as a rule, do not perceive themselves as researchers and do not embrace researcher identities. In relation to research capacity and expertise, they tend to consider themselves inferior to academically highly qualified colleagues (Rege Colet, 2012). In particular, a clear-cut distinction is perceived between Ph.D.-holders and non-holders. Special measures have been directed at research capacitybuilding – particularly doctoral programmes for academics. But yet again the teaching community is divided between those able to access these programmes and improve their qualifications and expertise, and those who are left with heavy teaching loads and with little chance of developing as or into researchers. The greatest challenge to academics’ identity is thus the tension between perceptions of oneself as a researcher and as a teacher; change to the Swiss higher education landscape occurred too recently for academics who were used to identifying themselves as either teachers or researchers, to easily adopt dual identities; it is too soon for that, in most cases. In research universities academics are having to commit themselves to developing their teaching practice, while those based in the universities of applied sciences, along with the teacher education universities academics, are having to win their places in the competitive realm of research – where they are not particularly welcomed by those from research universities who are concerned by the scarcity of resources. In both cases, academics are looking at the gap between their ideal selves (Evans and Abbott, 1998) – as delineated in the national framework, and perceived within their communities – and their constructed selves: how they consider themselves as professionals. Looking at the gap between the ideal and the self-perceived reality has longlasting effects on self-esteem. Having been involved for 15 years in professional development for academics in all types of higher education institutions, I have been able to observe how, on the one hand, those from research universities often despise teaching and feel it infra dig to be expected to develop their teaching practice, while academics from the universities of applied sciences, on the other hand, fear they will never be able to excel at research and therefore feel inadequate as researchers. The former are driven by their hurt egos, whereas the latter often show signs of low self-esteem. In both cases the response is resistance to the changes that have been implemented, and lamentation over what has been lost: the pre-Bologna ‘golden era’. Fortunately, I have also encountered academics who feel passionate about both research and teaching and who are fully committed to their professional development, seizing the Bologna process as an opportunity for personal growth.

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Personal and professional transformation and identity shift My involvement in the reform of Swiss higher education has been an extensive learning experience during which I have shaped my understanding of academic development and academic identity. From the beginning I have been able to appreciate how Switzerland’s decision to follow up the Bologna declaration has been a wonderful opportunity for me and for my professional development. There I was with my freshly obtained doctorate on higher education, looking out for opportunities to support innovation in teaching and learning and promote interdisciplinary approaches in academic teaching (Rege Colet, 2002); I could not have asked for a more exciting and challenging opening. So, of course, I set out with all my enthusiasm and passion, prepared to fully commit myself to this reform and support teaching and learning in higher education. Having been bought up in a truly academic setting, I felt it was my duty to contribute to the growth of the community. In the first years, in my role as an educational psychologist who specialised in higher education and who had just founded the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Geneva, I concentrated on building up a conceptual framework and cornering the embryonic (within that context) notion of educational development as an extension of the concept of academic development that was commonly used in the 1990s. I did this by networking with other European and non-European colleagues sharing my concerns and interests, and by taking part in creating communities of practices working on professional knowledge, professional training and development. We carried out collaborative research on academics’ approaches and conceptions of teaching (Frenay et al., 2010). We organised enquiries on innovations and their impact on learning. We set out to evaluate teaching effectiveness and implementation of the principles set in the reforms. I was fully immersed in action and in implementing the changeover. Ten years later I was invited to take advantage of my experience and accept more responsibilities in strategic planning. I became an academic leader. I was still the same enthusiastic and passionate person who strongly believes in enhancing the quality of higher education. I kept up my high work rate, boosted by the illusion that I was in a position to push forward the reform. This was a classic example of hyperactivity or ‘hyperprofessionality’ (Gornall and Salisbury, 2012), which looked as if I was slamming my foot on the accelerator. I was convinced that the carefully designed conceptual frameworks and the

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robust educational models all backed up by evidence-informed knowledge that I had devised with my peers were sufficient to achieve the reform goals. This, of course, represented neglect of consideration of an essential component of change processes: the human factor, and people’s reactions to challenging change situations. The Bologna reform in Switzerland meant overturning many stones, and I was soon to learn that I had been neglecting some of them that were about to trip me up. Suddenly my framework for implementing reform in higher education, promoting and supporting the professional development of academics in a changing context was questioned, and I encountered backlash in the form of several hostile responses. Although this experience of confronting my strategic planning with academics’ resistance to change was very disquieting and stressful, it was yet again to be an inspirational, eye-opening learning experience. It gave me an opportunity to suspend my action plan, curtailing my hyperactivity, and to reflect on what was going on. This enabled me to access a deeper understanding of the emerging social field (Scharmer, 2009) and to experience a personal shift that was relevant not only for adjusting my work as an academic developer but also to my manoeuvring shifts within the system. As an educational psychologist, I have always been concerned with people’s zone of proximal development (Bronckart and Schneuwly, 1992), so as to sustain motivation and engagement in learning and professional development. I was gradually aware that systems also have zones of proximal development, beyond which it is difficult to achieve significant changes (Solow and Fake, 2010). In a certain way my personal paradigm had met its limits and it was time to change it and to accept new inputs on learning processes, personal growth and professional development. And what all this meant was that my own academic identity – my sense of purpose, capacity and agency – were gradually shifting alongside this growing awareness of what I could and could not achieve and how I should or should not approach trying to achieve it. So I went back to what I excelled in – studying – and signed up for a programme on leadership and organisational learning. I broadened my reading and my views on learning. I practised interdisciplinarity by looking at what other disciplines had to say about change processes. I went from considerations about personal transformation to reflections on building up systems and communities. I worked on changing beliefs and their impact on self-esteem and self-worth, and how all this affects professional identity. I was able to reread my trajectory throughout the changing context of higher education, and I started joining up the dots of the lines that have led me to who I am as an academic today and what it means to be

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an academic. Writing this chapter on academic identity could not have come at a better moment: it has given me the opportunity to reflect and bring together my observations and my personal experience of identity evolution. It has been a thought-provoking experience for investigating academic identity and academic development.

References Aschieri, G. (2012), Réussir la démocratisation de l’enseignement supérieur: l’enjeu du premier cycle: Avis du Conseil économique, social et environnemental (Journal officiel de la république française). Paris: Conseil économique, social et environnemental. Barnett, R. (1995), Improving Higher Education. Buckingham: SRHE & Open University Press. Bell, L., Stevenson, H. and Neary, M. (2009), The Future of Higher Education. London: Continuum. Berthiaume, D. and Rege Colet, N. (eds) (2013), La pédagogie de l’enseignement supérieur: repères théoriques et applications pratiques. Tome 1: Enseigner au supérieur. Berne: Peter Lang. Bronckart, J. P. and Schneuwly, B. (eds) (1992), Vygotsky aujourd’hui. Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé. Evans, L. (2009), ‘S/he Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune? Professionalism, Developmentalism and the Paucity of In-service Education within the Research Profession’, Professional Development in Education, 35(2): 289–312. — (2010), ‘Developing the European Researcher: “Extended” Professionality within the Bologna Process’, Professional Development in Education, 36(4): 663–77. — (2014a), ‘A Changing Role for University Professors? Professorial Academic Leadership as It Is Perceived by “the Led”’, British Educational Research Journal doi: 10.1002/berj.3163. — (2014b), ‘What Is Effective Research Leadership? A Research-Informed Perspective’, Higher Education Research and Development, 33(1): 42–55. Evans, L. and Abbott, I. D. (1998), Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. London: Cassell. Evans, L. and Cosnefroy, L. (2013), ‘The Dawn of a New Academic Professionalism in France? Facing the Challenges of Imposed Reform’, Studies in Higher Education, 38(8): 1201–21. Fanghanel, J. (2012), Being an Academic. London: Routledge. Frenay, M., Saroyan, A., Taylor, K. L., Bédard, D., Clement, M., Rege Colet, N., et al. (2010), ‘Accompagner le développement pédagogique des enseignants universitaires à l’aide d’un cadre conceptuel original’, Revue française de pédagogie, 172: 63–76.

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Gordon, G. (2005), ‘The Human Dimensions of the Research Agenda: Supporting the Development of Researchers throughout the Career Life Cycle’, Higher Education Quarterly, 59(1): 40–55. Gornall, L. and Salisbury, J. (2012), ‘Compulsive Working, “Hyperprofessionality” and the Unseen Pleasures of Academic Work’, Higher Education Quarterly, 66(2): 135–54. Knight, P. T., Tait, J. and Yorke, M. (2006), ‘The Professional Learning of Teachers in Higher Education’, Studies in Higher Education, 31(4): 319–39. Kucholl, V., Amarelle, C., Jost, C. and Nappey, G. (2011), La Suisse mode d’emploi. Le Mont-sur-Lausanne: Editions LEP. Lanarès, J. and Poteaux, N. (2013), ‘Le contexte de l’enseignement supérieur’, in D. Berthiaume and N. Rege Colet (eds), La pédagogie de l’enseignement supérieur: repères théoriques et applications pratiques. Tome 1: Enseigner au supérieur. Berne: Peter Lang, pp. 9–24. Musselin, C. (2008), ‘Vers un marché international de l’enseignement supérieur ?’ Critique internationale, 39(2): 13–24. OCDE (2011), Regards sur l’éducation 2011: Indicateurs OCDE. Paris: Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economique. Rauhvargers, A. (2011), Global University Rankings and Their Impact. Brussels: European Universities Association. Rectors Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS) (2014), ‘La réforme de Bologne en bref ’ crus.ch, http://www.crus.ch/information-programmes/bologne-enseignement/ la-reforme-de-bologne-en-bref.html?L=1 [accessed 3 April 2014]. Rege Colet, N. (2002), Enseignement universitaire et interdisciplinarité: un cadre pour analyser, agir et évaluer. Bruxelles: De Boeck. — (2009a), ‘Relève professorale: des forces fraîches dans la mêlée’, in D. Bédard and J. P. Béchard (eds), Innover dans l’enseignement supérieur. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, pp. 229–45. — (2009b), ‘La place de l’évaluation formative dans le développement professionnel des enseignants-chercheurs’, in V. Bedin (ed.), L’évaluation à l’université. Evaluer ou conseiller?. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 275–93. — (2010a), ‘Le processus de Bologne: une chance ou un frein pour l’interdisciplinarité?’, in F. Darbellay and T. Paulsen (eds), Au miroir des disciplines. Réflexion sur les pratiques d’enseignement et de recherche inter- et transdisciplinaires. Berne: Peter Lang, pp. 15–35. — (2010b), ‘Faculty Development in Switzerland: A Study of French Speaking Universities’, in A. Saroyan and M. Frenay (eds), Building Teaching Capacities in Universities: From Faculty Development to Educational Development. Sterling (VA): Stylus, pp. 43–60. — (2012), ‘L’évaluation à l’épreuve d’un dispositif d’académisation de la formation des enseignants’, in V. Bedin and L. Talbot (eds), Les points aveugles dans l’évaluation des dispositifs d’éducation ou de formation. Berne: Peter Lang, pp. 143–66.

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Rege Colet, N. and Berthiaume, D. (2009), ‘Savoir ou être ? Savoirs et identités professionnels chez les enseignants universitaires’, in R. Hofstetter and B. Schneuwly (eds), Savoirs en (trans)formation. Au coeur des professions de l’enseignement et de la formation. Bruxelles: de Boeck, pp. 137–62. — (2012), ‘L’évaluation des enseignants universitaires: du contrôle des compétences pédagogiques aux dispositifs de développement professionnel’, Spirale, 49: 115–29. Rege Colet, N. and Durand, N. (2004), ‘Working on the Bologna Declaration: Promoting Integrated Curriculum Development and Fostering Conceptual Change’, International Journal for Academic Development, 9(2): 167–70. Scharmer, O. (2009), Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. San Francisco, CA: Berret-Koehler Publishers. Sharpe, R. (2004), ‘How Do professionals Learn and Develop? Implications for Staff and Educational Developers’, in D. Baume and P. Kahn (eds), Enhancing Staff and Educational Development. London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 132–53. Solow, L. and Fake, B. (2010), What Works for GE May Not Work for You: Using Human Systems Dynamics to Build a Culture of Process Improvement. New York: Productivity Press. State Secretariat for Education and Research (SER) (2014), ‘The Swiss Higher Education Landscape’, admin.ch, http://www.sbf.admin.ch/htm/themen/uni/hls_En.html [accessed 3 April 2014]. Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK) (2011), Swiss Education Report 2010. Bern: EDK. — (2014), ‘The Swiss Education System’, cdip.ch, http://www.cdip.ch/dyn/11586.php [accessed 3 April 2014]. Swiss Faculty Development Network (SFDN) (2001), ‘Towards Effective Teaching and Learning in Swiss Universities’, sfdn.ch, http://www.sfdn.ch/Documents.html [accessed 3 April 2014].

5

Academic Identity in Slovakia: A Personal Comparative View Štefan Beňuš

This chapter attempts to provide an autobiographical – and to a large extent also a personal and candid – reflection on the dynamic processes underlying changes in Slovakia’s academic environment and their effects on the development and maintenance of academic identities. The approach is based on a comparative perspective stemming from my experience with both Slovak and foreign academic environments, which I have experienced through extended academic stays abroad, primarily in the United States. It is hoped that this inevitably subjective, and thus very limited, view illuminates the changing nature of the academic landscape in Slovakia and contributes to identifying the social and cultural factors that play key roles in co-creating this landscape in a European context. I start with a brief biographical sketch, which frames the discussion and describes the approach taken in this chapter. The following section presents reflections on selected aspects of academic identity in view of recent changes and developments in the Slovak academic environment relating to mobility, human resources, ranking, financing, the relationship between academia and society, and finally, the relationship between the humanities and sciences when studying human speech. By way of conclusion, I summarise my observations and provide suggestions for developments that might positively affect academic identity in Slovakia. I would like to stress that this chapter is based on telling a story of forwardlooking, transformative processes as I see and experience them in Slovakia. I am a linguist and a communication scholar, not a sociologist or an expert in cultural studies. Hence, my narrative does not aspire to provide scholarship in

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these areas, and I keep theoretical discussion to a minimum. Rather, I approach the topic by providing a critical and comparative snapshot of current trends and developments in the Slovak academic environment and I leave it to the reader to link these observations with his/her preferred theoretical frameworks or formal models.

Background As this chapter largely draws on my own experience, it is fitting to start with a brief biographical note. I started my undergraduate studies in 1990 and graduated in 1995 from teacher training college, where I accepted an offer to teach in the English department. After three years I was awarded a one-year Fulbright fellowship at New York University in 1998, which gradually led to my pursuing a doctorate in linguistics, which I completed in 2005. I then took up a one-year post-doctoral research position at Columbia University, and this was followed by a one-year visiting professorship at Brown University. On returning to Slovakia in 2007 I resumed the position I had held when I left in 1998 – at what had now been upgraded from teacher training college to university. I have since become – and remained – an associate professor in the Department of English and American Studies, having taken a one-year research sabbatical at the University of Munich. In 2008 I also became affiliated, on a part-time basis, to the Department of Speech Analysis and Synthesis of the Institute of Informatics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. My university is a medium-sized institution (approx. 11,500 university students in 2010, out of which around 5,000 were at the Faculty of Arts), with a traditional emphasis on teaching over research, but with efforts in recent years to even out the balance between these two activities. Based on various independent evaluations the university ranks as average among academic institutions in Slovakia. My entire university career in Slovakia, from undergraduate to senior lecturer, is linked to this one institution. This needs to be borne in mind, for it has had positive and negative implications. It was advantageous to have the continuity of affiliation with a single environment – this allowed me to witness and experience first-hand the changes and developments that took place, and to get a real sense of the institution’s evolution over time. The disadvantage, of course, is that being affiliated only to one institution encourages narrow perspectives, based upon and reflecting limited experiences. This is an important consideration, since my views may not necessarily be shared by other academics in Slovakia.

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My approach in this chapter is to compare my ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ Slovak perspectives. By the former I mean my narrative as one who is in many ways fully integrated within the Slovak academic community: fully involved in the country’s academic discourse; a graduate – and now an employee – of a Slovak university; an affiliated, part-time member of a leading research institution in Slovakia. My ‘outsider’ perspective stems from my having undertaken doctoral studies in the United States, held post-doctoral and visiting professor positions at high-ranking American research universities, and some experience of the nonacademic research environment through limited consulting work. Naturally, being closely intertwined, these ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ selves can never be fully separated, but trying to understand the pressures, intentions, narratives and expectations stemming from these two perspectives plays a major role in defining my academic identity. These two perspectives are discussed here in relation to two other dimensions. First, I elaborate on what I mean by ‘academic identity’ by construing it as the dynamic interdependence of the identities of a researcher and a teacher and how the relationship between these two aspects of an academic persona is perceived in Slovakia. Second, as a researcher, I explore human cognitive abilities through analysing spoken communication. Spoken language is a domain that may be approached from the methodological and philosophical traditions of both the humanities and the natural sciences. One of the defining aspects of my academic identity is thus an ‘interface’ narrative that positions my work at the confluence of these two streams and involves constant renegotiation of my position along this dimension.

Academic identity in Slovakia: Recent changes and challenges One of the great revolutions in academic identity brought about by changes to the European political map took place in the early 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the communist regimes and the subsequent opening up of borders. It was during that era of momentous change, hope and anticipation – which was embraced with tremendous enthusiasm – that I began my academic career by enrolling at teacher training college (1990–5). I had not been familiar with the academic environment of the old communist regime, but from interaction with those who had been – older students and lecturers – I came to appreciate the enormity of the change. I still recall just how engaged were students and teachers alike with the genuine efforts towards and the struggles for

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improvements in the quality and fairness of academic life, and the commitment to establishing democratic principles and academic freedoms at every level of the university. Compared to this radical, non-linear change of the early 1990s, the development of Slovakia’s academic discourse and environment over the last 10–15 years seems rather gradual and slow (both in a positive and a negative sense). This is somewhat paradoxical given the dynamic and fluid changes that have altered the European landscape more broadly – including globalisation, migration, moves towards greater European integration and, most recently, the economic crisis. Moreover, I spent about half of this period abroad – not only out of Slovakia but out of Europe – so one would expect that after returning to Slovakia (in 2007) after the dynamic changes mentioned above, my perception of academia would be sharply different from what it was when I left (in 1998). Yet one of the observations that I share with others is that changes – both in academia and in many other facets of life – have been much slower than had been anticipated in the early 1990s. I discuss several of these changes (or the lack thereof) in relation to the insider-outsider and teacher-researcher narratives in the following subsections.

Mobility The opportunity for students’ and teachers’ academic enrichment, through extended absences from their own countries but within the European Research Area (ERA) or the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), is one of the initiatives that has already brought, and will continue to bring, largely positive and enduring effects. EU mobility programmes such as Erasmus, Tempus, Ceepus, Socrates and Marie Curie, as well as mobility through bilateral agreements, framework programmes and others provide wonderful opportunities for Slovak students to gain experience in other academic environments and to enrich Slovak academic discourse through sharing their experiences. The same applies to the mobility of university teachers for whom experience of academic discourse abroad provides an impulse for professional development and stimuli for exploring new research ideas or initiating collaborations. The notion of academic identity is one that I refer to as very ‘distributed’ – by which I mean that it is not formed in isolation; it is the product of multiple, diverse influences on one’s cognition, such as, inter alia: collaborators, conference participation and skills (see Clark, 1997, for an example of a review and philosophical discussion of situated, distributed and decentralised cognition).

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Given its distributed nature, opportunities for mobility have the potential to play a major role in forming the academic identities of researchers in Slovakia. Moreover, mobility opportunities allow Slovak researchers to draw comparisons between the nature and status of academia in other European societies with the reality and discourse in Slovakia at both the institutional level and the level of individual researchers. The incoming mobility of foreign students and teachers to Slovak institutions of higher education also provides invaluable input. The academic identities of all involved are influenced by interactions with researchers and students from different cultures, their research and teaching practices, and the university environments in which they work. Observations shared by these ‘outsiders’ provide valuable perspectives that help us understand our core academic values and practices and thus a significant component of our academic identity. The positive effects of mobility programmes highlight the importance of attracting foreign students to Slovakia, which is doubly important because of an evident brain drain, discussed later, of the best Slovak students, who are tending to leave the country in greater numbers than those of incoming foreign students. The relatively low number of incoming students is probably in part due to the paucity of courses taught in languages that are accessible to large numbers of foreign students. Slovak academics’ foreign language communicative competence, together with the provision of courses in English, is important for attracting more incoming students and positively influencing Slovak university teachers’ identities. I identify interpreting identity as an image of self that is conveyed or projected to others as one of the challenges for academic identity formation in relation to both academics and higher education institutions in Slovakia, achieving a better balance of the gains for outgoing Slovaks with the development of greater incoming mobility. In particular, there is a need to improve both lecturers’ approaches to their work and universities’ infrastructure and administration, with a view to enhancing the attractiveness and reputation of Slovakia as a destination for research and study.

Human resources My time in the United States was in many respects an eye-opener for me. I was extremely impressed by the effort expended by American universities in order to attract high-quality students and recruit the best available academic staff. The quality of academic personnel at every level was considered critical. Admissions

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are highly monitored; individual academics strive to attract the best students for graduate programmes, and departments make every effort to fill available positions with the best candidates. These processes are highly transparent and everybody understands that the future position and standing of the research team, department, university or individual academic depend to a large extent on the type of people that co-create the academic environment. When the department where I studied realised, for example, that other departments offered full scholarships to attract the best students, they worked hard with the university administration to reduce their disadvantage. Similarly, working as a student representative on several academic search committees – a practice that is unheard of in Slovakia – I was able not only to observe first-hand the effort and care that went into recruitment and selection, and the fairness of the process, but also to articulate the opinions of students. As I perceive it, the human resources situation at Slovak universities is quite different. In relation to student recruitment and admissions, the emphasis is on quantity rather than quality. The best Slovak students are leaving to go to the Czech Republic or other countries, and, just as Normand observes (Chapter 9, in this volume) that the brain drain from France is not recognised by policymakers as a significant problem, so too does the Slovak brain drain provoke no apparent sense of alarm or concern amongst political elites or university management. Rather than involving processes – such as advertising – aimed at attracting a strong field of applicants, recruitment at departmental level tends to be internal, in which ‘home-grown’ Ph.D. students are offered positions, or people are recruited via personal networks. Collaboration between lecturers and students is not prioritised in Slovakia; while several grant schemes, for example, encourage the participation of doctoral students who are already registered, in sharp contrast to American practice, few offer funding for new doctoral or post-doctoral positions. According to the Academic Ranking and Rating Agency of Slovakia (ARRA), there were 6,144 doctoral students (or early career researchers) registered at state universities funded by public funds, but their output is weak, which is mainly attributed by ARRA to doctoral supervisors’ low publication and citation outputs (ARRA, 2013). Academic identities in Slovakia must inevitably reflect the weak research cultures that prevail and that yield unimpressively low research by the standards of many other European and Anglo-Saxon research communities; as implied by O’Byrne’s (2015) analysis (Chapter 12, in this volume) of the Irish institute of technology sector, prioritisation of research and academics’ research identities go hand-in-hand: where the first is low, the second is likely to be weak.

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Finally, the staffing of universities in Slovakia is negatively affected by the brain drain that I refer to here. An increasing number of Slovaks choose to pursue their academic careers abroad – often in the Czech Republic, where linguistic compatibility and similarities between the Czech and Slovak languages facilitate communication. The number of Slovak students registered at Czech state-funded universities rose from 5,084 in 2001 to 15,849 in 2009, and there are currently around 22,000 full-time Slovaks in both state-funded and private Czech universities, representing about 10 per cent of all Slovak university students. Naturally, this trend has both positive and negative consequences. Assuming that the quality of education and of educational experience and student life are better abroad, a sizeable percentage of students receive better academic training than they would obtain in Slovakia. If and when they then return home, the Slovak workforce and society as a whole is likely be enhanced and strengthened. Yet the departure of the best students impoverishes the overall quality of the student body, which greatly impedes academic discourse and the development of strong academic identities, in particular, researcher identities.

Rankings and evaluations Recently a ranking system has been introduced for universities and their departments. League tables are generated by both governmental and nongovernmental organisations in Slovakia (e.g. ARRA1) and abroad (e.g. Academic Ranking of World Universities,2 or University Ranking by Academic Performance3) and employ various methodologies. A general trend at the international level, which is publicly criticised in Slovakia, is that at the time of writing no Slovak university has ranked among the top 500 universities in the most cited league tables, whereas neighbouring Central European countries with similar economic, historical and cultural backgrounds, and academicrelated conditions (e.g. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary) frequently have at least one or two universities among the top 500. The data provided by Slovak organisations on the ranking and assessment of individual universities and departments provide some indication to, and contribute an awareness within, Slovak society of the range of quality of university departments, which has the potential to stimulate a bottom-up 1 2 3

http://www.arra.sk [accessed 20 May 2014]. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ [accessed 20 May 2014]. http://www.urapcenter.org/ [accessed 20 May 2014].

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process of natural selection for research and teaching-focused departments. Driven by various – mostly political – factors, a rapid growth in the creation of universities in Slovakia occurred in the 1990s, yet, operating within a finance system that, until recently, was heavily based on fixed per capita (in relation to students) government funding allocation, the universities are fragmented and under-financed. Rankings are expected to lead to a de-fragmentation of people and resources. The ranking and accreditation system places pressure on university management to demand academic output that either generates money for the university or contributes to meeting accreditation benchmarks – pressure that inevitably cascades down to academics. Although, traditionally, their professionalism – intended to serve as a normative values system (Evetts, 2013) – was expected to underpin academics’ work and ensure their performance and output, more explicit forms of performativity are now creeping into the Slovak academy, including in particular research output assessment of the kind practised in the Anglo-Saxon world and in other European countries. These initiatives represent what I consider a most promising attempt to raise the quality of research produced in Slovak universities, and, by extension, enhance the profile and reputation of the country’s academic community. Another recent – and, in my view, welcome – initiative is the publication of graduate employment figures. This publicly available information has begun to influence academic discourse, and to influence decisions on degree course content and its capacity to develop transferable skills – which, in turn, impacts academic identities: on how academics see themselves and their purposes as higher education teachers and their roles in developing the next generation of graduate workers, who will contribute towards societal growth and cohesion. Yet lagging somewhat behind this development – at least in the universities with which I am familiar – is teaching assessment. Combined with institutional support for developing and improving teaching, the American approach involves anonymous, confidential and robustly enforced student and peer evaluation that provides feedback to teachers and serves as an important credential in the process of applying for academic teaching positions (Lencho, 2006). In Slovakia student evaluations of teaching are not yet embedded within academic culture and the mechanisms for soliciting them typically yield low returns; since such evaluations neither form part of academic selection processes, nor are linked to any performance related pay schemes, there is little incentive for academics to develop their teaching. Nevertheless, most university teachers consider teaching a key dimension of their identities that underpins their self-esteem,

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and, privately, they generally derive much satisfaction from their interaction with students. Herein lies an intercontinental distinction between the teachingrelated bases of academic identities: in the United States academic identity appears to be borne out of a performativity culture that is driven, in part, by competition and the competitiveness that represents a potent desire amongst individuals to excel; in Slovakia – whose post-war history was created within a political and economic regime that was the polar opposite of that in the United States – academic identity is fundamentally more intrinsically motivated, and hence potentially reflects people’s idiosyncrasies and personal academic values.

Financing and funding One of the problems that every academic faces is the availability of grants to fund research and dissemination activities, such as conference participation. The situation in Slovakia is, unfortunately, one of the worst in Europe. According to the 2011 EU Competitiveness Report, public funding of education and research and development (R&D) as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) dropped from 4.2 per cent in 2000 to 3.9 per cent in 2008, placing Slovakia second from the bottom in the member states’ R&D expenditure ranking – a situation that is exacerbated by a very low ratio of private sector investment.4 Public finances allocated for the teaching and education sector present a similar picture: funding for education between 1995 and 2007 dropped from 4.7 per cent of GDP to 4 per cent, representing the sharpest decline among the OECD countries. Moreover, the ratio of education funding in Slovakia compared to overall public expenditure ranks amongst the lowest for all three levels of education,5 and funding for tertiary education at 0.79 per cent of GDP in 2007 was the third lowest in the EU.6 The financing of research and education – primary pillars of academic identity – is clearly alarmingly neglected, with little prospect of improvement. An additional problem – not directly linked to funding availability, but to the research grants application, assessment and management process – is inadequate transparency. This, in my mind, is a significant problem that impacts academic identities – especially when compared to my experiences in the United States and of applying for EU funding. In contrast to these contexts, in Slovakia the 4

5 6

http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/competitiveness-report/2011/chapters/part_I_ chapter_3.pdf [accessed 20 May 2014]. http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/45926093.pdf [accessed 20 May 2014]. http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/competitiveness-report/2011/chapters/part_I_ chapter_3.pdf [accessed 20 May 2014].

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system of domestic evaluation is not clear, feedback on applications is rare, and anonymity and confidentiality are also an issue. The goalposts that help define the nature of academic work, by indicating direction and focus, are not clearly visible to those academics in Slovakia who want to participate in the kinds of activities that academics in other European countries perform with the skill and understanding of what is required to succeed. Without such direction and focus, academic identities remain confused and unclear, and their development and expansion are stifled. Slovakia, moreover, has an extremely low ratio of private sector investment in the R&D sector compared to other EU countries,7 particularly in the humanities, which increases academics’ reliance on an education system that is defined by political representatives. Yet the Slovak academy is fragmented on many levels, which impedes academics’ capacity to engage with and lobby politicians in a coherent manner. I do not suggest that academia should become unionised – indeed, a key influence on and dimension of academic identity in Slovakia is the notion of academic freedom – but a unified, credible voice is needed to communicate to the government what is good about academia, and also what is lacking and in need of improvement. Given the significance for academic identities of the two key academic roles – research and teaching – the funding and finance situation creates several difficulties. First, it is difficult to establish and maintain a ‘lab’ or a research team; as I mentioned earlier, internal funding mechanisms seldom cover the costs of employing post-docs or research assistants, and EU funding opportunities typically require the collaborative effort of multiple international teams, extensive administrative support and an infrastructure that facilitates these – all of which is challenging for many Slovak universities. The second problem – and a relatively dangerous trend in my mind – is the increasing bureaucratisation of academia. Political bodies generally establish a ‘middleman’ in the form of agencies to oversee and manage expenditure, in order to ensure fairness and accountability. Yet most such agencies – including those managing EU funding allocated to Slovakia – comprise primarily bureaucrats and administrators, rather than academics, which has the result of placing far greater emphasis on the administration of grant expenditure than on the academic quality of the research it funded. Balancing the books is given precedence over meeting research goals. Rather than facilitating researchers, many colleagues perceive these agencies as the instigators of a system of 7

http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/competitiveness-report/2011/chapters/part_I_ chapter_3.pdf [accessed 20 May 2014].

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administrative hurdles that impede the progress of the research and discourage future research activity. To deal with this situation, academic identity must shift to incorporate an administrative perspective. There is, of course, nothing particularly new about this, nor is it confined to being a Slovakian issue – generally, the more senior an academic is, the more her or his role embraces issues involving human resources, management and funding. However, the combination of funding shortages, insufficient transparency in grant allocation and bureaucratic hurdles imposed by government grant administration agencies engenders frustration.

Society’s relation to academia The figures presented here, relating to state financial support for research and education, show that, contrary to the political rhetoric, in practice political representatives in Slovakia afford research and education low priority. In the absence of thorough sociological research, one can only speculate if the current – and generally low – regard with which research and teaching occupations are held in Slovak society is a cause or an effect of the economic and political neglect outlined earlier. Whatever its causes, this societal tendency poses challenges to Slovak academic identity, which is faced with a relentless, ever-present pressure to justify research and educational activity on the basis of its value to society. The complex relationship between society and academia is probably influenced by two cultural-historical traditions in Slovakia. One – the culture of ‘Babbittry’8 – is somewhat more evident in the historical Austro-Hungarian geopolitical sphere than in other European countries and involves people’s belief that social prestige can be achieved by acquiring academic titles. In addition to the pursuit of economic well-being or personal happiness, people’s motivation to acquire a university education is driven by this culturally influenced perspective and relates to social acceptance and associated selfesteem. As in Anglo-Saxon culture – but inconsistent with some European national traditions (e.g. in France) – Slovaks commonly identify with, and respond to, academic titles outside the academic context. This is related to – but also subtly different from – the common acceptance in the Western world that (a university) education provides better life chances. Academic identity in Slovakia thus incorporates an element of pride in one’s achievements and one’s status as an educated person. 8

Defined as a ‘narrow-minded, self-satisfied person with an unthinking attachment to middle-class values and materialism’: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Babbittry [accessed 20 May 2014].

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A second cultural-historical tradition that stems from the former communist regime’s stance towards academia – its identification as a potential enemy of the state, reflected by the persecution at times of its members – runs counter to Babbittry. Being identified as belonging to the ‘intelligentsia’ still has derogatory connotations for many people. Often academic work was adopted, for propaganda purposes, as a rationale for the regime’s policies. So the promotion of strongly egalitarian, anti-elitist policies, alongside, paradoxically, the labelling of academics as elitists to be treated with suspicion, engendered mistrust towards them and their work on the part of ordinary people – not least because the regime’s firm grip on the academy inevitably produced pro-regime academics who embraced its (the regime’s) political agenda. The confluence of these two, somewhat conflicting, cultural traditions creates a strange dynamic that on the one hand drives demand for a university education, yet on the other hand promotes a degree of disdain for – or, at least, lack of recognition of the value of – academics and academic institutions. Society expects universities to mass-produce university graduates to support economic growth, and the per capita funding policy for universities encourages high recruitment. Meanwhile, high unemployment allows employers to raise the bar for their recruitment criteria, so they demand a university degree even where the job does not merit it. Yet, alongside this pressure for the expansion of university education, the disdain with which academia is regarded fosters opposition to the trend of setting high academic standards. These factors contribute to the undervaluing by society of domestic university education. High-calibre people have little incentive to pursue academic careers in Slovakia, where the value of the academy is questioned by many. The American response to such a situation would be an extensive public relations campaign.9 Such a strategy might prove effective for Slovakian academia and, by extension, strengthen its members’ academic identities.

The humanities and natural sciences After outlining several factors that affect academic discourse and identity in Slovakia, in this final section I reflect on a rather general and internal aspect of academic identity relating to disciplinary affiliation. My own identity is defined by the primary object of my research and teaching: human speech. Spoken language may be studied using methodological and philosophical approaches 9

See for example the efforts of the Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences http://www. humanitiescommission.org/ [accessed 20 May 2014].

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that are linked with the humanities, but the strong physical component of speaking – its articulatory and acoustic features – lend themselves to the application of epistemologies derived from the natural sciences (Beňuš, 2010). This specific interdisciplinarity relates to several aspects of my identity. One such influence on my identity is the culture of collaboration. In the humanities one works primarily alone. This makes a lot of sense when analysing literary texts or contemplating questions of a philosophical or moral nature. In the natural – and in some cases the social – sciences, however, it is more common to collaborate, since the process of acquiring and analysing data is multifaceted and, in relation to the study of speech, might require different ways of collecting a spoken database, transcribing and annotating relevant events, and analysing them both qualitatively and quantitatively. Since these tasks require a lot of time, and sometimes a wide range of expertise, it makes sense to divide up the labour required for their completion. Difficulties with different perspectives on collaboration also relate to issues such as the establishment of teams or collaboration with students, which I discussed earlier. Another identity-related issue involves established ways of writing and knowledge sharing, which is connected to regional, cultural and linguistically established ways of academic writing in Slovakia. Academic identity is linked to communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), and the ways of disseminating knowledge through writing gives rise to such a community. It is natural that specific disciplines have their own discourses and practices related to writing; some of the best mathematics papers, for example, are short and contain primarily formulae and proofs, yet, in something of a contrast to this, the best humanities papers often present in-depth contemplations of who we are, why we believe in certain things and how we fit into the world. But style of writing is also affected by cultural traditions, and here I would like to make one observation related to differences between the Anglo-Saxon and Slovak – or perhaps, more generally, central European – cultures and traditions of academic writing. For me, academic writing was, and still is, a great challenge, and I am enormously grateful to my academic supervisors and tutors in the United States for working with me on improving my writing and bringing it more in line with established practices in the field. Through this experience, my subjective opinion is that the starkest difference between the Western and Slovak discourses of academic writing relates to the notion of clarity. The emphasis in the AngloSaxon tradition is on accessibility of the text to as many readers as possible. This applies to both content and structure, and includes clear definition of terms and

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notions, syntactic and semantic structuring of individual sentences, paragraphs favouring brevity and logical linking, and the structuring of the entire text into meaningful chapters and sections. The mantra of having the reader always in mind is greatly emphasised. The emphasis in the Slovak context, I feel, is rather on the aspects of creativity, uniqueness and eloquence of the text. This again applies both to content and style. Less effort is expended on presenting complex and complicated ideas in accessible ways, since the primary target readership is a community of likeminded academics rather than the average university-educated person. In this sense, such a practice might promote modernist, elitist notions of academia, whilst a rather hybrid, postmodern view may be more in line with current reality (Chappell et al., 2003). It is true that practices and discourses for academic writing commonly encompass much tacit knowledge about writing within a particular discipline (Dysthe, 2001), and these are difficult to make explicit. Moreover, one is ‘accepted’ into this community of practice only if peers (through peer-review of written texts) deem one’s writing to be congruent with these tacit understandings. I believe that a turn towards emphasising the accessibility and clarity of academic texts has already been set in motion in Slovakia, but it will, I suggest, represent a continual challenge for academic identities.

Conclusion This chapter has reflected on the question of what it means to be an academic in Slovakia and what kind of challenges Slovak academics face. Primarily, I drew upon personal experience and my observations from extended experience within a normal Slovak university and my familiarity with the American academic environment, gained through doctoral and post-doctoral studies. The chapter outlined some of the changes, developments and trends in Slovak academic discourse, and then considered their effects on, and challenges for, academic identity in Slovakia. Academic identity is highly dynamic and has to be constantly renegotiated and renarrated given the changes taking place within the higher education context as well as within society as a whole. Additionally, academia is an integral part of society both in terms of actively shaping it as well as being affected by it. At times, the picture I painted might have seemed rather pessimistic; I have highlighted several factors that combine to create a frustrating situation and

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acute sense of crisis within academia in Slovakia. This leads many (early stage) researchers, academics, and excellent students contemplating academic careers to opt either for alternative professions or for pursuing their academic careers abroad. However, the chapter also identified positive trends and suggestions for dealing with unfavourable ones. Positive trends include the enrichment of Slovak academic discourse through mobility programmes, which promote the European: inclusive and competitive aspects of academic identity over the national narrative and the exclusion that it engenders. Positivity was also identified in the ranking and evaluation that cuts across both the micro (e.g. within a department or a team) and the meso levels of universities or their departments. My suggestions for strengthening academic identity in Slovakia include the establishment of academic staff development and support units, which have for several decades been common in American and British universities (Evans and Abbott, 1998). These could provide assistance with a whole range of issues deeply related to academic identity, such as teaching proficiency, managerial skills, dealing with bureaucratic aspects of grant processes and others. A slightly different potential positive influence on academic identity revolves around academics’ involvement in public affairs. My thinking is that if society becomes more aware of and better understands the nature of academic work, that is, how it as well as academics are perceived, it should gradually improve. Second, this civic involvement should facilitate a process of defragmentation and bottom-up organisation, which may lead to partnerships between academics and politicians that could push for much needed changes to the financing of research and tertiary education.

Acknowledgement I am indebted to Professor Z. Gadušová and M. Perez for providing valuable comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. All remaining mistakes are mine.

References ARRA (2013), Academic Ranking and Rating Agency Newsletter 2013_01, http://arra.sk/sites/arra.sk/files/file/ARRA%20Newsletter%202013%2001/ARRA_ newsletter_01_2013.pdf [accessed 6 November 2013].

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Beňuš, Š. (2010), ‘Building Interfaces between the Humanities and Cognitive Sciences: The Case of Human Speech’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9(3): 353–74. Chappell, C., Rhodes, C., Solomon, N., Tennant, M. and Yates, L. (2003), Reconstructing the Lifelong Learner Pedagogy and Identity in Individual, Organisational and Social Change. London and New York: Routledge. Clark, A. (1997), Being There: Putting Brain, Body and orld Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dysthe, O. (2001), ‘The Mutual Challenge of Writing Research and the Teaching of Writing’, The keynote address at the First Conference of EATAW: The European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing and EWCA: The European Writing Centre Association, University of Groeningen Netherlands, http://www.uib. no/filearchive/keynote_Eataw18–1-.pdf [accessed 6 November 2013]. Evans, L. and Abbott, I. D. (1998), Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. London: Cassell. Evetts, J. (2013), ‘Professionalism: Value and Ideology’, Current Sociology, 61(5–6): 778–96. Lencho, M. (2006), ‘What’s Happening Here and Why You Should Take My Word for It: A Microethnographic Study of the Language of Student Course Evaluations Composed in and out of the Course’, Proceedings of the 1st Nitra Conference on Discourse Studies. Nitra: Constantine the Philosopher University Press. Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

6

The Scholarship of Academic Entrepreneurship in Twenty-First-Century Europe: A Swedish Relief Carved from Personal Experiences Eva M. Brodin

My time has not yet come [. . .] it would be a complete contradiction of myself if I expected ears and hands for my truths already today: that I am not heard today, that no one today knows how to take from me, is not only comprehensible; it even seems to me right. Nietzsche, [1888]2004: 39 Even though these words were written in the nineteenth century, I recognise myself in relation to the political arena of the Swedish academia. Perhaps scholarship has not changed so much in over a century after all? About 20 years ago, Boyer (1990) defined four integrated domains of scholarship: the scholarship of discovery (research productivity), integration (interdisciplinary knowledge), application (transferring knowledge in practice), and teaching (implementing knowledge in education). Hitherto, state-level instruments of economic development, the academic reward structure and graduate education have been highlighted as important factors for fostering or impeding the institutionalisation of Boyer’s domains (Braxton, 2006). However, in this chapter I argue that the conditions for realising the domains of scholarship must be understood in relation to the changed and fragmented meanings of academic identity (Clegg, 2008). Academics of today are not only supposed to be skilled researchers, good cooperators across disciplines, experienced practitioners and competent teachers. They are also supposed to embody these academic identities in an entrepreneurial way. Thus another scholarly domain

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emerges: the scholarship of academic entrepreneurship. However, the problem is that the academic system is not sufficiently supportive of entrepreneurial endeavours beyond political investments, and consequently scholarship itself becomes undermined. Accordingly, contemporary academics need to guard their scholarly integrity. By combining Boyer’s (1990) domains of scholarship with the newer notion of ‘academic entrepreneurship’, the current chapter depicts the vulnerability of today’s academic identity formation through the lens of my own personal perspective. This implies the story of a young woman who has experienced a decade of rapid transformations in the Swedish academia at different levels: The downfall of a university department at a large Swedish research university, the epistemological alterations of the discipline of education, the fusion of two smaller Swedish universities during her post-doc period and her interdisciplinary journey into the discipline of psychology in order to maintain her research integrity and hence develop a sustainable academic position. Along the way the reader will be carried forward through the rough ground of the Swedish academic landscape.

