Professional Transitions in the Academy: A Conversation

Abstract

Journeys are funny things—they do not always take you were you were expecting them to, or even where you want to go. But if you are open to the experience, and committed to reflection, there are interesting lessons to be learned. What does it mean to shift from a practising professional (a lawyer–a social worker) to a discipline-based academic? Or to move beyond a narrow discipline to become a scholar of teaching and learning? What dangers lurk in the swamp of managerialism? How can we escape from the towers of solitude and isolation that characterise debates around academic identity and become true barrier breakers and boundary blenders? The key, for these two travellers, lies in recognising the transformative potential of epistemological fusion.

Keywords

critical reflection personal transformation transformative learning

This article is a personal reflection, in the form of a conversation between two academic journeyers, on our travels through the epistemological kingdoms of professional and academic identity. This reflection, and conversation, arose directly from our experience of moving between several different “roles” in our professional lives and the challenges to personal and professional identity that these shifts posed. From positions as professional practitioners in social work and law we both moved into the academy to take up positions in a university as teachers and researchers. More recently, within the university, we have moved away from our identities as discipline scholars and into roles with a focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Each of these moves has been somewhat unsettling, leading us to ponder the nature of “academic identity” and how we can make sense of who we are in the shifting and uncertain environment that characterises higher education today.

We recognise our journeys as unique and acknowledge the enormous diversity of experience that exists within the academy. At the same time, we believe that there is value in sharing our experiences and in doing so shining a light on some of the tensions and challenges of academic practice that may also resonate with others. During this journey transformative learning as a concept has helped us to understand our experiences and to explain why we now see ourselves as having shifted to ways of seeing the world that are more open and inclusive, more flexible, and better able to accommodate change and uncertainty.

Would You Like Some Theory With That?

Transformative learning theory now has a long pedigree in educational circles. One of the most generative of educational theories in recent times, it has shaped our understanding of the often personally profound changes that we have witnessed in our students. Reflecting on our own experiences within the academy, this theoretical perspective also provides us with a basis for thinking about the nature of change in our own worldviews and the processes involved in producing it. Grounded in the cognitive–rational articulation of Jack Mezirow (1991, 2000, 2003), transformative learning refers to:

…learning that transforms problematic frames of reference – sets of fixed assumptions and expectations (habits of mind, meaning perspectives, mindsets) – to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective, and emotionally able to change. Such frames of reference are better than others because they are more likely to generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action. (Mezirow, 2003, pp. 58–59)

Since Mezirow’s initial articulation, many other writers, educational theorists, and practitioners have explored the concept of learning transformation, developing and extending Mezirow’s work, or taking the idea of transformative learning itself in quite different directions. These include approaches to transformative learning theory which have emphasised Jungian, developmental, integral, spiritual, and ecozoic perspectives (see, Dirkz, 2001, 2006; Duerr, Zajonc, & Dana, 2003; Gunnlaugson, 2005; Kegan, 2000; O’Sullivan & Taylor, 2004). One of the outcomes of these various scholarly explorations has been the creation of what Sands and Tennant (2010) refer to as a “cognitive–affective tension,” between those with a more cognitive–rational understanding of transformation and those who place greater emphasis on the role of emotions and relationships in understanding such change.

In thinking about our experiences of change, and the way that these are related to our own sense of “self” and identity, we have been influenced by Sands and Tennant’s (2010) understanding that an experience of transformative learning does not mean that an old self disappears, to be replaced by a new, unified self, but rather that we can see aspects of previous experience and worldviews lingering, albeit with less force and prominence. In this sense, we can think of “life stories as continually under construction, whereby experience is viewed as a story that can be continually revisited, reinterpreted, and reassessed . . . The emphasis . . . is on the indeterminacy of identity, the relativity of meaning, and the generation and exploration of a multiplicity of meanings” (Sands & Tennant, 2010, p. 117). It is from this standpoint that we have tried to make sense of the processes of learning and change, which have characterized our experience as academics.

