Abstract
In this chapter, we draw on semi-structured interviews with academics from an interdisciplinary field of social sciences who have completed a GCert and who work together in a research-intensive university. We suggest that their labour together as teachers comprises an academic workgroup. We first provide a rationale for our focus on GCerts as a vehicle for our study; second, we offer a contextual description of the workgroup as well as a brief account of the participants involved in the study; third, we draw on interview data to explore the kinds of teacher identities that are made available (or summoned) through the agendas, structures, and assemblages of activity and interaction that these academics engage in. We are especially interested in how scholarly and institutional knowledge and know-how from the GCert becomes mobilised; that is, how it is put to use by our interviewees as a mechanism for them to (mis)recognise the identity struggles of others, and perform appropriate university teacher identities themselves. Our analysis draws primarily on Bendix Petersen’s (2008) notion of the ‘conduct of concern’ – a reading of Foucault’s notion of governmentality: "Exploring the conduct of concern as a readily available discursive practice is a way of analysing the ‘microphysics’ of power (Foucault, 1980) at play within academic culture; a way of asking how academic cultures are continued or discontinued, and how it comes to be that certain subjects and positionings are recognised as appropriate or inappropriate. It is an entry into trying to understand ‘who makes it’ and who doesn’t; what subjects need to do, think, say and be in order to be recognised, by themselves and others, as relevant and competent in an academic context. (p. 397)"
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Identity Work in the Contemporary University: Exploring an Uneasy Profession |
Editors | Jan Smith, Julie Rattray, Tai Peseta, Daphne Loads |
Place of Publication | Netherlands |
Publisher | Sense Publishers |
Pages | 77-90 |
Number of pages | 14 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9789463003100 |
ISBN (Print) | 9789463003094 |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Keywords
- university lecturers
- social sciences
- study and teaching
- education, higher