The scholarship of academic entrepreneurship These days entrepreneurial ambitions are high at my workplace at Lund University, which is one of the largest research universities in Sweden and Europe. In a brand-new Ph.D. course, ‘Entrepreneurship – Commercialize Your Research’, doctoral students from all faculties are invited to learn about entrepreneurship and business opportunities, market analysis, how to make a good business plan, financing, and how to pitch and sell their products. In the course description one reads that today’s excellent researchers more often contribute to useful effects in the society through their entrepreneurial thinking and acting than previously. Clearly, entrepreneurship has become an important part of the European academic identity. But the crucial point is that the entrepreneurial game is not only played on away grounds as suggested earlier, but on the academic home field as well, which leads us to the concern of this chapter: What does entrepreneurship mean in the academic context and how does it affect scholarly identity? While recent neoliberal-type political transformations are typically blamed for the current managerial discourse in academia, Lorenz (2010) reminds us that the idea of the ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ can be traced back to the Enlightenment and onward through a range of philosophers.

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Furthermore, in his renowned work Homo Academicus, Bourdieu (1988) frames a number of different powers in terms of capital. Thus, paraphrasing academic affairs in economic terms is no new phenomenon and hence the conditions for an entrepreneurial spirit have long been embedded in academic practice. It is therefore not surprising that the activities of entrepreneurs and contemporary scholars appear to have more similarities than differences when comparing the two forms of existence in the literature. On the basis of the many definitions of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial processes and entrepreneurial cultures provided by Lundström and Stevenson (2006: 41–5), entrepreneurs can be briefly depicted as economic innovative agents who are involved in creating and developing their own business through generating new ideas and turning them into something of value. Furthermore, entrepreneurship is chiefly described as the individual activity of recognising and actualising opportunities, which in turn are adjusted by organisational, societal and governmental forces. In entrepreneurial cultures, such external powers are supportive of reasonable risk-taking and encourage ‘individuals and organisations to cope with and enjoy high levels of uncertainty and complexity as a means of self-fulfilment’ (44). It appears that the afore-mentioned delineation of entrepreneurial activities may well be a portrait of scholarship. According to Törnqvist (2009), ‘academic entrepreneurs’ excel in recognising new research trends, in making themselves visible through engagement in numerous conferences and peer-reviewed publications, and in building strong and large networks. Such entrepreneurial activities imply well-developed skills in ‘enunciated critical creativity’, which is found in scholars who have reached explicit awareness of how they should express their new ideas to the community of peers (Brodin and Frick, 2011). Törnqvist (2009) states that the ‘academic entrepreneurs’ are therefore better equipped for survival in academia than the extraordinary, creative ‘pioneers’ who are seldom appreciated immediately for their original ideas and thus have difficulty communicating their research and obtaining grants for their projects. Nonetheless, Törnqvist stresses that both entrepreneurs and pioneers are needed for successful development in research environments since they function in a complementary way to one another. The crucial point is that the politically increased demand for ‘academic entrepreneurship’ overshadows all kinds of scholarship these days with the result that several scholarly destructive oppositions are manifest. On the one hand, today’s scholars are forced to act like entrepreneurs in some way or another, whether or not they are suited for the role. On the other hand, the Swedish academia does not, in fact, encourage an entrepreneurial culture within the

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system due to our controlling and bureaucratic apparatus. Apparently, neither entrepreneurs nor pioneers are completely supported by the academic system. However, perhaps the main problem is the monopolistic trend in Swedish academia that is found in the general development of fewer and larger university campuses, in the priority given to large research centres and to the strategic spearheading of research areas, as well as in the discontinuation of smaller subjects within higher education in favour of more student-attractive (read: crowded) courses. Undeniably, this is a proportionately strained and cynical picture of the Swedish academia, yet the illustration captures the current normative ideals and their ongoing actualisations here and there. In addition to this gloomy picture, fewer admission places are offered nowadays to students at Swedish universities in spite of a growing number of youths in the next generation. One need hardly mention that this implies an increased skewedness in the selection of our future students and accordingly in the researchers and lecturers of tomorrow. All these circumstances counteract the manifoldness that is a catchword in European policy documents and is essential for scholarship. Thus, through the amplified standardisation at many levels in academia, contemporary and future scholars run the risk of nurturing and reproducing a pocketful of rather unchallenged societal interests to the detriment of others, which is contradictory to the critical and creative spirit that should permeate all scholarship – including academic entrepreneurship. Consequently, we are captured in a destructive form of entrepreneurial scholarship in which scholars are moulded into effective agents who are deeply involved in creating profitable projects well adapted to political and bureaucratic confinements. This fact brings us to the story of my own academic journey, which begins in the scholarship of discovery.

The scholarship of discovery: Recognising the conditions of research The scholarship of discovery, at its best, contributes not only to the stock of human knowledge but also to the intellectual climate of a college or university. Not just the outcomes, but the process, and especially the passion, give meaning to the effort. Boyer, 1990: 17

In 2002–7, I was a doctoral student in education at Lund University, and my entire focus was directed towards becoming an independent researcher throughout my doctoral education. However, after my public defence I became

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aware that continuing with full-time independent research after your public defence is difficult within the social sciences where the post-doc positions are extremely few. At the same time I also realised the importance, for the individual and organisation alike, of keeping your research alive once you have attained your Ph.D. Otherwise you will literally disappear from the academic map, unless you have the right contacts. The simple fact is that there is no longer a department of education at Lund University, since the department was bankrupt and closed down soon after my public defence. About ten years before this discontinuation, Vislie (1998) pointed to particular difficulties in her examination of our organisation when scrutinising the nine larger educational departments in Sweden. Vislie found that the comparatively small size of the department combined with a generally passive approach to research among the lecturers holding a Ph.D. had led to insufficient external research funding. Nevertheless, beyond Vislie’s study, the subsequent decay of this department could also partially be explained by the swift transformation of knowledge interests due to political stakes within the discipline of education, as explained below. Research at Swedish universities is chiefly financed through public funding with the consequence that our research at higher educational institutions is predominantly determined by political decisions (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, 2012). Within the discipline of education, the political influences on Swedish educational research have been exceedingly palpable since the new research area called ‘Educational Sciences’ took form in 1999, and a special committee was established for such a purpose at the Swedish Research Council in 2001. On the one hand, the mission of the committee was to promote qualified research linked to teacher education and teachers’ practice. On the other hand, the committee was meant to support knowledge development in other areas of education and learning as well. Yet in reality, research connected to teacher education and teachers’ practices prevailed as the conceptual definition of ‘educational sciences’ and the policy documents embraced the arena of educational sciences rather than its particular content and object (SOU, 2005: 31). With respect to the department of education at Lund University, these conditions were devastating as there was no teacher education connected to the department and its overall research profile was not marked in such directions. Simultaneously, there was also a paradigm shift in the broader discipline of pedagogy, which the department of education in Lund belonged to in the first place. The so-called linguistic turn in the twenty-first century implied a general

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preference to other methodologies in educational research than those primarily used at our unit. A few of my colleagues fitted into these new methodological frames, but I was not one of them. During my doctoral studies, I did not realise the future consequences of these disciplinary transformations. Neither did I understand the importance of building networks both within and outside the organisation, but rather I was very happy with being the conventional ‘lone scholar’ in contrast to being a ‘community member’ as Pilbeam and Denyer (2009) phrase it. To sum up, it seemed as though I had moulded into an academic of the past when I received my Ph.D. I was not a community member, I was not researching politically strategic areas, I was not using the latest methodology and I therefore did not ask the right questions. Obviously, I was ill-prepared for the future scholarship of academic entrepreneurship and hence the forecast of my academic career was quite dark. Still, I received a national post-doc position two years after my public defence. This position was initially situated at the ‘School of Education’ at Växjö University but by the beginning of 2010, the department and the whole of the university were vastly transformed into the ‘School of Education, Psychology, and Sport Science’ at Linnaeus University, which consisted of an organisational fusion between Växjö University and the University of Kalmar. Thus, in contrast to my earlier experiences, this organisation expanded more than any Swedish university had ever done in a short time. The new Linnaeus University was pitched as a ‘university of opportunities’ throughout the country in different modes ranging from advertising to various recruiting campaigns. These largescaled entrepreneurial efforts appeared to be lucrative as the applicants per place increased remarkably compared to other universities in Sweden, collaboration with stakeholders in society at large was strengthened, and new strategic research centres were established on the campuses (Årsredovisning Linnéuniversitetet, 2010; 2011). However, the realisation of opportunities was not always encouraged. Among those neglected was my entrepreneurial endeavour to strengthen my international networking in connection to my research on doctoral education. Instead: all investments should be placed in the undergraduate programmes. The lack of interest in strengthening national research on doctoral education is not unique for the Linnaeus University, but is rather a nation-wide problem. This is a serious mistake, since the maintenance and further progress of European research excellence is of the greatest interest in contemporary policy debates. Hence doctoral education has recently been placed in the limelight due to its role in preparing the elite researchers of tomorrow. However, research on doctoral education is fragmented and partial, which is why there is an urgent

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need for further development within the field (Bogle et al., 2011; Lee and Boud, 2009; LERU, 2011). Unfortunately, the Swedish government is not yet on the same page.

The scholarship of application: Emancipating the scholarly conditions The scholarship of application . . . is not a one-way street. Indeed, the term itself may be misleading if it suggests that knowledge is first ‘discovered’ and then ‘applied’. The process we have in mind is far more dynamic. New intellectual understandings can arise out of the very act of application – whether in medical diagnosis, serving clients in psychotherapy, shaping public policy, creating an architectural design, or working with the public schools. In activities such as these, theory and practice vitally interact and renew each other. Boyer, 1990: 23

After my public defence I was long-term unemployed and met the severe reality among many doctorates from Lund University, where about 50 per cent of the alumni are not employed immediately after attaining their Ph.D. (Holmström and Nilsson Lindström, 2008). Nevertheless, in accordance with the same statistical study, I finally received my first positions of employment, which, in my case, were partially placed at five different organisations at the same time both within and outside academia. One of these places of employment was at a Swedish folk high school (non-academic adult education) where I held a part-time teaching position for 18 months. The culture clash was evident already on the first morning when I was provided with my own clock-in card at the folk high school. As an academic I was not used to being painstakingly controlled, and I was certainly not trained to work according to the clock but rather according to the results. Nonetheless, beneath the surface of the teaching factory, another world of intellectual freedom and creative collaboration appeared along with a complete lack of competitiveness in the organisation. Instead there was an enviably strong spirit of community, in which individuals can never fail but only develop in line with their personal prerequisites and aspirations. Thus, in contrast to general education, emphasis was put on potentials and developmental processes rather than outcomes. This idea of Bildung was soon tested by political injunctions, however. No folk high school could jeopardise their further financing from the State, so there was a great challenge in obeying the political demands for measurable results while at the same time keeping the spirit of the folk high school intact. The most

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important thing learned from this enterprise was to never lose possession of the reason for our activities. The matter was not how to regulate our practice to the political demands, but how to adapt the new politics to the folk high school. Against this backdrop we are brought to the core problem of the recent development in Swedish academia. Since the research politics influence what kind of research is important, the public and private sectors motivate which students are employable, and political authorities control the quality of our activities, the reason for scholarship is increasingly beleaguered by political powers. Yet, as the story from the folk high school recounts, the problem lies not so much in the political powers affecting scholarship but in our failure to guard our fundamental scholarly values. According to Nixon (2008), scholars need to reclaim their moral coherence of truthfulness, respect, authenticity and magnanimity, which should imbue all scholarly activities. This entails that scholars must be truthful, respectful and authentic towards themselves in the first place, since otherwise in the long run it will be difficult to maintain societal trust. However, when the basic reasons for scholarly activities are no longer in principle defined by scholars themselves but by neoliberal politics, severe consequences follow, along with the embedded competiveness in academia. Those who best conform to political and societal interests will win the whole entrepreneurial game. At that juncture there is no academic entrepreneurship but only entrepreneurship in its original commercial meaning. Thus academic entrepreneurship is on its way towards obliterating scholarship and hence itself, due to the loss of the scholarly reasons for what academics are doing and why. Without possessing their own reasons for embodying scholarship, scholars become alienated from the meaning of their own activities and subsequently become captured within their own instrumentality. Metaphorically speaking, academics are then transformed into pieces in the game of Monopoly played by political gamblers. This brings us to Freire’s ([1970]2005) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which I put into practise at the folk high school since many of my students did not have school-leaving certificates from their compulsory schooling. Therefore, all learning was grounded in the personal stories of both my students and myself with the intention of revealing the societally oppressed possibilities of our lives. Actually, my emancipatory teaching at the folk high school was not very different from writing this piece, which indicates that the mechanisms of oppression are no longer exclusively a phenomenon emerging between different social classes but they also thrive between different social powers in which the one social power (politics) colonises the other (academia).

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But as Freire ([1970]2005) accurately illuminates, the phenomenon of oppression is embodied in a dialectical relationship between the oppressors and the oppressed. Liberation will not occur until the oppressed raise their critical voice against the oppressors and stop conforming to the oppressive discourse. Assuredly, at a micro-level, concerned and resistant scholars have already started this emancipatory movement (Clegg, 2008), although, at a meso-level, the scholarly community is not yet united in these efforts. The political discourse still has its grip on academic leaders, signifying that we are merely in the initial stages of a potential future emancipation: . . . [A]lmost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or ‘sub-oppressors’. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped . . . This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of ‘adhesion’ to the oppressor . . . This does not necessarily mean that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden. But their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the contradiction; the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole. (Freire, [1970]2005: 45–6)

It would be presumptuous and even risky to say that I have released myself from political forces in my scholarly thinking. Nonetheless, I venture to assert that the intellectual conflation of Freire’s philosophy and my experiences from the folk high school channelled my academic identity in both entrepreneurial and emancipatory directions: I realised the importance of not conforming to the current conditions and hence losing my integrity, but rather transforming the conditions to my own gain. This insight was later to lead me to the scholarship of integration.

The scholarship of integration: Guarding scholarly integrity In proposing the scholarship of integration, we underscore the need for scholars who give meaning to isolated facts, putting them in perspective. By integration, we mean making connections across the disciplines, placing the specialities in larger context, illuminating data in a revealing way, often

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educating nonspecialists too . . . what we mean is serious, disciplined work that seeks to interpret, draw together, and bring insight to bear on original research. Boyer, 1990: 18–19

After my post-doc position, I took one of the most revolutionary turns a scholar can take. I left my own disciplinary environment behind and moved into another, the Department of Psychology. The contours of the content and arena for my research were already established in this environment with its long tradition of creativity research, on the one hand, and a professor with experience of conducting research within the field of research supervision, on the other hand. Hence, combined with my basis in educational philosophy, this new disciplinary environment allowed me both intellectual resources and free space to cultivate the object of my research through the scholarship of integration. Evidently, choosing the right place in academia is essential for the individual scholar’s integrity. But what does ‘the right place’ really mean? It is possible to identify particular places as attracting creative scholars, indicating that some environments should be more gainful than others. For instance, most Nobel Prize winners come from Cambridge University. Yet Törnqvist (2009) illuminates that attributing creative power to the geographical place itself is inaccurate as the past of these winners and other prominent scientists tells another story. They all have geographical mobility in common, moving from one place to another. Törnqvist also refers to European history, proving that creative places have their time of prosperity during limited periods when the economic and political conditions are favourable. Apparently, creative processes and creative persons cannot be tied to single places, especially not in our contemporary era of rapid social changes. Still, giant multidisciplinary research centres (MAX IV and ESS) are presently being built up at Lund University with the intention of creating a profitable place for the best researchers in the world to share their research, primarily within the natural sciences, technology and medicine. Most likely this empire-building will indeed yield effects of many creative processes – as long as the turnover of the staff is high and the stakeholders keep their interest in these areas. This is because the scholarship of integration does not admit being captured in stationary places unless these places are continuously renewed with new people who are interested in carrying the ongoing research further in new, profitable directions. With references to my own story and the above-mentioned conditions, contemporary academics are obviously doomed to be global and rootless at the same time.

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From the current development, a chain of scholarly identity transformations can be outlined: The scholarship of discovery has been transformed into the scholarship of integration, which in turn is embodied in the scholarship of academic entrepreneurship. Adding the scholarship of application to this chain of transformations, the conditioned feature of academic entrepreneurship with its general loss of a firm scholarly provenance is even more palpable. In the current entrepreneurial context of fluent affiliations, scholarly integrity therefore becomes more important than ever for keeping together the fragmented identity of academics. However, the recent trend in Sweden tests our future academics in this regard as the complex and integrative scholarship of academic entrepreneurship has recently been formally implemented in post-graduate education as well. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, an increasing range of interdisciplinary research schools have been established in Sweden with external funding. For instance, in 2007 the Swedish Research Council announced that among the first 64 applications from 16 universities, many were the ‘type of applications the Council wanted, that is broad, national cooperation across disciplinary boundaries’ (Swedish Research Council, press release, 25 May 2007). In accordance with the government mandate of reinforcing Swedish research education, 19 of the proposed research schools were funded with affiliations at 9 large host universities (Swedish Research Council, press release, 27 November 2007). Remembering that the bulk of knowledge on doctoral education and the phenomenon of interdisciplinary higher education are still in their initial phases of development, these political investments are hazardous indeed. In relation to undergraduate studies, Davies and Devlin (2010) call attention to the fact that interdisciplinary higher education involves serious pedagogical and epistemological considerations connected to the anticipated learning outcomes, holding that: ‘One of the great ironies of moving towards interdisciplinary higher education is the potential sacrifices that have to be made: “depth” in core discipline areas run[s] the risk of being compromised in the pursuit of “breadth” achieved through interdisciplinarity’ (21). With regard to doctoral education this concern is urgent. Interdisciplinary doctoral students need to develop skills that enable communication and application between multiple disciplines. At the same time, they need to develop their own disciplinary identity, as ‘the more complex an interdisciplinary problem, the more depth of knowledge a scholar is required to possess in order to actively engage in problem solving’ (Holley, 2010: 103). Against this

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background Holley argues that ‘fostering interdisciplinary socialization requires deliberate attention to the processes of learning, research, and service inherent to the graduate model’ (111). However, the academic scaffold is not yet suited for the scholarship of integration, which makes the circumstances more intricate. In their study, Boden, Borrego and Newswander (2011) found that the organisational culture, structure and policies appeared to work against interdisciplinarity in doctoral education. Thus interdisciplinary doctoral students seem to be the most vulnerable researchers of our time with little support for fulfilling their scholarly potential, due to academic bureaucracy. Moreover, they also seem to be the most exposed scholars of the future as they are moulded into experts within political fields of research rather than disciplinary knowledge areas. When the political winds shift, these scholars might have difficulties finding their ‘right place’ in academia – or they might not – as they have been trained in the scholarship of academic entrepreneurship already from the start. Only time will tell how their story proceeds.

The scholarship of teaching: Alienation from scholarly knowledge development As a scholarly enterprise, teaching begins with what the teacher knows. Those who teach must, above all, be well informed, and steeped in the knowledge of their fields. Teaching can be well regarded only as professors are widely read and intellectually engaged. One reason legislators, trustees, and the general public often fail to understand why ten or twelve hours in the classroom each week can be a heavy load is their lack of awareness of the hard work and the serious study that undergirds good teaching. Boyer, 1990: 23

Even though I am a lecturer at a highly ranked research university I occasionally have a strange feeling that I have landed in a teaching factory after all. Almost certainly many of my colleagues feel the same as a recent quality review of research at Lund University pointed to the excessive teaching load in most areas to the detriment of a research career (RQ08 Research Quality Assurance for the Future: 34–5). Thus, holding a post with conditional tenure in the Swedish academia basically implies you are a teacher, unless you belong to the exclusive circle of externally granted academics.

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This might explain why the scholarship of teaching has recently gained a prominent position throughout the university in parallel with the international university ranking where educational quality is one important indicator. Today, courses in teacher training and research supervision are mandatory. Each year university teaching awards are allotted for outstanding educational work at Lund University, and many faculties have established pedagogical academies where an appointment as ‘Excellent Teaching Practitioner’ can be applied for, the possession of which raises your salary at some places. Seen from an educational perspective this is great news. From a scholarly point of view, however, there is a fly in the ointment as the concept of scholarly teaching has been transformed in instrumental ways towards serving commercial interests. The misconception of the scholarship of teaching is palpable as, for instance, in the large-scale Educational Quality assurance project (EQ11), which was ongoing at Lund University in 2009–14. Indicators of scholarly teaching are in this project related to ‘assessment of teaching qualifications’ and ‘links to research in education, including education research/development’. However, the links to research are not related to teachers’ specific competence but rather to the students’ own learning and the need for establishing new subjects within education (EQ11 Final report, 2011: 6). With such an instrumental view of teachers, it is not surprising that the so-called scholarly enterprise of the EQ11 project is defined in one single line: ‘Scholarship of teaching and learning primarily refers to the education structure as a whole’ (9). The steering group has certainly lived up to their explicit goal of keeping the strategic plan of the project ‘simple’. Yet in my view, scholarship is never simple but a very complex phenomenon. Neither can the scholarship of teaching be separated from teachers who are ‘steeped in the knowledge of their fields’ (Boyer, 1990: 23). Against this background it is essential to consider the importance of discovery. When lecturers stop researching their fields of knowledge, and sometimes even stop teaching within their own expert fields of discovery (i.e. when their expert field is not considered to be student-attractive), the content of teaching is insidiously alienated from its scholarly enterprise. One must bear in mind that scholarship is ultimately founded on the scholar’s truthfulness, respect, authenticity and magnanimity as claimed by Nixon (2008). Such virtuous dispositions cannot be exclusively grounded in enhanced teaching skills through in-service courses, pedagogical awards and teaching experience, but they must also be interwoven in the dynamic knowledge development of scholars’ expertise. Since expertise is nurtured and manifested in concrete

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practice (Benner, 1984; Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 1986), the general absence of teaching researchers is disheartening. When scholars’ practice is tied to teaching rather than research, it is difficult for scholars to maintain expertise within their knowledge field since they are no longer profoundly practicing and hence developing their expert field through research. Instead scholars become experts in mere teaching, which is not enough for scholarship. Remembering the hard fate of the department of education at Lund University, this concern is serious indeed. Accordingly, the prime question these days is not what kind of knowledge a scholar can offer, but what kind of knowledge the students and society want. For instance, several courses in minor languages have already been closed down, and even more are under threat, at Swedish universities since these courses are not considered lucrative due to their small-size classes combined with the demand for extensive teaching resources (Eliasson, 2012). It appears that the full width of Freire’s ([1970]2005) philosophy of the oppressed is embodied in this single case since it is not the State that decides which courses should be arranged at Swedish universities, but the universities themselves. Through pursuing an economic and political discourse in the scholarship of teaching, academic leaders transform themselves into sub-oppressors of the poor in academia. Consequently, even teachers are forced into the role of academic entrepreneurship yet without support from a true entrepreneurial culture. Nowhere in the comprehensive work of Lundström and Stevenson (2006) is entrepreneurship literally equalled with ruling out small companies, but the entrepreneurial landscape is recognised for its manifold businesses, independent of size. Thus, eventual bankruptcy is caused by factors other than entrepreneurship per se. The support of an entrepreneurial culture in academia requires a democratic approach imbued with solidarity and respect for the minor – and therefore critically important – voices. As regards my own academic identity formation, these circumstances have had a dividing effect in combination with my interdisciplinary position. In my heart I will always be a researcher, although at present I teach most of the time. Unfortunately, my disciplinary knowledge domain and field of discovery is not exactly cut out for teaching students in psychology. However, fortunately, there is an educational need for my theoretical and methodological competence. So this is what I do almost full time: I teach in scholarly skills rather than in my scholarly knowledge domain and I also supervise Master theses within subjects far from my areas of expertise. The scholarship of teaching in my current disciplinary environment therefore implies alienation from my own scholarly

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knowledge development. Paradoxically, the same environment involves a closer association to my scholarship of discovery in spite of the disciplinary differences between me and my colleagues. No matter which discipline I choose, I cannot make the two scholarships of teaching and discovery intertwine, unless I use my evolved skills in academic entrepreneurship and transform scholarly conditions. Again.

Conclusion Introducing the notion of ‘academic entrepreneurship’ into Boyer’s (1990) scheme of scholarships is not uncontroversial as several scholars have raised their critical voices against the growing hegemony of a managerial discourse in academia during the last years. Notwithstanding, it is crucial to encounter and embrace the concept of academic entrepreneurship since it is has become an important part of contemporary scholarly identity. Throughout this chapter the reader has been invited to follow the impetus of my own academic identity formation within the Swedish scholarly context. As the story developed it appeared that academic entrepreneurship is necessary in all kinds of scholarship as defined by Boyer (1990). But it was also revealed that the academic conditions counteract individuals’ scholarly enterprise due to a lack of entrepreneurial culture and a current loss of the scholarly reason for academic development at a meso-level. Scholarly knowledge development must be grounded within academic values or else the ‘moral coherence of truthfulness, respect, and authenticity’ of scholars is lost. Unfortunately, this is not the case in contemporary practice, since the reason for academic knowledge development is increasingly conditioned by political powers on all scholarly arenas. This political progress forces individual scholars into an instrumental state of academic entrepreneurship where they are deprived of their scholarly integrity, since the pleasing of stakeholders tends to be more important than scholarly knowledge development independent of the political agenda. Do I say then that investing in politically strategic areas is the wrong path? No, I do not – as long as other paths are available in all arenas of scholarship, since creative pioneers are seldom found in the mainstream. The emerging problem of losing the scholarly reason for academic development is not due to the phenomenon of academic entrepreneurship per se, but to our having lost sight of the meaning of scholarship in our endeavour to encounter

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political pressures for entrepreneurship in a commercial and monopolistic sense. In this process, Boyer’s framework of scholarship has been put to improper use due to a severe misunderstanding of the scholarly conception. For instance, anyone who applies for a position at Lund University must account for his or her qualifications in different domains of scholarship separately; similar recruiting processes are also to be found at many other Swedish universities. This means that the whole point of scholarship is missing. The scholarly core of Boyer’s framework is not found in the mere activities or organisational structure of discovery, application, integration and teaching. These entities are just arenas for possible scholarship. Instead, the scholarly core converges in the object of scholarly knowledge development, keeping the academic organisation and the scholarly activities together as is aptly depicted by Boyer. Nevertheless, in my own case it turned out that I have difficulties with integrating the scholarship of discovery and the scholarship of teaching even though I have such aspirations. Consequently, my scholarly integrity is rather fragmented, which leads to the thought that true scholarly entrepreneurship might be found in the art of intertwining the domains of scholarship. Imagine a university where the courses are founded in the scholars’ research beyond politically strategic areas, and also where the scholars’ research is developed through teaching, application and integration. This would indeed keep scholarly integrity intact, but in practice we are not really there yet due to the gap between research and teaching. Thus it is time to change scholarly conditions, suiting politics to academia rather than the reverse and hence redeeming scholarship. According to my experiences from the scholarship of application at the folk high school, I know that not only is this possible but it is also an opportunity.

Acknowledgement This piece is written in memory of Professor Alison Lee who was a true pioneer and academic entrepreneur within the field of doctoral education.

References Benner, P. (1984), From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.

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Boden, D., Borrego, M. and Newswander, L. K. (2011), ‘Student Socialization in Interdisciplinary Doctoral Education’, Higher Education, 62(6): 741–55. Bogle, D., Dron, M., Eggermon, J. and van Henten, J. W. (2011), ‘Doctoral Degrees Beyond 2010: Training Talented Researchers for Society’, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, (13): 35–49. Bourdieu, P. (1988), Homo Academicus. Cambridge: Polity Press. Boyer, E. L. (1990), Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Braxton, J. M. (2006), ‘“Editor’s Note”, Special Issue: Analyzing Faculty Work and Rewards: Using Boyer’s Four Domains of Scholarship’, New Directions for Institutional Research, (129): 1–5. Brodin, E. M. and Frick, B. L. (2011), ‘Conceptualizing and Encouraging Critical Creativity in Doctoral Education’, International Journal for Researcher Development, 2(2): 133–51. Clegg, S. (2008), ‘Academic Identities under Threat?’, British Educational Research Journal, 34(3): 329–45. Davies, M. and Devlin, M. (2010), ‘Interdisciplinary Higher Education’, in M. Davies, M. Devlin and M. Tight (eds), Volume 5: Interdisciplinary Higher Education: Perspectives and Practicalities: Special Issue in International Perspectives on Higher Education, Bingley, UK: Emerald, pp. 3–28. Dreyfus, H. and Dreyfus, S. (1986), Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the era of the Computer. New York: Free Press. Eliasson, P. O. (2012), ‘Utbildningar i en del språk är nedlagda och andra ska utredas’ [Educations in some languages are closed down and others will be investigated], Universitetsläraren, (19): 8–9. EQ11 Final report (2011), Reg. no LS 2010/258, EQ11 – University-Wide Development of Education at Lund University, http://www5.lu.se/upload/EQ11/ EQ11FinalProjectReport30Sept2011.pdf [accessed 6 February 2014]. Freire, P. (1970/2005), Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Holley, K. (2010), ‘Doctoral Student Socialization in Interdisciplinary Fields’, in S. K. Gardner and P. Mendoza (eds), On Becoming a Scholar: Socialization and Development in Doctoral Education. Sterling, VA: Stylus, pp. 97–112. Holmström, O. and Nilsson Lindström, M. (2008), Efter doktorsexamen – en alumnstudie [After doctoral graduation – an alumnus study]. Lund: Utvärderingsenheten. Lee, A. and Boud, D. (2009), ‘Framing Doctoral Education as a Practice’, in A. Lee and D. Boud (eds), Changing Practices of Doctoral Education. London: Routledge, pp. 10–25. League of European Research Universities [LERU] (2011), ‘The European Research Area: Priorities for Research Universities’, Advice Paper, no. 9, December 2011. Lorenz, C. (2010), ‘Higher Education Policies in the European Union, the “Knowledge Economy” and Neo-Liberalism’, EspacesTemps.net, Travaux, 12 July 2010, http://

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www.espacestemps.net/articles/higher-education-policies-in-the-european-unionthe-lsquoknowledge-economyrsquo-and-neo-liberalism/ [accessed 6 February 2014]. Lundström, A. and Stevenson, L. A. (2006), Entrepreneurship Policy: Theory and Practice. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Nietzsche, F. (1888/2004), Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. London: Penguin Books. Nixon, J. (2008), Towards the Virtuous University: The Moral Bases of Academic Practice. London and New York: Routledge. Pilbeam, C. and Denyer, D. (2009), ‘Lone Scholar or Community Member? The Role of Student Networks in Doctoral Education in a UK Management School’, Studies in Higher Education, 34(3): 301–18. RQ08 Research Quality Assurance for the Future: A Quality Review of Research at Lund University 2007/2008, http://www4.lu.se/upload/LUPDF/Forskning/RQ08_ helarapporten.pdf [accessed 6 February 2014]. SOU (2005), Stödet till utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning: Betänkande av Utredningen om utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning [The support to research in educational sciences: Report by the Commission of inquiry for research in educational sciences], Stockholm: Fritzes Offentliga Publikationer. Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (2012), Swedish Universities & University Colleges: Short Version of Annual Report 2012, Rapport 2012:18, http://www.uk-ambetet.se/sokresultat.4.782a298813a88dd0dad800016697.html? query=Swedish+National+Agency+for+Higher+Education+%282012%3A18+R%29 [accessed 6 February 2014]. Swedish Research Council, press release, 25 May 2007, ‘Många vill starta forskarskola’ [Many want to start research school], www.vr.se [accessed 11 December 2012]. — 27 November 2007, ‘19 forskarskolor ska stärka forskarutbildningen’ [19 research schools will strengthen postgraduate education], www.vr.se [accessed 11 December 2012]. Törnqvist, G. (2009), Kreativitet i tid och rum: processer, personer och platser [Creativity in time and space: processes, persons and places]. Stockholm: SNS Förlag. Vislie, L. (1998), ‘Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige: HSFR granskar de nio “stora” pedagogikinstitutionerna’ [Pedagogical research in Sweden: HSFR scrutinizes the nine “large” educational departments], Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 3(1): 1–35. Årsredovisning Linnéuniversitetet (2010) [Annual report Linnaeus University 2010], Dnr: 2010/2958. Kalmar Växjö: Linnéuniversitetet. — (2011) [Annual report Linnaeus University 2011], Dnr: 2011/547. Kalmar Växjö: Linnéuniversitetet.

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Predicaments of Fusion and Transformation: A Journey from Georgia Liana Beattie

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Aristotle The heat haze rose in mirage eddies from the red pan-tiled roofs of Antalya . . . In cerulean-blue cloudless skies swallows peeled and manoeuvred in their aerobatic precision, catching insects rising on the thermals. I was meandering through a Turkish market – my senses flooded with vibrant colours, smells, sights and sounds – when an old lady, sitting between the stalls with a cooking pot, offered me a bowl of some sweet-smelling bubbling broth. I courteously declined, and she immediately asked who I was and where I was from. It was then that an instant turmoil presented itself in my mind: do I tell the old lady where I live now, or do I tell her where I was born? Do I tell her that I speak English, though Georgian is my native language? Do I tell her that I was a teacher in Georgia, but now I am a student at Liverpool University in the United Kingdom? What exactly is she expecting to hear, and how do I describe to her my identity? And, from my answer, what kind of perception of me as a person will she form? My hesitation and uncertainty about my identity mirror its conceptualisation in the literature. From its emergence within the social sciences in the 1950s – pioneered by analysts such as Erikson ([1950]1993) – much focus has been directed at its meaning and its formation. Hall (1994) draws attention to major shifts in definitions of identity, from early perspectives on it as something that is ‘static’ and fixed, to a postmodern perception of identity as a process of continuous construction and re-construction of ‘self ’. Consistent with Hall’s

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conceptualisation, I perceive my identity as something that is fluid and dynamic – not sculpted in one moment of time or as a result of one specific event, but transforming regularly, and often randomly, in a sporadic way and in contradiction to or complete negation of prior interpersonal and intrapersonal values.

Origins and beginnings I was born in the 1960s in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. To understand fully all the influences on the development of my identity, it will be helpful to take a short excursion into the history and origin of the Georgian nation, which goes as far back as Ancient Greece, when western Georgia was known as Kolchis, and is believed to be connected to the legend of Jason and the Argonauts. Known from 1990 as the Republic of Georgia, this former republic of the Soviet Union shares borders with Russia in the north and Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the south country to the east of the Black Sea in the south Caucasus. Mostly orthodox Christians, Georgians constitute approximately 70 per cent of the country’s population, with Armenians, Azeris and Russians constituting major minority groups. Georgian, the country’s official language, is spoken by about 4 million of the total population and by about 3 million abroad. It is the most widely spoken language of the Caucasus, and the only one with a long-standing literary tradition (Tabidze, 1999). It is also one of the most ancient languages in the world; the earliest known Georgian inscriptions date back to the fifth century A.D. (Dzidziguri, cited in Tabidze, 1999), and the magnificent fifth-century literary work ‘The Martyrdom of Shushanik’ is included in secondary school curricula, allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to access and understand it. Being an only child, I received a vast amount of parental attention and career advice, which – reflecting my own aspiration – was exclusively focused on pursuing a teaching qualification. After graduating with a first-class bachelor’s degree in teaching English as a foreign language (TESOL) at the end of a fiveyear teacher training course at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Tbilisi, I took a post as a TESOL teacher at a primary school in the most prestigious part of Tbilisi. I was fascinated by the challenges and peculiarities of working with urban children – most of whom came from extremely wealthy native Georgian families with a very strong sense of national identity and great pride in their native language and cultural traditions. This experience allowed me to observe first-hand the correlation between language – ‘the most unique human capacity

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that involves and governs broad areas of our personal and social life, which enables us to conceptualise abstract phenomenon and communicate through and about them’ (Grant, cited in Tomiak, 1983: 57) – and identity. It was interesting for me, as a teacher, to note how my pupils avoided speaking Russian, communicating with their peers solely in Georgian – although Russian remained the language of instruction in all schools across the USSR. My experience of teaching in Soviet schools provoked in me an interest in the politics of education and the complexities of identity formation. Languages have been often promoted as ‘a crucial ingredient of national identity (and hence a central ingredient in national mobilization and nation-building)’ (Bgazhnokov, 2000: 12), and I was beginning to see the role of language in identity making as one of the main factors that was also closely interlinked with historical, social and economic factors.

Politics and language It was then that I experienced my first ‘identity crisis’ that shifted my perspective as a teacher, a researcher and a citizen of the USSR through the mediated reflection provided by my teaching practice. In my search for a rationale for my teaching philosophy – why do I need to use Russian as a language of instruction when my pupils clearly prefer to communicate in their native language? – I began to search for analytic tools to unpack the mechanisms behind the state politics outside the classroom that were affecting my work inside it. Language education policy in Georgia, I found, tended to reflect the stages of national formation, the development of national identity feelings, the level of democratic maturity of a certain nation, as well as peripheral factors impacting on the formation of these policies. Language policies and political forces seemed so closely interwoven that language education policies often could be perceived as a reflection of its social and political trends. It became obvious to me that the formation of my identity as a teacher in the 1980s was affected by wider identity-building processes that were constructed alongside Georgia’s historical development starting as early as the nineteenth century when the country was part of Imperial Russia: ‘The final objective of education to be provided to the non-natives living in the far reaches of the empire is undoubtedly their Russification and their fusion with the Russian people’ (Tolstoi, cited in Smith, 1988). This comment on the part of the Minister for State Education makes crystal clear the basis of Imperial Russia’s educational policies towards national

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minorities. Remarkably, the situation I encountered in my classroom in the 1980s was a result – and just a single example – of a continuing aggressive state policy of a so-called linguistic Russification pursued through the educational system from the late nineteenth century. Russian was introduced as the language of instruction at all levels in 1872. Russification intensified after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, when Russian became a compulsory language. After the 1918 revolution backlash to the former regime’s injustices prompted a positive commitment to national education on the part of the new Soviet government, regardless of the practical economic and cultural benefits of universal knowledge of Russian. Consequently, the early years of the communist era were characterised by active promotion of the Soviet Union’s minority languages. With Stalin’s rise to power in 1924, however, Russian culture and language began to eclipse the national languages, as Stalin pursued a policy of ‘sbleegenie’ – the forging of a unificatory Russian nationality. Hence Russification signified a new era in language education that, persisting until 1991, was to have a profound impact on my national identity. The Encyclopedia of Georgia defines Russification as the ‘aggregate of political measures and processes that stimulate non-Russians to adapt the Russian language and culture as their own, expanding in this way the political domination of Russia’ (my translation). Formulated in 1991, when Georgia was still a part of the USSR, this definition undoubtedly reflects the politically influenced discourse of the day and a prevalent self-identification amongst Georgians as ‘non-Russian’. In the later Soviet era Russian became a compulsory subject in all schools, and in the Republics’ schools – where both a national language and Russian were used – science and technical courses were mainly taught in Russian, while some higher education courses were available only in that language. My secondary school certificates of achievement and my higher education diploma indicate a curricular imbalance that clearly prioritised Russian – which was referred to as the ‘native’ language – and Georgian, which was completely excluded from the higher education curriculum. This was a period when I struggled to identify myself with Georgians or with Russians, feeling rejected by both – yet, like the great majority of Georgians, I considered Georgian my first language.