Back to the Beginning…

Peter

Well, this is an interesting process Kate, a conversation about those issues of academic identity that you and I have pondered and discussed at such length in recent years. Identity has become such a tangled issue for me that it’s a little hard to know where to start, so maybe I’ll go all the way back to where my identity as a professional social worker first began.

When I think about how my interest in social justice first emerged I tend to end up back at Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) which I read as a young teen. It’s not clear whether reading the book was a transformative experience in the sense implied by Mezirow’s notion of a disorienting dilemma (2000), but it was certainly an influential moment in the construction of my worldview. Steinbeck’s novel brought into my young consciousness a realisation of the existence and operation of injustice and the impacts of such injustice on the lives of ordinary, relatively powerless people. What struck me most strongly (and it is a feeling that I can recall easily today) was the way in which the events described in the novel were “unfair”… how could this be allowed to happen? Why wasn’t it stopped? Why wasn’t everybody treated fairly and equally? These days I have a much more sophisticated political analysis and a whole body of theory and jargon at my disposal, but somehow those questions that emerged in the mind of my 13-year-old self still seem just as important, just as relevant, and just as hard to answer.

As I grew older this concern for social justice lead me, almost inevitably, to an interest in left-wing politics. Not being much of a “joiner,” the plethora of tiny, radical parties that were around in the late 70s and early 80s didn’t hold a lot of appeal. It seemed like there was a lot of talking, endless debating and infighting over issues of arcane political theory, but very little action. It took some searching (and several years of working as a dishwasher and storeman) but eventually I figured out that what I was looking for was a job that would allow me to express my values in a practical way. Social work beckoned. Here was a profession with a strong radical tradition (the work of people like Bailey & Brake, 1975; Galper, 1980; and Leonard, 1984, was influential in my attraction) and a clearly articulated aim of working with the most powerless members of society and bringing about social change. But perhaps most significantly, it saw itself as a “normative” profession—one based on a clear set of values and a sense of how the world ought to be (Ife, 1997). In the end I think it was this “oughtness” that helped me to see that my own values aligned with those espoused by the profession (or at least the radical factions thereof) and to recognise that there was an epistemological congruency between my own worldview and that espoused by the profession.

From where I stand now, and in terms of the interests of this reflection, perhaps one of the most important things that studying and entering the social work profession did for me was give me a clear, defined, and articulated sense of identity. I didn’t just do social work as a job, I was a social worker. While I have problems with some of the more self-serving dimensions of professionalism (Kunneman, 2005), it is certainly true to say that a professional identity is a powerful force in shaping and reinforcing one’s world view (Alistair, 2006; Ross & Crow, 2010), particularly when the values that underpin the profession match those that underpin one’s own sense of self.

Kate

That’s really interesting Peter, particularly the way that for you, it was really about finding a professional identity that meshed with an existing worldview. It was quite a different experience for me.

Like so many law students my entry into the law was externally influenced (Tani & Vines, 2009). Proud and loving family had always been convinced that I would “end up a doctor or a lawyer one day.” A debater and public speaker at school, I ended up at law school and followed my nose into legal practice. The problem with the law, as I tell my students, is that it rearranges your brain so that you see the world differently. I therefore found for myself that once intellectually engaged in the law and its mode of thinking, it was very hard to put the genie back into the bottle. In addition, the culture of competitiveness (Kelk, Luscombe, Medlow, & Hickie, 2009; Seligman, Verkuil, & Kang, 2005) in the profession, particularly in commercial practice, suited my own driven nature; always seeking to outdo myself if not my opponents.

Having felt such promise upon my graduation, early in my articles of clerkship (now traineeship), I started to learn the cultural nuances of the profession and where I, a young woman, fitted (or didn’t) within its framework (Thornton, 2001; Winter, 2011). While I experienced support in the development of my professional persona—that of a “woman lawyer”—I likewise experienced far more passive resistance (Hagan & Kay, 1995). I observed approaches also to dealing with women clients that reflected a thinking that was foreign to my liberal upbringing. Unlike your experience of fitting in with the values of social work Peter, the masculine culture of the legal profession (ref; ref) did not reflect my own sense of self (McKenzie, 2010; Spender, 1985). These early experiences informed the way in which I developed my sense of self as a legal practitioner (Winter, 2011) and indeed my approach to practice as one that sought to advance women’s agency in particular, but clients’ agency and autonomy in general (Gachenga, 2011; Parker, 2002).