A teacher in Georgia Such was the political and linguistic situation in Georgia when I began teaching. Focused mainly on developing my teaching and delivering the curriculum as it

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was prescribed by the Soviet Ministry of Education, I initially did not question these policies. Countless official pronouncements emphasised that the Russian language has been voluntarily (my emphasis) adopted by the Soviet people as the language of international communication; that it had promoted the ‘social, political, and ideological unity’ of Soviet nationalities, enriched the cultures of all other nationalities in the Soviet Union, and given ‘each Soviet people access to the treasure of world civilization’ (Brezhnev, 1983). Then – in this period of my first ‘identity crisis’ – reflecting on the ‘linguistic atmosphere’ in my classroom and on my pupils’ preferences for using Georgian as a language of instruction, I tried to rationalise my teaching philosophy of ‘a Soviet teacher teaching Soviet children at a Soviet school’. Meanwhile, the political and linguistic landscape continued to change. Soviet language policy that promoted the Russian language as the lingua franca for all union and inter-republican communications incited a burst of nationalism in the late 1980s, proving that the formation of a one-language entity was a fiction. In Georgia the Russifying language policy of the late-Soviet period was labelled ‘language genocide’ (Kobaidze, 1999: 161). Increasing resistance to the perceived Russification of schools in Soviet Georgia signified both a high level of nationalism as well as adherence to ethnic tradition. According to Isayev (1990), the Russification of national language education in the USSR created ethno-linguistic tensions by denigrating the peripheral nationalities to ‘folkloric’ or ‘ethnographic’ nations rather than deep-rooted societies. As a Georgian, I mourned the loss of my language – and my Georgian identity. I resented the state’s manipulation of my professional status as a teacher to fit its political agenda. In the early 1990s the Soviet government explored strategies for reducing the growing opposition to Russification; its language policies had always tried to maintain a delicate balance between centrism and pluralism, although the underlying Marxist concept of sliyaniye (the conflation of all languages and cultures into one) remained the overall guiding principle. The Communist Part of the Soviet Union (CPSU) adopted a policy of dva potoka ‘two streams’ (Allardyce, 1987: 8), which involved the promotion of a tiered bilingualism to deter inter-ethnic conflicts and ensure a balanced linguistic education: the national schools met local, cultural linguistic-related needs, whilst Russian was used in official Soviet state business and in relation to industry and technology. The Soviet objective was ‘the attainment of complete bilingualism in the Soviet Union, thereby elevating Russian to the status of the “second native language” of the non-Russian nations’ (Solchanyk, 1982: 114). Bilingualism in Georgia

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was also promoted through ‘integrated’ schools, where Russian and Georgian children attended separate classes; each taught in their mother-tongue, they mingled in extra-curricular activities, which fostered a community spirit whilst improving children’s non-native language skills. Bilingualism did not, however, prevent the growth of Georgian nationalism and general dissatisfaction with the pressure of Soviet language policies. During that period I worked as a TESOL teacher in an integrated school, where my Georgian pupils and their parents continued to object to the dominance and official status of Russian. Despite the state’s best efforts to promote a new identity – ‘a Soviet identity’ – I recollect developing a kind of dual identity, as did my pupils. My self-reflection led to my realisation that, whilst official bilingualism may be perceived as promoting the rights of national and ethnic minorities, it clearly cannot serve as a universally valid and adequate foundation for inter-ethnic agreement and harmony; the rhetoric of official bilingualism does not necessarily correlate with reality. This was the time of my second ‘identity crisis’. I felt the need to de-construct my ‘official’ identity as a ‘Soviet teacher teaching Soviet children at a Soviet school’, and to re-examine my reality: my real aspirations and principles, as an educator within a society whose members were resisting shifting their ethnic identity from ‘Georgian’ to ‘Soviet’. It became obvious to me that while the Georgian and Russian languages were officially equal, the bilingualism was unbalanced: my Georgian pupils had to learn Russian, whereas immigrant Russians did not have to learn Georgian. That was one of the key factors undermining my effectiveness in the classroom, since my pupils were extremely negative towards the curriculum’s Russian delivery. The pieces of my teacher-identity ‘puzzle’ were beginning to fall into place: children, I decided – as (Schulter, 2003) concludes – can effectively develop their overall language skills only if at least part of their education is provided in their native language. This is why the measures the Soviet government sought to exert on education in constituent republics always recognised the importance of instructional language in identity building. It is why it has been crucial for post-Soviet ethnic revival in the Republic of Georgia to ‘de-russify’ schools and make Georgian the main language of education: For many centuries literary Georgian has been the language of state administration, law, religion, science, education, art and inter-ethnic communication in Georgia. It retained these functions in the period of the political disunity of Georgia, because – in spite of the separation – in all parts of Georgia Georgian was the language of political administration, religion and culture. But where the position of the Georgian language was weakened, the Georgian sense of identity began to decline. (Jorbenadze, 1991: 7)

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Since the declaration of Georgian independence in 1991 the Georgian government attempted to give the country more prominence, making study of the Georgian language compulsory in schools. Whilst I could discern my Georgian identity slowly overshadowing my other identities, I could clearly see that even in early post-Soviet Georgia there remained an asymmetry between the use and usefulness of Georgian and Russian: Georgian language usage was considered ‘limited and particularised’, while Russian was the ‘normal’, ‘unmarked’ language that could be used in all functional domains (Faller, 2003). This represents part of the Soviet hegemonic policy, which was initially enforced in all areas of institutional practice, including education. Amongst the first attempts of the Georgian democratic forces to regain ground in the new political and social order were efforts at reforming the education system and eradicating the remnants of Soviet policies. Their ultimate aim was to foster a truly Georgian culture and sense of national identity. An influential post-independence strategy for education, published by the Ministry of Education, claimed that the Soviet reforms had led to the suppression of natural talents, capabilities and the interests of all participants in the educational process. When the strategy was published in December 1992, Georgian state schools had already begun the strenuous task of converting to a post-Soviet Georgian-language curriculum by introducing Georgian as the official language of state education and by encouraging new interpretations of the Georgian historical experience. This resulted in job redundancies for most Soviet-trained teachers and headteachers – many of whom had only a rudimentary knowledge of Georgian. Initially, there was little overt protest over the change to a Georgian-language curriculum; certainly, some teachers were left with the daunting task of having to translate all their teaching materials from Russian into Georgian, but this depended on the region, for, as Shaw (2001: 132) notes, ‘most teachers and administrators, in the grand Soviet tradition of “two personalities”, simply accepted the policy in word and passively resisted it in deed’. I was one of those teachers. Lack of availability of textbooks in Georgian delayed the introduction of new and revised courses, so state schools charged with creating a new world view had to do with ‘former Soviet’ staff using outdated Russian textbooks cluttered with references to the Soviet Union and Lenin, against the backdrop of a thriving black market of new Georgian-language textbooks. My post-Soviet teaching experience leads me to observe that the economic and structural aspects of Soviet education were easier to reform than values-informed practices. Government leaders’ grandiose plans to reform the educational

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system seemed at times to bear little resemblance to the multitude of obstacles that faced those charged with the ‘Georgianisation’ of state education: In today’s state schools today children are still obliged to work up to the level of the class standard in all subjects, underlining the importance of the collective over individual achievement and abilities. Public humiliation, rather than positive reinforcement, is considered the prime motivator and means of disciplining lazy or weak students who do not meet the class standard. (Mepharishvili, 2006: 15)

From Georgia to the United Kingdom It is interesting to note that the Georgian Ministry of Education’s introduction of a number of teaching-related innovations generated broad dissatisfaction only because it reflected Western teaching methods. It was the cultural facet of my identity that was challenged at this time. Specifically, the traditional Georgian respect – and even reverence – for books underpinned very negative attitudes towards the novelty of a combined textbook and exercise book, which was widely disliked; the idea of writing in books instead of reading them was perceived as reflecting a much more casual, disrespectful, Western attitude towards books and literary culture. (As an aside, it is worth mentioning that Georgians find it shocking to see how Western students casually deface books with multi-coloured markers – though, ironically, Lenin is notoriously renowned for his disrespectful annotations in library books!) My identity as a teacher was shaken, too, by the introduction of a specific teaching method: the use of play and picture books prior to children learning the alphabet. Georgian nationalists reacted with apparent hostility to this reform, which they saw as an attempt to delay and hinder the child’s learning of the national alphabet. Some parents went as far as to bribe teachers to teach their children Georgian illegitimately (my emphasis) by using the traditional method of introducing the alphabet from the first day of school. In 2003, following accusations of election fraud, the then president of Georgia, Edward Shevardnadze, had to resign and, in what has become known as the ‘Rose Revolution’ – the new president, Mikhail Saakashvili, took office. The cabinet made a public promise that the new political order would be aimed at the development of a democratic state, free from corruption and ethnic discrimination. In order to do so, the new government needed a new legal framework, which would enable political leaders to function effectively.

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In view of these demands, the Ministry of Education declared as its main objective the reform of the education system, with a focus on de-centralisation, where educational organisations would gain financial autonomy and be directly responsible for their educational outcomes. The reforms included changes to the language of instruction, the use of minority languages in schools and the teaching of Georgian history. As Korth et al. (2005) observe, the government tried to endorse a liberal approach in its attempt to propose, rather than impose, the reforms. In the absence of alternatives, however, it was anticipated that the standardised implementation of the reforms would be achieved. Unfortunately, I had no opportunity to witness further changes in the development of the Georgian educational system from 2001, for this year marks my emigration to the United Kingdom, where I enrolled in a teacher training course at the University of Liverpool. It was an immense undertaking for me – a teacher with established professional ideologies shaped for 20 years by indoctrination within the totalitarian Soviet regime, where teaching methods and resources were designed to suppress and undermine democratic ideas – to transplant myself within a system that affirms diversity and encourages dialogue between all participants of the educational process. Another ‘identity crisis’ was about to unfold: it hinged around uncertainty about my role as a teacher in a UK school, and the kinds of teaching methods I should use to pass on knowledge to my pupils. My earlier ‘Soviet’ teaching philosophy had been based on three main pillars: structured delivery of the curriculum dictated by the needs of the State, respect for the teacher and firm discipline. The underlying principle of the highly centralised Soviet approach to education was embedded in the psychology of behaviourism, where the process of learning is seen as a system of behavioural responses to physical stimuli driven by reinforcement. Within this teachercentred behaviourist approach, pupils were seen as relatively passive recipients of knowledge, and, as suggested by Skinner (1953), their behaviour needs to be moulded by external reinforcement controlled by teachers. In line with this approach, I had perceived my goal as a teacher to be the de-construction of subject matter into smaller units to facilitate knowledge transfer to my pupils in a clearly structured linear way that would allow them to progress from ‘not knowing’ to ‘knowing’. Hence, rather than a facilitator of the learning process, I considered myself an influential authority in charge of the learning process and knowledge provision. The ultimate aim of that learning process was learners’ memorisation of knowledge for further reproduction rather than their creative knowledge use. Popper (1986) calls this ‘the bucket theory of knowledge’.

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Unfortunately, alternative ways of conceptualising education were non-existent during the Soviet era. My ‘transformation’ from authoritarian teacher to a teacherfacilitator was also hindered by the impact on my teaching identity of Marxist and Leninist philosophies – considered by the Soviet state to underpin ultimate truth. As a result of this, I led my pupils to believe that there were categorically right and wrong answers to, or explanations for, anything – including social and historical events. I considered myself the main source of knowledge, and my pupils were expected to follow my instructions and learn material in the form in which I presented it. The seismic shift that directed me towards a learner-centred approach had a powerful impact on my teacher identity. I had to review fundamentally my philosophy of education. First as a student-teacher, and then as a primary school teacher, I started using learner-friendly teaching strategies and prioritised interaction and creative thinking over particular skills and behaviours, moving away from a ‘cookbook teaching style’ (Twomey, 1996). The revelation that pupils can be efficient in making their own decisions – and that a natural interaction between teacher and pupils promotes children’s cognitive processes – has changed my identity as a teacher forever.

A ‘double perspective’ Yet the shift in my teacher identity was not straightforward. The recursive relationship between my Soviet identity of authoritative teacher and a Westernised identity as a teacher-facilitator was one that I continually struggled with. As both a classroom teacher and a UK immigrant, I often felt pulled by the conflicting principles of these two identities, in addition to continuously recurring adjustments of national and cultural perceptions of myself. As I have shown in this chapter, multiplicity of identities has always been a feature of my professional life. Turkle (1995: 80) notes that ‘now, in postmodern times, multiple identities are no longer so much at the margin of things. Many more people experience identity as a set of roles that can be mixed and matched, whose diverse demands need to be negotiated.’ Similarly, Said (1994: 44) argues: [T]he exile sees things both in terms of what has been left behind and what is actually here and now, there is a double perspective that never sees things in

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isolation. Every scene or situation in the new country necessarily draws on its counter-part in the old country. Intellectually this means that an idea or experience is always counter posed with another, therefore making them both appear in a sometimes new and unpredictable light. (My emphasis)

The complexity of articulating my academic identity became even more intricate when I started working as a lecturer at a UK university in 2007. At this time I felt acutely the overall effect of the modern globalised context on the formation of ‘me’, as the national, cultural and academic parts of ‘me’ started to merge and move from ‘multiple identity crises’ to something approximating to a ‘fused’ identity. Moving into the university environment felt like a second birth. I had to learn new language conventions in relation to choice of words and style: a process variously referred to as ‘style shifting’ (Kutz, 1998) and ‘code switching’ (Flowers, 2000; Turner, 2009). I had to learn new hierarchies and familiarise myself with local social networks; I had to adjust to the whole new culture of university environment as well as learn to negotiate neoliberalism as it impacted on my work and my institution. Most importantly, not long after I started working in higher education I began to identify myself through the various university activities, structures, regulations, networks and communities of practice of which I was a part. I was beginning to recognise that, though my identity had been shifting in a ‘messy’ and ‘fluid’ way (Gosine, 2002), I commonly identified myself with the most dominant contexts in my life at given points; changes in my responses to them underpinned the formation of contradictory, or sometimes completely opposite, self-identities. I had never felt forced into such identity shifts or evolutions; I had always been willing to examine and, if necessary, revise aspects of my identity as a result of selfreflection on internal and external changes and influences. One of the key changes that I experienced while working in higher education was a considerably greater emphasis on teaching and learning activities compared to my own experience of being a higher education student in Soviet Georgia. Whilst it probably reflects the specific sector in which I am employed – the United Kingdom’s post-1992 university sector, which, in contrast to the pre-1992 research-intensive sector, is historically teachingfocused – for me, this change reflected my recognition of the centrality of teaching and learning in higher education. Yet the opportunities to engage more fully in the teaching and learning processes also presented challenges to

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my academic identity as a discipline scholar and researcher, and entailed an epistemological move towards educational and even managerial orientations: a widespread phenomenon also conceptualised by a number of analysts (Clarke and Newman, 1997; Deem, 1998; McNay, 1995; Peters et al., 1999). Reflecting on the nature of these changes, I have discovered two signifi cant sources of influence on the formation of my academic identity: my interaction within my chosen subject and my interaction with the university as an institution. This perception followed Clark’s (1983) interpretation of the discipline and the enterprise, or higher education institution, as the main communities in which academic identities are built. Initially I enjoyed the positive dynamic between my academic role and the organisational features of higher education, when I felt my identity was being transformed in response to the – new to me at the time – collective university values, and specifically, as defined by Henkel (2005: 155), the ‘primacy of the discipline in academic working lives and academic autonomy’. However, the meaning of academic autonomy started to shift rapidly as I progressed further in my career as a university lecturer, and soon a realisation came that my professional practice could not be detached from the current societal and political context, nor could it be unrelated to the strategic aims and objectives of higher education. My ‘academic autonomy’ was therefore not as autonomous as I expected it to be. Unfortunately, this shift did not represent an isolated case at a single higher educational institution, but a much wider social and political phenomenon: new public management: The restructuring has involved the reform of education in which there has been a significant shift away from an emphasis on administration and policy to an emphasis on management. This form of managerialism is known as New Public Management (NPM) and has been very influential in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. It has been used both as the legitimating basis and instrumental means for redesigning state educational bureaucracies, educational institutions and even the public policy process. (Fitzsimons, 1999: 1)

Foucault (1991) provides an alternative term: ‘governmentality’, arguing that the perceived internal constraints of ‘governmentalising’ practices are just as capable as principles of legitimation of carrying normative meaning and content. Pressures and challenges created by these changes led to significant change to my academic identity: the development of a ‘fused’ identity of academic and manager. As an academic, I felt that I could no longer function autonomously,

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and that my academic agendas were required to be aligned with my institution’s strategic goals and vision, which reflected what Strathern (1997) refers to as the ‘audit explosion’ in universities. Bonisch-Brednich’s experiences (2010) resonate in many ways with my own; a German academic migrant finding herself within the corporatist performativity regime of a market-oriented university, she describes her culture shock as a deep intrusion into her academic identity: ‘It is an imposition of another learning process in the entrepreneurial system of producing and selling knowledge. Resisting this often means a slow or sudden professional death’ (Bonisch-Brednich, 2010: 179). Archer (2008) rightly points out that these current developments are disrupting notions of professionalism, and create uncertainty amongst academics on what constitutes academic work and what it means to be an academic. Rapidly changing political and institutional contexts have given rise to a modern generation of academics with new ‘fused’ identities, who continue to be challenged in defining their identity and trying to find new ways of establishing and envisaging the ‘self ’.

Conclusion Whilst my long-held confusion over who I am continues to concern me, the issues raised in this chapter have explored the process of identity formation through an autobiographical account that I hope will stimulate discussion. Self-reflection can help colleagues to understand their own academic identities within the current political and economic climate and, in so doing, reclaim the power to determine how academic identity should be defined and perceived in our ever-changing society. The single narrative of a life unfolds over time and in response to the endless unpredictability of circumstance and event: The ‘self ’ fluctuates through a lifetime and even through the day, altered from without by changing relationships and from within by spiritual and even biochemical changes, such as those of adolescence and menopause and old age. Yet the self is the basic thread with which we bind time into a single narrative. We improvise and struggle to respond in unpredictable and unfamiliar contexts, learning new skills and transmuting discomfort and bewilderment into valuable information about difference even, at the same time, becoming someone different. (Bateson, 1994: 66)

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References Allardyce, R. (1987), ‘Planned Bilingualism. The Soviet Case’, Journal of Russian Studies, 52: 3–15. Archer, L. (2008), ‘Younger Academics’ Constructions of “Authenticity”, “Success” and Professional Identity’, Studies in Higher Education, 33(4): 385–403. Bateson, M. C. (1994), Peripheral Visions: Learning along the Way. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Bgazhnokov, B. (2000), ‘The Crisis of National Languages in Russia’, Journal of Russian Studies, 50: 11–16. Bonisch-Brednich, B. (2010), ‘Migrants on Campus: Becoming a Local Foreign Academic’, in B. Bonisch-Brednich and C. Trundle (eds), Local Lives: Migration and the Politics of Place. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 167–81. Brezhnev, L. (1983), Speech at the Meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. Online. Available from http://www.brezh/speeches/rus13.html// [accessed 3 June 2012]. Clark, B. R. (1983), The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross National Perspective. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (1997), The Managerial State: Power, Politics and Ideology in the Remaking of Social Welfare. London: Sage. Deem, R. (1998), ‘“New Managerialism” and Higher Education: The Management of Performances and Cultures in Universities in the United Kingdom’, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 8(1): 47–70. Erikson, E. H. ([1950]1993), Childhood and Society. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Faller, H. (2003), The Fallout of Soviet Nationalities Policies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Fitzsimons, P. (1999), ‘Managerialism and Education’, in P. Peters, B. Ghiraldelli, A. Zarnic and A. Gibbons (eds), Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education. Online. Available from http://www.ffst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/doku.php?id=managerialism_ and_Education. [accessed 16 March 2014]. Flowers, L. (2000), ‘Code Switching and Ebonics in Urban Adult Basic Education Classrooms’, Education and Urban Society, 32(2): 221–36. Foucault, M. (1991), ‘Governmentality’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Great Britain: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 235–91. Gosine, K. (2002), ‘Essentialism versus Complexity: Conceptions of Racial Identity Construction in Educational Scholarship’, Canadian Journal of Education, 27(1): 81–100. Hall, S. (1994), ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew (eds), Modernity and Its Futures. London: Polity Press, pp. 273–325.

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Henkel, M. (2005), Academic Identity and Autonomy in a Changing Policy Environment’, Higher Education, 49(1–2), January: 155–76. Isayev, M. (1990), National Languages in the USSR: Problems and Solutions. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Jorbenadze, B. (1991), The Kartvelian Language and Dialects. Tbilisi: Mecniereba. Kobaidze, M. (1999), ‘Minority Identity and Identity Maintenance in Georgia’, Working Papers in Linguistics, 47: 149–68. Department of Linguistics, Lunt University. Korth, B., Stepanian, A. and Mushelishvili, M. (2005), Language Policy in Georgia. Geneva: Cimera Publications. Kutz, E. (1998), ‘Between Students’ Language and Academic Discourse: Inter-language as Middle Ground’, in V. Zamel and R. Spack (eds), Negotiating Academic Literacies: Teaching and Learning across Cultures. Mahwah: LawrenceErlbaum Associates, pp. 37–50. McNay, I. (1995), ‘From the Collegial Academy to Corporate Enterprise: The Changing Cultures of Universities’, in T. Schuller (ed.), The Changing University. Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 105–15. Mepharishvili, I. (2006), Razvitie Obrazovania na Jazikah Soiuznih Respublik SSSR [The Development of Education in the Languages of the Union Republics of the USSR]. Moskva: Nauka. Peters, M., Fitzsimons, P. and Marshall, J. (1999), ‘Managerialism and Education Policy in a Global Context’, in C. Torres and N. Burbules (eds), Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives. New York/London: Routledge, pp. 109–32. Popper, K. (1986), The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson. Said, E. (1994), Representation of the Intellectual. New York: Pantheon. Shaw, M. (2001), ‘Values and Vodka: Cross-Cultural Anatomy of an Anglo-Russian Educational Project’, International Journal of Educational Development, 21(2): 119–33. Schulter, B. (2003), Language and Identity: The Situation in Kyrgyzstan and the Role of Pedagogy. Cimera: Cimera Pubications. Skinner, B. F. (1953), Science and Human Behavior. New York: Free Press. Smith, J. (1988), ‘National Schools and National Identity in and after the Soviet Union’, Education and Civic Culture in Post-Communist Societies, 13–15(November): 59–79. Solchanyk, R. (1982), ‘Language and Education in Soviet Schools’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 33(1): 113–18. Strathern, M. (1997), The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tabidze, M. (1999), ‘Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Development of Georgian’, in Lund University Working Papers, 47: 201–10. Tomiak, J. J. (1983), Soviet Education in the 1980s. London: St. Martin’s Press.

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Turkle, S. (1995), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster. Turner, K. (2009), ‘Flipping the Switch: Code-Switching from Text Speak to Standard English’, English Journal, 98(5): 60–5. Twomey, C. T. (1996), ‘Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning’, in C. T. Fostnot (ed.), Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Competitiveness, Elitism and Neoliberal Performativity: The Formation of a Russell Group Academic Identity Linda Evans

The week in which I became a professor1 was a pivotal point in my academic career. It was pivotal not because I had made the transition to the most senior academic grade, but because it entailed a very difficult choice. This choice presented me with a dilemma that preoccupied me for days on end – and about which I still ponder, for I am by no means certain that the outcome I settled upon was the best one for me. At the root of it lay a key component or dimension of my academic identity. In delineating the nature and tracing what I consider to be the origins of that identity dimension, this chapter presents an autobiographically focused analysis of the nature and process of identity formation, as illustrated through the experiences of one academic. This is a tale of how identities are shaped. To illustrate through my narrative the complexity and intricacy of this agency I must weave together an introduction to the main protagonists, a description of the historical context within which they operated, and an outline of the nature and background of the dilemma to which I refer here. And as with many a tale, mine deviates from a chronologically linear format, leaping to and fro across decades in its unravelling of causal links that were forged out of the attitudinal and emotional derivatives and tributaries flowing in and out of my developing self.

1

The title ‘professor’ is applied more narrowly in the United Kingdom than in North America. In this chapter I apply the European interpretation of professorship as denoting only the most senior academic grade, equivalent to what in North America is referred to as full professorship.

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The standing around two chairs: My dilemma My dilemma was by no means an uncommon one; it has confronted many senior academics. I had been offered professorships at two different universities and had to choose between them. After a year spent on the preparation of it, I had submitted an application for internal promotion from reader2 to professor within my own institution, the University of Leeds. Meanwhile, I had also applied – and was shortlisted – for a chair at another university, and the date of my promotion interview at Leeds fell, coincidentally, within the same week as the external interview. Since I had mentioned in my letter of application for the external chair that I was awaiting the outcome of an internal promotion application that was fully supported by my dean of faculty and head of school, when I was offered the external chair I was permitted to defer my response until I had learned the outcome of my internal promotion application two days later. In many respects I found myself, on the evening of being offered the external chair, content with what I recognised as my win-win situation: come what may, I would be a professor within the week. Yet over the course of the next two days, as the promotion interview on my home turf drew nearer, this security was overshadowed by the prospect of having to choose between staying put and moving on. So when, within half-an-hour of my interview at Leeds, I answered the phone to my head of school to be greeted, ‘Congratulations, Professor Evans!’, I was not quite as elated to learn of my promotion as I would have been if all my eggs had been in that one Leeds University basket. I discussed my dilemma with a few close colleagues outside my university: I like working at Leeds, I told them – I particularly liked its supportive, collegial culture . . . but the other university seemed equally supportive and collegial; I had really warmed to those staff who had come to hear my interview presentation, and I had been flattered by the encouragement of one – the harbinger of a warm, post-appointment, welcome, I felt – who, encountering me by chance as I awaited my interview, had confided, in hushed tones: ‘We all really liked your presentation – you’re our favourite candidate.’ I considered the many pluses of my working life at Leeds: I was happy with the leadership and management through all levels of the hierarchy; the recently appointed head of school had a vision

2

A readership is a senior academic grade between senior lecturer (which is equivalent to associate professor) and professor. It is not necessary to hold a readership in order to be promoted to a professorship; indeed, some universities have in recent years phased out the reader grade.

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and energy that had breathed new life into the department; I enjoyed nearly all aspects of my work – there were few irritants – and most of my professional and career-related needs were met. But the other university seemed to offer very similar advantages – I had taken to the faculty dean, and I knew the professor who was the director of research and both liked and had enormous regard for him and his work. Both universities are pre-1992 institutions, which implies that they define themselves, and are recognised, as research-intensive. But a frustration for me was that, since most of my Leeds colleagues are established researchers, I have few opportunities for the kind of academic leadership3 that I find very fulfilling: working with others – often one-to-one – to develop their research skills and profiles. Moreover, I felt (perhaps mistakenly) that internally promoted professors, being familiar to their colleagues, and having already had many of their idiosyncrasies and foibles exposed, face more of an uphill struggle to establish or consolidate professorial credibility and respect than do new appointees. The prospect of changing institutions was therefore very inviting because it offered a new start, with new colleagues – many of whom I knew to be hungry for mentoring and support as they worked to develop nascent researchfocused careers, within an emerging research culture that I could contribute towards enhancing. The ‘other’ university offered a potentially good move. The decision that I finally made, after much deliberation, reflected a powerful component of my professional identity. But in order to convey that potency, and explain the decision that it prompted, I must first retrace through time and space those steps that propelled me from the drab, dirt-ingrained, industrial landscape of my formative years, to the vibrant redbrick4 environment of my maturity.

From infancy to intelligentsia: A reprobate’s progress I grew up in a working-class family in the north of England in the latter half of the twentieth century; born in the 1950s, educated in the 1960s and 1970s, 3 4

See Evans 2014 for a discussion of the meaning of ‘professorial academic leadership’. Redbrick denotes a specific category of UK university. The adjective alludes to the red brick buildings of universities founded around the turn of the twentieth century and was originally applied to six civic universities – all members of the Russell Group – built in industrial cities. Historically, the term carries connotations of institutions that, in terms of status, lie immediately below Oxbridge, but several non-redbrick universities are now prominent members of the Russell Group and enjoy the kind of status that was once confined to the redbricks.

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I represent a constituency – or generation – that Skelton (2005) identifies as ‘Vintage Academic women’.5 In the Britain of that period, being both northern and working class served as a double disadvantage in relation to social integration and acculturation in contexts where intellectualist – and, by extension, middle class – values and norms prevailed. In the north Manchester cotton town of her birth, with a grammar school6 education and qualifications that not only distinguished her from most of my primary school friends’ mothers, but also facilitated her entry into a secretarial career on leaving school at 16, my mother was able to deviate from the path to the mills taken by generations of women before her – though this was, in any case, the start of the post-industrial era. Representing what Giddens (1981: 195) refers to as ‘a new vanguard of the working class’ to emerge in post-war Britain in the wake of the decline of many industries and the increase of mechanisation in the workplace, she had brought to her marriage upper-working-class aspirations and expectations that very gradually, and only ever partially, eroded away the rough edges that characterised my father’s social self. Her agential influence on the dynamic of interaction within our small nuclear family (I was regrettably an only child) was to have particular potency for my academic career (I apply a broad interpretation of ‘academic career’ here, using the term to denote my progression from child to adulthood through the education system, as a recipient of and contributor to it). It is slightly ironic that the very first street where I lived was called School Street, for I recall my mother being what, in the teenage vernacular of the day, I used to describe to my friends as ‘school mad’. What I meant by this was that she took my schooling – my education – very seriously, seeing it as the prime means of enhancing my life chances. Underpinned by a trusting, simple naiveté that is not uncommon amongst respectable working-class people of her generation, her largely unquestioning and unqualified support of my school and its teachers – her unequivocal acceptance of any decisions they made – was a dimension of a wider pro-authority, deferential attitude that she extended to all professionals, always respecting their judgement, which she believed reflected the skills set and knowledge that their qualifications ensured. Preoccupied not so much with the content and nature of my education (which lay within the domain of the trusted professionals charged with educating me) as with my

5

6

This label was applied within Skelton’s comparative (inter-generational) study of the applicability of Ulrich Beck’s (2000) notion or model of the ‘individualised individual’ to people’s sense-making in relation to their lives. Grammar schools represented the selective tier of what, until around the late 1960s or the 1970s, was a bi- or tripartite system of secondary education that prevailed in most of the United Kingdom.

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attendance and overall scholarly achievements, she was relatively unconcerned to know what I had covered in lessons, and she certainly did not monitor my homework – though she did habitually correct my spoken grammar, and taught me that the letter ‘h’ should be pronounced not as ‘haitch’, but as denoted by its dictionary spelling: aitch.7 Oblivious to the nature–nurture debate that was gaining momentum in child development discourses of the day, she considered my schooling the most important ingredient of my future success. To her, school was the be-all-and-end-all. To my enduring irritation and resentment, she would never countenance even the odd day’s absence; I recall being embarrassed and upset, aged 13, at having to return to school immediately after the hour-long funeral service of a boy from my youth club, denied permission to accompany my peer group to the wake. From my mother’s perspective, the qualifications that a good schooling provided were the currency that would buy me a successful life; a School Certificate8 holder herself, it was on these that she was squarely focused. Her first significant maternal trauma was the anxious wait for my 11+ examination9 results – my success afforded me ‘golden girl’ status for a brief week when I could do no wrong. Five and seven years later, respectively, it was she who went to my grammar school to collect my GCE O and A level10 results, and then, when she packed me off to teacher training college, confident that I was embarking on a worthy career, she felt her work was done. It was not for financial success or celebrity that my mother reserved her greatest respect; she was most impressed by academic achievement. Though she was ignorant of the subtle distinctions and status-related hierarchies within UK higher education – apart from Oxford and Cambridge, a university was a university to her, and a degree, a degree – such indicators of intelligence featured prominently in her values system. 7

8

9

10

In Northern Ireland the pronounciation of ‘h’is a shibboleth, since Protestant schools traditionally teach aitch and Catholic schools haitch. Preceding the introduction of GCE O level examinations in English and Welsh secondary schools, the school certificate was an educational attainment standard qualification obtained by passing examinations in five subjects, usually at the age of 16. An examination taken by children at age 11, in their final year of primary school, to determine which kind of secondary school they were permitted to attend: grammar or secondary modern school. The 11+ examination became redundant in local education authorities where selective secondary education was replaced by a comprehensive system. General Certificate of Education (GCE) examinations at ordinary (O) and advanced (A) levels – respectively, taken typically (but not exclusively) at the end of compulsory and sixth form education (typically at age 16 and 18 respectively). GCE A levels remain part of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish post-compulsory education assessment system and are the main examination used by UK universities for selection of students. GCE O levels were replaced in 1988 by GCSEs: General Certificate in Secondary Education.

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By today’s standards my mother clearly was not overly ambitious for me; primary school teaching had always been my own choice of career, but she wholeheartedly supported it. Like most parents, she wanted me to surpass her own scholarly achievements, but her vision of what was potentially achievable was framed within the context that defined her rather parochial world, and which limited her aspirations for me to what her experience allowed her to comprehend. This was a time when the sexism that lingered as a potent dimension of British society and culture was reflected in a selective secondary education system whose predominantly single-sex grammar schools typically offered the facility to prepare ‘gifted’ boys for Oxbridge entrance, whilst their female counterparts were directed towards the redbricks, teaching training colleges, or careers in nursing. To my mother, then, who, like me, represented a generation of women schooled ‘when traditional gender and social class roles were explicit in educational policy and thereby inscribed their educational experiences. Also, gender constraints allowed them entry only to certain areas of the labour market’ (Skelton, 2005: 6) – a teaching qualification represented an acceptably lofty height to scale. A product of her age and class, through no fault of her own, she simply lacked the know-how to steer me towards pathways that would take me beyond the parameters of a world that she had the capacity to imagine. Yet for all this subdued and understated ambition, my parents were vicariously competitive. It is difficult to convey accurately the nature of this competitiveness, for despite her obsession with my schooling I would not categorise my mother as what may today be considered the stereotypical ‘pushy’ parent – a label that my daughters’ teachers probably applied to me, with a degree of justification. In sharp contrast to me as a parent, my mother was too deferential in social situations to be anything other than mildly, passively pushy, and was moreover insufficiently savvy to understand precisely – rather than vaguely and generally – the fine detail of what it took to be a high achiever, academically. She nevertheless derived enormous pride from the high ‘positions in class’ that I achieved at primary school through marks in school- or local education authority-devised annual tests (the practice of publicly divulging to children their achievement-related position, as an ordinal number, in relation to their classmates, has long been outlawed in the politically correct, childcentred environments that define today’s state primary education sector in England). She was quietly gratified when my achievements surpassed those of my cousins or neighbours (and struggled to mask her disappointment when they did not), and, giving me my first experience of performance-related pay, my father beamed from ear to ear and made a show of handing me a banknote equivalent to a month’s pocket money on the single occasion when I came top

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of my secondary school year in English language. The message was persistently clear: doing better than other people, coming top, excelling, was good; being average or mediocre was not. It was here, in a North Manchester cotton town, not in the senior common room, that performativity first entered my life. But I did not perform. I was not a compliant, committed scholar – far from it. Having acquired a wit and a sense of humour, I was more interested in playing the role of class comedian than in learning algebraic formulae and French verbs, and my parents began to receive complaints that I was not handing in my homework. On school reports and at parent evenings the same refrain was repeated: my academic potential was never doubted; it was my application that was the problem – ‘such a disappointing waste of ability’. Reminiscing with amusement on my school days, I refer to myself as a reprobate. In full view of my classmates – for my sole purpose was to win the admiration of my peers by entertaining them – I once locked a teacher in a store cupboard, and on another occasion was disciplined for having secured a sticker reading ‘Dumbo’ to the maths teacher’s back. A catalogue of other, similarly motivated, minor misdemeanours remains undetected to this day – hopefully, I am protected by a statute of limitations. Meanwhile, at home, I was rebellious and recalcitrant. Never close to either of my parents, I was becoming increasingly contemptuous of what I identified as my mother’s stupidity, neurotic short-temperedness, and nasty pettiness, and my father’s antiquated authoritarian disciplinary regime; I naturally resented and feared the roaring reprimands and thundered threats that he hurled my way to accompany the beatings that were the culmination of his uncontrolled rages, and from which my mother – not averse herself to giving me a thick ear – did nothing to protect me. These two key contexts of my life – home and school – were securely linked by the thread of acute alienation, borne of deep filial disdain. Escaping the discomfort, frustration and loneliness of cohabitation with two people whose language I did not speak, nor they mine, I placed my teenage peer group, friendships and socialising at the apex of my world, and while my studious classmates were closeted in their bedrooms thumbing through textbooks, I preserved my sanity by loitering around the youth club, knocking on friends’ doors and pestering them to break off for coffee, or aimlessly wandering the streets, all the while watching the clock to avoid incurring my father’s wrath by returning home two minutes later than the curfew that I knew he would impose with uncompromising rigidity. It was more than simply jettisoning the homework; like many a disaffected or underperforming school child, I was seeking a distracting interlude from the purgatory that was my home-based existence.

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So – judged against the standards that I was known to be capable of reaching – my performance at school was unimpressive. Yet, because somewhere in my consciousness there lurked a residual, reluctant acceptance of my mother’s academic-focused values – and a recognition that, unless I did manage to grab for myself a half-decent fistful of O and A levels, I would have stupidly forfeited this opportunity to make something of myself and my life – despite careering wildly and erratically off the main track for much of the time, I never entirely lost direction, and kept one eye on the speedometer to ensure that I could slam on the brake and screech to a halt at the last minute. Perhaps it was that, in revenge for the poor parenting I felt (and still feel) I had received, I wanted to upset and disappoint my parents – particularly my mother, who I knew would feel it more acutely than my father – by depriving them . . . her . . . of something she would prize highly: her daughter’s academic success. Yet, annoyingly and involuntarily, I seemed to have been sufficiently imbued with a sense of the importance of education and, in particular, academic qualifications, that I found it impossible to squander entirely the opportunities available to me; the trick was not to reveal – until it could be no longer covered up – that I was in fact something of a closet compliant (albeit reluctantly and perhaps only partially). So, always conscious of precisely where the threshold of minimum acceptable achievement lay, though my teachers would have thought otherwise, I was in full control of my output and gauged its consequences with fine-tuned accuracy – in one O level examination, judging that I had answered three of the required four essay questions well enough to secure a pass, I lay my head on the desk and dozed for the remainder of the exam, rather than go to the trouble of attempting the final question. In A level French, having read none of the five set texts, I was unable to answer a single question on the literature exam paper – which cost me its allocated 25 per cent of the total marks – but I was confident that my language knowledge and proficiency would comfortably get me through the other French papers. Prompted entirely by laziness, for my higher education destination I chose the easier option of teacher training college in preference to university followed by a PGCE11 course, removing the pressure to achieve anything in excess of two A level passes. Then, on passing all three A levels, I joked about having over-achieved. Once at college I loved the teaching component and the preparation for it – working into the small hours on far more preparation than was needed for school placements, eager to excel and to please my tutors, and fulfilled by the 11

Postgraduate Certificate in Education: a teaching qualification.

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creativity and imaginativeness that this work involved. But on the academic side I stayed true to past form: I frequently skipped classes; Proust, Baudelaire and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles gathered dust on my shelves, and I was relegated from the B.Ed. degree to the teacher’s certificate course when I failed the second year examinations – and the resits (I had planned to revise for them the night before the exam, but then found myself rather too easily seduced into accepting an impromptu party invitation). Finding the teacher’s certificate course ridiculously easy, and its assessment remarkably unchallenging, I effortlessly secured a distinction in the finals – and, euphoric that my study days were finally well and truly over, gathered together my college notes and flung them into the dustbin. Academic work was anathema to me; never again, I vowed, would I contemplate embarking upon it. With the commendation I was awarded for teaching practice, my graduation profile appeared impressive, and during a period when teaching jobs were notoriously hard to come by, I was one of a small number of my college cohort to take up a permanent, full time, post in September 1975. I was perfectly content doing the only job I had ever wanted to do, and envisaged spending my entire working life in the primary education sector. But the seeds of discontent had been sown. They had been sown many years earlier, in a two-up, two-down terraced house on School Street, where, gradually and imperceptibly, my mother’s values had been absorbed into my consciousness, until they had become my values. And as I made the subtle transition from adolescence to teenage-hood, I became aware that this woman had imbued in me – perhaps unwittingly, and probably much more than she will ever know – a strong sense of competitiveness and statusawareness in relation to education and academic contexts, underpinned by a deep respect and admiration for scholarship and intellectual excellence. So, for all my apparent bravado, as a schoolgirl I never got a bigger kick than when my very occasional exertions yielded outstanding work, bringing recognition from my teachers, my peers and, ironically, the two parents I despised. I recall the quiet regret I had felt, on setting off for teacher training college in the autumn of 1972, at having rashly dismissed the university option. How I would have loved to be making my way to one of the redbricks; I knew that my grades – though barely average – would have secured me a place on some course or other. And I would have done really well, I told myself, if I had only bothered to put in the work – my grade C for French A level, on the basis of having completed only 75 per cent of the exam, indicated that, had I bothered to read a few French novels, a grade A would have been easily within my reach. Likewise, my D for history, achieved after only a single night’s revision, could have been converted

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into an A if, like my classmates, I had conscientiously completed all homework assignments and devoted myself to sustained revision over the course of several weeks. No – my self-esteem was intact; it had been my laziness, I felt sure, not my intellectual capacity that had been my undoing. And for several years this reasoning represented my psychological cushion. I recognised that I was inferior to all the graduates with whom I brushed shoulders, in relation only to effort expended, not erudition. And that was fine . . . of sorts. But with the greater introspection that comes with maturity, I began to question my long-held belief that I had been something of an underperforming genius. That my conviction of my under-used ability could, in fact, turn out to be nothing more than misplaced arrogance, escalated from being a niggling doubt to a nagging concern. And as time passed, I realised that I would never be content until I had settled, once and for all, whether I was as intellectually capable as I had always thought – and, for that matter, been told – or whether rumours of my intelligence had been greatly exaggerated.

A la recherche du temps perdu: A new chapter That nagging concern was the turning point that was to have a profound impact on my life and the direction it took – though the real Damascene moment came whilst, still a serving teacher, I was taking a part-time degree course at a local college of education. This was the early 1980s – six or seven years after I had left college and taken up my first teaching post. For teachers, it was a golden age of employer-financed self-improvement and career development opportunities, when local education authorities in England still controlled schools and (though there were regional variations) were for the most part willing to pay in full the tuition fees for their teachers’ part time study for advanced certificates and diplomas, teaching-related degrees and higher degrees. So I decided to take advantage of what was on offer, and enrolled on a B.Ed. degree course, attending weekly classes over two years, beginning in September 1982. My main motivation was financial, for the teachers’ salary structure at this time was such that, if I achieved a good honours degree (defined as class I or 2i), I would immediately advance up the scale by five increments, earning a pay increase of over £1000 per annum. By the standards of the day – when £1000 could probably have bought a one-year-old, second-hand hatchback in excellent condition – this was not to be sniffed at. But I also had a second agenda: to prove myself – to myself. This degree course would allow me to put my demons to rest – or to face them head-on.

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No longer distracted by the lure of social activities, nor, settling down in a new marriage in a home of my own, by the need to take to the streets to escape an alien home environment, I was determined to turn over a new leaf. I would be a hard-working student: no more work-avoidance, no more staggering from one assessment exercise to the next, getting by on a wing and a prayer; I would put in the hours, expend the effort, and see what rewards it yielded – after all, I needed at least an upper second to secure the anticipated salary increase. Precisely when it occurred, I could not say. I refer to it above as a Damascene moment, but in fact this is an inaccurate descriptor, for in my case it came not like a bolt out of the blue; it crept up on me silently, stealthily and imperceptibly gradually. I am talking about my conversion. Within a couple of months of starting my degree course, it dawned upon me that I had become a born-again swot. Friends – and teachers, for that matter – who had known me as a schoolgirl or college student would have been utterly incredulous on encountering my converted self. I studied continually and relentlessly – at weekends, in the evenings and during the school holidays. I even worked on an essay on Christmas Day. I read every book on every reading list I was given – and sought out background reading material, too. Doing better than other people, coming top, excelling, was good; being average or mediocre was not. I was focused unwaveringly on one clear goal: getting a first.12 And this was in the days when getting a first was so rare an achievement that it was recognised by having one’s name listed in the quality national newspapers. The night before collecting my degree results I experienced anxiety such as I had never before felt (and which since then has been matched only by the excruciating wait for my daughters’ A level results) – I recall thinking that if I had anticipated the intensity of my anxiety I would never have embarked on the course. The next day, as I approached the notice board where the results were displayed, for a brief moment I was transported back to a north Manchester grammar school, where, over 20 years earlier, my mother would have taken her long, nervous walk along the corridor towards the notice board where she would have read my A level results. But it was all alright, of course – on this occasion, the single name that I had discerned at the top of the list of degree results turned out to be mine. I was vindicated.

12

Bachelor honours degree classifications in the United Kingdom generally range from class I (known as a ‘first’) to class III (a ‘third’), with the middle class differentiated into upper second (2i) and lower second (2ii).

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To rewind my story slightly: a fascinating irony had revealed itself a few weeks before I completed my degree course. Writing now, 30 years after the event, I struggle to recall the precise details, but I do remember that – whilst I had been extremely lucky in having worked for a local education authority that not only generously paid all my degree course tuition fees, and sanctioned (subject to school-level approval – which I secured) my absence for one afternoon a week over the course of two years to attend classes, plus up to six weeks’ paid study leave – a problem arose with this study leave. The assessment of my course culminated in seven examinations – the finals – held on successive mornings (excluding weekends) in late May/early June, and I had been relying on six clear weeks of uninterrupted exam revision in the run-up to the exam period, to maximise my performance. But, despite my headteacher’s having always assured me that it would be granted, my study leave was threatened at the eleventh hour by the unavailability of supply teacher cover for my absence. I was distraught. I was in fact so distressed and panicked by the prospect of, after two years’ hard work, falling at the final hurdle that I made a drastic decision: I would resign from my job, allowing me the requisite time for exam revision. Doing better than other people, coming top, excelling, was good; being average or mediocre was not. Failure – represented by anything other than a first – was not an option. In the event, the supply cover problem was resolved and my resignation was not needed. But though I kept my job, this part of my story provides a wonderful illustration – which I often use in my teaching and research – of human motivation, for the irony is, of course, that, whilst it had been the prospect of a salary increase that had primarily motivated me towards a degree, my priorities changed entirely over the course of those two years to the extent that, faced with the prospect of failing to achieve what I saw as my full academic potential, I was prepared to lose entirely the salary that I had once been so keen to augment! My graduation euphoria lasted for many, many weeks. Getting a first – because of all it stood for in my ‘trajectory of self ’ (Bathmaker, 2010; Hanson, 2009) – was the most gratifying and satisfying event in my life, and although its sheen may have dulled a little over the years, it remains, to me, the most glittering prize I have ever secured, far outstripping subsequent achievements and pivotal points in my working life that I have, for the most part, simply taken in my stride dispassionately: my M.A. degree; my first appointment as an academic; my first book; my doctorate . . . and my professorship. For although – as I began this chapter by observing – the events surrounding my promotion to a professorship were pivotal, I recall being surprisingly

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unmoved by the promotion itself. Indeed, years later, I still remark (only half in jest) that the best thing about being promoted was not the professorship itself, but the parking permit that it allowed me to procure, and which improved incalculably the practicalities of my working life – for the car parking provision at Leeds University is shamefully inadequate! So – yes – after much deliberation and vacillation over two days, it was for staying put at Leeds that I finally opted. Though, in the end, my choice was principally not for Leeds – despite its many merits – but for the Russell Group.

A Russell Group identity Universities in the United Kingdom may be divided into two broad categories: the first comprises ‘old’ universities that received their Royal Charters before 1992 (and which are therefore also referred to as pre-1992 universities), and the second category comprises what are variously referred to as ‘new’, ‘modern’ or post-1992 universities that did not acquire university status until after the binary divide was abolished in that year, and before which they had been polytechnics or, in a few cases, colleges of education. A key distinction between pre- and post-1992 universities is mission focus: the pre-1992 sector is recognised as being researchfocused, whereas the post-1992 sector has a long tradition of being teachingfocused, and although some of the highest ranking post-1992 institutions have made great strides in developing research cultures, they nevertheless lag behind the pre-1992s in relation to research activity and excellence. As I mention above, the two at the centre of my promotion-related dilemma were both pre-1992 institutions. Yet even within the pre-1992 sector there is a status hierarchy that is determined by research performance and reputation. At the pinnacle of that hierarchy sits the Russell Group. The Russell Group is a group of, currently, 24 of what are deemed the United Kingdom’s most research-intensive universities: Oxford and Cambridge, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Cardiff, Queen’s University, Belfast, and 18 other universities located across England – including the University of Leeds, but excluding the ‘other’ university that had lain at the centre of my dilemma. Since becoming an academic 25 years ago, I have never known anything other than the Russell Group; the only two universities where I have been employed – Warwick and Leeds – are both members of it. It therefore constitutes my familiar world, as an academic. Clegg (2008: 329) observes that ‘in so far as individuals conceptualise themselves as having an identity as an academic, this multiple and shifting term

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exists alongside other aspects of how people understand their personhood and ways of being in the world’. The imprecision of her expression – for it is not the term that shifts, but what it denotes – does not belie the accuracy of her intended meaning; we all have multiple identities: some surfacing as dominant for certain periods of our lives – or even fleetingly and momentarily, in response to certain situations or circumstances – others remaining subsidiary ones; some will evaporate unnoticed over time while others will be more enduring, and many coexist simultaneously, though often as unequal partners. Yet any identity must have the capacity and potential for dominating one’s sense of self – how one labels oneself – at certain moments, under certain circumstances. My own identities cohabit my psyche in this way. In this decade of my life I identify or have identified myself as, variously – depending on my geographical and physical location and my surroundings, whom I am with, what issues I am preoccupied with, whom or what I am thinking of, whom I am interacting closely with, what is going on around me, and the state of my physical and mental health and wellness – a Mancunian,13 a Manchester United supporter, a northerner, a British person, a European, a mother, a cousin, a niece, a wife, a neighbour, a woman, an education expert, a modern foreign linguist, a lay expert on certain aspects and periods of European history, an educated person, an under-educated person, an ignoramus, an idiot, an academic, or a senior academic. My academic identity – my identity as an academic – has for many years been my dominant identity: it is ever-present in my consciousness, usually occupying a centre-stage position, but even when it is temporarily upstaged it is always lurking in the wings, awaiting its entrance into the limelight. It is a multifaceted identity, comprising many dimensions that at times overlap and at other times conflict with each other, and a small number of which appear sporadically, as my situation or circumstances determine, in-between their lying dormant for a spell: researcher, author, speaker, member of this or that leaned society, senior ‘elder stateswoman’, professor, mentor, institutional ambassador . . . and Russell Group academic. I have met colleagues employed in the post-1992 sector – many of who, paralleling my long-standing Russell Group affiliation, have spent their entire careers in that sector – who tell me they cannot envisage ever leaving it because they are committed to the values that it espouses: the promotion of lifelong learning and widening access agendas that reflect a concern for social justice. In a similar way, I am familiar with the Russell Group’s priorities and agendas 13

A native or inhabitant of Manchester.

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and am comfortable with the norms that these impose on the working lives of its academics – and make no mistake, for whilst it is a voluntary grouping of independent institutions, in practice the Russell Group is very much a unity: I learned long ago that, in relation to significant policy and practice initiatives, by and large, what one member university does, the others inevitably end up also doing. So my transition several years ago from Warwick to Leeds was seamless and devoid of any hint of culture shock – everything was familiar; everything precisely as I had anticipated. There is a recognised theoretical model of academic work attitudes – the prestige value system – that ‘posits that individuals attempt to maximize their prestige – in part through attachment to distinguished institutions’ (Morrison et al., 2011: 25), and I have met many academic colleagues in the United Kingdom who admit to valuing, as I do, what they perceive as the prestige associated with being employed in a Russell Group university. Yet, while accepting that my Russell Group identity is what Bernstein (2000) calls an ‘elitist identity’, I emphasise that it was primarily not for status for its own sake that I reluctantly rejected the professorship offered to me by the ‘other’, non-Russell Group university. Rather, it was for the assurance of sustaining the working lifestyle that I have come to value and to cherish – the relatively ample resources, the reasonably well-stocked libraries, the expertise and advice that is always at hand, the availability of funds for conference attendance, and so on, that I know are typical features of Russell Group universities, and that I feared may not be in quite such plentiful supply elsewhere. For these represent all the trappings of my academic identity: they support it and reflect it. Stets and Burke (2000: 226) distinguish between identity theory and social identity theory: Having a particular social identity means being at one with a certain group, being like others in the group, and seeing things from the group’s perspective. In contrast, having a particular role identity means acting to fulfill the expectations of the role, coordinating and negotiating interaction with role partners, and manipulating the environment to control the resources for which the role has responsibility.

As far as I can tell, my Russell Group academic identity straddles these two descriptors: I feel at one with the Russell Group membership – which administratively comprises institutions, but operationally is evident in the practice of their academic workforces – and for the most part I see things from its perspective; yet this facet of my identity (my social identity) has implications for

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my role identity, for I act to fulfil what I interpret as the expectations of the role of an academic (indeed, a senior academic with an implicit academic leadership responsibility) employed not simply within a university, but, more specifically, within a Russell Group university. That role, going full circle, involves academic practice that is congruent with the values and goals adopted and determined by the Russell Group, along with the agendas that frame these values and goals and the norms that they, in turn, fashion and perpetuate. These norms that prevail within the Russell Group are in many – if not most – respects those of status and elitism within the context of higher education. They include, first and foremost, the prioritisation of research, for this is the basis of the Russell Group’s inception and of its membership criteria. They include the pursuit of high-quality research, and entrepreneurism, together with more recent additions that are now becoming discernible, such as the provision of highquality teaching, and the demonstration of the impact of research in alignment with user group – and wider societal – needs and interests. The academic who is a fully paid-up member of the Russell Group – as opposed to one who takes her/his salary from it, but rails against its norms and priorities – is therefore research-focused, research-active, and accepting of the economic imperatives imposed by the neoliberal cultures that have taken hold of UK higher education and are arguably most active in its highest ranking institutions. Enter a second protagonist into this narrative of the key influences on the formation of my Russell Group academic identity: Margaret Thatcher. Status and elitism are relatively determined, and it is against the backdrop of a higher education sector that has not been slow to adopt and absorb the market principles that Thatcherism introduced into Britain’s socio-political landscape, that they have been defined in this context. The neoliberal performativity culture that is currently a dominant feature of higher education in all developed countries, and that, in the United Kingdom at least, can trace its origins back to Thatcher’s economic legacy, has been the context in which the Russell Group has been defined and distinguished, and within which it has so far prevailed. And, for my part, I am perfectly comfortable with such a culture, so the enactment of my academic identity through the lens of my Russell Group membership is unproblematic for me. It is not only that I find it difficult to object to the principle that the institution or organisation that pays one’s salary has the right to expect – within the bounds of democratic reasonableness, legality and equity – to be able to determine the nature of the work that is bought with that salary, nor is it purely and simply that the components of my work that I most enjoy – most notably, research – sit high on the neoliberal policy agenda, as formulated by

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the Russell Group. It is, in addition – and perhaps above all – that the Russell Group is about competitiveness and about excelling, by achieving the very best that one is capable of, and this resonates with the values that I assimilated at my mother’s knee. Besides, there is no one more zealous than a convert, and, having underperformed for almost half of my life, to date, I now find myself embracing performativity as it impacts upon my own working life. As an academic I have known nothing else, for the Warwick of the early 1990s where I cut my teeth and was acculturated has, to my recollection, always espoused and promoted the kind of competitive-focused values that have since acquired the labels ‘neoliberalism’, ‘performativity’ and ‘managerialism’. Contrary to the sentiments expressed in the anti-performativity academic discourse, I struggle to identify a single element of my academic working life that has changed other than marginally since I joined the academic profession in 1990. Margaret Thatcher was a leading architect of the cultural-political environment within which my status-related competitiveness has been – and continues to be – enacted. So in many respects I owe my academic identity in all its complexity, and including the Russell Group dimension of it, to two women who, in quite different ways, shaped my world and my experiences. One of them instigated fundamental, sweeping, macro-level policy initiatives that would have far-reaching consequences for twenty-first-century-British society, and in doing so she crafted the external context and conditions that would delineate and define excellence and competitiveness as it is currently interpreted. Motivated by a quite different agenda, the other, through a more directly personalised and focused form of interactive agency, planted in my consciousness a latent desire to compete and excel. The irony is that, as both a member of the Labour Party and a disappointed and disdainful daughter, I would not wish to associate myself with either of these women, yet – for better or worse – my Russell Group academic identity is their joint legacy to my sense of being, as an academic. Mine is a story of the combined effects of temporality, class culture and geography – specifically, in the case of my mother’s agency, of the extent to which it was moulded by deferential, yet dissenting, northern working-class attitudes that came to maturity in a post-war era of renovation.14 For at that time, one form of dissension to the constraints that were inherent in northern English working-class culture was the pursuit of excellence – that is, literally, exceeding the norm; doing better than everyone else. Such was the path my mother chose –

14

In the concluding chapter of this book I outline what I recollect as key features of this post-war context.

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for herself, and, in turn, for me – though it would be some time before the values that I absorbed from her were activated and incorporated into my practice. And so this complex interaction of ideologies, values, forces, and competitive survivalism came into play in one tiny, insignificant corner of what was then a continent in flux, and set in motion an intricate process and succession of events and circumstances that have been instrumental in delineating the person I consider myself to be, and a label that, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, I choose to denote who I am.

References Bathmaker, A. M. (2010), ‘Introduction’, in A. M. Bathmaker and P. Harnett (eds), Exploring Learning Identity and Power through Life History and Narrative Research. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–10. Beck, U. (2000), What Is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity. Bernstein, B. (2000), Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity (2nd edition – revised). Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Clegg, S. (2008), ‘Academic Identities under Threat?’, British Educational Research Journal, 34(3): 329–45. Evans, L. (2014), ‘A Changing Role for University Professors? Professorial Academic Leadership as It Is Perceived by “the Led”’, British Educational Research Journal, doi: 10.1002/berj.3163. Giddens, A. (1981), The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (2nd edition). London: Hutchinson. Hanson, J. (2009), ‘Displaced but Not Replaced: The Impact of E-learning on Academic Identities in Higher Education’, Teaching in Higher Education, 14(5): 553–64. Morrison, E., Rudd, E., Picciano, J. and Nerad, M. (2011), ‘Are You Satisfied? PhD Education and Faculty Taste for Prestige: Limits of the Prestige Value System’, Research in Higher Education, 52(1): 24–46. Skelton, C. (2005), ‘The “Self-Interested” Woman Academic: A Consideration of Beck’s Model of the “Individualised Individual”’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26(1): 5–16. Stets, J. E. and Burke, P. J. (2000), ‘Identity Theory and Social Identity’, Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(3): 224–37.

Part Three

Formations and Re-Formations

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The Challenges of ‘Homo Academicus’: The Making of Self, Identities and a Sense of Fairness and Justice Romuald Normand

Introduction Homo academicus – with this title French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1988) opened up a Pandora’s box to reveal an academic world that emerges as an environment characterised by conflict, power struggles and hierarchically imposed domination. Yet this academic order is now seriously challenged by issues arising from globalisation and, more specifically, the ongoing development of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the European Research Area (ERA). Located at the heart of this changing landscape, amidst Northern European neighbours who are better positioned and equipped for global competition, the French academy is battling with paradoxes and contradictions – challenges that are examined in this chapter through a contextualised and personalised account of my own experiences as an academic in my former post at l’Institut Français de l’Education in Lyon. Within this narrative I explore changes that have impacted the French higher education sector’s research and policy over the last ten years, particularly in the field of education studies. I apply to my analysis a theoretical framework developed by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. These French sociologists demonstrate how, despite diverse difficulties or ‘hardships’ created or encountered by social actors within their social environments, by drawing upon different ‘worlds’ and logics of action – within the limits imposed by their cognitive and material resources – they may bring a sense of justice and common good to the shared

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public space, particularly when faced with confrontation from and difficulties imposed by others. Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) argue that whilst social encounters and interaction generate disputes, because of the diversity of common goods within society, compromises have the capacity to deflect disagreement. This is not easy, because disputes and disagreements are embedded within the fabric of academic institutions. Criticisms of people’s actions and decisions, and, in turn, their counter-arguments or justifications for what they do, serve both to undermine compromises and to build new ones according to societal changes. Following this sociological perspective, regimes of justice and diversity of ‘goods’ are embedded in academic interaction, creating the structure that defines the contexts within which academics carry out their working lives. In the first part of my chapter I apply this theoretical framework to present evidence of tensions faced by homo academicus in his or her daily work and quest for legitimacy; it serves as a useful device for conveying the complexity of academic commitments in the social world, and the diversity of academics’ resourcefulness in justifying their actions to peers, policy-makers, practitioners and stakeholders – all of which both shape and reflect their identities as academics. Through the lens of this sociological perspective I present personal examples of how my own experiences as an academic, and of the range of ways in which I experience different principles of fairness and justice, forged my own identity. The last part of the chapter focuses on the current discourse within the French academy, with its debates and controversies between those committed to republican principles of fairness and justice and the legacy of the Enlightenment.

The French academy: Tensions around principles of fairness and justice In this section I do not describe the hierarchies of domination and the symbolic violence that characterise the academy, nor do I focus upon academics’ power games. Rather, I draw upon the experiences of academics and the sense they make of their actions and their agency – particularly when they call upon their inner resources to support their interpersonal interaction. Reflecting their identities, academic discourse is underpinned by principles of fairness and justice linked to different perceptions of the common good, but it also reflects the various problems that academics identify and encounter. In such challenging situations French academics typically react by justifying their own

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actions and criticising others (these are respectively translated into French as justification and dénonciation, and here and there in this chapter I retain the anglicised versions – ‘justification’ and ‘denunciation’ – of these French terms, as labels that neatly and succinctly convey what are arguably these pillars of French academic collegial interaction). As responses to problematic situations justification and denunciation generate disagreement and controversy, but they rarely lead to conflict; people make compromises and learn to live with each other, giving way on small matters – allowing battles to be lost in order to avoid all-out war – and thus a form of working and workable collegiality is preserved. Boltanski and Thévenot’s social theory offers an explanation of why and how these compromises prevail, and why and how principles of fairness and justice are upholding the common good. In the following pages I illustrate some of the arguments typically put forward by French academics in a range of challenging situations.

Between denunciation and justification: A ‘plural grammar’ of principles of justice Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) identify six types of common good that can be distinguished in relation to the ‘cognitive’ ‘worlds’ or spheres shared by academics – those that determine the intellectual dimensions of their practice: the Inspired (I), Domestic (D), Civic (C), Opinion (O), Market (M) and Industrial (Ind) worlds1 (in the appendix to this chapter I elaborate on these terms, through identification of their characteristics). An academic may, for example, be inspired when s/he is involved in creative thought and writing (I). This orientation is important in France, where the philosophical tradition plays an important role, particularly in the social sciences. The model of the philosopher – the creator of ideas – is particularly valued in the public sphere through cafés philosophiques, where the layperson can access and participate in philosophical discussion and debate (Pinto, 2009); the French intellectual is a symbolic constituent of this historical tradition. The academic must also respect her or his peers (D) and be appreciated and celebrated if s/he wants to build up an academic reputation that is recognised, in the public, non1

I apply this codification to the rest of this chapter, to avoid introducing too many concepts. The juxtaposition of two ‘worlds’ is denoted by a forward slash (e.g. the world of domesticity versus the world of the market: D/M) and the compromise between two worlds is denoted by the abbreviation ‘compr’ (e.g. a compromise between the world of domesticity and the world of the market is represented as: D compr. M). I also refer readers to the appendix to this chapter, for an elaboration on the characteristics of the different worlds.

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academic arena and by the media (O). Such peer regulation characterises the academic establishment as it is described by Pierre Bourdieu (1996) in his study of academics’ areas of power and the establishment’s ‘nobility’ or elite. When it comes to formulating and promulgating opinion there is more ambivalence; the promotion and advancement of reason – to which French academics are generally committed – represents a departure from common sense (doxa). In the social sciences it requires the objectification of the social world, particularly the application of quantitative tools and a positivist approach, following a tradition initiated by Condorcet and Auguste Comte (Ind) (Desrosières, 1998). Paradoxically, in aspiring to influence public opinion – emulating famous intellectuals like Sartre and Bourdieu – some academics have found themselves in the media spotlight. The public intellectual, representing the juncture of – and compromise between – the world of inspiration and the world of opinion (I compr. 0), is sometimes considered a vehicle for disseminating critical thought to non-academics, for the purpose of enlightening and emancipating them. In her or his day-to-day activities, each academic also has to demonstrate effectiveness (Ind) and awareness of the need to respond to market forces (M); for example, by meeting editorial deadlines and by considering how her/his latest book will be promoted and marketed. Despite most French academics’ disregard for performativity, marketisation-focused thinking is facilitated by metrics, accountability mechanisms and rankings (Hazelkorn, 2011). Academics would argue that cost-effectiveness and neoliberal performativity do not sit easy with what they see as their purpose of serving national or local public interests (C). In France academics are civil servants, paid by the state, and accordingly their role is to defend public services and public interest against the intrusion of marketisation – a perspective that is widely shared by the influential trade unions. But, as s/he goes about her/his daily business, the academic has to make compromises and act according to principles that are not always shared by colleagues. In the interests of academic creativity, s/he may, for example, resist – or complain about – the effects that performativity and marketisation impose on her or his publications (I/M). S/he may battle against collegial interference that threatens to undermine the effectiveness of her/his research unit in developing new research projects (D/I). She may be criticised by others as a selfish, uncooperative person seeking self-aggrandisement and reluctant to engage in academic citizenship (O/D). These tensions remain part and parcel of academic life, but compromise can secure relative peace, harmony and a sense of civility; academic authorship, for example, may facilitate situations that

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represent compromise (Pontille, 2004). Far from being an independent activity, authorship represents the application of different ‘rules’ of behaviour and interaction that reflect fairness, such as when a senior academic co-authors with a junior colleague (D) to help establish the latter and raise her/his profile (O), or the belonging to a community (of practice) (C). Academic authorship has the potential to create reputations (O) within an academic peer group (D) and also within a research community and within wider society (C); it represents inspiration (I) on the part of a researcher formulating new concepts or/and methodologies, whilst also including her/him in a competitive environment (M) for creativity (I) and ranking (Ind).

The French academy: The status quo and recurrent debates Following a long historical tradition, there is much about the structure of the French higher education sector that has now become accepted as the status quo and which for the most part remains unchallenged – except by a few reformistminded academics (e.g. Beaud et al., 2010; Musselin, 2004). A great divide persists between universities (which are required to accept as students any baccalaureateholders) and the grandes écoles (elite, selective higher education institutions, comparable in status to the United Kingdom’s Oxbridge and Australia’s Group of Eight). Such a hierarchically determined disparity also applies to academics in France; on the one hand, there are the privileged members of the Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), who have no teaching duties and enjoy the luxury of being permitted to engage in full-time research activities. Much lower down the academic pecking order, on the other hand, a second constituency is that of university academics, with research, teaching and administrative duties. Yet despite this status-related divide, both of these constituencies share common ideologies of fairness and equity. Moreover, their careers depend largely on their peers, who have the power to influence their selection and recruitment, and to approve their accreditation (D). Most of them belong to trade unions (C) which represent their interests on different committees and have a say on matters related to promotions and career progression. Above all, the French academy espouses republican principles: equality of opportunity (C) and meritocracy (Ind.) (Goastellec, 2010). Paradoxically, this meritocratic vision of equality and social justice fuels a selective, elitist system whose label ‘republican’ affords it approbation on the basis of its connoting recognition and reward of effort and merit. Progressive academics, however, advocate a narrowing of the gap between the grandes écoles and the universities,

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with a view to better supporting undergraduates and reducing dropout rates. There are calls for a less divisive higher education system that allows workingclass and first-generation students the same opportunities as their middleclass counterparts to academic, rather than lower status, vocational-focused courses. Such putative or proposed reforms have been the subject of recent public debate and criticism of the status quo (Caillé and Chanial, 2009), representing the opposing perspectives of the political right and left. French elitism is criticised for its persistent waste of the skills and talents required for competing in the global economy, and which often remain untapped or underdeveloped amongst the lower social classes (Ind or M/C). The prevalent system of peer approval and regulation has also come under fire: cases of cronyism and prejudice in academic promotions and assessment have persuaded some policy-makers and academics that peer regulation, rather than transparency and fairness, has actually undermined and threatened them (O or Ind/D). There are no rules or regulations that cover conflicts of interests, and the partisan spirit is very much alive and kicking on journal editorial boards, impacting review processes and systems (C/D). A climate of suspicion prevails in the academic estate (Ind/C or D), in the humanities and social sciences, in trade unionism and corporatism, engendering disputes and quarrels about theoretical paradigms and schools of thought.

The formation of an ‘identity’: A personal, autobiographical ‘take’ on fairness and justice Having outlined the contextual backdrop, in this section I relate some of my own experiences during my period as an academic at my former institution, l’Institut Français de l’Education in Lyon. Boltanski and Thévenot refer to a ‘grammar’ of principles of justice – by which they mean that the principles of fairness and justice operate on the same lines as rules of grammar in providing a structural framework to social actors’ discourses and actions. This is described as a ‘plural’ grammar because the common good is achieved through, and is dependent upon, multiple – hence ‘plural’ – classes and strands of discourse and exemplars. I apply this theoretical frame to the autobiographical analyses which follows. I illustrate – by analysing some of the tensions between different ‘worlds’ – the relative complexity and uncertainty underpinning the making of the academic self (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999; Mead, 1934; Ricoeur, 1992), of

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which academic identity formation is a key dimension. The shaping of multiple identities is one way of coping with and responding to the challenges and paradoxes of academic life.

The state as a civic common good: Contradictions and controversy Egalitarianism and equality represent key tenets of a French cultural tradition expertly examined by Alexis de Tocqueville (2000). The recognition of the value of the civic common good is the glue that binds together French society, the educational system, and educational research to the extent that it blinkers people against accepting opposing ideologies – including marketisation and its derivatives: neoliberalism and performativity (C/M). Reflecting this tendency, in my former institution any deviation from what was perceived as a fair and equitable distribution of benefits and resources or creativity and innovation tended to be viewed with suspicion – interpreted as selfish competitiveness that runs counter to collegiality (C compr. D/ I compr. M). It explains why, for example, precisely the same small amount of money was allocated to staff for their expenses without taking into account the quality of their work and the nature and extent of their research and scholarship outputs (C/Ind). Individuals responded by finding ways around the rules that imposed such inflexible procedures and processes; they typically used any influence they enjoyed through committee memberships and other networks in order to broker backroom ‘deals’ and arrangements (D/C), passing off resultant decisions and policy as representing the interests of collegial cooperation and the common good. This tension between a ‘society of equals’ (C) and peer relationships (D) occurs frequently within France’s educational research community. As trade union representatives, peers exercise power in relation not only to job appointments and promotions but also to the election of university senior managers, including institutional directors (D compr. C). Engagement with the research community is sought, with policy reforms involving debates and arguments grounded in competing ideologies, perpetuating inter-group divisions. Modernists and conservatives argue amongst and between themselves over values and principles of fairness and justice – particularly social justice, equality and citizenship, which can spark off demonstrations and other forms of protest (C). Whilst educationalists tend to be ignored or overlooked by the media and by policymakers, philosophers and journalists who speak out on ethics or morals or other ‘hot’ cultural topics often find themselves in the limelight (O). Some issues – like moral and religious education, selection (of students), state secularism, and

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the long-running saga of the right to wear the Islamic veil – demonstrate the hypertrophy of the civic good in French society. For the most part academics and managers of higher education institutions share a commitment to the state (C); higher education in France is a highly centralised system – a public service that is subject to strict rules, imposed by central government, relating to curricular design and certification and qualifications. In my former institution each department or service fought for its share of funding – which was depleted by budget cuts. Yet as long as bureaucracy held sway and retained its grip on how people were permitted to interact, the rigid legal and regulatory framework that it imposed precluded the kind of responsive flexibility and diversification required to develop partnerships and research projects (Crozier, 1964). Entrepreneurship and marketisation were regarded with mistrust as running counter to public service values (C/M). Moreover, since each minor civil servant has discretionary power either to facilitate or impede research projects and programmes (D/I), the enterprising academic had to be patient and Quixotic-like, to tilt at the windmills of bureaucracy if s/he wanted to innovate and to engage with international networks. Each member of the institution was preoccupied with safeguarding her or his territory and power to fend off others who threatened to encroach upon them (D/Ind).

Confronting different principles of fairness and justice I arrived at l’Institut Français de l’Education by accident, as a social science secondary teacher. I had been unaware of its existence until – on beginning my doctoral research at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales – my supervisor had put me in touch with the head of the department of policy studies in education who was seeking a research assistant. Entering the world of academic research is a culture shock; it conjures up feelings of humility, anxiety and inferiority (D). Initially I was full of admiration for those academics whose scholarly language was hard to decode (D compr. I). I gradually came to grasp the rituals of research seminars and to work out the micro-politics of the place and its power hierarchies: who was close to the most important academics, who had the status and intellectual credibility that afforded them the ‘right’ to speak, how to ask good questions – and how to forget the bad ones! (D compr. O) (Goffman, 1972). Thus my academic identity began to be formed. It can be traumatic for early career academics and researchers when they first present their research findings to colleagues (Ind. compr. D); everything is codified, but implicit, and certain social skills are required to fit in

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in a research community (D. compr. C). Institutional micro-politics and their effects – influence, power, strategies and different interests – are not immediately apparent, though they may be discernible in the ways in which people take the floor and argue their points. Whilst interaction within the research group appears collegial, it is in fact underpinned by individuals’ agendas and characterised by subtle strategies that relate to recognition, inclusion and exclusion (D/C) – which, again, are the bases of academic identities. As these initial feeling of strangeness and vulnerability dissipate, working within the profession requires common sense if one is to become acculturated and accepted socially within the wider research community. From my earliest days in this educational research community into which I had been propelled, I found myself confronted by diverse social contexts shot through with significant tensions between different interpretations of fairness and justice. Academics have to learn to coexist with multiple situations and to frame their identities in relation to negotiations and arrangements that impact on their careers and individual projects. The academic self is shaped by multiple identities in regard to different types of work or interactions and subtle games of legitimacy and recognition (Frazer and Honneth, 1998). I had come from a social science (not an educational studies) background and I quickly became aware of the yawning gap between the theory-focused dimension that had been evident at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the practicalities of dealing with arguments about values, which incorporated implicit and unchallenged republican conceptions of knowledge and citizenship (I/C). This created an initial identity crisis that was essentially ontological, as I found myself faced with two different – and in many ways competing – possible selves to adopt and develop. On delving into Anglo-American research, I began to feel more and more the weight of a cultural gap highlighted by the ethnocentrism that characterises and influences French educational research. For me, some colleagues were overemphasising the notion of ‘republican civic good’ and seemed quite blind to the merits of competing ideologies and different modes of political representation. I found myself having to make intellectual compromises in order to adjust to what was, for me, a new and unfamiliar professional environment. I had to abandon the ground-breaking conceptually focused research developed by my Ph.D. supervisor in order to find common dialogic ground within the French educational research community and to become published, and hence recognised, within it (I compr. O). I had to fit in with my institution’s priorities and foci, to contribute to its quadrennial programme, to incorporate consideration of and

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acknowledge the work of my colleagues and the topics of my research group (D compr. C). My own research priorities and foci were determined in response to orders from the Ministry of Education (compr C, D, I). I got involved in local meetings organised by trade unions, acting as a union representative on some of my institution’s academic and administrative committees (D compr. C). I found myself having to deal with a hierarchical and bureaucratic administration that was not conducive to creativity and innovation (D/I). These strategic compromises were my responses to ways of doing things and to viewpoints that were not congruent with mine, and which became evident at meetings, where social actors – my colleagues and managers – manifested their different perspectives, their commitments and the ways in which they tried to reach consensus or agreement. Such interaction – and responses to it – shapes the academic self and multiple identities are reconfigured as different opportunities and challenges present themselves and need dealing with. The making of the self is embedded in problems, difficulties and biographical shocks that combine to define academic career stages and progression.

Finding a way across the changing European landscape: Academic, expert, entrepreneur Within this challenging environment, I had to find my way as an academic located within what seemed an insular or parochial environment, whilst yet confronting and engaging with an emerging world influenced by globalisation and by the European lifelong learning agenda. I began to forge relationships with the anglophone research community and I became involved in European partnerships and research programmes. Although the ‘publish or perish’ regime is less pronounced and its standards are less demanding in France than overseas, I developed my capacity to write for publication in foreign-based academic journals. At the same time, I still had to comply with the academic tradition that prevailed – and still does prevail – in the French academy, where peer regulation remains an omnipresent potent force (Ind & O/D). I had to demonstrate that my skills correlated with the scholarly and theoretical expectations of my discipline, ensuring that I retained links with academics able to understand and support my work within the French research community. Another tension was related to the increasing internationalisation of my research, which required a responsive and comprehensive infrastructure that facilitated relationships with foreign institutions and academics. My institution remained bureaucratic and risk-averse, with most of its managers

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more concerned to conform to statutory requirements than to develop new opportunities – particularly those requiring complex administrative and financial support (C/M or Ind). So it was difficult to persuade my institutional colleagues and managers to become involved in the comparative and European research programmes that excited me, to bid for funds from other public providers, to support travel to European meetings and conferences, and to welcome overseas visiting academics. A third tension was characterised by lack of evaluation. Some politicians and political discourses promote excellence, yet France’s higher education system is not geared up for developing transparent and impartial evaluation of academic achievements and skills (Ind/O). In French educational research there is vagueness around how the quality of research findings may be evaluated, and patronage regulates individual careers (D/C). Decisions about which academic or training projects should be prioritised or promoted are seldom justified and depend more on some colleagues’ capacity for influence than on objective evaluation measures (D/Ind). Research activities at my institution typically comprised a mish-mash of people’s pet projects, making for loosely coupled and weak research programmes that lacked awareness, or failed to incorporate consideration, of the institutional and global environment. They did nothing to enhance the institution’s reputation, credibility and visibility at the national or European level. Finding a way through and between the local, national and European levels implies a multiplicity of identities representing commitment to academic work, expertise and entrepreneurship (Derouet and Normand, 2012), and this creates problems with colleagues and the wider research community. As an academic in France one’s status as an expert is perceived negatively and is subject to criticism and derision, because it is commonly accepted that the expert sacrifices her or his intellectual autonomy in order to follow unusual and narrow interests, or to serve the political agenda or the market (I/M & D). Educational researchers in France typically consider expertise to lead to the adoption of a normative register that is incompatible with the maintenance of a critical and impartial stance (I/Ind). To most French academics research must be divorced from political power and business, and the state must intervene to redistribute public funds to guarantee this impartiality and foster the development of objective knowledge that is not partisan (compr. I, C & M). The same is true of entrepreneurship. Chasing (research) grants, it is argued, must not represent opportunistic pursuit of funding at all costs; care should be taken to avoid creating or highlighting disparity between academics – such as might arise from some securing grants and

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others failing to do so. Collegiality must take precedence over competition. As a custodian of academic freedom, the academic must shun entrepreneurism. This shared moral stance offers advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side it safeguards the academic profession and its knowledge output from instrumentalist purposes that serve the market and accommodate policy-makers’ narrow expectations – the kinds of neoliberalist practices that have taken a firm grip on the academies of many other developed countries, but that have so far been resisted and largely avoided in France. However, a negative effect of this perspective is that, through the medium of a patrimonial interpretation and application of collegiality that is supported by highly bureaucratic structures, creativity is stifled and intellectual talent within the academic community often remains untapped and under-developed. Tackling the new challenges posed by globalisation and by the EHEA and the ERA is consequently doubly difficult for French academics.

Europe and globalisation at the door: New challenges facing the French academy The French educational research community inhabits what is effectively an autarchic insular universe, where ‘global’ issues are parochially interpreted as being limited to the francophone world, and where any interaction with anglophone communities is undertaken with suspicious caution. As I argue elsewhere (Normand, 2012), globalisation does not feature within academic discussions, and lifelong learning is of little interest to French academics, who seem to be deaf to – or to be covering their ears to block out – the loud knocking of globalisation, and specifically the Bologna Process, on the door of their academy, which is steeped in traditions begun in the Napoleonic era (Martens and Wolf, 2009). Whilst the French higher education system is undergoing significant transformation with the introduction of key modernising reforms (Evans and Cosnefroy, 2013), this transformation process has met with resistance, often borne of misunderstanding or ignorance.

Modernising French higher education and research Reflecting increasing acceptance that modernisation is long overdue in the French higher education system (Derouet and Normand, 2008; Musselin, 2009), a succession of reforms – many of them statutory – have been implemented

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(Evans and Cosnefroy, 2013), including the adoption of the principles of new public management (Ind.). The creation of l’Agence d’Evaluation de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur (AERES) (National Agency for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education) has ostensibly forged stronger links with the rest of Europe through affiliation with the European Network of Quality Assurance, but the system is far from perfect because any recommendations for improvement are largely based on peer assessment and seldom filter down to impact upon research and teaching teams (it is a far cry from research assessment mechanisms such as the United Kingdom’s Research excellence framework [REF] or Australia’s Excellence in research for Australia [D compr. Ind]). Nevertheless, the principle of accountability has been introduced into the French higher education system and has created challenges and demands. Despite strong trade unionism, some higher education reforms were welcomed by academics – few of whom, for example, opposed the Bologna-instigated reform that imposed on the academy what is known as the LMD (licence, master, doctorat) framework. Yet the introduction and promulgation of research and higher education clusters, known as pôles de recherché et d’enseignement supérieur (PRES), intended to create inter-institutional critical masses of research excellence that could compete on a global scale, met with resistance, with the elite grandes écoles jealously wanting to preserve their autonomy. An interesting case was the appointment of the new director of one grande école – Science-Po – after the death of Richard Decoings; despite his election by an internal board (in the tradition of universities, but hitherto not of grandes écoles), Decoings’s successor was dismissed by the minister for higher education and research on the grounds of suspected fraud and conflict of interests and was replaced by a high-ranking civil servant of the Ministry’s choice. French cultural tradition does not embrace the concept of leadership as it is applied in the Anglo-Saxon worlds and in many other geo-cultural contexts; higher education senior managers are expected to be bureaucratic managers rather than inspirational leaders who motivate people and encourage and facilitate creativity and innovation (D/I). This kind of management represents inappropriate use of power that prompts criticism and controversy amongst the research community (C/D).

Europe at the door of the ivory tower Despite its idiosyncrasies, the French higher education system has finally entered an era of modernisation. Yet, far from being subjected to academic capitalism (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004), it remains relatively traditional in relation to

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managing academic careers and controlling research activity, retaining a lack of transparency and ‘readability’ that disadvantages young people wanting to enter it as students, and confounds foreign researchers who want to make sense of it, while the nature of its endogenously reproduced research is unconducive to creative scholarship. In the field of education, academic activity is not really developed at the European or international levels, first, because of the French academic community’s general lack of proficiency in English – academia’s lingua franca – and second, because of its mistrustful weak affinity with the AngloAmerican research community that does not share French epistemological and methodological traditions. (Other francophone research communities [in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland], seeming by comparison more receptive to international influences, find themselves mediating or acting as brokers between the anglophone and francophone academic worlds.) There is moreover a lag of 30 years between the evolution of Anglo-American higher education and the slow pace of development in French higher education, which is, in comparison, less attuned to the kind of internationalisation that involves welcoming overseas students and visiting researchers, and – at least in the humanities and social sciences – is less involved in European and international programmes. The potential impact of the brain-drain of talented French post-docs who cannot find employment in France has long been underestimated by policy-makers; only recently has the Ministry of Higher Education and Research woken up to and tried to address this problem with Les initiatives d’excellence (IDEX) – an ambitious programme involving the creation of, inter alia: mega-universities – clusters of existing institutions – to serve as world-class multidisciplinary poles of excellence in higher education and research, the creation of special chairs, and new grants available for excellent research units. Whilst several of the reform initiatives adopted by the French higher education system are strongly influenced by European policy, no French policymaker would admit as much to the academic community and trade unions (Derouet and Normand, 2011; Lawn and Grek, 2012) – yet it is an influence that is evident in the most progressive universities. Elsewhere, social justice-related problems prevail, with first-generation students from working-class families entering a higher education system that is not geared up for dealing with their distinct needs (Evans and Cosnefroy, 2013). The shrinking of the public purse in the current financial crisis prompts more and more academics to seek research funding, so competition has intensified. The Socialist government pledged to restore academic collegiality and to limit competition, through redistributing

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resources in the interests of equity. Some organisations’ and institutions’ names were changed from those that connoted neoliberalism – the use of ‘agency’ within names was frowned upon, for example. Yet, in the end, the same principles of governance remain.

Conclusion This analysis of the complexity of homo academicus, through the construction of the self and the mobilisation of principles of fairness and justice, echoes Foucault’s (1984) explanation that the knowledge of the self, informed through having to deal with a succession of problems and difficulties, plays a part in defining the truth in relation to what the moral subject is capable of. In discussing the ‘grammar’ of common goods that reflects the various decisions made by academics in their day-to-day work, and the inner (cognitive) resources that they draw upon, I have revealed something of the reflexive and voluntary practices that underpin the rules that a French community imposes on itself, and something of the ways in which it deals with challenging and problematic issues and situations. To understand the subjectivation of the self in these contexts that I have tried to convey through my narrative, it is important to keep in mind the governing mechanisms and regimes of truth that dictate the direction and nature of academic activity by imposing collective norms over which individuals have no control. It is worth considering how, applying established analytical frameworks, the complex identity of homo academicus may be thought of. As Tom Popkewitz (2012) writes, human beings are framed by their autonomy and subjectivity as much as by the fabrication of “human types” on a scale that makes them quantifiable and instrumental for government ends (Popkewitz, 2012). Homo academicus’s agency – the mediation between a subject with multiple identities and an increasingly normalising environment – is redefined at the parameters of a scientific space that was mapped out at the end of the Middle Ages. The prevalence of standards, accountability and evidence-based education mechanisms are increasingly governing and delineating the nature of academics’ work, while rankings and bibliometrics are pushing them in the direction of unbridled competition and competitiveness. Today, the uncertainty that defines academics’ trajectories and careers also reflects their development and reconstruction of multiple identities over time. In this chapter I have tried to convey something of this from my own experience,

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through an interpretation of the self and narratives which, as Paul Ricoeur (1992) observes, constitutes the singularity of action embedded within the past and the future. History and narrative combine to assign to individuals or groups identities that reflect life’s changes and cohesiveness. Whilst ‘sameness’ injects a degree of permanence into time, the temporal unicity of narratives takes account of and reflects the individual’s identity, the unity of his/her life history, his/her singularity and uniqueness in relation to encounters with unforeseen problems and events. It is through their personal stories that identities are forged out of the merging of individuals’ uniqueness, the immutability of their characters that have been shaped by their habits and their ‘sameness’: individuals’ enduring immutability. In this chapter I have outlined the nature of homo academicus’s identity within the French academy: a study in the invention of the self in exploring the parameters of autonomy and future horizons through a quest for fairness and justice.

Acknowledgement I am indebted to my friend and colleague, Linda Evans, for having polished my English in this chapter.