Revelling in the intellectual rigours of the law, I identified increasingly strongly as a lawyer so as not to lose myself within the women-resistant culture of the profession. At the same time, my experiences and observations led me to develop an ethical compass, perhaps in the tradition of an ethic of care (Gachenga, 2011; Parker, 2002), albeit without an intellectual framework. My evolving philosophy of practice and my approach to ethics did not necessarily align with the standard approach to legal practice (Gachenga, 2011; Parker, 2002; Smith, 2006) presenting further challenges for me in consolidating my place within the profession.

The merger of my professional and personal identity was finally revealed to me when I was searching for a master’s degree to undertake. It was clear that no other discipline than law would offer me the intellectual stimulation and interest required to partake in further study. The genie was certainly not to be contained.

From on the Ground to Up in the Tower…

Kate

This powerfully merged personal/professional identity as a lawyer has been a significant factor in thinking about the identity issues that arose as I moved from a professional practice setting to an academic one. I’ll be interested to learn if that was the case for you too Peter. My own move to academia was initially seamless.

Part of my role in private practice had been supervising and mentoring junior lawyers and implementing staff training programs. I saw these roles as integral to the role of the lawyer: part of my commitment to support others’ agency and autonomy, but in a broader context than that of a client (Galloway, Bradshaw, Dunbar, & Fellows, 2011). Likewise I saw the role of lawyer extending to the academy—the history of the legal profession is a history of scholarship and teaching, albeit on occasion somewhat aloof from the academy proper (James, 2000). It was an extension of my understanding of my professional identity, coupled with a need for flexible working conditions to assist my family responsibilities that led me to the university.

I came to university lecturing and tutoring full of confidence. I knew my material and I knew how it was used in the context of practice. My discipline epistemology would serve me well, I felt. Unlike my own university experience, I would bring the subject matter to life for my students using real-world examples, my public speaking experience and colourful overhead transparencies (well, this was 2004. . .). My students were indeed receptive. Feedback was positive.

During my transition into the academy, first as a sessional and then as a contract lecturer, my understanding of my role as a teacher of law was rooted within my existing professional identity. My job as a communicator of legal knowledge, my ethical orientation as a facilitator of agency in my clients (or students), and my commitment to public service were all wrapped up in my understanding of my professional responsibility to train the next generation of lawyers. I was an academic but clearly following in the tradition of the law.

In this way, I was clear about my philosophy of teaching. I knew what I needed to do and why. Upon first hearing of a “teaching portfolio” and associated “philosophy of teaching” (National Tertiary Education Union [NTEU], 2005), I could quite happily articulate a vision of myself as a teacher in terms of empowerment (Freire, 1970) and of inculcation into the law (Wilkins, 2001). My philosophy related also to my role in a regional university—part of my commitment to equality of opportunity for nonmetropolitan students. Having come from the oldest law school in my home state of Queensland—one of the so-called sandstone universities—I saw how the culture of the profession was disposed against the newer law schools. My commitment to regional higher education stemmed from my rejection of this biased view, again a perspective coloured by my professional identity.

While I could adapt my discourse to some extent to mimic an educational one (e.g., in articulating a teaching philosophy), my entire identity was grounded squarely within my discipline and not within an educational epistemology. I was still a lawyer, and I taught law at a university. Developing other aspects of my legal academic persona during this time, I had no need to engage outside my firmly held beliefs within my own discipline epistemology. The success of my projection of a professional lawyerly persona resonates still as colleagues in the profession ask me “are you still teaching out at uni?”

Peter

There are some similarities in our experiences Kate, but also some differences. I think we both came to academia thinking that teaching would simply involve an extension or new dimension of our existing professional identities. I’m not entirely sure that I see it that way anymore.

The shift into academia was, for me, the result of a lucky coincidence rather than a well-thought-out career plan. I had done some tutoring at university while completing my honours year and had found working with groups and conducting training one of the most satisfying aspects of my social work practice, but I hadn’t really considered teaching as a pathway for me. I was invited to fill in for a short period for a staff member who had unexpectedly left the social work department at the local university. After 6 months in that temporary role, I applied for and was successful in being employed in the department on a permanent basis. I was an academic. Well, of sorts.

The traditional mode of operation in Australian universities, at least in the social sciences and humanities, has been the lecture–tutorial (Ramsden, 2003). The lecture where the academic delivers content to a large group of students and tutorials where smaller groups can engage in a facilitated discussion of course material. There was very little in the way of induction into the job and certainly no suggestion of support or training in how to teach (happily this situation has improved markedly over recent years). The consequence of this was that my entire approach to teaching was based around my existing identity, skills, and knowledge as a social worker. This worked pretty well in the tutorial setting, where skills in interpersonal communication and group work translated easily and effectively into the classroom. The lecture theatre, however, was a different proposition. I remember drawing up long lists of absolutely essential information that students needed to have, and writing out entire lectures verbatim, so that I could read them to the assembled students.

Issues of identity did not trouble me at this time. When asked about what I did for a living, my answer was swift and clear—I was a social worker, who happened to be teaching at the university. It was my professional identity that held sway, and this was reinforced by the fact that the body of knowledge, values, and skills that I was employing in my job came exclusively from this professional foundation. Epistemologically, I was operating in the social work worldview, and as an approach to teaching, it seemed to work pretty well. Student evaluations of my work were generally very positive and I began developing a reputation with my students and colleagues as a “good teacher,” a development that proved to be the beginning of the unravelling of my comfortable worldview.

In a discussion with a colleague from another discipline I was asked what my “philosophy of teaching” was. As I stumbled through a reply I had a sudden realisation that I had no idea what I was talking about. A little later, reflecting on that experience, I realised that I actually had no idea about anything to do with teaching. I felt I was doing a good job—the evaluations all said so—but I really had no way of explaining why I was doing what I did, or why it worked, or if it could be done differently and more effectively. I really connected at that point with the conscious competence learning model (Chapman, 2001), realising that I had just shifted, rather dramatically, from a place of unconscious incompetence, where I didn’t realise that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, to a place of conscious incompetence, where I was becoming painfully aware of how little I knew.

This constituted an epistemological dilemma, and in many respects a disorienting one. In my teaching of social work, I had always argued to students that a good practitioner needed to be able to justify everything they did, with reference to the values, skills, ethics and knowledge base of the profession. “Imagine,” I would say, “a person tapping you on the shoulder while you are working and asking you ‘why did you do that?’ or ‘why did you do that, that way?’ You need to be able to answer those questions in a full and professional manner.” Hmmm. Hoist on my own petard, I realised that I needed to turn my attention in a new direction, that I would need to do some serious learning about learning, and teaching, and what it actually meant to be an educator as well as a social worker. In this sense, I began to realise what it might mean to actually become a discipline-based academic, rather than a social worker who happens to be teaching. Reflecting on this now it seems like an important transformative moment, when the limitations of an existing epistemological position became obvious and the possibility of a new identity emerged.

Excuse Me, But Your Epistemology is Showing…

Peter

I’m sure you’d agree Kate that such dilemmas and the change that may follow them are not always easy to deal with, but they can be quite exciting. The deeper I went into learning about teaching and learning, the more interested and engaged I became in this as a field of academic interest and of practice. Initially, the learning I did helped to inform my practice as a social work educator. In some instances this simply meant developing an understanding of why some of the things I’d been doing for years worked (or didn’t), but in other areas it entailed dramatic changes to my practice as an educator. I began developing a theoretical foundation for thinking about students’ learning and my own teaching practice, and this in turn transformed my thinking about my work and my identity. I recognised, in hindsight, that I had been reluctant, even actively resistant, to the idea of “giving up” my professional identity as a social worker and assuming a new identity as a discipline-based academic. An identity that I understood to mean someone who is well schooled in a profession but whose main focus is on teaching and research, and who therefore needs to know something about these domains as well as the actual discipline in which they are applied (Aitken, 2010).