References Boltanski, L. and Thévenot, L. (2006), On Justification. The Economies of Worth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1988), Homo Academicus. Cambridge: Polity Press. — (1996), The State Nobility. Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Standford, CA: Standford University Press. Caillé, A. and Chanial, P. (2009), L’Université en crise. Mort ou résurrection, Revue du MAUSS, 33(1). Crozier, M. (1964), The Bureaucratic Phenomenon: Examination of Bureaucracy in Modern Organizations and Its Cultural Setting in France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derouet, J.-L. and Normand, R. (2011), ‘The Hesitation of French Policy Makers in Identifying a Third Way in Education’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 43(2): 141–63. — (2012), ‘Les nouvelles épreuves d’Homo Academicus. Revisiter la condition universitaire dans une société de la connaissance’, in J.-E. Charlier, S. Croché and

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B. Leclercq (eds), Contrôler la qualité dans l’enseignement supérieur. Louvain-LaNeuve: Academya, L’Harmattan, pp. 45–57. Desrosières, A. (1998), The Politics of Large Numbers – A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Evans, L. and Cosnefroy, L. (2013), ‘The Dawn of a New Academic Professionalism in the French Academy? Academics Facing the Challenges of Imposed Reform’, Studies in Higher Education, 38(8): 1201–21. Foucault, M. (2005), The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982. New York: Picador. Frazer, N. and Honneth, A. (1998), Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange. London: Verso. Goastellec, G. (2010), Understanding Inequalities in, through and by Higher Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Goffman, E. (1972), Interaction Rituals. London: Penguin Press. Hazelkorn, E. (2011), Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education. The Battle for World-Class Excellence. HoundMills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lawn, M. and Grek, S. (2012), Europeanizing Education. Governing a New Policy Space. Oxford: Symposium Book. Martens, K. and Wolf, K. D. (2009), ‘Boomerangs and Trojan Horses – The Unintended Consequences of Internationalizing Education Policy through the EU and the OECD’, in A. Amaral, G. Neave, C. Musselin and P. Massen (eds), European Integration and the Governance of Higher Education and Research – The Challenge and Complexities of an Emerging Multi-level Governance System. Berlin: Springer, pp. 81–107. Mead, G.-H. (1934), Mind Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Musselin, C. (2004), The Long March of French Universities. London: Routledge. — (2009), ‘France. From Invisible Transitions to Institutional Change’, in C. Paradeise, E. Reale, E. Ferlie and I. Bleiklie (eds), University Governance. Western European Comparative Perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 21–49. Normand, R. (2012), ‘French Educators’ Uncertainties and Doubts against Changes Influenced by Globalization’, in T. Seddon, J. Ozga and J. Levin (eds), Globalization and Professions. London: Routledge World Yearbook of Education, pp. 184–200. Pinto, L. (2009), Le Café du commerce des penseurs. À propos de la doxa intellectuelle. Bellecombe-en-Bauges, éd. du Croquant, collection Savoir/agir. Pontille, D. (2004), La signature scientifique. Une sociologie pragmatique de l’attribution. Paris: CNRS Editions. Popkewitz, T. (2012), ‘Numbers in Grids of Intelligibility: Making Sense of How Educational Truth Is Told’, in H. Lauder, M. Young, H. Daniels, M. Balarin and J. Lowe (eds), Educating for the Knowledge Economy? Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 169–91. Ricoeur, P. (1992), Oneself as Another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Slaughter, S. and Rhoades, G. (2004), Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Tocqueville (de), A. (2000), Democracy in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Appendix ‘Worlds of justice’, as presented in L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot (1999). Inspired Mode of evaluation (worth) Format of relevant information Elementary relation Human qualification

Domestic

Grace, non- Esteem, conformity, hierarchy creativeness Emotional Oral, exemplary Passion

Trust

Creativity, ingenuity

Authority

Civic

Opinion

Market

Public Fame interest

Price, gain

Formal, official

Monetary

Semiotic

Industrial Effectiveness

Measurement and criteria, statistics Solidarity Recognition Competition Functional link Professional Equality Celebrity Desire, purchasing competency, expertise power

10

High-Flyers and Underdogs: The Polarisation of Finnish Academic Identities* Oili-Helena Ylijoki and Jani Ursin

The macro-level changes in the policy, funding and governance of higher education impact on the micro-level of daily activities in academia, shaping and moulding how academics make sense of their work and their roles. The image of the university as a territory inhabited by distinct academic tribes – with their own disciplinary cultures, and academics as tribe members with firm disciplinary identities (Becher, 1989) – has been challenged by increasing, and often conflicting, external pressures on higher education. New managerial practices with audits, performance measurements, rankings, profilings and competition for funding have substantially transformed the academy as a workplace (Enders et al., 2009; Nixon, 1996; 2003) as academics are expected to increase and improve their performance in both teaching and research and demonstrate societal impact. Alongside this, short-term employment has become commonplace since casualisation has been a standard response to an insecure funding environment (e.g. Enders, 2000; Rhoades, 2010; Ylijoki, 2010). The Finnish higher education system has witnessed several transformations that are indicative of such a changing context; whilst based on the Nordic welfare state model that perceives higher education as a public good, it has nonetheless become increasingly market-oriented in recent decades. Since the turn of the century in particular, several significant transformations have taken place. A more performance-based salary structure was introduced in 2005 (Jauhiainen et al., 2009); the New Universities Act of 2010 devolved the university sector from * Some of the arguments presented in this chapter were developed in O.-H. Ylijoki and J. Ursin (2013), ‘The Construction of Academic Identity in the Changes of Finnish Higher Education’, Studies in Higher Education, 38: 1135–49.

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government control and transformed civil-service employment relationships into contractual ones (Välimaa, 2012); institutional mergers created three new universities in 2010 (Ursin et al., 2010; Ylijoki, 2014); and an outcomes-based funding formula is scheduled for introduction in 2015. All of these changes have increased competition between and within Finnish higher education institutions. Similar changes across the developed world have increasingly fragmented and blurred the academic profession (e.g. Clegg, 2008; Fanghanel, 2012; Gornall and Salisbury, 2012; Henkel, 2000; 2012; McInnis, 2012; Musselin, 2005; Ylijoki, 2013). In addition, growing competition at all levels of higher education has promoted the stratification and polarisation of academic staff into two tiers, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’: those who benefit from the changes and those who do not (e.g. Kogan et al., 1994; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Ylijoki, 2014). These transformations shape academic culture, influencing academic identity constructions and interpretations of what it means to be an academic in the present-day university. In this chapter we explore academic identity formation from a narrative perspective, which views stories as a fundamental form of human understanding through which individuals make sense of their experiences and of themselves (e.g. Carroll, 2001; Elliot, 2005; Herman, 2009; Polkinghorne, 1988). A cultural stock of stories that are prominent in a given cultural context serve as resources for individuals to orient themselves in the social world, interpret that world in an appropriate manner, and relate to others in meaningful ways. Narratives also reflect a moral order (Harré, 1983), which defines what is seen as good, right and valued, and what is seen as bad, wrong and worthless, enabling individuals to reach shared understandings of the core values and basic assumptions that prevail within and define their culture. On the one hand, narratives have normative power over individuals – and sometimes a particular narrative may become so dominant and hegemonic that it is treated as a self-evident fact beyond all human intervention; on the other hand, without narrative resources individuals would be lost, unable to orient themselves and come to terms with changes in their environments. Individuals live amongst a variety of narratives, ensuring that there is always at least some space for agency and choice. Narratives are therefore not culturally imposed straightjackets that determine individuals’ action, but cultural tools that may not only be adopted and absorbed but also redefined, reshaped and recreated in and through social interaction. We argue that academics make sense of their work and of themselves by absorbing, negotiating, reshaping and co-creating stories. Faced with continuous

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changes, they need to rework and redefine what it means to be an academic and what actually are their key values and moral commitments under these changing circumstances. Drawing upon data generated through an empirical research project, in this chapter we examine the diversity of narratives of changes in academic work that prevail in the present-day Finnish university, and consider what kinds of narratives Finnish academics use to make sense of their work experiences and to build their academic identities. We begin by outlining details of our research.

The research project: An outline of the design and method The empirical basis of our chapter is data generated through focused interviews with 42 Finnish academics. The interviews formed part of a joint research project, ‘Universities’ Structural Development, Academic Communities and Change’ (2008–9), funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education. Data collection included interviews with academics from eight Finnish research universities that had undergone structural reforms at the institutional and/or unit level. The interviewees represented different disciplinary fields and organisational positions and ranged from senior to early career academics. The themes addressed in the interview conversations included recent transformations at the institutional level, and more generally in the Finnish higher education system, as well as interviewees’ day-to-day work experiences and responses to the changes. Drawing upon a narrative perspective, we explore the variety of narratives through which academics understand change and its impact upon their work, and accordingly, what kinds of identities are thereby constructed. We are interested in the content of narratives, not in the linguistic forms of narration; in other words, we pose ‘what?’ rather than ‘how?’ questions (Hyvärinen, 2008: 47). In doing so, we seek to illustrate how differently the apparently same changes in higher education are interpreted, resulting in dramatically distinct – even totally opposing – academic identities that emerge from the current Finnish university context. It is important to emphasise that the unit of our analysis was not the individual academic but a fairly coherent discursive act, which we conceptualise as a distinct narrative that relates specifically to recent changes in Finnish academia. This means that there is no one-to-one relationship between a particular narrative and a particular academic; rather, in the course of her/his interview, an academic may have identified her or his reliance on several narratives, depending on which

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issues and themes were discussed. Whilst one narrative typically emerged from the interviewee’s account as a principal influence, other influential narratives would also be identified as interviewees related their work experiences. Based on our narrative analysis of the data, we identify eight different narratives, each providing a specific way of making sense of the changes that have impacted higher education in Finland, and of what it means to be an academic in that context. We have classified these eight narratives into two basic storylines: regressive and progressive (see Gergen and Gergen, 1983). In regressive storylines recent changes are perceived negatively as representing the deterioration of one’s work context and situation, and of one’s standing in academia. In progressive storylines, in contrast, changes are described positively: as representing improvement and progress. Our analysis led us to identify five different regressive storyline narratives that were focused on academic life (the narratives of resistance, loss, work overload, job insecurity and cynical bystander), all incorporating descriptions of worries, disillusionments, fears or dissatisfaction of some kind. Three narratives represent the progressive storyline (the narratives of success, mobility and change agency), exuding contentment, optimism and high morale.

Conflicting narratives of academic identities We present the eight narratives one by one, beginning in each case with quotes that illustrate the tone of the narrative in question. After the quotes, we outline how the changes in higher education are understood, and then characterise the essence of the academic identity embedded in each narrative. Since regressive storylines are the more typical category represented in our interview data, we begin with them.

The narrative of resistance Overall I’m annoyed that business principles have been introduced into the university. (. . .) There are ethical questions involved, so I don’t want this. (. . .) I mean, what’s happening in the university system nationally, how things are, and also what’s happening inside the university. All this development, in my opinion, is heading in the wrong direction. I think we need a Humboldtian university. [Female associate professor] I was involved at the time in the protests about salary, and now I’m involved a lot in this opposition to the University Act. They’re not good, these things – and

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this new salary structure, for example, it really annoys me. They’re rather . . . how shall I put it? – they’re ethically dubious. [Male associate professor]

In this narrative the recent changes in higher education are strongly opposed for moral and ethical reasons. Irritated and resentful, academics associate these changes with what they consider unacceptable managerialist and neoliberal ideologies. The trend of presenting students as consumers or customers and academic knowledge as a marketable commodity are perceived as particularly objectionable, so overt opposition and protestations are seen as morally justifiable and legitimate responses to the changes occurring not only in universities but in many cases in wider society. The form of academic identity embedded in this resistance narrative is that of critic and rebel. Academics make sense of their work through a lens of negativity; they are first and foremost opposed to current neoliberal policy. Their own working conditions and their positions within academia may not necessarily have been affected, so their opposition does not always reflect selfinterest; it is a principled objection. Their opposition often reflects nostalgic yearning for what they imagine as a golden age of ‘traditional’ academic values and ideals: academic freedom, autonomy, collegiality, knowledge as a common good and the principles that underpin the Humboldtian university model – these epitomise the standards and moral virtues perceived as seriously threatened, and which therefore need actively defending. Whilst reflecting negativity – representing an oppositional stance – this identity incorporates a positive dimension insofar as it generates an academic identity that incorporates strong personal conviction and commitment to specific ideologies and values.

The narrative of loss We’ve been extensively reorganised. First, our new head said he wouldn’t delegate any decision making authority to us. (. . .) It’s led to a reduction of the number of posts – also the number of admin. staff has been reduced. (. . .) It has an enormous impact on day-to-day life. (. . .) I think we’ll survive somehow, but our resources have been cut back. [Male professor] My career’s in decline. (. . .) I mean my career’s about to end. (. . .) I’ve been forced to resign. (. . .) I still find the field interesting. It’d still be nice to do something . . . to achieve something. [Male professor]

The narrative of loss follows the plot structure of a tragedy. The line it takes is that external changes to higher education have had a serious deleterious effect on the nature of academic work. This is not simply about opposition in principle,

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but to specific actual changes that have already occurred: cuts; new types of profiling and forced mergers between universities, departments and units, leading to redundancies; questionable power relations; and the marginalisation of one’s disciplinary field. Although the changes have created widespread general dissatisfaction, the narrative of loss does not incorporate reference to active opposition and resistance; on the contrary, it conveys acquiescence and passivity. It is a gloomy and dark narrative that includes no reference to light at the end of the tunnel – no vision of or hope for a better future. Resonant of the plight of a tragic victim, this academic identity is one of vulnerability, weakness and defencelessness. The academic has no capacity for opposition or fight against the changes imposed from above; identity construction is characterised by submission to the inevitable. All that can be done is to endure and try to survive – often by waiting for retirement. At the same time, by relying on this narrative academics are able to construct themselves as innocent and guiltless, and by extension they attribute responsibility for the current grim situation to external forces within or outside their departments.

The narrative of administrative work overload What’s been particularly annoying is the proliferation of all kinds of reporting and control and self-assessment and external evaluations and planning and surveillance. A totally unreasonable proportion of my working hours goes into filling in these different forms. This kind of administrative burden has been steadily increasing. (. . .) Quite clearly, administration has become an end in itself. [Male professor] My aim is to go into part-time retirement since I’m now old enough. It’s partly because I want more time for research. Unfortunately it has to be done this way, since there’s no other reasonable way. [Male lecturer]

This narrative portrays academic work as involving an ever increasing administrative workload, due to the managerialist regulation mechanisms that have created a flood of administrative tasks related to, inter alia: audits, self-assessments, strategic planning, mission statements, electronic control and monitoring systems. These are perceived as a futile waste of time, preventing academics from fulfilling their real purpose: teaching and research. Shouldering heavy administrative burdens creates the risk of falling completely behind with research. This narrative highlights the fact that academic work is increasingly infiltrated and diluted by unavoidable and

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uncontrollable administrative duties, which are assigned from the top, with no real possibility of avoiding or amending them. This is seen as narrowing down the scope of autonomy and academic freedom, turning academics into ‘managed professionals’ (Rhoades, 1998) who are subordinated to managerial power. This, in turn, threatens the essence of being an academic. The identity construction entailed in this narrative is that of an exhausted and overworked academic who is about to collapse under the weight of a constantly increasing administrative burden, and who yearns to devote her or himself to scholarly activities. This often gives rise to special identity work, in which academics have to renegotiate the meaning of being an academic: How to be an academic without being research-active. It illustrates the strength of the traditional notion of an academic as one who is committed to research, and that it is through research that prestige and recognition are won. Even retirement is considered as an option, in order to free up time for research. This leads to a paradox: in order to retain an identity as an academic, one must leave academia.

The narrative of job insecurity The biggest problem from an employee’s perspective is what I’ve been complaining about all the time: the university’s employment policy. I can’t understand why it’s so problematic (. . .) why a university can’t be a normal workplace where you can get a permanent post after a certain period. (. . .) All the time I’ve worked here I’ve complained about these temporary contracts. I’ve always said that a researcher’s a human being too. [Male associate professor] My five-year period ends next summer and I’m a bit worried about it. It’s not clear whether I’ll get another five years. It’s not clear any more – particularly because of the merger; there are several areas that they could target with this associate professorship. It’s a bit open, really. Although, by rights, I should get it, I can’t take anything for granted. Anything can happen; cuts that you wouldn’t imagine are made all over the place; they could happen here, too. I’m a bit worried, really. [Female associate professor]

This narrative describes the insecurity and anxiety around temporary contracts, which are a common feature of the Finnish university system. Our data revealed this kind of employment to affect not only junior academics but also some senior ones whose employment has entailed decades-long successions of fixed-term contracts. Academics without permanent posts tend to refer to this narrative in relating their work experiences.

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The narrative of job insecurity tells of living and working in the shadow of potential unemployment. Linked with uncertainty, it also entails speculation and reflection as to how committed to the university one should be under the current conditions. The narrative also highlights the increasing precariousness of the fixed-term employment culture that is a consequence of increasing competition and restructuring at all levels of academia. Although in the past it was perhaps reasonable to expect something – another contract, or a renewal of one’s current contract – to turn up, such confidence has dissipated. Yet, contrary to the narrative of loss, the narrative of job insecurity embraces hope for the future: that a new contract – and, for some, even a permanent one, eventually – may be on the horizon. The academic identity embedded in this narrative is one of precarity and fragility combined with anxiety and distress over the future. Consequently, identity as an academic remains rather weak and wavering, incorporating consideration and contemplation of alternatives and fall-back positions that unemployment may precipitate. Short-term employment engenders an identity as a wage earner – academics are considered knowledge workers who sell their labour for a salary. Instead of reflecting vocation and calling, academic work is perceived as paid work and contract researchers and short-term-contract academics as members of an exploited precariat. In a similar vein, academia is not seen as a collegial alma mater but as an employer that dispenses and administers contracts. This narrative was the only one to emerge from our data in which salaries and contracts feature, indicating that within academic culture they become an issue only when there is a risk of losing them.

The narrative of a bystander I haven’t followed these much. (. . .) I haven’t got involved with these. (. . .) It’s staff of a certain level who negotiate and get stressed. [Female researcher] I haven’t really noticed these. (. . .) I suppose it’s all right; we’ll just carry on. (. . .) I’m old enough to have seen so many different things come and go. They’ve had very little impact on me. [Male associate professor]

The narrative of a bystander interprets changes in higher education as remote and distant, occurring at the upper levels of the administrative hierarchy with little impact on one’s daily work. A distinction is thus made between one’s own work and policy- and institutional-level changes; the two are perceived as independent of each other. This narrative reflects a passive and cynical

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stance towards the changes – a perception that changes tend to come and go irrespective of one’s preferences, so it is pointless to bother too much about them; they are likened to increasingly disturbing background noise that needs to be blocked out. The interviewees who applied this storyline did not have much to say about changes to their work – they were not identified as an issue worthy of mention. The identity constructed in this narrative is one of a bystander or onlooker who is absorbed in, or focused on, his or her immediate tasks, and the university environment and its transformations do not feature within this confined field of attention or concern. Keeping her or his head below the parapet, the ‘bystander’s’ perspective on academia incorporates cynicism and indifference, coupled in some cases with a kind of pragmatic resignation to their impotency in resisting change, which prompts disengagement with it. In sharp contrast to these regressive storyline narratives, we present three below that, representing the progressive storyline, are focused on improvement and advancement over time.

The narrative of a change agency So it was quite a provocative paper [about merging the activities of two faculties from two different universities], as it brought up for discussion those sensitive issues from both parties, but I think it was worth it and justified. I got the worst telling-off of my life, though. [Female professor] I need to make sure that everybody’s able to earn a living. That means I need to work pretty hard to get money from somewhere so that our budget will stay healthy. The only way to really save money is to sack a researcher or somebody; it’s possible to sack a researcher and save money, it’s not possible to make savings from anything else. But then, is that the right thing to do? [Male professor]

The narrative of a change agency reflects an assumption that some academics act as the driving force behind and the instigators of reforms. This narrative is often associated with academics who have roles as departmental heads or deans of a faculty – with one’s organisational role as a sort of ‘third space professional’ (Whitchurch, 2008) and with the power that accompanies it. Reform management and other administrative duties are seen not as an unpleasant burden or a waste of time, but as an integral part of one’s work, and reforms are considered the conduit to the right course or direction – although the narrative acknowledges that in the short term transformation tends to create stress, anxiety and insecurity

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amongst staff, so it is important to support colleagues and help them get through the transition period. The academic identity embedded in this narrative is one of change agent and facilitator, combining soft managerialism with the role of a university teacherresearcher. As reforms are often personalised to the one in charge of the process, the protagonist of this narrative needs to confront resistance and criticism from colleagues, which requires conflict resolution skills together with the ability and willpower to make tough decisions in order to achieve the changes considered legitimate and necessary. In this way the identity involves negotiating a balance between collegial and managerial stances; rather than resorting to harsh, topdown managerialism, the change facilitator seeks to be compassionate and supportive. Hence, this narrative portrays an academic who understands the worries that transformation creates, but who is nonetheless persistent with implementing it.

The narrative of mobility At some point I will go back to industry or somewhere else. I haven’t made any decisions yet. (. . .) I haven’t stayed in any job for more than 10 years. When I came here I thought, ‘I won’t be here as a professor for 30 years until retirement; I’ll definitely move on again, go for somewhere else’. It’s just that the time’s gone so quickly that I haven’t yet gone anywhere during these 5 years here. [Male professor] I really don’t think I’ll stay in this post until retirement. It’s not that I don’t like this job, but, rather, that I’ve given myself a personal challenge that I’ll still make another move into something – but I don’t know what, yet; it could be at university or somewhere else. (. . .) I’ve worked abroad a few times, so an overseas post would be an interesting option for me. [Male research director]

The narrative of mobility glorifies dynamism and flexibility, perceiving them as advantageous characteristics. Current changes in higher education are regarded as opportunities for engagement with other spheres of society, for promoting interdisciplinary, and for inter-sectoral, inter-organisational and international mobility. This impetus is highly valued on account of the opportunities it presents for branching out along exciting, new, personal career paths. Accordingly, academic work has no particular intrinsic value, but is simply one of several potentially interesting jobs. Although academia as such is perceived as holding no special status or attraction, it presents itself as a good place to work during

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a certain stage of one’s career. The narrative’s tone is light, bright and forwardlooking; it describes ‘the world as one’s oyster’ – including the academic world: brimming with interesting career options and challenging opportunities from which the protagonist may take her or his pick. The academic identity embedded in this narrative is not stable, deep-rooted and fixed, but fluid, transitory and provisional – flexible enough to re-shape and take on the features of another professional identity. An identity as an academic entrepreneur, for example, facilitates border-crossing between academia and business, accompanied with a corresponding change in identity. Thus the traditional notions of academic calling and vocation are seen as constricting and obsolete remnants of the past, potentially impeding the dynamism and mobility that motivate and empower the protagonist in her or his current working life context. The identity constructed in this narrative is individualistic; it incorporates recognition of the individual’s ability to spot – and to capitalise on – the potential of different situations for career change and diversification. Academic identity is hence an outcome of one’s own choices and decisions, based on calculation of what would best suit oneself at a certain point of time.

The narrative of success We got the maximum 7 points in an international [research] assessment, and it said that in these fields we’re the trendsetter, globally – we’re the ones who set the direction for others. (. . .) This environment is really good from our point of view. As this has been a priority area, we’ve received special support from the university management for developing infrastructure, and for some posts as well. In fact, there’s really nothing to complain about. [Male professor] We got to the crux of the matter straight away; we were the first to make headlines. From our point of view this is a really good thing. The overall status of natural sciences will increase now; we’re going to be at the centre of one of the key priority areas. [Male professor]

The narrative of success sees the current reforms in an entirely positive light on account of their having yielded great benefits to one’s own situation and one’s academic profile. This perspective is crystallised in slogans or mantras such as ‘success fosters success’ and ‘the winner takes all’, which highlight the accumulation of advantages and the Matthew effect (Merton, 1968) in science. This narrative conveys the standing of an individual academic, research group, or field of study as having been strong from the outset, demonstrated by success –

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particularly in obtaining funding and in research and teaching assessments. The recent transformations, in turn, have further improved their status by providing significant extra revenue, new university posts, world-wide visibility and international recognition, and correspondingly high profiles. This narrative is particularly evident in the natural sciences, technology and medicine – all of which have been identified by the university as strategic priority areas, and are highly valued on account of their potential to impact positively on societal and economic growth. High status of this kind – elite status, in effect – offers a kind of immunity to the potential negative effects of reforms and external pressures; having become invaluable, or even indispensable, to a given university allows the deflection of, or the capacity to take in one’s stride and remain relatively unaffected by, any unfavourable changes. The academic identity associated with the narrative of success is characterised by self-confidence grounded in the conviction that one’s academic standing both locally and in the international community is strong – and is going from strength to strength. The protagonist in this type of narrative is a winner – someone who is not only skilled in playing particular academic ‘games’, but who may also be a game-shaper and a game-changer, wielding enough power, on account of the scientific capital that she or he has accrued, to be able, at times, to determine the ‘rules’, or to ignore them. Irrespective of the kind of reform taking place, the self-confidence of the protagonist remains relatively unaffected. The identity constructed in this narrative may be either individualistic or collectivistic; a charismatic individual or a highly valued research group or disciplinary field is capable of reaching an indispensable position within the academic community.

Conclusion On the evidence of our findings, we argue that there are strikingly diversified and polarised ways to make sense of academic work and identity in the current Finnish higher education context. In this regard our results corroborate several other studies revealing increasing fragmentation and heterogeneity within the academic profession or sectors of it (e.g. Anderson, 2008; Barry et al., 2006; Duberley et al., 2006; Evans, 2014b; Fanghanel, 2012; Gornall and Salisbury, 2012; Henkel, 2005; Nikunen, 2012; Smith, 2012). Although the academic profession has always been differentiated into distinct cultures with specific notions of academic identity that relate to disciplinary fields and institutional settings (Becher, 1989; Clark, 1986), this diversity has become more pronounced

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due to the managerial and structural transformations in the university environment. The eight narratives identified in this study accordingly represent highly polarised understandings of what it means to be an academic. Adopting an identity as a rebel, loser, overstretched worker, precariat or cynical bystander reflects a negative, resistant and resigned stance towards one’s current working conditions and position, whereas self-identifying as a winner, mobile careerist, or change agent implies celebration of the current changes, underpinned by a positive, bright and enthusiastic attitude towards the academic work setting. The university is similarly perceived and interpreted in strikingly distinct ways through different narratives, ranging from idealised Humboldtian scholarly community to greedy exploitative employing institution. None of the narratives emerged as dominant; they all coexist alongside each other, mosaic-like, collectively defining Finnish academia as it is currently perceived and enacted, with all its diversity. Colleagues within one unit may thus understand their work and themselves as academics in totally different ways, making academia internally fragmented and blurred. Academic work and identities moreover reflect not only diversity but also stratification and polarisation: there are high-flyers and underdogs, ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, who exist side-by-side and must come to terms with each other. This kind of polarisation flies in the face of the welfare state ideology, and its strong emphasis on equity, which is a deeply rooted fundamental tenet of Finnish public sector policy-making, sharing many similarities with the French republican ideology that Normand describes (Chapter 9, in this volume). In parallel with the recent trends that Normand discerns glimmers of in France, increasing marketisation and managerialism seem to be threatening – if not eroding away – Finland’s Nordic welfare state ideology. The eight narratives outlined here, and the identity constructions embedded in them, were not able to be linked emphatically and exclusively with individuals since our interviewees generally called upon different narratives, depending on the themes discussed. The narratives of success and change agency, for example, were articulated within one interview, with the interviewee speaking both of his role as the leader of a research group, and of his administrative role. Not all narrative combinations, however, are feasible in this academic context. Most obviously, the narratives of loss and success as well as those of bystander and change agency incorporate entirely opposing and mutually exclusive perceptions of academic work and identity. As Clegg (2008) points out, academic identities are not fixed and clear-cut; they are constantly being rebuilt, shaped and (re-)negotiated in social interaction – the interview setting included.

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The findings from this study pose challenging questions about academic career building, especially at the early career stage (see Hakala, 2009). The current academic culture indicates a diversity of responses to the question of what it means to be an academic in the present-day Finnish university, but the crucial issue from junior academics’ perspective is what it means to be a successful academic (Evans, 2014a). How is a successful academic career defined? Is success inseparably linked with the progressive narratives? All testaments of one kind or another to the positive effects of the market-driven changes in higher education and the advantages of a high-flyer identity. This is related to the question of what kinds of competencies, abilities, values and ideals should be fostered and cultivated in university education and researcher training and development (see Evans, 2012). This chapter suggests that, whilst traditional academic values and commitments may not necessarily have dissipated, they manifest themselves principally in the regressive narratives that reflect academic identity as a sort of underdog – most evidently in the narrative of resistance. Resistance in itself may involve appeal and charm, but is it enough to keep tradition alive in the midst of accelerating change?

References Anderson, G. (2008), ‘Mapping Academic Resistance in the Managerial University’, Organization, 15(2): 251–70. Barry, J., Berg, E. and Chandler, J. (2006), ‘Academic Shape Shifting: Gender, Management and Identities in Sweden and England’, Organization, 13(2): 275–98. Becher, T. (1989), Academic Tribes and Territories. Buckingham: SRHE/Open University Press. Carroll, N. (2001), ‘On the Narrative Connection’, in W. van Peer and S. Chatman (eds), New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 21–42. Clark, B. R. (1986), The Higher Education System. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clegg, S. (2008), ‘Academic Identities Under Threat?’, British Educational Research Journal, 34(3): 329–45. Duberley, J., Cohen, L. and Mallon, M. (2006), ‘Constructing Scientific Careers: Change, Continuity and Context’, Organization Studies, 27(8): 1131–51. Elliot, J. (2005), Using Narrative in Social Research. London: Sage Publications. Enders, J. (2000), ‘An Uncertain Profession’, in M. Tight (ed.), Academic Work and Life: What It Is to Be an Academic, and How This Is Changing. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, pp. 7–32.

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Enders, J., de Boer, H. and Leisyte, L. (2009), ‘New Public Management and the Academic Profession: The Rationalization of Academic Work Revisited’, in J. Enders and E. de Weert (eds), The Changing Face of Academic Life: Analytical and Comparative Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 36–57. Evans, L. (2012), ‘Leadership for Researcher Development: What Research Leaders Need to Know and Understand’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 40(4): 432–5. — (2014a), ‘What Is Effective Research Leadership? A Research-Informed Perspective’, Higher Education Research and Development, 33(1): 46–58. — (2014b), ‘A Changing Role for University Professors? Professorial Academic Leadership as It Is Perceived by “the Led”’, British Educational Research Journal, doi: 10.1002/berj.3163. Fanghanel, J. (2012), Being an Academic. London: Routledge. Gergen, K. J. and Gergen, M. M. (1983), ‘Narratives of the Self ’, in T. R. Sarbin and K. E. Scheibe (eds), Studies in Social Identity. New York: Praeger Publishers, pp. 254–73. Gornall, L. and Salisbury, J. (2012), ‘Compulsive Working, “Hyperprofessionality” and the Unseen Pleasures of Academic Work’, Higher Education Quarterly, 66(2): 135–54. Hakala, J. (2009), ‘The Future of the Academic Calling? Junior Researchers in the Entrepreneurial University’, Higher Education, 57(2): 173–90. Harré, R. (1983), Personal Being. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Henkel, M. (2000), Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley. — (2005), ‘Academic Identity and Autonomy in a Changing Policy Environment’, Higher Education, 49(1–2): 155–76. — (2012), ‘Introduction: Change and Continuity in Academic and Professional Identities’, in G. Gordon and C. Whitchurch (eds), Academic and Professional Identities in Higher Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 3–12. Herman, D. (2009), Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Hyvärinen, M. (2008), ‘Narrative Form and Narrative Content’, in I. Järventie and M. Lähde (eds), Methodological Challenges in Childhood and Family Research. Tampere: Tampere University Press, pp. 43–63. Jauhiainen, A., Jauhiainen, A. and Laiho, A. (2009), ‘The Dilemmas of the “Efficiency University” Policy and the Everyday Life of University Teachers’, Teaching in Higher Education, 14(4): 417–28. Kogan, M., Moses, I. and El-Khawas, E. (1994), Staffing Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley. McInnis, C. (2012), ‘Traditions of Academic Professionalism and Shifting Academic Identities’, in G. Gordon and C. Whitchurch (eds), Academic and Professional Identities in Higher Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 147–65. Merton, R. K. (1968), Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press.

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Musselin, C. (2005), ‘European Academic Labour Markets in Transition’, Higher Education, 49(1/2): 135–54. Nikunen, M. (2012), ‘Precarious Work at the “Entrepreneurial” University: Adaptation versus “Abandon Ship”. Individualization and Identity Work: Coping with the “Entrepreneurial” University’, in S. Ahola and D. Hoffman (eds), Higher Education Research in Finland. Emerging Structures and Contemporary Issues. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylä University Press, pp. 271–90. Nixon, J. (1996), ‘Professional Identity and the Restructuring of Higher Education’, Studies in Higher Education, 21(1): 5–16. — (2003), ‘Professional Renewal as a Condition of Institutional Change: Rethinking Academic Work’, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 13(1): 3–15. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988), Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press. Rhoades, G. (1998), Managed Professionals. Albany: State University of New York Press. — (2010), ‘Envisioning Invisible Workforce: Enhancing Intellectual Capital’, in G. Gordon and C. Whitchurch (eds), Academic and Professional Identities in Higher Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 35–53. Slaughter, S. and Leslie, L. (1997), Academic Capitalism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, K. (2012), ‘Fools, Facilitators and Flexians: Academic Identities in Marketised Environments’, Higher Education Quarterly, 66: 155–73. Ursin, J., Aittola, H., Henderson, C. and Välimaa, J. (2010), ‘Is Education Getting Lost in University Mergers?’, Tertiary Education and Management, 16(2): 327–40. Välimaa, J. (2012), ‘The Corporatization of National Universities in Finland’, in B. Pusser, K. Kempner, S. Marginson and I. Ordorika (eds), Universities and the Public Sphere. Knowledge Creation and State Building in the Era of Globalization. New York, London: Routledge, pp. 101–20. Whitchurch, C. (2008), ‘Shifting Identities and Blurring Boundaries: The Emergence of Third Space Professional in UK Higher Education’, Higher Education Quarterly, 62(4): 377–96. Ylijoki, O.-H. (2010), ‘Future Orientations in Episodic Labour: Short-Term Academics as a Case in Point’, Time & Society, 19(3): 365–86. — (2013), ‘Boundary-Work between Work and Life in the High-Speed University’, Studies in Higher Education, 38(2): 242–55. — (2014), ‘University under Structural reform: A Micro-Level Perspective’, Minerva, 52(1): 55–75.

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The Changing Conditions of Academic Identity: The Case of the Portuguese Open University* Darlinda Moreira, Susana Henriques and Luísa Aires

In recent decades higher education institutions have changed considerably, due mostly to the pressure of globalisation, the integration of information technologies and, more recently, major economic constraints. In Portugal, as a result of the European financial crisis, higher education institutions have been subject to severe budget cuts, which have affected education quality and financial support for: research, student scholarships and facilities, and academics’ professional development. The impact of technological change, particularly the integration of the Learning Management System (LMS) and Web 2.0, has radically transformed different aspects of academic life, nowhere more so than in distance education universities. A significant feature of globalisation and internationalisation is the imposition of English as a lingua franca for teaching and publishing. This is reflected in the Portuguese legal framework for academic professional development, within which the primary mechanism for assessing published output involves drawing upon publications in international (English language) journals. Although evidence of change is everywhere, the model of professional development that persists in Portugal is a very traditional one, and we have to make the best of it. Our identity as Portuguese academics has thus evolved between, on the one hand, the tensions created by a system that constantly requires the questioning of our identity – and consequently the emergence of * This work is funded by National Funds through FCT– Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under the project PEst-OE/SADG/UI0289/2014.

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new facets – and, on the other hand, a system that demands the reproduction of traditional academic practices mediated by authority, bureaucracy and massification. This chapter presents the analytical perspective of three female academics who belong to the Department of Education and Distance Education at Universidade Aberta – the Portuguese Open University, which specialises in distance learning. We have witnessed and monitored the profound changes at our university that have impacted pedagogy, course content and teaching materials, the student population, and methodologies. Amidst these changing conditions, our pedagogical, relational and academic identities have undergone a process of individual, as well as social, adjustments, which are related to: who we are as academics and how the national framework of academic professional development accommodates the distinctive nature of our institution; how other higher education institutions position themselves towards us; how our peers – our colleagues – see us as scholars; how we act towards them; and, finally, how both the increasing dimension of globalisation and the financial crisis affect our daily practice as teachers and researchers.

Challenges and contradictions: An emerging paradigm For Manuel Castells (2010), the first decade of the twenty-first century is characterised by ‘confusing’ and ‘troubled’ times and by the global financial crisis, the social and cultural exclusion of large segments of the population from the global networks that accumulate knowledge, wealth and power, and the growing incapacity of political institutions based on the nation-state to handle global problems and local demands. These factors, among others, are different expressions of a process of multidimensional change that generates uncertainty (Castells, 2010). In Portugal the scenario described by Castells (2010) and summarised above is very much a reality. Due to the global/European economic crisis, cutbacks in social benefits and the welfare state have had serious effects on higher education, whose institutions have suffered from dramatic budget reductions that have negatively impacted the quality of education, financial support for research, student scholarships and other facilities, as well as opportunities for academics’ own professional development. According to an OECD report (2012: 8): The current financial crisis is severely affecting Portugal, with a significant impact on the resources available to education. While public spending on education

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reached 5% of GDP in 2010, it is estimated that such proportion decreased to 4.7% in 2011, and the 2012 State budget plans a further reduction to 3.8% of GDP. Austerity measures include salary cuts for all personnel working in public education, the freezing of career progression in the public service (including for teachers), posts in school management reduced, regional administration for education downsized, and a major rationalisation of Ministry services which led to a restructuring of its organisation.

It is also important to mention that changes are currently occurring in Portugal whose impact upon higher education institutions and the production, distribution and dissemination of knowledge has yet to be assessed. We refer specifically to the dynamics of globalisation and localisation (also at the European level); national institutions and the processes of higher education access; to technology, particularly the diffusion of Web 2.0 in education, and the widespread use of English for communication between academics and academic publications. These processes have implications for the higher education model, which will necessarily lead to changes (Magalhães, 2006; Stoer, 2004; Stoer and Magalhães, 2005). In terms of the internationalisation of Portuguese higher education, this essentially involves the consolidation of the identities of these institutions and their national standing; only after this occurs can internationalisation be consolidated, forging links to the Portuguese-speaking community and Europe. In the particular case of Universidade Aberta, these change scenarios are occurring even quicker and are even more profound; we experience daily what Conole (2007: 286), commenting on online education in the globalised world of distance learning, describes as ‘one of the key catalysts for change in current higher education’. For some authors (see Hargreaves, 2003, for example), when the educational sphere is dominated by constraints, such as cuts, standards, test scores, and achievement targets, it becomes necessary to retrieve the fundamental values of the knowledge economy; in fact, improving standards marginalises the attention to personal development that is the foundation of community and eliminates interdisciplinary attention to global education at the heart of cosmopolitan identity (Hargreaves, 2003). Changes to how universities are designed, how their autonomy is structured, the tensions between the state and private systems and between polytechnics and universities have affected higher education institutions. In relation to Universidade Aberta as a state-funded distance learning institution, we believe that its specific characteristics have not been fully taken into account when it comes to the changes made within the Ministry of Education and Science (which

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funds and regulates the institutions and training provision) or the Fundação para Ciência e Tecnologia – the Science and Technology Foundation (which funds and regulates research programmes). Another important issue is the integration of technologies in education, which has seen the development of networks organised around the internet and wireless communication. This is particularly evident in distance education universities, such as Universidade Aberta, whose online provision attempts to address the challenges of a fast-changing world. Schleicher (2012: np) explains these challenges: Today, where individuals can access content on Google, where routine cognitive skills are being digitized or outsourced, and where jobs are changing rapidly, education systems need to place much greater emphasis on enabling individuals to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers cannot take over easily. Students need to be capable not only of constantly adapting but also of constantly learning and growing, of positioning themselves and repositioning themselves in a fast changing world. The kind of teaching needed today requires teachers to be high-level knowledge workers who constantly advance their own professional knowledge, as well as that of their profession.

The skills referred to here are particularly important in today’s social configuration, because the network(ed) society demands the development of a number of facets of education professionals’ lives: deep cognitive learning; creativity; drawing on research; working in networks; continuous professional development; promoting problem-solving, risk-taking, trust in collaborative processes; and commitment to continuous organisational improvement (Hargreaves, 2003). Within this developmental context, one of the main trends of the network(ed) society is the increasing economic value of literacy, with human capital (knowledge and skills) being an important booster for economic and societal growth, and literacy being a priority. While the demand for literacy skills is driven by changes in technology and social organisation, supply is determined by daily social and cultural practices (reading and critical analysis) and by lifelong and life-wide learning. Literacy supply and demand are found in skills markets, which generate economic and social inequalities, all the while including labour, education, health and all the markets that ensure access to social power and influence (Data Angel Policy Research Incorporated, 2009). In addition to these economic, social and technological issues, globalisation increasingly affects our daily practices as teachers and researchers. As

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researchers, one major change has been the widespread use of English as the language of academia. In day-to-day life a basic understanding of English is perceived as key to effective international communication, and a competent communicator must be able to use it to deal with diverse people in different situations. Academic or professional communication requires more sophisticated linguistic skills and greater levels of proficiency. When it comes to knowledge sharing on a global scale, English is essential in academic circles – particularly in academic writing and publication, where it has been gaining ground for some decades. The proliferation of English usage is reflected in Portuguese academic life; funding proposals, reports and the peer reviewing and assessment of publications in Portugal – and in a number of other non-English-speaking countries – must be presented in English. There are a number of contexts in which English is virtually the only language used, such as internet use, specialist books, electronic communication, and the like, interaction with colleagues from international networks and projects, or hosting colleagues from abroad and lending them support for their activities. Since it is becoming increasingly important both as a criterion for promotion at work and as a requirement for many funding applications, Portuguese academics have begun to feel enormous pressure to engage and communicate in English – to publish in English in international journals, as well as participating in English in international conferences. Even at Portuguese conferences it is common to invite foreign colleagues who communicate and present their papers in English, and Portuguese participation at international conferences is done via both written and spoken English. Despite many Portuguese scholars’ mastery of conversational English, academic writing in a second language is extremely difficult, requiring a level of proficiency that allows the author to describe and convey her or his analyses of complex issues. Unsurprisingly, many academics must rely heavily on professional translation services, incurring costs for which they may or may not be funded or reimbursed. These linguistic-related situations have prompted major changes within the Portuguese academy, which are reflected in professional development needs and provision for academics whose native or first language is not English. A problematic issue is that most of the research carried out by these academics is rooted in Portuguese-specific contexts and issues. As Lillis and Curry (2010: 134) observe: Most scholars are staying local, with the local – most obviously understood as place, people and language – being centrally relevant to scholars’ research and

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writing activity. Even when scholars are not staying geographically local, the local as immediate and imagined locality powerfully influences their research focus and interests opportunities for research and writing.