This sense of identity confusion was compounded as my interest in teaching and learning, as a distinct field of study and practice rather than applied to any particular discipline, continued to grow. I was fortunate that my own individual interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) coincided with a renewed interest in teaching as an activity at Australian universities (Gray & Radloff, 2010). I was successful in applying for a Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) fellowship based on teaching practice and scholarship (Jones, 2008) and won a number of teaching-related awards at an institutional and national level. I had also begun writing and publishing articles that looked at aspects social work education from a SoTL perspective (Jones, 2009, 2010). Significantly, for me, I was invited to begin teaching in a graduate certificate program on tertiary teaching, where the material had no direct connection to social work at all. The identity shift that I could sense unfolding here was one that involved moving further away from my own professional background and indeed from a discipline-based perspective at all and towards an identity focused on the more abstracted, meta-dimensions of teaching and learning. In other words, towards an identity shaped by an educational epistemology.

The most recent stage in this process has involved taking on a role within my university of “Curriculum Scholar” along with three colleagues in faculties across the institution (including you Kate!). The aim of the scholars’ position is to facilitate a “refreshing” of the curriculum university wide. Essentially, I see it as a capacity-building exercise, supporting discipline-based academics to review and develop their curriculum in light of the university’s identified strategic intent. But it is a long way from social work. Or is it?

One of the areas that have emerged as deeply interesting for me along this journey so far is the question of identity, epistemology, and transformation. It is easy to see the journey that I have taken from social worker (professional identity) to social work educator (academic identity) to curriculum scholar (SoTL identity) as a simple progression from one to another. Yet the fundamental assumptions, orientations, value bases, knowledge bases, and goals of these different identity positions are quite . . . well, different. Are the movements from one to the other more like shifts or significant transformations than simple progressions? What happens to the deep connections to self that characterise many identity formations? Do these simply drop away?

Kate

These are such important and challenging questions. I suspect that different individuals will negotiate this terrain in a variety of ways and certainly you and I have gone down different paths here. In my early teaching career, I was really proud of the work I did. Students responded positively on the whole, and I felt I was serving the profession well. Somewhat belatedly however, I attended a teaching induction. How Could I Have Been So Wrong? Early on I had of course, apart from my minor creative flourishes, been teaching in the way that I was taught: as a lawyer, not as an educator. I have since learned that the entrenched content-focussed doctrinal approach to teaching law remains an issue of concern internationally (Davis, 2008); a concern which I share, based on my engagement with the SoTL (Kift, 2009).

My institutional teaching induction and inclusion into our rollout of the revamped and innovative first year program in the law degree (Roebuck, Westcott, & Thiriet, 2007; Westcott & Shircore, 2006) caused me to approach my teaching differently. Or did it?

I could see that there was an approach to teaching that was “professional”—that I had in fact become a professional teacher, not a lawyer who taught. I wore the hat of “teaching and learning leader” in the guise of first year coordinator, and subsequently director of teaching and learning in my school. In relation to my own teaching however, I continued to use my lawyer skills to embed the approaches I read about into my teaching. I traced teaching policy to source, finding evidence of its genesis and for its efficacy (Ramsden, 2003). I approached teaching on an evidential basis (what worked for students) and within an intellectual framework of educational literature as part of my discipline identity incorporating “task variety competence” (Holmes, Foley, Tang, & Rowe, 2012). Thus, as if a lawyer preparing for court, I felt I could enter into the discourse of SoTL.

Was this a deep learning experience or simply surface learning (Ramsden, 2003)? A high achiever with a sense of credentialism, I felt that I should embark on a graduate certificate in tertiary teaching; but I dropped out after 1½ semesters. Akin to my experience while considering a master’s degree, I found it difficult to move beyond the mode of thinking like a lawyer, and the structured engagement with the SoTL did not hold my attention.