Reflecting this localisation, continuing to publish in Portuguese academic journals – in Portuguese – is considered a duty to the academic community, essential to the development of the Portuguese academic community, and thus this too is important for academic career advancement. This power-related issue in relation to languages in academic communication has the perverse effect of undermining the value and potency of academic research in the Portuguesespeaking world, with implications for the depreciation of the ‘economic potential of the Portuguese language’ (Reto, 2012).

Identity and innovation Our interpretation of identity is that it is not only a reflection of origin, life experience, or social position, but also something that represents the individual’s interpretation of her or his own life, involving analysis of the range of possibilities open to him or her, and selecting from different presentation and representation strategies of her- or himself. This self-constructed biographical definition of identity contrasts with the relational definition (which is constructed by others) (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2003; Dubar, 1997; Giddens, 1997; Touraine, 1986; Velho, 1994). To this end, the identities constructed by individuals reorganise, reflectively, their past experiences, defining their range of possibilities and initiating processes of social change. Identity itself is constructed in various places and settings that are not limited to just one physical dimension but also include new spaces, such as the internet and virtual environments. This – identity formation within and through virtual environments – is a key focus of our chapter. Our interest is in the way in which professional settings contribute to developing common identity bonds in specific institutions, where groups of people share certain practices, experiences and imagery, and where they interact, asynchronously, in a virtual environment, alongside interaction in the real world. We begin by highlighting identity features of professional contexts within online environments, to unearth trends in and envisage possibilities for professional development – within the context of their current situation, influenced by the socio-economic constraints of Portuguese society today – of academics/university teachers at Universidade Aberta.

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Research has shown that, within online communities, identity is managed by taking advantage of new communication and interaction possibilities, experimenting and reusing what is ‘at hand’. As Turkle (2011: 152) argues, ‘connectivity offers new possibilities for experimenting with identity . . . Real life does not always provide this kind of space, but the internet does.’ In learning societies in particular, it is also important ‘that participation should be seen as a way of building a sense of belonging and identity within the network of authors and mediators of learning contexts, experiences and scenarios’ (Dias, 2012: 4). As such, being situated at a crossroads, where the boundaries between formal and informal education overlap, distance education academics and teachers are actively involved in learning communities. These communities are seen as networks of people who build knowledge via collaboration and dialogue, encouraging distributed knowledge, and who are organised via shared leadership, mediated by the tools that are available in open and blended contexts (Aires et al., in press; Dias, in press). In order to develop this type of analysis, we resorted to self-analysis (Bourdieu, 2005), adopting the perspective of the analyst focused on certain important features of a biographical route (in this case, professional). Our aim is to observe and understand certain social processes and achieve a theoretically shaped analysis. Our starting point was certain important features of individual stories (our own), seen within their time–space dimension, because they are located within the current social framework. If professional knowledge is a set of skills, inclinations and attitudes, plus their mobilisation (Nóvoa, 2011), we share the idea that identity is a source of meanings, experiences and deeds for the individual (Castells, 2003). Professional identity – which is based on biographical and relational identity – surpasses it in a number of aspects. It is constructed and expressed through professional accomplishment, through the social relationships that are created and developed in the workplace, through professional experiences and learning that occur within national and international professional networks, and through the expectation of mobility, intervention and social involvement through one’s profession. It is also worth mentioning that as learning occurs confidence grows, and one’s career becomes more important in relation to one’s professional identity (Hoare, 2006). The identities of education professionals (academics, schoolteachers, trainers, etc.) are broad, multi-faceted and strongly influenced by institutional culture and by the political climate in general, leading to the mutability of certain aspects of identity that need to adapt to the many changes of professional and political scenarios (Hoare, 2006). At Universidade Aberta, technological development has

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a very unique impact, to the extent that the mutability of the available tools allow practices and interactions to be reconfigured, encouraging contact between – and the combined development of – both academic and identity projects. By allowing barriers of time and space to be overcome, they facilitate interaction, reducing associated costs. This is particularly important within the context of today’s society, where we have seen an increase in team teaching, which indicates greater awareness of the fact that teaching, as a profession, is undertaken within a collective (Nóvoa, 2011). Distance education research has been predominantly focused on the development of information and communication technologies; however, the way that distance education is made operational involves much more than the application of technological resources. Whether or not there is true pedagogy in e-learning training provision depends primarily on the role, competences and knowledge of the educational professionals involved in the design and organisation of such a provision. In addition to this, Dias (2012: 6) suggests: [T]he use of digital technologies without a conceptual change or any alteration of practices by those involved (teachers and students) is one of the main reasons why there is resistance to the creation of new educational scenarios, due to the fact it is not sustained by a change in thinking or teaching practice. Overcoming this involves thinking about education from a global and open perspective, where digital technologies contribute as a means of expanding cognitive and social processes in the mediation and scaffolding of learning.

This new educational ecology gives those involved a voice, and it views digital technologies as material tools that coexist with other symbolic ones. Within this context, a sense of identity is associated with feelings of both belonging and difference in relation to certain groups and communities. Identity is necessarily redefined in virtual worlds, due to the separation between their physical and communicative dimensions (Aires et al., 2007). However, this dissociative process in virtual environments tends to be avoided by employing new mechanisms that overcome such constraints; ‘technical mechanisms . . . give a greater feeling of presence to the interaction’ (84). Another resource used to overcome the boundaries of an ambiguous and diffuse identity in virtual environments involves the construction of a group culture, which promotes a sense of sharing and solidarity. As such, the sharing and joint construction of interests, values, knowledge, projects and objectives contribute to a collective identity in virtual environments.

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Within the context of the network(ed) society, the development and complexity of these types of belonging implies that individuals have to construct identities that lead to significant participation (Castells, 2003). Here, the dynamic of identity is distinguished by processes, conditions, results and changes that are typical of the information era; in other words, the development of identity is heavily influenced by context, as well as by the objective and subjective practices of a particular community. In short, virtual communities, or cyber-communities (Castells, 2001), increasingly organise themselves into places for the construction and reconstruction of identity. In scenarios involving technological innovation, such as the ones we have experienced, it is important to develop individuals’ ability to think, and to think of themselves, according to the tools they use. This is particularly important within Universidade Aberta.

The case of Universidade Aberta In this section we examine: the identity features of Universidade Aberta academics; how the national framework for academics’ professional development accommodates the specific characteristics of our institution; the positions of other higher education institutions in relation to us; how our colleagues regard us as scholars; and how we act in relation to them. Finally, we consider how both increasing internationalisation and the European financial crisis affect our daily practice as teachers and researchers. Economic difficulty presents both risks and opportunities. Whilst facing constraints, there is a real need for academic staff to improve their practice, develop their research and have their achievements recognised. Internationalisation brings new demands (through the professional mobility agenda and in relation to the dissemination of academic output) and an increasingly prominent role for technologies is evident – not least in supporting communities of practice (Hoadley and Kilner, 2005; Wenger et al., 2005). In this context of constant technological development and innovation, the impact and importance of technological mediation in academics’ and teachers’ everyday online relations and practice involves and requires specific characteristics that impact their identity processes. Universidade Aberta is the Portuguese state university for distance education – a pioneer in distance education in Portugal. It was founded in 1988 and has been involved in higher education and continued professional development since then, contributing to

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the active dissemination of Portuguese culture and language – particularly in Portuguese-speaking countries and communities. The university is the main national centre of expertise in distance education, developing the know-how that allows it to be the country’s largest provider of online higher education. The Virtual Pedagogical Model (VPM) developed by Pereira et al. (2007), and adopted at Universidade Aberta, provides a complete reference model for planning, organising and implementing university-level online courses by fully exploring the facilities offered by ICT. The model replaces a previously adopted industrial-type one that was based on multimedia materials and learning activities (Trindade, 1990). The VPM, which has been in use since 2007, promotes student-student and student-teacher-community interaction through collaborative learning and is focused on continuous assessment. Its development and introduction represent a major pedagogical breakthrough; its success is reflected in today’s increasing numbers of enrolled students and their rate of success (Moreira et al., 2013). The VPM is based on four major principles: the principle of student-centred learning, where students are assumed to be active individuals (builders of their own knowledge who drive their learning process) and integral parts of a learning community; the principle of flexibility, where students can learn anywhere and at any time, regardless of the space-time constraints that, by contrast, classroom teaching imposes; the principle of online interaction, which extends to the new type of student-student interaction that occurs in asynchronous discussion groups within each virtual class and forms the basis for collaborative learning; and the principle of digital inclusion, where the educational institution develops the basic ICT skills of those who find themselves excluded from this type of knowledge and thus unable to attend higher education and are at risk of being socially excluded. The work environment that results from the application of these principles through the VPM facilitates daily contact with virtual spaces that constitute resources for developing a wide range of teaching tasks – which leads to these tools and their use becoming a natural component of the working process. This has implications for the link between identities (professional and others) and innovation. These changes to ways of working require academic staff to construct new identities that, most of the time, are still strange and difficult to coordinate with the requirements of other aspects of professional development and scholarship. Hence, as previously mentioned, the identity features of Universidade Aberta academics are heavily influenced, on the one hand, by the unique mission of an open and distance learning university, and,

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on the other, by the specific nature of its pedagogical model: the VPM. The model functions via the particular work undertaken within online settings, the use of technology that mediates interaction with students (teaching, guidance and other support in course coordination, for example) and with other teachers. We therefore find identity features distinguished by the way teaching is organised. Although all academics construct and affirm identities, there are other important aspects of being academics, such as beliefs, ethical and moral values, as well as representations constructed and acquired in relation to ‘being a teacher’ or ‘being a researcher’ – all of which influence identity. In relation to this, it is important to highlight the sense of social responsibility and personal fulfilment associated with a career in higher education and research. Within the current context of higher education teaching, we see a number of new demands and challenges that may make teachers redefine their roles, tasks and identities. These challenges and demands are particularly pertinent for an institution geared towards distance learning – particularly one boasting characteristics that are unique in Portugal. The university’s uniqueness has a major influence on academics’ professional behaviour and identity (as constructed and as perceived). Moreover, it is important to take into account state higher education policy – specifically legislation that applies to academics, and which does not always incorporate consideration of the uniqueness of distance learning and its latest generation, e-learning. Indeed, teachers who work in e-learning have to deal with tensions that extend beyond the specific issues relevant to their fields of activities and work, which can be found in the statutory duties of a university teacher in Portugal (Decree-Law no. 205/2009, Article 4): a) To undertake scientific research, cultural output or technological development; b) To perform the teaching duties given to them and supervise and guide students; c) To participate in university-related tasks, scientific dissemination and the economic and social promotion of knowledge; d) To participate in the management of the respective university institutions; e) To participate in other tasks given by the relevant managing body that are included in the duties of a university teacher.

On the basis of this legislation, we suggest that the national professional development framework for teachers in higher education has yet to take into account the specific unique characteristics of Universidade Aberta. The precedence given to research activities may be indicated by the order in which

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the duties are listed; it is also highlighted by commentators, such as Rosado Pinto (2008: 113). We have already mentioned the autobiographical and relational processes involved in the construction of identity (Dubar, 1997), in order to consolidate the idea that social identity is constructed by social agents according to an interactionist rationale that is based on the expectations that group members have about their roles. In other words, the acceptance of a given social identity presupposes interaction between those who construct and share it. Taking this perspective of dialogue, there is commitment from the group and to the group, defining feelings of social belonging that sustain its existence. In the same way in which identities are constructed in feelings of belonging to a group, these are also constructed in the feelings of boundaries separating them from other groups, that is, the different aspects of social comparisons shape identities according to the similarities and differences amongst them, in relation to otherness (Bakhtin, 1984). Given the above, and in our particular case, it is important to refer to three essential and symmetrical processes between ‘us’ and ‘others’: (i) stereotyping, (ii) overworking, (iii) differentiation. The specific nature of teaching using an e-learning system is not well known to those who teach face-to-face. This leads to certain misperceptions and stereotypes; for example, the idea that the interaction is non-existent or ‘cold’ and requires much less effort than does faceto-face teaching. It is this second issue that relates to operating within uncertain contexts, with increasing expectations regarding teaching in higher education and knowledge production. This excess of effort and work is exacerbated by problems relating to how online teaching is managed (Henriques and Seabra, 2012). To the extent that the system is accessible wherever there is an internet connection, teachers’ personal lives are subject to intrusion – they may be contacted at night, at weekends and even on holiday, with less clear-cut demarcation of boundaries than generally occurs with face-to-face teaching (though we accept that the predilection of many academics for working to excess, unable to ‘switch off ’ within the networked global academic community, has very recently started to come to light; see, for example, Gornall et al., 2014). The problem of managing teaching time for e-learning and associated issues, such as calculating years of service, has been discussed, but answers have not yet been forthcoming. This is an issue with important implications, both with regard to the constructed and perceived identity of teachers at Universidade Aberta and the perception that teachers from other institutions have of this minority professional constituency.

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Naturally, these issues have implications for interaction and collaboration between both groups. However, recognition of the specific nature of the cultures of conventional universities and distance universities goes way beyond the everyday practice of teaching; it also involves the negotiation of consensus based on differences and guided by common goals, as in the case of the promotion of state education or the application of the principle of higher education for all. The reductionist approach, which is very influential in this area, tends to prioritise the social value of higher education institutions based on concepts such as synchrony and physical presence, discriminating against distance education. This is part of a monologue that higher education institutions have adhered to for many years and which has, for the most part, been the basis of their mission and educational focus. Whilst there has been a focus in the public arena on issues like the social mission of higher education institutions, the emergence of a new educational paradigm, or the need to reinvent the focus of training and education for the twenty-first century as a response to various crises, paradoxically, there has been little incentive for a culture of dialogue capable of finding answers to the challenges that global education represents in today’s digital society. Consequently, we live with the paradox of extolling the virtues and incalculable advantages of a digital culture that produces new learning tools, dynamics, contexts and subjectivities, while, at the same time, maintaining and perpetuating institutional cultures that are not receptive to such new paradigms. These contradictions jeopardise, amongst other things, innovative legislative frameworks that reintegrate and extend new ways of organising and certifying learning, such as training via online courses, thus limiting the extent of identity construction and professional development of teachers working at open and distance universities.

Conclusion How academics as teachers are positioned in the world of work is crucial to strengthening or weakening their identity as professionals. Throughout this chapter we have aimed to reflect on these issues. Indeed, whilst a teacher’s professional knowledge is difficult to grasp, it is also important to recognise that the constraints arising from the financial crisis in Portugal limit the development of teaching, as previously mentioned. However, we have also highlighted the potential of information and communication technologies to create innovative

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work and collaboration practices, believing that teachers working with e-learning systems are particularly valuable in harnessing and fulfilling this potential. To this end, making online education an integral part of higher education provision – and the educational paradigm associated with it – has a number of implications for university teachers’ identity and the everyday life of higher education institutions. Despite Universidade Aberta teachers working according to the recent distance education paradigm – which involves dealing with new needs and duties – issues around the recognition and development of professional careers, as well as funding for research and publication, are still governed and contextualised by rules that virtually ignore the specific characteristics of this university. Whilst distance education has achieved a status similar to that of traditional courses, with some teachers believing that the same will occur with professional development, due mostly to the demand for online courses, Anderson observes: The new and added dimensions of faculty work bring us back to the debates about tenure and the nature of scholarship. Accommodating faculty time and effort associated with distance teaching, the creation of online instructional materials, and digital scholarship challenges the existing system for acknowledging and rewarding faculty for their teaching, research, and service. Further, activities associated with distance teaching represent an alternate form of scholarship that is not yet well recognised nor credited. (2008: 550)

In short, it is worth highlighting that the debate on academic identities cannot be dissociated from issues of academic self-governance and management competence. Similarly, the contribution of higher education to jobs and growth, and its international attractiveness, can be enhanced through close, effective links among education, research and business – the three sides of the ‘knowledge triangle’ (European Commission, n.d.). Although few institutions have introduced policies that address alternative forms of scholarship or reflect the dimensions of academic roles associated with distance education (US Department of Education, 1997), in terms of the general legal framework of university teaching, it is necessary to include and consider the specific characteristics of online education. This should accommodate both the new duties performed by teachers, as well as the creation of new recruitment conditions for academic staff. In the case of distance learning universities, it is also necessary to consider where new work positions (such as tutors at this type of institution) fit within the profession.

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References Aires, L., Azevedo, J., Gaspar, I. and Teixeira, A. (2007), Comunidades virtuais de aprendizagem e identidades no ensino superior. Lisboa: Universidade Aberta. Aires, L., Dias, P., Azevedo, J., Rebollo, M. A. and García, R. (in press), ‘Education, Digital Inclusion and Sustainable Online Communities’, in S. Caeiro, F. W. Leal, and U. M. Azeiteiro (eds), E-learning and Sustainability, series Umweltbildung, Umweltkommunikation und Nachhaltigkeit – Environmental Education, Communication and Sustainability. New York: Peter Lang Publishers. Anderson, T. (2008), ‘Towards a Theory of Online Learning’, in T. Anderson (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Edmonton, Canada: Athabasca University Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (C. Emerson, Trans. Vol. 8). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Beck, U., and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2003), La individualización: el individualismo institucionalizado y sus consecuencias sociales y políticas. Barcelona: Paidós. Bourdieu, P. (2005), Esboço para uma Auto-Análise. Lisboa: Edições, p. 70. Castells, M. (2001), La galáxia internet. Reflexiones sobre internet, empresa y sociedad. Madrid: Areté. — (2003), O poder da identidade (Volume II). Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. — (2010), The Rise of the Network Society. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing. Conole, G. (2007), ‘An International Comparison of the Relationship between Policy and Practice in E-learning’, in R. Andrews and C. Haythornthwaite (eds), The Sage Handbook of E-Learning Research. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, pp. 286–310. Data Angel Policy Research Incorporated (2009), A Dimensão Económica da Literacia em Portugal: Uma Análise. Lisboa: Gabinete de Estatística e Planeamento da Educação (GEPE). Decree-Law no. 205/2009, 31 August 2009. Dias, P. (2012), ‘Comunidades de educação e inovação na sociedade digital’, Educação, Formação & Tecnologias, 5(2). — (in press), ‘Inovação pedagógica na educação aberta e em rede’, Revista Educação, Formação e Tecnologias. Dubar, C. (1997), A Socialização: A Construção das Identidades Sociais e Profissionais. Porto: Porto Editora. European Commission (n.d.), Education and Training. Retrieved from http://ec.europa. eu/education/policy/higher-education/knowledge-innovation-triangle_En.htm). Giddens, A. (1997), Modernidade e Identidade Pessoal. Oeiras: Celta Editora. Gornall, L., Daunton, L., Salisbury, J., Cook, C. and Thomas, B. (2014), ‘“Starting the Day Fresh” – Hidden Work and Discourse in Contemporary Academic Practice’, in L. Gornall, L. Daunton, J. Salisbury, C. Cook and B. Thomas (eds), Academic Working Lives: Experience, Practice and Change. London, Bloomsbury, pp. 1–10.

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Hargreaves, A. (2003), Teaching in the Knowledge Society: Education in the Age of Insecurity. New York: Columbia University. Henriques, S. and Seabra, F. (2012), ‘Impactos do e-learning ao nível da organização do trabalho docente no Ensino Superior’, in J. F. Matos, N. Pedro, A. Pedro, P. Patrocínio, J. Piedade, and S. Lemos (eds), Em direção à educação 2.0. Atas do II Congresso Internacional TIC e Educação. Lisboa: Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa, pp. 3584–602. Hoadley, C. M. and Kilner, P. G. (2005). ‘Using Technology to Transform Communities of Practice into Knowledge-Building Communities’, SIGGROUP Bouletim, 25(1): 31, 31–40. Hoare, C. (ed.) (2006), Handbook of Adult Development and Learning. Oxford: Oxford Academic Press. Lillis, T. and Curry, M. J. (2010), Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. London: Routledge. Magalhães, A. M. (2006), ‘A identidade do ensino superior: a educação superior e a universidade’, Revista Lusófona de Educação, 7: 13–40. Moreira, D., Marcos, A. and Coelho, J. (2013), ‘Experiencing Diversity in a ODL Higher Education Context’, EADTU Annual Conference, Paris, 2013 – The Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference 2013 – Proceedings, pp. 251–60. Nóvoa, A. (2011), O regresso dos professores. Retrieved from http://www.youblisher. com/p/304349-O-Regresso-dos-professores/. OECD (2012), Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education: Portugal. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/edu/evaluationpolicy. Pereira, A., Mendes, A. Q., Morgado, L., Amante, L. and Bidarra, A. (2007), Universidade Aberta’s Pedagogical Model for Distance Education: A University for the Future. Lisbon: Universidade Aberta. Reto, L. (Coord.) (2012), Potencial económico da língua Portuguesa. Alfragide: Texto Editores. Rosado, P. (2008), ‘Formação pedagógica no ensino superior. O caso dos docentes médicos’, Sísifo. Revista de Ciências da Educação, 7: 111–24. Schleicher, A. (ed.) (2012), Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons from around the World. OECD Publishing. Retreived from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264xxxxxx-en. Stoer, S. R. (2004), ‘New Forms of Citizenship, European Construction and the Reconfiguration of the University’, Conferência proferida Fulbright Brainstorm. Lisboa: Fulbrait. Stoer, S. R. and Magalhães, A. M. (2005), ‘A Europa como Bazar. Contributo para a análise da reconfiguração dos Estados-nação no contexto europeu e das novas formas de “viver em conjunto”’, in Teodoro, A. and Torres, C. A. (Orgs.), Educação Crítica & Utopia. Perspectivas para o século XXI. Porto: Edições Afrontamento, pp. 33–51. Touraine, A. (1986), Le Retour de l’Acteur. París: Fayard.

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Policy, Profession and Person: The Formation of Reflexive Academic Identities in an Irish Institute of Technology Carol O’Byrne

What does it mean to be an academic in the twenty-first century? What is it possible to do, to be and to become? How are our activities and identities influenced by our locations – by the continents and countries we inhabit, the institutions we serve, the departments and disciplinary groupings we view as our conceptual homes? This chapter addresses these questions in relation to one national context, reporting on research which explored the nature and evolution of academic professional identities in the Institute of Technology (IoT) sector of Ireland’s higher education system. It begins with a brief overview of the key issues highlighted in existing research on academic identities, and then addresses the conceptual challenges involved in identity research in the early twenty-first century. It proposes the use of Margaret Archer’s model of identity formation as a possible solution to these challenges and discusses the insights generated when this model was applied to life history data collected from Irish IoT lecturers with a view to understanding the academic identities that had emerged over a 40-year period in this particular context.

Academic identities – existing understandings Identity is a complex, and in many ways a contested, concept, but neither its complexity nor its contested nature detract from its inherent fascination for those interested in understanding academic life. It is ‘of central, symbolic and

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instrumental significance in the lives of individual academics’ (Kogan et al., 2000: 162), and has been widely researched in a broad range of academic contexts. Research on the nature of academic identities suggests that they are ‘a complex and heterogeneous mix of individual and community values, linked to particular forms of knowledge or epistemological frameworks and a sense of worth or self esteem’ (Henkel, 2000: 255). They are influenced by the various communities to which individual academics belong, from the discipline (e.g. Lindblom et al., 2006; Robertson, 2007), the department (e.g. Mills et al., 2005) and the institution (Kogan et al., 2000) to many other informally constituted communities of practice (e.g. Nagy and Burch, 2009). They are played out in a variety of roles, primarily in research, teaching and administration (Raddon, 2006) but also for enlightenment of the public and extramural activities (Kyvik, 2000). Academic identities are characterised by diversity. Nixon et al. (1998: 292) stress that ‘in this sprawling and diverse system, there is more than one way to construct an academic professional self ’. Individuals follow a range of different trajectories in forming academic identities (Jawitz, 2008), and these identities are flexible, multi-layered and susceptible to change over time (Winberg, 2008). Changes to identities are often driven by external forces, and the change process can be traumatic; Clegg (2008: 340) suggests ‘academic identities [are] being actively shaped in response to changes in university structures and external environments’, while Sikes (2006: 563) stresses that ‘when contexts change and priorities shift, grasping hold of identities that one can feel comfortable with is no easy matter’.

Exploring academic identities – conceptual challenges In order to understand academic identities, we need a clear conceptualisation of identity. Finding one presents a challenge, however, as is implied by Hall’s (1996: 15) reference to ‘a veritable discursive explosion . . . around the concept of identity at the same moment as it is subjected to a searching critique’. The ‘discursive explosion’ centres on the question of what ‘identity’ actually means. The modernist interpretation of identity views the person ‘as an individual subject . . . a given entity, the author of its own acts and centred in a unitary, reflexive and directive consciousness’ (Du Gay et al., 2000: 2). At the heart of this modernist subject is ‘the unity of the real “me” or essential self ’ (Usher,

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1998: 18), a singular, static essence that is both unchanging and fundamentally unchangeable. This modernist notion has come under attack from various sources. The challenges have focused on the viability of this essentialist perspective in the context of late modernity with its ‘dislocations of structures and processes’ (Henkel, 2000: 13). In this context, the idea of a ‘singular knowable essential self ’ is contested, and replaced by ‘more multiple, disrupted notions of subjectivity’ (Goodson and Sikes, 2001: 15), which are ‘multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices and positions’ (Hall, 1996: 17). The certainty and stability of the modernist concept is replaced by a sense that identity is ‘more contingent, fragile and incomplete and thus more amenable to reconstitution than was previously thought possible’ (Du Gay et al., 2000: 2). What concept of identity can we use to think with against the backdrop of the deconstruction of the modernist concept? To return to the idea of a unitary subject would be, Hall (1996) suggests, impossible. Yet to go as far as some postmodernist theorists who have reconceptualised identity as a textual or discursive construction rather than as a personal phenomenon seems equally unviable. In denying that ‘identities and identifications have a materiality outside the sphere of the discursive’ (Walker, 1998: 352), the postmodernist conceptualisation of identity effectively denies individual human beings their agency and indeed their fundamental humanity. What is required is a conceptualisation that addresses the concerns of the deconstructionist critics, but allows us to continue to consider the individual as having an existence outside the realm of the discursive. Working within the framework of social realist theory, Margaret Archer (Archer, 1995; 2000; 2003; 2007) proposes a model of personal and social identity that meets this requirement. In her conceptualisation of identity, the individual is neither ‘Modernity’s Man’ – processed of an essential unchanging core of rationality that means that he shapes society, but is not shaped by it – nor ‘Postmodernity’s Man’, arising from, and constituted purely by, discourse.

A social realist perspective on the emergence of identity Archer’s model of personal and social identity is based on social realism’s ‘stratified view of “the subject” whose different properties and powers (PEPs) emerge at each level’ (Archer, 2000: 255). The individual subject is made up of

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four strata: ‘the self, the person, the agent and the actor’ (255). Each stratum is characterised by its own distinct properties and powers, but all four strata are located within the one individual subject and thus are interrelated. The process of forming personal and social identities begins with the emergence of the ‘self ’ and of ‘self identity’. Self identity amounts to ‘a continuous sense that we are one and the same being over time’ (7). The sense of self develops early in life, and is characterised by ‘our most crucial human properties and powers – self-consciousness, reflexivity and a good knowledge of the world which is indispensable to thriving in it’ (189). This is followed by the formation of a personal identity. The individual human being, in possession of a sense of self, must operate in the world. Every human being ‘has concerns in the natural order (about physical well-being), in the practical order (about performative competence) and in the social order (about self-worth)’ (313), and is obliged to address the concerns arising from all three orders of reality. Exercising the ‘self ’s’ capacity for reflexivity, the individual engages in an internal conversation in which the relative importance of the various concerns is considered. This internal conversation generates the individual’s personal identity by ‘elaborating the constellation of commitments with which each one of us feels we can live’ (11). The ‘person’, characterised by a unique constellation of concerns, devises ‘projects’ (7), or courses of action, that can contribute to the realisation of these concerns. In pursuing these projects, s/he interacts with the social as well as with the natural and practical orders of reality. It is the interaction between the person and the social world that generates the final two strata of social realism’s subject: the agent and the actor. Agents are defined as ‘collectivities sharing the same life chances’ (260). All human beings are characterised by what Archer calls primary agency. They become, by birth or by default as a consequence of taking up particular positions in society, members of particular collectivities. Their membership of them is involuntary, but is highly significant as it influences the resources and opportunities that they can access, and the kinds of social identities they can develop. Individuals may also develop corporate agency, which involves actively seeking out like-minded individuals with similar interests and goals and working with them towards the fulfilment of those goals. The activities of such voluntary collectivities, or corporate agents, often result in what is described as ‘the elaboration of the institutional role array’ (260). This essentially involves the creation of new roles and the opening up of new opportunities both for those who belong to the collectivities concerned and for the members of society at large.

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In order to move from being agents to being actors, individuals must seek out roles in society that allow them to pursue their ultimate concerns, and thus to become the kinds of people they wish to be. Once they have found appropriate roles, they must ‘personify’ (288) them. Personifying a role, in Archer’s use of the term, means performing it in a way that is consistent with, and allows for, the further pursuit of one’s own particular set of concerns: it essentially involves bringing one’s personal identity to bear on the role, and animating it in one’s own unique way. By personifying the roles they have chosen, individuals develop social identities, but they may also ‘elasticate’ (297) the roles themselves: their particular interpretations of how roles can and should be performed may lead to changes in general perceptions of what these roles involve, and in relation to the kinds of behaviour expected of their incumbents.

Setting the scene – an introduction to the Irish IoT sector The research discussed here set out to examine the nature and evolution of academic professional identities in an Irish Institute of Technology. Fundamental to understanding these identities is an understanding of the context in which they were formed and played out. This section provides a brief introduction to that context. Ireland has a binary higher education system, made up of seven universities and thirteen institutes of technology (IoTs). The latter started life in the late 1960s as regional technical colleges (RTCs), which were established to provide applied vocational education at sub-degree level in a limited number of discipline areas – chiefly science, engineering and business. They operated under legislation enacted in 1930 to regulate the provision of second-level vocational training, and their activities were controlled by the Irish Department of Education and Skills (DES) through the local Vocational Education Committees (VECs). Over time, and in response to the demands of various stakeholders, the RTCs began to operate outside their initial and official remit: they began by providing study programmes leading to first degree and later postgraduate qualifications in a wide range of discipline areas – including the humanities and social sciences, and they engaged in research and consultancy, as well as in teaching and teaching-related activities. Legislation enacted specifically for the RTCs in 1992 ultimately legitimised some of these ‘new’ activities, including research, and their expanded role in the higher education system was acknowledged by their re-designation as IoTs in the late 1990s. Yet their autonomy remains limited; the majority of IoTs now

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have authority to make their own awards, but it may be withdrawn at any time by the national awards body, Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), and the influence of the DES remains strong. All academic appointments and promotions continue to require sanction from the DES, and academic contracts, which are still strongly teaching focused, continue to be negotiated at the national level by the DES, sectoral management and the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI). Institutional budgets and spending are closely monitored by the DES, and unlike the universities, the IoTs receive no baseline funding for research. The government’s determination to maintain the binary divide (see e.g. HEA, 2012; Higher Education Strategy Group, 2010) and to prevent ‘mission drift’ in the higher education sector means that, despite considerable change in what IoTs do since they were originally established, their room for manoeuvre remains restricted.

Exploring actual identities – the research study The aim of the research discussed here was to examine the academic professional identities formed by individuals working within the context just described. Sixteen lecturers at one IoT participated in the study. They were drawn from four academic schools: business, engineering, humanities and science, with each represented by four lecturers. Eight participants had joined the staff prior to the enactment of the 1992 RTC Act, and are referred to as the pre-1992 participants, while the remaining 8 had taken up their positions after 1992, and are described as the post-1992 participants. All 16 were full-time permanent members of staff, at either lecturer or senior lecturer 1 level. All qualified to Master’s level, 4 of them held, and 4 were close to achieving, doctorates. The study was conducted using the life history methodology advocated by Goodson and Sikes (2001), in which, to create life histories, individuals’ life stories are collected and then set against the contextual background in which the lives have been lived. Data collection involved biographical interviews with each participant, as well as contextualisation interviews with members of the institution’s management team, and analysis of relevant national and local documentation. The biographical interviews were largely unstructured ‘grounded conversations’ (28) in which individuals were invited to tell the stories of their professional lives. To generate life histories, the tales gathered were set against the backdrop constructed on the basis of the contextualisation interviews and the documentary analysis.

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The remainder of this chapter considers the insights generated when the life histories of the research participants were analysed using Archer’s concepts as a theoretical frame. It first considers the lecturers as ‘agents’ (Archer, 2000: 260), examining how their primary agency (in this case, their involuntary placement as members of particular collectivities that results from accepting positions as lecturers) and their corporate agency (i.e. their voluntary engagement with other collectivities) have affected and continue to affect them and the professional identities they form. It then considers them as ‘actors’ (261), focussing on how they have chosen to ‘personify’ (288) the lecturing role and to engage with the various activities involved.

Participants as primary agents – involuntary collectivities and their consequences Of the 16 research participants, only 1 claimed lecturing as a first career. The others had all pursued alternative career paths before moving into higher education: they were, in Archer’s terms, mature actors with established social/ professional identities before becoming lecturers. On taking up their lecturing posts, they began a new cycle of professional identity formation, and took up new, though still involuntary, positions on the overall distribution of resources as primary agents: as technological sector lecturers, as employees of a particular IoT and as members of specific schools and departments. How did these new positions impact on these individuals and their developing academic professional identities? As lecturers in an IoT, the research participants were clearly positioned within the Irish higher education system and firmly rooted on one side of the binary divide. This positioning impacted strongly on the ‘projects’ (Archer, 2007) that they could pursue, enabling some and constraining others. The strong emphasis on teaching and the tendency to define lecturers’ work in terms of teaching hours rather in terms of outputs or of the broader range of roles academics play, mean that activities such as research, while encouraged by ambitious institutions, receive limited support. The research active participants did research largely in their own time, and were only able to focus on what they described as ‘their own work’ (Francesca, humanities) when their teaching and administrative duties were fulfilled. The vocational remit of the IoTs served as a constraint to some. The DES’s determination to deter mission drift means that IoTs are usually sanctioned to run only ‘applied’ programmes. Lecturers

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in areas that were not particularly ‘applied’ thus found themselves prevented from developing and running the kinds of programmes they wished to provide, and thus from involvement in high-level specialised teaching or activities, like postgraduate supervision. Even their ‘applied’ discipline colleagues found being an IoT lecturer potentially limiting. Both scientists and engineers commented that they were seen as second-class citizens within national disciplinary and professional communities. They claimed that they were viewed as unable to compete with their university counterparts in terms of outputs, despite evidence to the contrary, and were allocated a smaller share – or indeed no share at all – of competitive funding. Being located within the IoT sector and obliged to operate within its limits appears therefore to impact significantly on what individuals can do and the kinds of professional identities they can develop. Institutional location appears also to impact strongly on identity. Although all IoTs operate within the same macro-level context, the technological sector is far from homogeneous. How macro-level policy is received, interpreted and implemented at the meso-level can differ significantly from one institution to the next. Being located in one IoT rather than another can therefore affect the extent to which individuals’ projects are constrained or enabled, and the range of professional identities available to them. The institution in which my research was conducted had traditionally been quick to embrace whatever opportunities arose to move beyond the limits of its remit, and had actively sought to overcome various obstacles to the pursuit of progressive projects. My data suggest that the research participants were conscious of their experiences differing from those of lecturers in other IoTs, with many suggesting that their working environment was characterised by an energy and sense of progressiveness absent in other colleges. The disadvantages of being located in an IoT seemed to be counterbalanced by the advantages of being, as Emma (science) put it, in ‘the best IoT’. Institutional location did appear to have its downsides, however. There may have been a sense that ‘the joint is jumping’ (Kieran, engineering) when compared to other institutions, but this was due at least partly to a culture of high expectations, which led individuals to get involved in activities that fell outside their contractual obligations, and to work in the evenings, during holiday periods and so on. In a higher education sector characterised by strong macro-level commitment to keeping institutions in their places, individuals also found that being located in an institution with declared aspirations to become a university meant that they were ‘nobody’s friend’ (Laura, humanities) and rather isolated within the broader IoT community. In considering lecturers as primary agents, we must also consider the impact of their involuntary positioning in

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particular collectivities within the institution on their projects and professional identities. The participants all ‘belonged’ to particular academic schools and departments and were affected by the structures of these organisational units and their prevailing cultures. In most IoTs – including the case study institution – schools and departments are formed on the basis of size rather than specialism. Disciplines are often combined into schools and departments on the basis of staff and student numbers, rather than necessarily of disciplinary coherence, and even those departments that appear to be characterised by disciplinary coherence often house quite disparate groups with distinctive specialisms and needs. The participants’ stories suggested that departmental assignment to an individual can influence the kinds of projects s/he is likely to pursue and the dimensions of the academic role that s/he is likely to engage with. Certain schools and departments had maintained the strong practical focus expected in a technological college, defining their mission as the preparation of students for specific roles in industry, and prioritising practically oriented teaching and industrial engagement over activities such as research. Other schools and departments were characterised by a commitment to knowledge creation and to academic reproduction: these units were research-focused – often at the expense of other activities, such as teaching. Still others – usually those housing a more disparate range of disciplines – tended to allow, if not always to actively facilitate, pursuit of a wide range of projects. My data clearly show that research participants’ attitudes towards their departments varied both across disciplines and across generations, and appeared to have changed over time. The School of Business seemed to provide its members with a comfortable and acceptable conceptual home: business lecturers identified strongly with the school, rather than with individual departments, and seemed happy to belong to this particular collectivity. The diversity inherent in the remaining schools meant that lecturers were more likely to identify with their departments, which tended to have a more specialised focus, than with the school. The natural scientists, for example, appeared to feel very little connection with the computer scientists and mathematicians who shared the School of Science affiliation, and tended to describe their primary allegiance as being to the department. In the School of Humanities, disciplinary incoherence was evident even at the departmental level, resulting in humanities lecturers having a somewhat ambivalent relationship to both the school and department; some participants explicitly questioned whether they belonged at all to the collectivities in which they had been involuntarily placed.

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Communities of their own choosing – participants as corporate agents Taking up a lecturing role means being placed in particular collectivities as primary agents, but these are by no means the only collectivities for lecturers. Where possible, people move beyond these assigned communities, in search of colleagues who share their interests and of contexts in which they can pursue their professional concerns. They align themselves with groups of like-minded individuals to work towards common goals, and thus become corporate agents. All of the research participants had developed corporate agency, although the groups with which they had aligned themselves and the impact of their engagement with these groups varied across generations. One factor influencing lecturers’ pursuit of groups was their views on the overall purpose of higher education. The pre-1992 participants were concerned with preparing students for industry and committed to delivering industryinformed and industry-relevant teaching. As a result, they tried to retain their ties to the ‘real world’, and most had worked out mechanisms for keeping in contact with colleagues in industry, ranging from maintaining their membership in professional bodies to continuing to practise in their professions. The post1992 participants, in contrast, were concerned with producing broadly educated, research-literate graduates, and thus aligned themselves with their academic peers in disciplinary networks within and outside the institution. While some did maintain their professional ties, they used these to inform research rather than teaching. Both the pre- and post-1992 humanities lecturers demonstrated a tendency to align themselves with external networks of academics in their specialist areas, since these provided them with a community of peers, and compensated for the lack or limited number of fellow specialists within the institution. Individuals tended to seek out collectivities that allowed them to pursue concerns that were significant to them as professionals. Strong institutional loyalty and a concern with making the institution work better for its members pushed the pre-1992 participants in the direction of groups such as the Academic Council, which allowed them to contribute to broad, institutional-level change. The post-1992 participants, in contrast, tended to align themselves with institutelevel groups to a lesser extent than their pre-1992 colleagues. While many had played roles in shaping institutional policy on issues that were important to them, such as research support structures, they were less inclined to join committees like the Academic Council, whose remit is more broadly focused.

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In terms of corporate agency, one of the most interesting developments was a trend towards the formation of research groups and research centres that had developed among the post-1992 recruits. Whereas the pre-1992 participants tended to make the best of their involuntary placement in schools and departments, the post-1992 lecturers showed a willingness to seek out, and if necessary set up, collectivities that would fulfil their need for appropriate conceptual homes. Most worked in research collectivities of some sort, from teams established for particular projects to full-fledged research groups, and they tended to identify more strongly with these than with their schools and departments.

Participants as actors – how individuals perform and personify the academic role In the previous sections I consider the research participants as agents. In this section my focus is on the participants as social actors, investing in the lecturing role as one that they have deemed suitable for the development of social identities which are ‘expressive of who they are as persons in society’ (Archer, 2000: 261). I examine how these lecturers ‘personify’ the role and how they engage with a selection of the duties that form part of it, and I consider the various types of professional identity that emerge out of different role personifications.

Personifying the lecturing role – the project of teaching Teaching remains one of a limited number of projects or activities that all IoT lecturers are obliged to pursue, so all the participants had teaching duties – although what these comprised varied significantly from individual to individual and from one level and discipline to another. The centrality of this dimension of the lecturing role, my data show, has changed significantly over time. The pre-1992 participants saw teaching as their primary function. When they invested themselves in the lecturing role, which offered the kind of professional identity they desired, they did so on the understanding that it was essentially about teaching. The post-1992 participants, in contrast, assigned a lesser degree of centrality to the teaching dimension of the role; while most acknowledged the importance of teaching – and some claimed to enjoy it – many perceived it as ‘only one part of the job and not necessarily the most

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important part’ (Timothy, humanities), and several admitted to trying at every opportunity to reduce their teaching loads. How the teaching dimension of the role was approached varied from one generation to the next; individuals’ approaches to teaching were influenced by their particular concerns. The pre-1992 participants, concerned with preparing students for professional accreditation and practice, perceived teaching as the ‘real’ world-focused and industry-led. They drew upon their own industrial experience for examples, and took every opportunity to keep abreast of developments in the workplace. Among the post-1992 participants, teaching was more likely to be research-led, with several mentioning how much they enjoyed discussing their own research in class. Lecturers from the two generations differed in terms of activities categorised as teaching-related. The pre-1992 participants saw teaching largely as an activity occurring in structured formal settings with groups of students. The post-1992 participants had worked to stretch the definition of teaching to include activities such as postgraduate supervision, because this created space within the teaching role for them to pursue projects that were important to them. Over time, individual lecturers’ work in this area had come to be recognised as contributing to the institution’s research capacity–building ambitions, and research supervision came to have ‘teaching hours’ allocated to it. The teaching dimension of the role was thus ‘elasticated’, and research supervision had come to be accepted – at least at the meso-level – as a teaching duty, though postgraduate student numbers were still such that not all lecturers were expected to undertake it.

Personifying the lecturing role – engaging with other projects While all IoT lecturers are expected to teach, the lecturer role has other dimensions that are not necessarily contractual requirements. Chief among these are the pastoral and the research dimensions. The extent to which participants chose to engage with these dimensions varied significantly across generations, and the manner in which those who chose to do – and did – so differed significantly from one lecturer to the next.

The pastoral project Among their concerns the pre-1992 participants included connecting with students and fulfilling their duty of care towards them. It is therefore unsurprising that most of them actively engaged with the pastoral dimension of their role. They

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talked at length about their interaction with students and how important they found it, and several expressed regret that their connection with their students seemed to be weakening as they got older. Many had become involved in the Academic Council and other committees to ensure that institutional structures were designed and implemented in a truly student-centred manner. The post-1992 participants manifested a different attitude to the pastoral dimension of the role. While most were evidently committed to their students, and some did take on pastoral duties, many felt that their student care-related responsibilities should be clearly bounded, and limited to academic mentoring rather than personal support. Many indicated a preference for no involvement in pastoral work, either because they were uncomfortable with it or because it took time that they preferred to expend on other activities that they prioritised more.

The project of research The most significant difference in terms of how the two generations personified the lecturing role was undoubtedly related to the research dimension. With the exception of the humanities lecturers, the pre-1992 participants had chosen either not to engage with this dimension at all, or had engaged with it only to acquire higher-level qualifications. The post-1992 participants, in contrast, were all involved in research of some sort, seeing it as a significant component of what they did. Although research is now acknowledged as an activity that IoT lecturers may participate in, and is strongly encouraged at the case study institution, how research is understood can and did vary substantially from person to person. The post-1992 participants defined research as it is defined in universities: to them, it involved generating new knowledge, conference presentations, publishing and so on. Most held, or were working towards, doctoral qualifications, often in areas strategically chosen because of their potential to help carve out academic careers, and they tended to define themselves as researchers. The pre-1992 participants had a different perspective on research. With one exception, they seemed to associate it almost entirely with the acquisition of postgraduate qualifications. Several had reacted to the institutional push for research by signing up for Master’s degrees, but most had shunned research activity outside the context of postgraduate programmes. All the post-1992 participants engaged with the research dimension of the academic role, but how individuals personified this dimension varied. Being a ‘researcher’ meant different things to different people – and indeed it seemed

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that the different personifications of the role’s research dimension had over time led to the ‘elastication’ of the researcher identity. For some, ‘research’ involved designing, and seeking funding for, projects to be carried out by postgraduate students, which they oversaw. For others, chiefly in the humanities, research involved working in relative isolation on their own projects and honing their ideas for publication to obtain feedback from colleagues in their fields. For most of the ‘researchers’, the role’s research dimension also involved membership of project teams or formal research centres. This brought additional work, but being part of a community of like-minded individuals working towards similar goals and enjoying a certain level of autonomy and control over one’s own destiny seemed to compensate for any such extra work.

Academic identities in an Irish IoT – What have we learned? Overall, my research suggests that, in the Irish IoT sector, there is indeed ‘more than one way to construct an academic professional self ’ (Nixon et al., 1998: 292). The professional identities formed by the research participants appeared to be strongly influenced by the context in which they operated, and to be complex and characterised by diversity. Archer’s model of identity formation asserts that identities are affected by the various collectivities to which individuals belong, and my findings suggest that Irish IoT lecturers are indeed susceptible to the influence of their groups. The participants’ activities and professional identities were affected by their positions as primary agents, that is, by their membership in collectivities to which they were involuntarily assigned when they became lecturers, and as corporate agents, that is, their membership in collectivities that they have voluntarily joined or in some cases created. In terms of primary agency, these academics’ location in the IoT sector seemed to strongly influence what they could be and do. Operating in what is still perceived as the tertiary education’s ‘Cinderella’ sector, with its clearly defined and delimited applied vocational remit, affected the nature and level of programmes they got to teach, the kinds of students they got to work with, the extent of their research activity, and the seriousness with which their research was taken by peers. These issues impacted their professional identities, contributing to a sense of inferiority that is discernible in many participants’ stories. The impact of the department and school on research participants’ identities varied. Several pre-1992 participants’ stories indicated that schools and departments had indeed been significant and formative communities

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for lecturers in the RTC days. As the institution grew and these units became umbrellas for increasingly large staff and student groups, as well as for increasingly wide ranges of disciplines that – at least in some cases – did not necessarily sit comfortably together, the likelihood of drawing a strong sense of identity from departments and schools seemed to have diminished. Where these units provided a relatively coherent ‘conceptual home’, they apparently continued to exert a positive influence. Where they did not, participants’ reactions varied from regret to active efforts to join or create new collectivities which offered the sense of belonging and professional identity that their departments and schools did not provide. In terms of corporate agency, all the participants had also voluntarily aligned themselves with particular groups and communities within and outside the institution. While the kinds of groups they chose to work with varied from one generation to the next, with pre-1992 participants gravitating towards institute-level bodies such as the Academic Council and post-1992 participants joining – or indeed establishing – research groups and research centres, these collectivities all served a similar purpose; they provided opportunities to pursue the projects that were important to lecturers as professionals and to acquire a certain level of personal control over their destinies. By seeking out and working with like-minded colleagues, not only did individuals find communities from which they themselves could draw professional identities, but they often created new positions that upcoming social actors can choose to occupy. While social identities are influenced by the collectivities to which we belong, Archer stresses that the key to the formation of unique identities as social actors lies in the manner in which we personify the roles we choose as vehicles for fulfilling our ultimate concerns. The participants’ stories suggested that the manner in which the lecturing role was personified had changed significantly over the institution’s lifetime. Not only had the concerns that people hoped to fulfil in the role changed, but the range of approaches taken to the personification of the role had also expanded considerably, resulting in the development of a considerable variety of professional identities in this particular context. The pre-1992 participants (with the exception of the humanities participants) seemed to be happy to accept a generalist identity. They focused on the teaching and pastoral dimensions of the role and on developing structures to support themselves and their colleagues. They saw themselves, broadly speaking, as professionals who lectured, and did whatever was possible to keep their fingers on the pulse of industry. They were community-focused, and personified the

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role in a generally selfless manner, willing to make sacrifices for the overall good of the groups to which they belonged. The post-1992 participants and the pre-1992 humanities lecturers, in contrast, were anxious for specialist identities, seeing themselves as professional lecturers. They focused on the role’s research dimension, expecting support for their research ambitions. They were involved in other activities, but many tried to limit their pastoral involvement and administration. They were individualist rather than collectivist in focus, and while they demonstrated strong loyalty to the institution and to various collectivities within it (chiefly research groups and centres), they had a tendency to evaluate opportunities not just in terms of how the group stood to benefit, but also in terms of how they themselves were likely to benefit. All in all, these individuals were conscious of making their mark and making their way forward, and they tried to personify the lecturing role in a manner that would make them stand out from the crowd.

Conclusion Overall, the research suggests that an identity shift has occurred over time in the Irish IoT sector, with the predominantly teaching-based identity which characterised those who entered lecturing prior to 1992 being replaced by a more complex and multi-layered professional identity built around a combination of roles in teaching, research and administration among those whose academic careers began post-1992. While this shift has been a gradual one, it does appear to have been set in motion by a clearly identifiable macro-level event, namely the enactment of sector-specific legislation which allowed the then RTCs and their staff to move beyond the constraints that had previously limited the range of projects they could pursue and thus the range of identities they could legitimately develop. The elimination of macro-level obstacles to particular activities has undoubtedly had some positive effects. However, the removal of constraints does not necessarily equate to the provision of enablements, and the post1992 participants highlighted ongoing challenges which faced them and their institutions as they tried to take advantage of the new spaces opened up by the 1992 RTC Act. Possibly the most significant issue affecting IoTs and their staff in the early twenty-first century is the continued disconnect between what they actually do and wish to do, on the one hand, and what they are officially expected and supported to do, on the other. At the meso-level, the desire of ambitious

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institutions to push the boundaries of their remit to meet the needs of their regions and their students often means engaging in activities for which they are not really supported or resourced, and working creatively within the limited spaces that exist in the policies and structures to enable projects they wish to and are technically allowed to, though not officially expected to, pursue. At the micro-level, individual IoT lecturers engage with research, with postgraduate teaching and supervision, and with a range of disciplines that stretches far beyond the traditional understanding of applied vocational education, yet they continue to be perceived primarily as teachers and to have their role officially defined in terms of (ever increasing) teaching hours rather than in terms of the diverse range of activities that most undertake on a daily basis. The tension between the desire of the IoTs and their staff to develop and grow, and the desire of those operating at the national level to maintain the status quo in Irish higher education, continues to have a significant impact on those working in the institutes. While this study clearly shows that it is possible for IoT lecturers to do, be and become much more than the official discourse suggests, until the extent and nature of the changes that have taken place at the meso- and micro-levels in the IoT sector are acknowledged and accepted at the macrolevel as the basis for future development, those of us operating in the ‘Cinderella’ sector will have to continue to fight to be allowed to dance at the ball.

References Archer, M. S. (1995), Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — (2000), Being Human: The Problem of Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — (2003), Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — (2007), Making our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clegg, S. (2008), ‘Academic Identities under Threat?’, British Educational Research Journal, 34(3): 329–45. Du Gay, P., Evans, J. and Redman, P. (2000), ‘General Introduction’, in P. Du Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman (eds), Identity: A Reader. London: Sage, pp. 1–5. Goodson, I. and Sikes, P. (2001), Life History Research in Educational Settings: Learning from Lives. Buckingham: Open University Press. Hall, S. (1996), ‘Who Needs Identity?’ in P. Du Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman (eds), Identity: A Reader. London: Sage, pp. 15–30.

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HEA (2012), Towards a Future Higher Education Landscape. Dublin: Higher Education Authority. Henkel, M. (2000), Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley. Higher Education Strategy Group (2010), National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030: Report of the National Strategy Group. Dublin: Department of Education and Skills. Jawitz, J. (2008), ‘New Academics Negotiating Communities of Practice: Learning to Swim with the Big Fish’, Teaching in Higher Education, 12(2): 185–97. Kogan, M., Bauer, M., Bleiklie, I. and Henkel, M. (2000), Transforming Higher Education: A Comparative Study. London: Jessica Kingsley. Kyvik, S. (2000), ‘Academic Work in Norwegian Higher Education’, in M. Tight (ed.), Academic Life and Work. Oxford: Elsevier Press, pp. 33–72. Lindblom Ylänne, S., Trigwell, K., Nevgi, A. and Ashwin, P. (2006), ‘How Approaches to Teaching Are Affected by Discipline and Teaching Context’, Studies in Higher Education, 31(3): 285–98. Mills, M., Bettis, P., Miller, J. and Nolan, R. (2005), ‘Experiences of Academic Unit Reorganisation: Organisational Identity and Identification in Organisational Change’, The Review of Higher Education, 28(4): 597–619. Nagy, J. and Burch, B. (2009), ‘Communities of Practice in Academe (CoP-iA): Understanding Academic Work Practices to Enable Knowledge Building Capacities in Corporate Universities’, Oxford Review of Education, 35(2): 227–47. Nixon, J., Beattie, M., Challis M. and Walker, M. (1998), ‘What Does It Mean to Be an Academic? A Colloquium’, Teaching in Higher Education, 3(3): 277–98. Raddon, A. (2006), ‘Drawing the Boundaries in Academic Work: Individual Views and Experiences of Teaching, Research and Administration’, Paper Presented at the Society for Research in Higher Education Annual Conference, December 2006, Brighton, UK. Robertson, J. (2007), ‘Beyond the “Research/Teaching Nexus”: Exploring the Complexity of Academic Experience’, Studies in Higher Education, 32(5): 541–56. Sikes, P. (2006), ‘Working in a “New” University: In the Shadow of the Research Assessment Exercise?’, Studies in Higher Education, 31(5): 555–68. Usher, R. (1998), ‘The Story of the Self: Education, Experience and Autobiography’, in M. Erben (ed.), Biography and Education: A Reader. London: Falmer Press, pp. 18–31. Walker, M. (1998), ‘Academic Identities: Women on a South African Landscape’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 19(3): 335–54. Winberg, C. (2008), ‘Teaching Engineering / Engineering Teaching: Interdisciplinary Collaboration and the Construction of Academic Identities’, Teaching in Higher Education, 13(3): 353–67.

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Laws, Regulations and Economics: Academic Identity Formation in Greek Higher Education Antigoni Papadimitriou

Universities in Greece are legal entities financed by the state. From 1974 until 2013, five major reforms have taken place and can be grouped in terms of the policy concepts of ‘democratization-1982’, ‘quality-2005’, ‘efficiency and performance-2007’, ‘modernization (or restructuration)-2011’ and the latest ‘Athena-2013 (crisis effect mergers)’. In 1982 the first framework for universities appeared. Karmas et al. (1988: 264) stated: ‘[T]he year 1982 will remain a historical landmark for university education because Greece abandoned a model of university government based on Central European experiences and practices of the past, which had remained in operation for over 50 years.’ In 2005 the Bologna process’ stocktaking exercise was a ‘window of opportunity’ that drove the Greek government to develop a quality assurance policy for its institutions of higher education (Papadimitriou, 2011: 251). Quality assurance, notably as evaluation, always had been criticised by several academics and their political parties as a market tool. Academics reacted negatively in the beginning to the introduction of the 2005 quality assurance law. In 2007, another law was launched for a short period, and it stands without changes primarily because it was never implemented fully by the universities even though that law requested more managerial practice and strategic university planning. Finally, law 4009/2011 offered the opportunity for academics in each university to organise both the academic and administrative structures of their institutions in order to simplify, operationalise and adjust them to a new reality.

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These changes requested internal control, so that academics could decide how they wanted to organise their schools, organise their criteria to assure the quality of their programs and provide general education study programs for the students. However, the overwhelmingly negative reaction by those academics who strongly resisted change has now become a political weapon used to ‘assist’ the Ministry of Education in imposing changes as from March 2013 on academics and to introduce mergers among university departments regardless of whether academics approved those changes or not. Meanwhile, an economic crisis hit Greece much like a tsunami, hitting harder there than in other European countries. During that storm, new economic measures and austerity programs made the majority of the Greek population’s life unaffordable. That storm hit Greek higher education particularly hard. In November 2012, the Ministry of Economics announced additional economic measures that affected academia (public funding was cut, salaries were scaled back to 1995 levels, new taxes were introduced, etc.), and at the same time the Ministry of Education announced the latest 2013 reform called ‘Athena’: Athena was the goddess of wisdom and military victory in ancient years; today, it deals with higher education mergers. Minister of Education Konstantinos Arvanitopoulos stated that Greece, which has a population of 11 million people and has many institutions (24 universities and 16 in the technological sector), must merge to reduce costs. This fifth and latest reform in Greece can be characterised as ‘crisis effect mergers-2013’, its prime aim being to comply with current economic constraints imposed by external forces (the International Monetary Fund) and streamline resources accordingly. So, how – given this policy context of externally imposed austerity measures – are academic identities being shaped within the Greek higher education system?

A framework for academic identity formation Organisations interact with their environments to achieve basic objectives (Gornitzka, 1999). The external environments that affect all organisations include a variety of elements: legal/political, economic and socio-cultural influences (Hall, 1999; Scott, 1995). Stensaker et al. (2012: 12) have argued that ‘organizational identity is transformed from a stable, distinct and enduring characteristic to a more fluent and more easily changeable organizational identity’. Academics are members of organisations (namely universities) and as such experience the impact of legal/political, economic and socio-cultural factors

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on their own identity and on the organisational identity of their institutions. To understand the formation of the Hellenic academic identity formation we need to take into account these three formational dimensions:

Legal/political Legal issues and sets of rules and regulations constitute this dimension. In practice, these items provide the bases for ‘the rules of the game’ and to a large extent determine how universities operate within the power structures of received academic traditions.

Economic This dimension focuses on economic and funding issues. In Europe, state budgets for higher education are under scrutiny. Reform processes aim to make universities financially more independent from the state, thereby applying pressure on them to raise additional funds from student fees and from the private sector. The crucial question raised by these reform processes is: Who funds Greek universities and who pays their academics?

Socio-cultural This dimension focuses on socio-cultural issues. These issues impact diverse groups of strong, influential stakeholders such as students, parents, international students, politicians, and general social actors, all of whom interact either directly or indirectly with academics and thereby exert a significant influence on Greek higher education.

Applying the framework to Greek reality Academic identity, under the circumstances pertaining within Greece, is a dynamic construct linking the past with the present and the present with the future. It is important therefore to adopt a historical perspective on the threedimensional framework.

Legal and political issues The first ‘Hellenic University of Otto’ was founded in Athens in 1837, followed by the National Technical University, which was established in Athens in 1873.

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Subsequently, in the twentieth century, other universities were established. The original governmental laws establishing the organisation and operation of the universities were not amended until 1978. In 1982, an effort was made to bring university education up to date in Hellas by parliament’s passage of new legislation (frame-law 1268/1982, ‘The Structure and Operation of Higher Education Institutions’). This law accounts for the major and most significant reform in Greek higher education since 1932. A significant number of laws have followed since 1982, with partial improvements and supplements to frame-law 1268/1982. The major principle of Article 16 of the Greek Constitution is that the privileges of full autonomy and of academic freedom are preserved for the universities. At the same time, the Greek Constitution refers also to the state control of the universities, which was the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. (This was the name of the ministry until 2009; hereafter, I use the term Ministry of Education.) The need for state control stemmed primarily from the fact that, according to the Greek Constitution, universities are state-financed institutions. As in many countries, the tension between university autonomy and state control – and the resulting friction in the relations between the universities and the government – is considerable. Saitis (1988: 261) declared: ‘[I]n theory there is “absolute” independence for university institutions to manage their affairs as they wish; in practice, however, the sense of “self-administration” has disappeared because all university decisions need ministerial approval.’ The Greek Constitution, however, interprets this tension in terms of a necessary balance between academic freedom and state obligation: ‘Art and science, research and teaching shall be free and their development and promotion shall be an obligation of the State’ (Article 16, section 1). The situation is further complicated by the fact that the Greek higher education system comprises two sectors (Law 2916/2001): universities (including the Open Universityonline) and the technological sector. Both sectors are nationalised and centralised. Constitutionally, universities are autonomous institutions. However, their mission is uniformly determined by the law. Every university operated according to frame-law 1268/1982, and every National Report or each university’s report mentioned how it complied with that law. This framelaw considered values and principles of democracy, collective participation, accountability and transparency. It also considered the rationale of the organisation, personnel and educational structure of the Greek higher education system. These values and principles

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obviously reflect the regulations concerning decision-making and leadership. Karmas et al. (1988: 264) noted: [S]ometimes ideological and political considerations have become the predominant criteria for making decisions: the most obvious (and perhaps most important) example is the election for a three-year term of the Rector and the two Vice-Rectors . . . Since 1982, when the new model of university government was introduced, the election of the Rector has become a political issue involving manoeuvres, alliance etc.

This new model for the operation of the Greek universities remained in place until March 2007. Tsaousis (2001: 141) pointed out that it marked a clear departure from the old academic structure, which, following the Humboldtian pattern, was organised around the chair and the ordinary professors. Karmas et al. (1988: 264) also highlighted some of the implications of this structural change: [In each university the] department [is] the basic functional academic unit, with a number of related departments grouped into schools; for the first time in Greece, it [allowed] the creation of Graduate Schools for the development of meaningful postgraduate programmes of study and research; it [divided] the academic year into two separate semesters; [and] it [required] completion of a certain number of credits for graduation.

The 1982 legislation stipulated four distinct levels of academic structure inside the university: institution, school, department and division. Each academic unit has its own leadership and decision-making structure. Rectors and vicerectors form the leadership in Greek universities. There is a hierarchical relation between the four levels of academic structure with regard to leadership and decision-making, with the institution situated at the top and with the division situated at the base. The final authority for setting up new academic units and for renaming, merging, splitting or closing down existing academic units belongs to the Ministry of Education. The number of new students enrolled in each university and department is also determined by the Ministry of Education. The basic unit in the university’s inner structure is the department. Departments correspond to an area of knowledge (discipline). They award degrees and they are also the academic units to which the positions of the main teaching personnel belong (academics). The departments have full autonomy in the election of their academic staff at all levels but the Ministry of Education determines the number of positions to be filled each year and checks the legality

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of the staff selection processes. Departments are divided into divisions or sectors corresponding to smaller and distinct parts of the major scientific disciplines of the department, provided the department’s discipline area is adequately broad and the department’s faculty is sufficiently large. The teaching and research activities of a department or a division/sector may be grouped and concentrated into even smaller operational units, the so-called laboratories (or clinics, in the case of medicine). Departments covering related discipline areas may constitute a School, which has mainly coordinating responsibilities for its departments. Not all universities in Greece are organised in the same way. Some, for example, do not have schools or research institutes or departments. But they all share a common framework. According to Greek legislation, university personnel consist of the following three major categories: academic staff, technical and laboratory staff, and administrative staff. Academic staff includes the following sub-categories: 1. The main teaching staff faculty members (professors, associate professors, assistant professors and lecturers) who all hold Ph.D. degrees. This group comprises the so-called Teaching and Research Faculty. 2. Adjunct and visiting teaching staff, who normally hold a Ph.D. degree. They are employed on a temporary and contractual basis. 3. Special teaching staff and research associates, who are mostly without a Ph.D. degree. Their teaching responsibilities are limited to specific subjects. Only the members of the two upper levels of full-time faculty members (i.e. professors and associate professors) are elected to permanent (i.e. tenured) positions. To safeguard academic freedom, university faculty members are defined as public functionaries who only under exceptional circumstances can be dismissed prior to the expiry of their term of employment. The rest of the staff members are also categorised as public servants but do not hold tenured positions. The Ministry of Education directly controls the salaries of all academics. During the academic year 2005–6, there were 266 departments in 21 Greek universities. The total academic population consisted of 14,439 members, 9,782 male and 4,657 female. Figure 13.1 shows the distribution of academic staff by age and gender for the academic year 2005–6. As the figure clearly demonstrates the vast majority in 2006 were in the age group 55–64. (The rapid tailing off thereafter is explained by the fact that in Greece academics were required to retire at the age of 65.) All universities operate in a similar way adhering to specific rules and national policies. This adherence to a set of common regulations can lead to uniformity among Greek academics, particularly in relation to their sense of academic

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6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 < 25

25–34

35–44

45–54

55–64

> = 65

Male

9

126

1844

3133

3887

782

Female

2

112

1015

1509

1714

305

Total

11

238

2859

4642

5601

1087

Figure 13.1 Distribution of academics by age and gender for the academic year 2005–6

identity. All academics in Greece are, as already noted, public employees. They are also, regardless of which university or department they work in, employed by the Ministry of Education. Their duties are legally defined and they are obliged to follow particular procedures. They are required to teach, perform research and provide services in accordance with the law, which allows no negotiation regarding individual or collective status. One of the effects of this systematisation of academic work can be to erode the disciplinary base within universities and, with it, the influence of discipline-based assumptions and values among academics. Higher education laws introduced between 2005 and 2013 contributed further to that erosion. The year 2005 saw the introduction of the quality assurance (QA) law (3374/2005). Until 2005, QA and evaluation had been addressed almost entirely at the governmental level (Asderaki, 2009; Biliris, 2004; Kyriazis and Asderaki, 2008). Asderaki (2009: 113) noted that ‘in the early 1990s an attempt was made to introduce institutional or departmental evaluation (article 24 Law2083/1992, 21.09.1992) but met strong reactions from the opposition political parties and universities as well’. The QA law was submitted to the Greek parliament for discussion, following the Bergen meeting on 30 May 2005. However, there was a two-year gap before the 2005 QA law became an active policy in 2007. The aim was to improve the transparency, comparability and accountability of the Greek higher education system. With that in mind universities were encouraged to set up their own internal QA mechanisms to provide a sound basis for external evaluation. Furthermore, teaching staff (academics), administrative personnel and students were viewed as the main participants in and contributors to this process. Papadimitriou (2011) highlighted negative reactions to the adoption of QA by

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academics, while Katsikas et al. (2008) discussed the diverse problems associated with the implementation of the policy. In particular, they observed the absence of a QA culture, considerable resistance from several groups and high levels of insecurity with regard to the policy. Katsikas et al. (2008) also highlighted the failure of the Ministry of Education to make clear how the departments’ evaluations were to be used, and the lack of confidence in the policy that resulted from this failure. This negative attitude towards QA among academics, among students and even among rectors was also noted by Kladis (2008) who attributed it to ‘[t]he general Greek mentality against any type of control and the lack of trust between the State and the HEIs’. Finally, since the academic year 2009–10, the new Ministry of Education has required all institutions of higher education to submit a self-assessment report and to invite external evaluators for review. Failure to meet these requirements resulted in sanctions targeted at funding and human resources. Arguably, these measures have met with some partial success. Today each academic department has appointed an Internal Evaluation Committee to collect data, documents and information that then inform the department’s self-assessment report. Coercive pressure exerted through these policies has impacted on both academic mindsets and the academic routines of higher education, with the result that academic identities are now oriented towards the managerial rather than the collegial. However, it is worth bearing in mind Papadimitriou’s observation that the compliance may be more symbolic than real: Surfing the Greek higher education institutions’ websites since then [i.e. 2009–10], one can observe changes in universities’ attitudes. Departments published self-evaluation reports on their websites, and there are now rectors’ messages advertising how their universities meet 21st century expectations regarding quality assurance. It seems that coercive pressure motivated universities to comply at least symbolically. (2011: 278)

In the period following 2011–13, further policies were introduced relating in particular to modernization (2011) and mergers (2013). Law 4009/2011 introduced substantial changes to the structure of all institutions of higher education within both the university and technological sectors. For the first time, both PASOK (socialist) and New Democracy (conservative) voted in the Greek parliament to pass the 2011 law. However, this vote did not represent the views of either academics or students who in the main opposed this legislation. The Ministry of Education responded by announcing a deadline by which

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universities and their academics were required to adopt the new policy changes and operate according to the new law. A particularly contentious aspect of this law was the requirement for universities to elect new board members in an election from which student representatives and administrative personnel were excluded. It was envisaged that the new board members would be instrumental in calling for the deselection of existing rectors and the selection of new rectors by November 2011. However, the majority of universities cancelled the elections of new board members thereby pre-empting this attempt at ‘modernisation’. Several newspapers campaigned against the new law. Some academics supported it, while others were set against it. Several universities formed committees to study its constitutionality prior to acting upon it. The law was both divisive and difficult to implement. In August 2012 the new coalition government passed a further law aimed at ensuring that the measures introduced by the 2011 law were fully implemented. It was not until November 2012, therefore, that almost all academics had complied with the law by voting for new board members (using e-voting). Almost all universities now have councils (comprising board members and presidents). The 2011 law had also changed the procedures relating to academic promotions, requiring a report by a committee of two members rather than three. In addition, the 2012 law requires the inclusion of one or two board members from universities located abroad. It is also possible for the professor-candidate to self-nominate one member of the committee. With the introduction of the 2013 law (mergers), further changes were introduced as a result of which departments were merged and in some cases academics and students were moved to another university possibly in another city. By changing the relation between academics and their institutions and between institutions and the state, the legislation that has come into force between ‘democratization-1982’ and ‘Athena-2013’ has clearly had a major impact on academic identity. However, in order to understand its full impact, we also need to understand the economic context within which these major policy changes have taken place. It is to these economic elements and their influence on the higher education system as a whole that we now turn.

Economic elements All public universities in Greece are entitled to financial support (Laws 2083/1992 and 2327/1995). The main sources of funding are the state budget

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and European funds. The Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Education agree with the Conference of the Rectors of universities on the amount of funds, the types of expenses (infrastructure, equipment, etc.) and the standards and guidelines for the four-year planning of institutions of higher education (YPEPTH, 2007: 3–4). Table 13.1 illustrates higher education finance figures for the period 2004–7 in the regular national budget. To expand upon Table 13.1, state financing is provided to the universities in three parallel ways. The first covers the salaries of the permanent personnel. The amount covering salaries is inflexible in the sense that the salary of every employee of each university is determined by rank, years of service and marital status in accordance with Law 2530/1997. Hence, universities have no autonomy in this regard. The basic monthly salaries of all ranks for teaching and research faculty members are derived from the basic salary of a lecturer through a set of multiplication factors (Table 13.2). The second parallel way provides, on a lump-sum basis, funds to meet universities’ functional/operational expenses (Regular Budget, Ministry of Education), and the third provides, on an earmarked basis, funds for universities’ capital needs. This sum is to support investments (Public Investment Budget, Ministry of Finance). Research is funded separately (YPEPTH, 2005: 7). Then, each individual institution of higher education negotiates with the Ministry of Education about its annual budget, which is roughly based on an algorithm that takes into consideration the number of students and the academic staff, the number and the location of the departments, and so on (YPEPTH, 2007: 3–4). Psacharopoulos (2002) commented that Greece utilizes a direct allocation model, meaning that public money goes directly to universities without any Table 13.1 Universities’ regular national budget, 2004–7 (million euro) Type of budget Regular budget

2004 826,80

2005 869,80

2006 928,50

Source: Kyriazis and Asderaki (2008: 130).

Table 13.2 Factors in academics’ basic salaries Professor: 1,50 Associated Professor: 1,30 Assistant Professor: 1,10 Lecturer: 1,00 Source: www.euridike.org.

2007 1,036,35

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intermediate evaluation of their efficiency and in the absence of any concept of varying financial rewards depending on the quality of the offered education and/ or the students’ socio-economic background. Although the funding formula is derived primarily from quantitative input factors, there is—as stipulated— room for negotiation. Kyriazis and Asderaki (2008: 129) euphemistically noted: ‘HEIs have the potential to be additionally funded by the budget for special or unscheduled funding.’ Universities then have to reallocate the government funds by setting up their own budgets. The internal budget of each university has to be approved by both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Economics. State-control restrictions extend to financial management procedures, as all expenses have to be controlled by the regional or local economic authorities and every provision of large-scale equipment follows stringent and time-consuming processes. These procedures were followed until 2007. Comparing the Greek economy with similar economies (in terms of public expenses as a percentage of GNP) within the European Union (Eurostat, 2005), Greece dedicates a considerably smaller percentage to education than Portugal, Belgium, France, Austria and the Netherlands. There is ongoing discussion in Greece regarding the low level of public expenditure on education and whether this is in part at least a consequence of the inelasticity of concrete categories of public expenses (such as defence and public safety, salaries of public employees and subsidies of actuarial funds). Greek legislation allows universities and their academics to develop entrepreneurial activities in both research and services. It encourages universities and their academics in such activities, as it provides them with a legal framework for financial management that is much more flexible than that for state resources. Not only universities as a whole but also laboratories have full autonomy in the way they organise and conduct research. The laboratories belong to two different categories according to their legislative status: those which have been established by a presidential decree and those which have been informally established in order to satisfy the need for organised research. Formal laboratories have research resources and funds that come from their host departments and their academics. Therefore, they enjoy limited autonomy unless they manage to attract external funding. Academics also hold key positions in laboratories and direct/ conduct research or participate in the development of entrepreneurial activities in research institutions or technological parks. Many research activities, mainly in the area of applied and technological research, are supported financially by outside resources in a contract-based partnership. In this case, funding follows the principles of orientation and competition.

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The responsibility for the development of research policy belongs to the general assemblies of the departments and to the senate of the university as a whole. A percentage of the total budget of each research project, not exceeding 10 per cent, is top-sliced by the research committee of the university, which thereby becomes a major player in the planning of research policy and which is also responsible for the proposals to the senate for the allocation of internal research funding. The approval of the financial management of a research project with outside funding produces additional resources for the university itself, which can be used in turn for financing specific educational developments and research activities. Moreover, in some cases these research funds can be applied to less attractive or non-market-oriented departments and specialisations. The initiative for all types of research projects lies with the academics of the university. To this extent, sources of external funding vary by the attractiveness of the department’s field of knowledge, along with the academics’ capabilities to attract resources and support and the quality of the services provided by the research committee of the university. As a consequence, the balance between teaching, research and service activities varies among departments. However, from 2010, universities and academics (and the broader Greek society) have begun to receive substantially lower salaries (net loss) and have to deal with the new austerity measures. Academics need to teach and perform research while serving in a substantially unstable economic environment. Furthermore, they are required to perform as they did previously. So, academics must now find ways to support themselves and their families without lowering their performance and while carrying an increasingly heavy burden of tax. Between 2010 and 2013 salaries for all academics fell between 20 to 30 per cent. The present financial crisis has seriously affected academics and there is no framework within which they are able to negotiate salaries and related benefits. Again, this is having a profound effect on the academic identity of those working within institutions of higher education as well as the academic culture within which they operate. As salaries decrease in relation to workload there is an increasing likelihood of lowering morale among academics together with a lowering of public esteem across the higher education sector.

Socio-cultural elements The university is a symbol of ‘public benefit’ and, as such, helps define Greek society. Access to university is a crucial characteristic of Greece’s social physiognomy as is the diversity of its population. Although a dream for almost

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every adolescent, this access is highly competitive and subject to numerous conditions. Every year, the number of new undergraduates allotted to each department of each university is determined by the Ministry of Education. Admission to undergraduate institutions of higher education is dependent upon a combination of the candidate’s success in national examinations, their choice of department and the number of places allotted overall. The entry examinations for undergraduate students lead to annual social agony. As Psacharopoulos (2003: 129) noted, ‘perhaps nowhere else in the world does annual tertiary education entry examination immobilize the nation’. The exams make newspaper headlines, describing the agony potential undergraduate students and their families endure until (or if) a university place is secured. At the graduate level however, the universities have autonomy in their selection of students. In general, selection of graduate students is based on a combination of factors, including grades, letters of recommendation and references, and knowledge of a foreign language. The majority of Greek secondary school graduates, and especially their families, crave higher education qualifications without necessarily taking into consideration their cost or the ‘added value’ they will bring. Psacharopoulos (2003: 125) observed that Greece has an ‘insatiable demand’ for education. The dominant explanation for such a phenomenon was that in a period of massive rural-urban migration, parents saw education as a means of escaping from the village to facilitate social mobility. He also stated that competitiveness for university entry has given rise to the proliferation of cramming schools for university exam preparation called ‘frontistiria’. Each year, over one billion Euros were spent on preparatory courses at these cramming schools, which he called ‘misallocation of resources’. Greek households invest in their children’s studies without any guarantee of a return on this ‘investment’. This is apparent in the high level of unemployment among young people and the irrelevance of many degree courses to the job market (OECD, 2006). Recent data from Eurostat revealed that the youth (under 25) unemployment rate in February 2013 was 23.5 per cent in the EU27, and the highest observed in Greece was 62.5 per cent (Eurostat, 3 July 2013) According to OECD (2011: 3), ‘Greece has the highest rate of unemployment among 25–29 years-olds with a tertiary degree (13.2%) compared to all other OECD countries (the OECD average is 5.5%).’ The problem of youth unemployment is compounded by problems associated with the ‘massification’ of higher education. During the academic year 2010–11 the number of undergraduate active students attending universities was 238,009 and the total undergraduate register 397,309. That same year 36,668 undergraduate students completed their studies. During the same period there were 46,185 students enrolled for graduate study and 37,161 for doctoral

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study. The number of students enrolled in higher education means that in some universities academics are required to teach large classes for the same period (2010–11) Given a total of 13,402 full-time teaching faculty together with adjuncts (for the year 2010–11), the volume of students means that in some universities class sizes are well above the optimum level. As Papadimitriou (2009: 11) observed, ‘in the university, professors are required to develop students’ critical thinking skills, by teaching case studies, scenarios and by actively participating in the classroom. That is not an easy task considering that class sizes are large and the student participation is low and voluntary.’ This is the ‘educational paradox’ of modern Greek society: the demand for higher education remains high, but the possibility of remaining unemployed, underemployed or employed in a sector unrelated to one’s area of study also remains high. The high demand is attributable in large part to the traditional reputation of the universities and to the social prestige that university degrees ensure for the graduate. The high rates of unemployment, underemployment and employment in sectors unrelated to one’s area of study are related in part to the economic factors discussed earlier and perhaps to a mismatch between labour market demands and higher education supply. The relation between sociocultural and economic elements within Greek society has become increasingly problematic and impacts directly on higher education and the academic identity of all those who work within it. The tensions experienced by academics working within the Greek higher education system are, of course, similar in kind to those experienced by their colleagues in other parts of Europe: the tensions resulting from, for example, the ‘massification’ of higher education, the increasing demands of public accountability and the calls for greater managerial efficiency. However, these tensions are intensified within the Greek context because of the economic situation pertaining in Greece and the internal and to some extent externally imposed policy responses to that situation. The socio-cultural implications of the economic crisis are particularly apparent within the higher education sector and are reflected in the perceptions and self-perceptions of all those working within that sector.

Conclusion Academics in the Greek context were – and remain – a professionally prestigious group whose academic identity was formed decades ago. However,

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a significant political, economic and cultural shift has required this group to adapt and, in so doing, to adopt changing social positions. Quality assurance policies placed new demands upon academics. The two latest laws, 4009/2011 and 2013, attempted to introduce what were seen as ‘meteoric’ changes to the governance of all Greek public universities. These laws reflect not only market forces but also the new international requirements that affect not just Greece but other countries. In Greece, the current economic crisis is a major force to consider as the ‘Athena’ project attempts to transform society by-laws that may or may not be actualised or fully implemented. It remains an open question as to whether the government and the corporate groups that are supportive of the reforms will be able to resist the external economic pressures of the global market. The reforms – and the economic crisis by which they have been shaped – has undoubtedly created a more structured environment requiring what many would see as a new ‘professional’ academic identity (Henkel, 2000). Academic identities are shifting entities that form and reform in response to changing circumstances. In Greece the circumstances as they pertain to higher education have changed hugely and rapidly. The analysis provided in this chapter suggests that academic identities in Greece are undergoing a period not only of transition but of transformation (see Stensaker, 2004). Indeed, it could be argued that they are undergoing a professional ‘identity crisis’ (see Nixon, 1996). The reforms and changes that have been introduced in Greece are increasingly structured and increasingly powerful in their impact on higher education. As a result academic working lives have become more increasingly regulated and, some would argue, more heavily routinized. Perhaps the Greek situation will confirm Henkel’s (2012: 173) claim that professional instability and risk need to be balanced against the possibility of professional enhancement: ‘[A]cademic identities are less stable and risk of loss of selfworth almost certainly increased but so have opportunities for stretching and reshaping identities that are enhancing.’ Change may be extremely burdensome for academics who are losing income, possibly having to move to another university and adapting to changing institutional contexts and routines. We clearly need to understand more about – and develop more refined frameworks for thinking about – how academic identities are being formed and reformed in these changing and challenging times. This chapter has been written in response to that need for greater understanding and for frameworks to guide and focus our thinking.

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References Asderaki, F. (2009), ‘The Impact of the Bologna Process on the Development of the Greek Quality Assurance System’, Quality in Higher Education, 15(2): 105–22. Biliris, H. (2004), The National System of Higher Education in Greece: Waiting for a Systematic Quality Assurance System, in S. Schwarz and D. Westerheijden, F. (eds), Accreditation and Evaluation in the European Higher Education Area. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 197–206. Eurostad (102/2013–2 July 2013), Eurostat news releases on internet at http://epp. eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3–01072013-BP/EN/3–01072013-BPEN.PDF (accessed 20 August 2013). Gornitzka, Å. (1999), ‘Governmental Policies and Organizational Change in Higher Education’, Higher Education, 38(1): 5–31. Hall, R. (1999), Organizations: Structures, Processes, and Outcomes (7th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Henkel, M. (2000), Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley. — (2012), ‘Exploring New Academic Identities in Turbulent Times’, in Stensaker et al. (eds), Managing Reform in Universities. The Dynamics of Culture, Identity and Organizational Change. London: Palgrave, pp. 156–76. Karmas, C. A., Lianos, T. P. and Kalamatianou, A. G. (1988), ‘Greek Universities: An Overview’, European Journal of Education, 23(3): 261–9. Katsikas, S., Papazoglou, V. and Tsakloglou, P. (2008), ‘Quality Assurance in Greek Universities: Challenges and Prospects’, Paper Presented at the Conference ‘Where the Greek University goes?’ 27–29 March, Athens, Greece. http://paratiritirio.wordpress. com/ (in Greek). Kladis, D. (2008), Experiences of Self-Evaluation: The Case of Greece. Paper presented at the Conference on Self-Evaluation of Higher Education Institutions, 10–11 July, Belgrade, Serbia. Kyriazis, A. and Asderaki, F. (2008), Higher Education in Greece. Bucharest: UNESCO-CEPES. Nixon, J. (1996), ‘Professional Identity and the Restructuring of Higher Education’, Studies in Higher Education, 21(1): 5–16. OECD (2006). Education at a Glance. OECD Indicators 2006. Paris: OECD — (2011). Education at a Glance. OECD Indicators 2011. Country Note – Greece. Paris: OECD. http://www.oecd.org/greece/48657344.pdf. Papadimitriou, A. (2009), ‘Motivating Freshman Students in a Business Management Course via Portfolios: Practice from a Greek Public University’, Assessment Update, 21(1): 10–12. — (2011), The Enigma of Quality in Greek Higher Education: A Mixed Methods Study of Introducing Quality Management into Greek Higher Education. Enshcede, The Netherlands: University of Twente, CHEP.

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Psacharopoulos, G. (2002), ‘Liberalism and Education’, in C. Zachopoulos (ed.), About Liberalism. Athens: I. Sideris. (In Greek “Φιλελευθερισμός και Παιδεία,” στον τόμο Ο Φιλελευθερισμός Σήμερα, επιμ. Χρήστος Ζαχόπουλος. Σιδέρης για το Ινστιτούτο Δημοκρατίας Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, 2002, pp. 70–92.) — (2003), ‘The Social Cost of an Outdated Law: Article 16 of the Greek Constitution’, European Journal of Law and Economics, 16(2): 123–37. Saitis, C. (1988), ‘The Relationship between the State and the University in Greece’, European Journal of Education, 23(3): 249–60. Scott, W. R. (1995), Institutions and Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Stensaker, B. (2004), The Transformation of Organisational Identities. Enschede, The Netherlands: University of Twente, CHEPS. Stensaker, B., Henkel, M., Välimaa, J. and Sarrico, C. (2012), ‘Introduction: How Is Change in Higher Education Managed?’ in B. Stensaker, J. Välimaa and C. Sarrico (eds), Managing Reform in Universities. The Dynamics of Culture, Identity and Organizational Change. London: Palgrave. pp. 1–16. Tsaousis, D. (2001), ‘The Academic Profession in Greece; Current State and Conditions of Employment’, in J. Enders (ed.), Academic Staff in Europe: Changing Contexts and Conditions. London: Greenwood Press. pp. 137–52. YPEPTH. (2005), Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs. National Report 2004–2005. Towards the European Higher Education Area: Bologna Process. Athens, Greece. — (2007), ‘Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs’. National Report Hellas 2005–2007, Athens, Greece.

Reflections: Academic Identity and the Changing European Landscape Linda Evans

In search of homo academicus europeanus It was Tony Becher (1989) who famously introduced into the lexicon of research into academic working life the terms ‘tribes’ and ‘territories’, which Malcolm Tight was later to apply to research into and researchers of higher education: ‘a partially explored territory through which a variety of tribes traverse’ (Tight, 2008: 596). Whilst, as one such researcher, I find myself considering my own tribal affiliation, I also wonder how this book on academic identity might measure up against a yardstick forged out of similar anthropological-metaphorspeak. In what Bauman (2004: 4) describes as ‘an age of territoriality and territorial sovereignty’, where ‘all realities are presumed to be spatially defined and territorially fixed – and Europe is no exception. Neither the “European character”, nor the “Europeans” themselves’, have we beaten a new path across relatively unchartered terrain with a compilation of stories and sketches that reveal something hitherto undiscovered about ‘the European academic’ and his or her identity? Or have we done little more than add a few unremarkable voices to what is fast becoming a well-rehearsed repertoire of tribal chants that beat out tales of academics’ tribulations, triumphs, transitions and trajectories of life, before chorusing a familiarly repetitive refrain about identity’s underpinning and determining everything that people think, do, like and dislike? On the basis of Bauman’s analysis (2004: 12), achieving the first of these would be a challenge: ‘[W]e, the Europeans, are perhaps the sole people who (as historical subjects and actors of culture) have no identity – fixed identity, or an identity deemed and believed to be fixed’ (original emphasis). The problem – recognised by many analysts of Europe and Europeanness – lies in trying to pin down, scrutinise, describe and pinpoint the nature of something

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that is plural and diverse, fluid and restless, kaleidoscope-like, hazy and outof-focus in places – particularly around the edges. Continued or prolonged boundary shifting features in this conception, along with repeated expansion and expansiveness, and a form of intermittent contraction that is represented by fragmentation through cultural (and sometimes geographical and political) ideological separatism that threatens commonality – in other words, tribalism. Delanty and Rumford (2005: 69) describe being European as ‘in a certain sense, optional and vague, lacking a clearly defined set of markers’ for ‘those elusive citizens, Europeans, who – if they exist – do so in a complicated relation to the political subjectivity of Europe and the very meaning of Europe’. Have we managed to convey something, in this book, of this complicated relationship? Have we communicated – not only to fellow Europeans who may smile knowingly and nod their heads as their eyes flit down the pages, but also to readers located further afield – a sense of the often indefinable, and at times scarcely discernible, sense of belonging to a diverse community whose rich and colourful (and sometimes shameful) history shaped, for better or for worse, Western civilisation, and who have inherited a cultural legacy that is still – as Bauman (2004) reminds us – a work-in-progress? ‘[N]ot a unitary concept, but a mixture of values, accomplishments and aspirations, varying in form and degree of realization among European states’, writes Giddens (Giddens et al., 2006: 15). He is in fact referring to the European social model, but could his words just as easily be applied to the European academic? Warleigh (2003) is probably justified in observing that Europeans often emphasise their diversity rather than their commonality – even, it seems, at the national level, for Hantrais (2009: 51–2) refers to researchers who have identified: ‘eight Spains . . . four Finlands, . . . three Belgiums, four Italys, and five or six Frances’, and she herself points out that ‘German unification . . . created a national unit in which internal diversity was greater in some respects (sociodemographic trends for instance) than that observed across the European Union’. Plurality then is clearly an issue when Europe and Europeanness are considered – and the chapters in this volume reveal something of the diversity of authors’ experiences and situations that have resulted from context-defining throws of the geographical, political and cultural dice: whether one was born in the West, or the (post-) Soviet Communist empire of the East; whether one had the opportunity to travel abroad – including beyond Europe; whether one was in the right place at the right time, able to seize opportunities for personal and career development – or in the ‘wrong’ place at the ‘wrong’ time. But amidst the variability, diversity and inequality that are the consequences not

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only of Europe’s multi-tribal ecology but also of one’s spatially and historically determined location within that ecology, are there no common threads that could be drawn from the warp and weft of these micro-societies and woven together into a fabric that Europeans would be content to wear, and that would identity them as European? The European social model – to return to a parallel case – despite at first glance appearing an unrealisable illusion, is perceived as having some common basis that offers promise for its evolution into a singular entity: It is generally accepted that there is no such thing as the ‘European social model’. It is more accurate, given the range of national diversity, to speak of Europe’s social models. Nonetheless, there is sufficient commonality in the values that underpin the social models of the EU countries to label discussion of shared problems as about the ‘future of the European social model’. (Giddens et al., 2006: 3, emphasis added)

Is a single European identity currently too much to expect, as Jon Nixon implies in the opening chapter of this book? Perhaps it is – much depends on how we interpret identity. To me, it involves self-labelling and self-designation, or, in Clegg’s (2008: 333, 334) terms, ‘self-descriptions’ and the individual’s ‘sense of embodied being in the world’ – it is ‘what the individual is conscious “of ” in the term “self-consciousness”’ (Giddens, 1991: 52); ‘[i]t is the self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography . . . [it] includes the cognitive component of personhood’ (original emphasis; 53). This interpretation implies that identity may be determined only by the identityholder, not by the beholder – ‘[a] person’s identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor – important though this is – in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going’ (original emphasis; 54). So we cannot take liberties in ascribing this or that identity to people, no matter what their roles or behaviour suggest; unless they communicate to us something of their selves, as they reflexively understand themselves in terms of their biographies (to draw upon Giddens’s words), we run the risk of barking up the wrong tree. Identity, Castells (2010: 6) observes, ‘must be distinguished from what, traditionally, sociologists have called roles, and role sets’, and as Thomson and Kamler (2013, p. 16) point out, ‘identity narrative is . . . how we explain our category-selves to our-self as well as to others’ (emphasis added). Self-reports are therefore the only reliable identity-indicators. This book is a compilation of what are, to varying degrees, such self-reports. They illustrate Henkel’s (2000: 255) point that ‘academic identities are a complex

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and heterogeneous mix of individual and community values, commitment to particular forms of knowledge or epistemological frameworks and a sense of worth or self-esteem’, for each is located within and focused upon a specific European context that sets out as an over-arching geographically determined context – Slovakia, Ireland, Georgia, Portugal, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Greece – and then reveals its complexity as the interplay between geo-cultural and other circumstantial factors, such as historical events, situational transitions and cultural legacies and traditions, defines the communities within which individuals shape their identities. Many represent individual first-hand self-reports, through which we may discern the particular narratives that their authors are evidently able to keep going (to re-use Giddens’s words once again). Some are second-hand, presented and analysed by researchers as syntheses of their research participants’ self-reports: the data they provided. The autobiographical vignettes that pepper the pages of the preceding chapters – including: a Swiss colleague’s harnessing her interest and expertise in psychology to a pioneering academic development initiative; a Georgian teacher’s linguistically based recurring identity crises in the former Soviet bloc; a French academic’s disciplinary border crossing; tension experienced by Portuguese distance learning specialists’ striving for the ‘new’ whilst having to satisfy the ‘old’; and a Slovak lecturer’s cultural and critical awakening during prolonged visits to the United States – perhaps illustrate how identity may serve as a potent form of responsive and pro-active motivational agency, as well as a potential trigger of contextually focused angst, uncertainty and insecurity. Returning to consideration of how we have fared, with this book, in relation to making an audible contribution to the academic identity tribal chorus, I concede that this basic message is not new. But have we amplified it a little through these varied tales and snippets of academics’ life stories? I think perhaps we have. We have illustrated the importance to academics of knowing and understanding who they are, what their heritage is and how this shapes their purpose. We have highlighted the significance of ‘relative perspective’ that, as I point out elsewhere (Evans, 1998, 1999; Evans and Abbott, 1998), is a key influence on how people evaluate their own current situations and circumstances; for some academics who feature in this book – either as research participants whose perspectives are reported by others (e.g. in O’Byrne, Chapter 12 and Ylijoki and Ursin, Chapter 10, in this volume) or as authors conveying something of their own identities – contexts other their own current ones (such as how things used to be, or how things are in other institutions or

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other countries) provide comparators that prompt critical judgement and the questioning of purpose, direction and identities. And since such changed and changing contexts reflect twenty-first-century Europe and, by extension, its academy – which, despite its pluralistic variability, is not only, post-Bologna, becoming increasingly singularised, but is also part and parcel of a supranational economic environment whose challenges are (albeit to varying degrees) essentially commonly confronted – they collectively represent a common territorial backdrop that offsets the lives and experiences of twenty-first-century European academics. In this sense, they may be thought of as shaping distinctly European academic identities, which, representing Taylor’s (2008: 38) proposed notion of academic identity, may be thought of as ‘context-specific assemblages that draw on a shared but open repertoire of traits, beliefs, and allegiances – a creative commons for identity assemblage’. What are the features and landmarks of this territorial backdrop – and what image of ‘the European academic’ is distinguishable against it? Is the territory that the Bologna architects variously call the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area populated by a distinct homo academicus europeanus tribe, and, if so, how might such a tribe be identified? Whilst accepting that territorially based distinctions become blurred in the melting pot of an increasingly globalised and globally networked academic environment, I suggest there are three inter-related characteristics that, though they may not be entirely unique to or ubiquitous within it, are discernibly prevalent amongst this tribe. The first characteristic concerns language, which has historically been – and remains – enormously important in multilingual Europe, where language and linguistic proficiency have over many centuries been symbolic and indicative of learning, culture, hierarchy, social class and status, entrepreneurialism, power and emancipation. Apart from the use of academic or scholarly lingua franca – which in Medieval Europe was Latin, and in twenty-first-century Europe is English – the need to communicate and network extensively across the continent required knowledge of languages other than one’s native one(s). Several of the chapters in this book – none more so than Beattie’s – convey the potency of language for individuals’ emotional and proprietorial connection with cultures to which they are exposed, within which they interact and which they may choose to, or unconsciously, assimilate and contribute towards shaping (or, in some cases, to reject and to rail against). This book’s authors – most of whom have each produced a chapter written in what, to them, is a foreign language – exemplify what I identify as a readiness to embrace multilingualism

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that is characteristic of a great many European academics. Romuald Normand, for example, taught himself English in order to expand his academic networks and to extend his international communicative capacity, Carole O’Byrne is a German language specialist, and I – a former student of modern European languages – remain fluent in French and German, whilst Štefaň Beňuš (Chapter 5, in this volume) highlights in his chapter the importance of Slovak academics’ ‘foreign language communicative competence, together with the provision [in Slovak higher education institutes] of courses in English’. Portuguese authors, Moreira, Henriques and Aires, remind us that English is imposed on the European academy. Since this ‘imposition’ (Moreira et al., Chapter 11, in this volume) effectively gives most European academics little choice in the matter of developing proficiency in at least one foreign language if they wish to communicate and compete – albeit with disadvantages (Lillis and Curry, 2010) – on the European or global academic stage, I am slightly uneasy characterising homo academicus europeanus as manifesting a receptivity towards multilingualism; rather, it is, as I see it, a question of appreciating the potency of language within (and beyond) the academy and consequently recognising the pragmatic value of multilingual proficiency and academic engagement. This first tribal characteristic is congruent with – and supports and explains – what I propose as the second: an outward-facing perspective. Bauman (2004: 3) notes that ‘Europeans were the adventurers among the lovers of peace and quiet: compulsive and indefatigable wanderers among the shy and sedentary, ramblers and roamers among those who would rather live their lives in a world ending at the outermost village fence.’ The chapters of this book are shot through with allusions to and reminiscences of academic-related mobility – one of the key tenets of the Bologna Process. It would be going too far to claim that they represent European academics as transient migrants (though some undoubtedly are); rather, an image of academic travellers is conveyed. This does not necessarily involve travelling in the physical sense – though many of the authors have periodically been or still are physically ‘displaced’ from their native regions – rather, it is an intellectual mobility. Homo academicus europeanus is, in this sense, a nomadic tribe, whose far-reaching intellectual horizons are neither insular nor parochial. This tribe searches for answers and ideas – reaches out for intellectual stimulation, engagement and collaboration – beyond its familiar environs and perimeters. Not content to sip from nearby stagnant waters whose capacity to refresh and energise is diminished, it wanders far and wide – across and beyond Europe – traversing newly discovered intellectual terrains, to quench

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its thirst for knowledge from fresh ideological, epistemological, paradigmatic and theoretical springs. Hand-in-hand with this outward-facing perspective is a third European academic characteristic: an intellectually pioneering disposition that, at its best, is represented by a strong desire (and at worst a mere preference) for leading the field; pushing back the frontiers of knowledge with its own discoveries and adaptations, rather than simply replicating, consolidating or confirming knowledge generated by others. This is undoubtedly a product of an academic cultural tradition that has a long history: European education systems typically value – and promote the development of – discursiveness and analyticism, with criticism, as Handal (2008: 65) reminds us, being considered ‘an academic virtue’. Theories are advanced to be tested and challenged, and arguments are proposed to be knocked down, whilst the Oxbridge supervision process is designed to be confrontational and to encourage the development of rational argumentation, and French cafés philosophiques aim(ed) to stimulate debate and explore ideas. These features of education systems and intellectual networks across much of Europe – with the exception of certain regions during specific periods of their history (where, for example, totalitarianism and extremism prevailed) – represent a contrast to more passive learning approaches in other parts of the world, where a cultural respect for intellectual authority traditionally underpins the prevalence of description and the uncritical regurgitation of established ideas. So do these discernible characteristics make for a European academic identity? And if so, how should we label it? An umbrella descriptor that encompasses all three characteristics is incorporated into one conception of the nature of European identity: Rather than relate the identity of Europe to a set of cultural values, goals, territory or people – what in general may constitute the cultural content of the idea of Europe – it is more fruitful to see it in terms of a socio-cognitive form consisting of repertoires of evaluation, discursive practices, and identity projects which could be characterized in terms of dialogic rationality. In this respect there are clear parallels with notions of discursive democracy and what may be called a cosmopolitan European identity. (Delanty and Rumford, 2005: 50, final emphasis is added, other emphases are original)

Applied more specifically to European academic identity, cosmopolitanism is the antithesis of the kind of blinkered parochialism or ‘splendid isolationism’ that narrows visions of what is possible and what is accessible, usable and relevant –

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represented, for example, by the notorious tendency (at least in my field: educational research) of American academic authors to cite almost exclusively literature generated by their compatriots, overlooking (or perhaps eschewing) non-American texts – and consequently key arguments present within them – and drawing upon a pool of conference keynote speakers that seldom includes nonAmericans. Major European-based conferences, in contrast, almost invariably include at least one non-European (usually an American) keynote speaker. Ever the cosmopolitan intellectual, homo academicus europeanus cheerfully keeps renewing the network-widening invitations and calling cards to distant tribes, undeterred – if a little irritated and bemused – at the lack of reciprocation. With its illustrations of European academic cosmopolitanism, then, I believe this book has augmented what we know about academic identity. To me, it conveys something of the commonality of the attitudes, mindsets, values and resilience of a diverse group of European academics – and of the contexts that have been formative on who they are and what they have, and will, become. Aware that very few of our contributing authors affiliated themselves with the relatively small, but growing, community of scholars or researchers of identity – much less with its even smaller sub-group of researchers of academic identity – this was our purpose: primarily to illustrate and depict, rather than to analyse and explain. Considering it unreasonable and unrealistic to ask or expect non-specialists and non-experts – many of whom, moreover, are early career academics, to whom we wanted to give a voice – to take the time and trouble to wander into unknown intellectual territory and familiarise themselves with its literature base and epistemologies, before then constructing credible scholarly analyses that would augment the field’s theoretical perspectives, we were content to put together an illuminative compilation of European academics’ stories, told first-hand, through autobiographically focused narratives, or second-hand, through reported research: a collective ontology of what it means to be an academic in twenty-first-century Europe. We have achieved this. But as a consequence of these self-imposed limits, the book’s amplification of familiar and well-rehearsed messages about academic identity is in many respects subdued and measured. It represents – even as a collective chorus – a still, small voice, for we are aware that it leaves much unsung. In particular, an illuminative compilation of stories or accounts of what it means to be an academic in one of several specific European national or cultural contexts does not equate to an illustration of that elusive creature: the European academic. The first retains the plurality that stems from conveying the diversity that is – and has come to be inextricably associated with – Europe; the second involves

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a notion of a singularity. If we wish to consider how feasible or realisable is a single European identity – or, to go one step further, a single European academic identity – we need to convert or translate the plurality into a singularity, by seeking out commonalities within the plurality and reducing them down to the lowest common factor. This lowest common factor will not be evident in manifestations or illustrations of identity and how it shapes people’s lives; we need to look for it in the bases of people’s identities as European academics. And since – as with identity itself – these can only be determined reliably by the identity-holders, as one such holder I shall start the ball rolling.

Affinity, affiliation and affectivity: The bases of a European academic identity I sometimes try to explain to foreigners that, as I see it, we in the United Kingdom are pulled in two affiliative directions: towards the United States and towards Europe. Many of my compatriots nurse a love of or fascination for all things American. I cannot speak for my children’s generation of global citizens, but for those of us who, growing up in post-war Britain, were inevitably exposed to idealised (or sometimes sensationalised) American culture portrayed in profusion through television screen, cinema, superhero comic and popular music, it was easy to be seduced into perceiving what its inhabitants dubbed the Land of Opportunity as the Land of Milk and Honey. The America of the 1960s’ sitcom series was brought to us through amiable – if a little ridiculous – screen characters with just enough credibility to afford them a degree of alter-ego status. With most of their exploits set against a backdrop of stylishly furnished suburban homes, equipped with the latest technology and gadgetry (such as telephones, refrigerators, hostess trolleys and vacuum cleaners) – and from where they travelled in capacious sedans to their fashionably fitted-out offices, or to the well-stocked supermarkets that were yet to make an appearance on this side of the Pond – these characters, with their comfortable lifestyles, became the middle-class aspirational yardstick for Britons who were shaking off the habits formed, and the psychological legacy of privations suffered, during the ‘make-do-and-mend’ wartime years and over a decade of rationing. With Prime Minister Macmillan’s declaration that we’d never had it so good spurring us on to rebuild our bombed-out cities and fractured lives, this became an era of hope and opportunity, when austerity was expected to give way to prosperity. And, for many, America was the model for that future; the escapist destination of choice;

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the post-victory vision of what Britain could become – the technological pioneer and superpower that was leading the way and serving as a beacon to banish the horrors and nightmares that had darkened the lives of so many Europeans during the first half of the twentieth century. It became a country that many longed to visit, whose culture they wanted to share – indeed, that they often mistook for or appropriated as their own culture, such had been the degree of its infiltration through British television screens into British society. But never for me. With a lifelong love of history that awoke in me a fascination with ancient monuments and historic buildings – and their longdead inhabitants – I found America-the-technology-leader, and the American lifestyle, as transmitted through the black and white images appearing on my television screen, uninspiring and uninviting. A school friend once introduced me to an American visitor (a child, like us) whose confident loquaciousness and brashness I found overbearing and intimidating, yet I warmed to Maria Gonzalez – I still remember her name – the quiet, nine-year-old Spanish girl who spent one term at my primary school, struggling to understand and be understood. Harbouring no ambitions to cross the Atlantic, or to experience anything American, was it through encounters such as these that the seeds of my Europhilia or personal Europeanness were sown – or, rather, were they manifestations of a European identity that had somehow already taken root in my consciousness? For while many of my contemporaries became enthralled with America, I found myself – and remain – pulled in the opposite direction, towards my continental neighbours. Not venturing beyond the United Kingdom until I was 20 years old – though that was the result of circumstances rather than choice; I simply did not grow up in a familial environment where overseas travel was contemplated – I was first introduced to Europe through history. At primary school I listened intently to tales of medieval monarchs and their foreign – European – marriages. I learned of Ferdinand and Isabella’s financing of Columbus’s exploration, and of their youngest daughter, Catherine of Aragon, who arrived with her Spanish entourage to marry into – and play her part in perpetuating – England’s recently established Tudor royal dynasty. I was amused by the tale of the ‘fat Flanders mare’: the Duke of Cleves’s sister who failed to impress the English king, Henry VIII. I was thrilled by colourful pictures of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, where that same English king entertained Francis I of France in ostentatious splendour, and I was morbidly fascinated by the vicissitudes of Mary Queen of Scots’ life, divided between France and Scotland, and featuring a French mother and husband, and a powerful Italian mother-in-law. These were neither fictional

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heroes nor screen characters; they were real people, whose territorial-specific names introduced me to an alphabet of countries, regions or provinces that, during certain periods, had been sufficiently significant to influence, one way or another, the way history panned out: Aquitaine, Braganza, Castile, Denmark. . . . The history that fascinated me as a child – and still does – was inextricably linked with Europe; it shaped and defined it. For me, this richly coloured and colourfully rich Europe provided the backdrop to the stories and adventures that I absorbed and, in the imagination of my childhood, embellished. I was drawn to it. It was – is – my history. It is a history that I share with fellow Europeans, for the contexts within which we operate today are linked by volumes of chronicled overlapping and intersecting events and stories that were played out on our continent centuries ago. How may European identity, so-defined, be explained or analysed? Giddens et al. (2006), cited earlier, imply that common values are key to replacing diversity with unity. Can we then argue, by extension, that if such a thing as a single European identity is evident, or at least is potentially realisable, it is or will be based upon values that Europeans share? Analysing my own European identity, I would argue that it is grounded in culture. It is based upon an awareness and appreciation of Europe’s cultural history and heritage – which, quite simply, is a culture that I like and that I warm to; one whose artefacts and imagery are pleasing to me, aesthetically and emotionally. Countless manifestations of that pleasure stand out within the miscellany of memories that constitute my recollections of my life: I remember, in my school’s language laboratory, being attracted to the colourful wall posters showing Parisian landmarks, medieval Germanic architecture and Spanish cathedrals, and to those, pinned up in geography lessons, of Norwegian fjords in glaciated U-shaped valleys. Black and white documentary photographs of twentieth-century European people and places have always appealed to me – from Cartier-Bresson’s Paris to history textbook images of serfs working the land in pre-revolutionary Russia and trams cutting across cobbled streets in wartime Amsterdam or Warsaw. And I delighted in illustrations in foreign language textbooks of stereotypical French and German life. That such imagery should play a key part in developing and consolidating my European identity is unsurprising when one considers that imagery has been used extensively in the twentieth century to promote a collective European identity, through disseminating the notion of ‘common European cultural ground’ (Bruch and Pfister, 2014: 30), which included ‘visualised presentation of a shared European heritage and culture . . . to recall the common history of the European people only by means of iconographic material (pictures, prints), historical relics

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(regalia, manuscripts, records) and location shots of significant European buildings’ (36), using film ‘as a medium with a powerful potential for awakening feelings of identification, empathy and parasocial interaction . . . to propagate solidarity among the people of Europe. The constant repetition of identical images, combined with informative commentaries in the films was meant to communicate common values and norms to the Europeans’ with the use of ‘metaphors and tropes of a common culture and history’ (41). Of course, such cultural appreciation goes hand-in-hand with values. Is it fundamentally that European cultural history is so appealing to me because it encapsulates and reflects things that I like, that I value, and hence that represent, literally, my values? Or is it the other way round: that what I have come to identify as my values – in the sense of things that I like and therefore value – have been forged out of basic visceral and emotional responses to aspects of my environment that have shaped what I would call my aesthetic taste(s)? And from my perspective, what has evolved over the decades of my life is that the formation and development of the European Union have been instrumental in shaping and formalising a set of shared values – many of which are reflected in the European legal framework – and which have injected a degree of commonality into the lives of many Europeans that allow us to identify, at least officially, what may be accepted as common European values. Distinct in magnitude and scope from the values that reflect and represent the minutiae of everyday life – people’s likes and preferences: what matters to them; what is important to them – it is ‘grand’ values, such as equality, freedom and justice and their sub-components and dimensions, such as the unacceptability of the death penalty, and the importance of gender equality and racial tolerance, that are at play at the supra-national level. For the most part, I buy into these EU-delineated values – I see them as the glue that continues to hold us together – and this acceptance on my part serves to strengthen my sense of belonging to a European community and my European identity. Am I deviant or distinct in such self-identification? Certainly, in the context of what, at the time of writing, is presented by the British media – along with the media of several other European countries – as the accelerated growth of Euroscepticism, it seems that I may represent a minority perspective that is becoming increasingly marginalised. Yet although the focus of this Euro-scepticism, the EU, has in many respects supported it, my European identity preceded, transcends, and is so much bigger than EU citizenship. For me, it is fundamentally about feeling a part of, and having a stake in, a shared cultural heritage and history.

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We Europeans have travelled so far together – sometimes beside and sometimes despite each other – that we surely cannot help but be bound by the legacy of that odyssey. Do other Europeans see it the same way as I do? I have certainly met some who do – or so they claim – often (though not exclusively), like me, (former) students of European studies, or European languages (ancient and modern), or European history. Such European identity neither conflicts with, nor compromises, other identities; in my case it sits perfectly easily with my British and Mancunian identities – each represents and operates on a different level from the others. It frames what I describe elsewhere in this volume (Chapter 8) as one of my most prominent identities: my academic identity. I belong to the homo academicus Europeanus tribe – its members are my people.

The changing European landscape: plus ça change European analysts have highlighted the impact on academic life of the changing institutional, socio-cultural and political contexts within which many professionals – including academics – operate. Noordegraaf (2007: 771) identifies the emergence of ‘pressured professionalism’ out of the ‘fuzzy’ and ‘loosely ordered’ (770) context that defines twenty-first-century working life. Scott (2009: 69) refers to this context – at least in relation to academia – as ‘a post-modern fog’, while Barnett (2011), likening it to thin ice upon which the ‘modern professional’ must skate, trying to keep ahead of its cracking behind her, highlights its ‘networked complexity’, represented by a set of infinities . . . of expanding accountability demands, resource challenges, global horizons of standards and developing techniques, shifting knowledges, and changing client relationships. (Barnett, 2011: 31)

The implications of such changed and volatile environments have been rehearsed within a burgeoning academic discourse on academic identity crises, identities under threat, and imposed or strategic identity shifts, which is reflected in several of the chapters in this book. Other chapters focus on geo-political influences on identity formation and reformation, highlighting the vulnerabilities, frustrations and confusion that stem from culture clashes and ambiguity. The common theme is one of adaptability and resourcefulness in coping with difficulty, precarity or uncertainty: navigating paths across the unstable terrain of a changing landscape. Such is the context within which the twenty-first-century European academic must operate.

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Yet Europe has always had a shifting landscape, offering its inhabitants and visitors constantly renewed vistas to take in, and newly laid pathways to tread. The Europe of the twenty-first century is no more precarious and uncertain than it has been on countless occasions in the past. The current challenges facing many of us may appear contemporary, or unique to our time – economic recession, unemployment, political uncertainty, tribal conflict, the rise of extremism – but there is nothing fundamentally new under the European sun. We have seen it all before; it has shaped our history. And we have prevailed – often at great loss, and sometimes through Pyrrhic victories – but we have prevailed. In particular, the intellectual fabric of European society, having at times appeared moribund, has survived. And when it may have seemed that we were being submerged by a sea of irrationality or madness, reason has always spluttered and kicked its way back to the surface. That reason is the basis of a European intellectual tradition that I, for one, want to play a part in perpetuating. It is an ongoing collaborative project to which we – the European academics – each contribute. If we are looking for common values that underpin European academics’ identities – their lowest common factor – it is surely a concern to retain and protect academic integrity through safeguarding our intellectual traditions: those of Europe and of Europeans.

References Barnett, R. (2011), ‘Towards an Ecological Professionalism’, in C. Sugrue and T. D. Solbrekke (eds), Professional Responsibility: New Horizons of Praxis. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 29–41. Bauman, Z. (2004), Europe: An Unfinished Adventure. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Becher, T. (1989), Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines. Buckingham: Open University Press/SRHE. Bruch, A. and Pfister, E. (2014), ‘“What Europeans Saw of Europe”: Medial Construction of European Identity in Information Films and Newsreels in the 1950s’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, 10(1): 26–43. Castells, M. (2010), The Power of Identity. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Clegg, S. (2008), ‘Academic Identities under Threat?’, British Educational Research Journal, 34(3): 329–45. Delanty, G. and Rumford, C. (2005), Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization. Abingdon: Routledge. Evans, L. (1998), Teacher Morale, Job Satisfaction and Motivation. London: Paul Chapman.

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— (1999), Managing to Motivate: A Guide for School Leaders. London: Cassell. Evans, L. and Abbott, I. (1998), Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. London: Cassell. Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A., Diamond, P. and Liddle, R. (2006), ‘Introduction’, in A. Giddens, P. Diamond and R. Liddle (eds), Global Europe, Social Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 1–13. Handal, G. (2008), ‘Identities of Academic Developers’, in R. Barnett and R. Di Napoli (eds), Changing Identities in Higher Education. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 55–68. Hantrais, L. (2009), International Comparative Research: Theory, Methods and Practice. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press. Henkel, M. (2000), Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley. Lillis, T. and Curry, M. J. (2010), Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. London: Routledge. Noordegraaf, M. (2007), ‘From “Pure” to “Hybrid” Professionalism: Present-Day Professionalism in Ambiguous Public Domains’, Administration and Society, 39(6): 761–85. Scott, P. (2009), ‘Markets and New Modes of Knowledge Production’,. in J. Enders and E. de Weert (eds), The Changing Face of Academic Life: Analytical and Comparative Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 58–77. Taylor, P. (2008), ‘Being an Academic Today’, in R. Barnett and R. Di Napoli (eds), Changing Identities in Higher Education. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 27–39. Thomson, P. and Kamler, B. (2013), Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals: Strategies for Getting Published. Abingdon: Routledge. Tight, M. (2008), ‘Higher Education Research as Tribe, Territory and/or Community: A Co-Citation Analysis’, Higher Education, 55(5): 593–608. Warleigh, A. (2003), Democracy in the European Union: Theory, Practice and Reform. London: Sage.

Index accountability 8–9, 47–50, 52, 57–9, 88, 108, 172, 181, 183, 242, 245, 252, 269 administration 51, 87, 103, 104, 108, 109, 138, 144, 178, 192, 205, 222, 236 self- 242 agency 1, 3, 10, 16, 21, 65–8, 72, 74, 76, 94, 149, 165, 170, 183, 188, 190, 195–6, 199, 223–4, 227, 230–1, 234–5, 260 altruism 11 Archer, Margaret 221, 223–5, 227, 231, 234–5 arts 36, 89, 100, 138, 242 aspiration 24, 121, 130, 134, 138, 152, 154, 228, 258 austerity see under economy Australia 18, 63–79 Austria 249 autonomy 18, 32, 43, 44, 181, 183–4, 191, 193, 205, 225, 234, 242–3, 248–9, 251 academic 20, 23, 144 and autonomisation 47–60 financial 141 and integrity 15 intellectual 179 Bauman, Zygmunt 2, 3, 10, 76, 257, 258, 262 Belgium 41, 182, 249, 258 bilingualism 137, 138 Bologna Declaration 7, 84, 88, 93 Bologna Process 7, 19, 84–94, 180, 181, 239, 261, 262 border-crossing 20, 41, 68, 101, 197, 260 boundary 4 politics 65, 66, 68 shifting 258 time 77 zone 65, 66, 68 Bourdieu, Pierre 17, 117, 169, 172, 209 Boyer, E.L. 115–16, 118, 121, 124, 126–7, 129, 130 bureaucracy 58, 126, 176, 204

Canada 144, 182 capability 56, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 79, 139, 250 capitalism 3, 19, 76, 181 career 1, 17, 38, 39, 60, 87, 89, 90, 91, 100–1, 104–5, 110, 113, 120, 126, 134, 144, 149, 151–4, 156, 162, 173, 176–9, 182–3, 189, 191, 196–7, 199–200, 205, 208–9, 213, 216, 227, 233, 236, 264 development 37, 41, 59, 158, 258 paths 59, 158, 258 transnational 41 change 2, 7, 8, 11, 22, 32, 72, 75, 83, 84, 86, 90, 92, 94, 101, 102, 139, 143, 144, 189, 195, 197, 200, 205, 207, 222, 226, 240, 253 agents 84, 91, 190, 195–6, 199 conceptual 210 cultural 7, 60 educational 65, 68, 73 institutional 230 multidimensional 204 social 208 structural 243 choice 4, 8, 20, 56, 58, 73–5, 83, 143, 149, 154, 161, 181, 188, 197, 251, 262, 265–6 methodological 67 civic good 176, 177 civil society 75 colonialism 68 common good 21, 169, 170, 171, 174–6, 183, 191 competition 7, 33–4, 41–2, 47–9, 54–6, 58–9, 89, 91, 107, 169, 180, 182–3, 186–8, 194, 249 versus collegiality 50–3 consumer culture 12 cosmopolitanism 263, 264 creativity 24, 54, 88, 112, 117, 124, 157, 172–3, 175, 178, 180–1, 186, 206 Czech Republic 104, 105

274 democracy 5, 76, 85, 86, 242, 263 Denmark 41, 266 destiny 234 disorder 2, 3, 11 duty 86, 93, 208, 232 economy 36, 248, 249 austerity 1, 23, 205, 240, 250, 265 global 174 knowledge-based 51, 63, 68, 87, 116, 205 egalitarianism 10, 110, 175 elite 20, 42, 54, 75, 88, 104, 110, 112, 120, 149, 163–4, 172–4, 181, 198 emigration see under migration employment 48, 50, 58, 63, 106, 121, 182, 187, 188, 193, 194, 244, 252 Enlightenment 2, 5, 65, 116, 170, 222 post- 3 entrepreneurship 176, 179 academic 20, 115–30 epistemology 70 contextualised 66–9 equality 173, 175, 186, 268 ethics 10, 22, 58, 175, 190, 191, 213 ethos 19, 32 Eurofascism 1 Europe, Central 15, 105, 111, 239 Europe, Eastern 37, 38, 101 Europe, Northern 15, 169 Europe, Southern 15, 23 Europe, Western 84, 182 European Commission 7, 54, 57, 75 European Consortium for Political Research 37, 38 European Council 51 European Higher Education Area 7, 102, 169, 261 European Research Area 102, 169, 261 European Science Foundation see under sciences European Social Model 258, 259 European Union (EU) 4, 5, 7, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 47, 50, 51, 84, 102, 107, 108, 249, 258, 268 European University Association 52 excellence 8, 18, 32, 33, 34, 43–4, 49, 51, 60, 120, 157, 161, 165, 179, 181, 182 exile 142

Index expectation 20, 89, 91, 101, 152, 163, 164, 178, 180, 209, 214, 228, 246 fairness 102, 104, 108 and justice 170–7, 183, 184 feminism 73 Finland 21, 37, 41, 76, 190, 199, 258, 260 France 33–8, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 90, 104, 109, 169–86, 199, 249, 258, 260, 266 freedom 11, 23, 31, 32, 52, 268 academic 48, 56, 87, 88, 102, 108, 180, 191, 193, 242, 244 intellectual 121 frontier 4, 263 gender 154, 244, 245, 268 geopolitical 1, 15, 16, 20, 109 Georgia 20, 133–48, 260 Germany 37, 40, 41, 42, 76 globalisation 32, 51, 65, 85, 102, 169, 178, 180, 203–6 Greece 4, 23, 134, 239–55, 260 hegemony 17, 33, 129 hierarchy 6, 16, 150, 161, 186, 194, 261 historiography 67, 77 humanities 19, 32, 36, 99, 101, 108, 110–12, 174, 182, 225, 226, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236 Hungary 105 incentive 6, 8, 89, 90, 106, 110, 215 individualisation 18, 47–60 individualism 10, 11, 21, 38, 49, 54, 76 inequality 4, 258 innovation 51, 59, 73, 84, 88, 89, 91, 93, 140, 175, 178, 181 and identity 208–12 integration 20, 41, 102, 115, 123–6, 130, 152, 203, 206 integrity 9, 15, 116, 123–6, 129, 130, 270 interdisciplinarity 19, 57, 67, 83, 84, 91, 93, 94, 111, 115, 116, 125, 126, 128, 196, 205 intimacy 12 irredentism 11 Italy 5, 258 justice 3, 5, 21, 74, 162, 169–84, 186, 268

Index labour 13, 74, 77, 194, 206 circuits of 75 division of 6, 11 market 51, 154, 252 law 7, 34, 35, 36, 43, 89, 90, 138, 213, 239–53 leadership 52, 56, 84, 94, 150, 151, 164, 181, 209, 243 life history 184, 221, 226 loyalty 230, 236 marketization 172, 175, 176, 199 Marxism 73 meritocracy 38, 173 migration 2, 20, 102, 251 emigration 141 mobility 7, 17, 18, 19, 23, 34, 40–3, 48, 68, 70, 75, 78, 99, 102–3, 113, 124, 190, 196–7, 209, 211, 251, 262 morale 36, 190, 250 multilingualism 23, 261, 262 nationalism 5, 11, 42, 137, 138 neoliberalism 9, 18, 32, 33, 37, 42, 44, 65, 143, 165, 175, 183 Netherlands 41, 249 network 41, 42, 48, 84, 93, 103, 117, 120, 143, 175, 176, 204, 206, 207, 209, 211, 214, 230, 261, 263, 264, 269 Bologna 88 Swiss Faculty Development Network 91 Nobel Prize 54, 124 O’Neill, Onora 8–9, 50 ‘oneself as another’ 11 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 44, 87, 107, 204, 251 otherness 214 pedagogy 13, 22, 119, 125, 127, 204, 210, 212, 213 Pedagogy of the Oppressed 122 peer 94, 135, 153, 155, 157, 170, 171, 204, 230, 234 approval 174 assessment 181 evaluation 106

275

regulation 172, 174, 178 review 112, 117, 207 performativity 106, 107, 145, 155, 164, 165, 172, 175 personhood 162, 259 plurality 14–15, 17, 258, 264, 265 Poland 35, 105 Portugal 203–19, 249, 260 post-colonialism 3, 64 power 3, 23, 33, 49, 57, 65, 72, 73, 87, 122, 124, 136, 145, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175–7, 179, 181, 188, 193, 195, 198, 204, 206, 208, 241, 261 ‘symbolic’ 17 technologies of 32 privatisation 1, 12 productivity 13, 115 professionalism 9, 44, 106, 145, 269 ‘hyperprofessionality’ 93 un- 8 values 6, 9, 60 public good 187 public interest 172, 186 public management 48 new 7, 56, 57, 144, 181 public sector 4, 199 public service 22, 35, 172, 176, 205 quality 22, 32, 33, 44, 55, 90, 93, 105, 127, 203, 249, 250 of academic life 102 assurance 7, 58, 88, 239, 240, 245, 246, 253 and budget reductions 204 of research 59, 106, 108, 164, 179 standards 6 teaching 90, 164 rankings 8, 18–19, 32–4, 44, 47, 49–51, 53–5, 57, 59, 99, 104–7, 113, 127, 172–3, 183, 187 Academic Ranking and Rating Agency of Slovakia (ARRA) 104 Shanghai 8, 34, 37, 50, 54 Times Higher Education Supplement 8, 54 U-Multirank 34 recognition 6, 39, 90, 91, 110, 143, 157, 173, 175, 177, 186, 193, 197, 198, 216

276 reflexivity 22, 23, 49, 69, 221–37, 259 religion 4, 11, 138, 175 Republic of Ireland 22, 221–38, 260 republican 21, 35, 137, 170, 173, 177, 199 reward 6, 59, 115, 159, 173, 216, 249 Ricoeur, Paul 11, 174, 184 Said, Edward 9, 142 scholarship 12, 87, 99, 115–30, 157, 175, 182, 212, 216 Science Europe see under sciences sciences 19, 32, 37, 40, 41, 42, 49, 99, 120, 136, 138, 197, 225, 226, 242 applied 89, 90, 92 educational 119 European Science Foundation 40 natural 70, 71, 72, 101, 110–12, 124, 197, 198 Science Europe 40 Slovak Academy of Sciences 100 ‘of the social’ 67–71 social 32, 36, 41, 64, 66, 70, 76, 119, 133, 171, 172, 174, 176, 177, 182, 225 Swiss National Science Foundation 87 secularism 11, 175 self-determination 10, 23 self-esteem 92, 94, 106, 158, 222, 260 self-worth 5, 35, 109, 224 sexism 154 Slovak Academy of Sciences see under sciences Slovakia 19, 99–114, 260 Soros, George 3, 4 Soviet collectivism 19 Spain 5, 258 sustainability 4, 18, 20, 52 Sweden 115–32, 260 Swiss Faculty Development Network see under network

Index Swiss National Science Foundation see under sciences Switzerland 41, 83–97, 182, 260 Todorov, Tzvetan 2, 3, 5, 32 transformation 37, 119, 142, 180, 195, 196, 253 personal and professional 19, 93–5 ‘university of ’ 65 transition 20, 149, 157, 163, 196, 253, 257, 260 global 18, 75, 76 transnational 16, 20, 41–2, 47 knowledge production 75–8 Ukraine 38 unemployment 1, 110, 251, 252, 270 United Kingdom 20, 33, 35, 40, 41, 42, 53, 71, 133, 140–2, 143, 144, 161, 163, 164, 173, 181, 260, 265, 266 virtue 191, 215, 263 vocational 6, 22, 86, 91, 174, 225, 227, 234, 237 Weber, Max 57–8 welfare 50, 55, 58 Nordic model 187, 199, 204 state 22, 71, 73 welfarism 9 well-being 5, 35, 109, 224 working lives 6, 8, 12, 16, 76, 144, 163, 170, 253 workplace 13, 57, 73, 74, 76, 90, 116, 152, 187, 193, 209, 232 youth 118 club 153, 155 unemployment 1, 251 Zizek, Slavoj 4, 44