I agonised over my decision to drop out. I felt deeply committed to the SoTL and was disappointed in my almost emotional reaction to the course requirements—the affective aspects of my learning that were such a barrier for me (Beard, Clegg, & Smith, 2007). I have grappled with my resistance to this formal learning experience, and I suspect that my sense of independence including long-standing independent intellectual inquiry, coupled with my long-term reliance on experience and observation in developing my professional persona, had already informed my approach to teaching and learning. I did not feel above the learning, but the mode of learning did not suit me.

My experience in developing a professional persona as a lawyer in a context within which I felt somewhat of an outsider was being replicated in the SoTL context where I could see the beauty of construction of the graduate certificate curriculum but could not engage in it myself as a learner. To compensate for my lack of formal credentials, I redoubled my efforts to self-educate through engaging in the literature and experimentation in my own teaching. I worked with colleagues to research and publish on our teaching, like you Peter I also won teaching awards at institutional and national level, I embarked on institutionally funded projects on teaching in the law school and the faculty and became co-convenor of a national network of teaching and learning in law. This latter experience has coincided with my appointment as curriculum scholar.

Also like you Peter, I have contemplated my transformation and puzzled at its depth. In reflecting on the fundamental assumptions and orientations within the culture of my discipline and the SoTL, I find the fundamental differences difficult to make a part of me and who I am. Part of this is reflected in my feeling that I can never know enough about the psychology of learning, about research methodologies outside my familiar doctrinal research in law, and about other pillars of how adults learn. I can engage in the educational discourse at one level, thus creating a common ground with other tertiary teachers that transcends discipline, but having set out to situate myself as a SoTL, I find increasingly that I may instead in fact be a lawyer.

Danger! Swampy Ground Ahead…

Kate

Complicated isn’t it? And just to add to the messiness of moving from, or between, these identity positions the organisational context also throws in some unanticipated challenges. I recognise now that an unexpected effect of my involvement in positions of leadership in SoTL has been my increasing exposure to reporting, policy and procedure, and internal regulatory processes. In considering the resistance of many academic staff to SoTL, I have reflected on the possible perception of a merger of SoTL with such managerial epistemologies. Certainly observing teaching and learning leadership roles within the institution, it seems that reporting can take precedence over the activity of curriculum design and teaching; that audits, quality enhancement, course performance, departmental, faculty and institutional KPIs, and strategic and operational planning are taking an increasing amount of effort.

I have found my identity moving from a somewhat uncertain place within educational epistemology into a creeping managerialism (Reid, 2009).

Lawyers are not known for their management skills for a number of reasons including a cultural claim to intellectual superiority of their discipline and a predilection for working out ways around regulation (Munneke, 2010; Thornton, 1998). This is known to generate resistance to management processes (Dwyer, 2005). Indeed professional identity in terms of autonomy can trump attempts to regulate the lawyer, and “self-regulation, has long been identified as a core characteristic of professionalism as a distinct work organization principle” (Flood, 2011, p. 508). As I reflect on what interests me about teaching and SoTL, and my discipline-based identity, my identity in a managerial sense is in direct conflict with my self-perception. In assessing my capacity to support institutional engagement in SoTL, I look to my own experience of this managerialist approach to our academic role and see its impact also on my colleagues. Where I experience a lack of authentic engagement in this epistemology, I question my capacity to engage my colleagues within this framework. I feel I lose my ability to practise according to my central beliefs of “client” agency.

Peter

Yes, indeed. I love that term creeping managerialism. It really seems to capture the notion that the managerial discourse sneaks up on us, particularly as a person becomes increasingly identified as a “leader” in any given field, including the SoTL.

I mentioned earlier that there had been renewed interest over the last decade in issues around learning and teaching in Australian universities. While this has been a very positive development, I see that it has also meant that many universities are adopting a more comprehensive, institutionalised approach to these aspects of university business (Reid, 2009). And as with many large organisations, such a shift inevitable means building up an internal management structure that needs to be managed, and subsequently, where managerial epistemologies rule the roost (O’Connor & White, 2011; Pick, Teo, & Yeung, 2012). In the role of Curriculum Scholar, there has emerged a certain tension between an identity firmly grounded in the SoTL and the pressures of the managerial imperatives. The university has a program that it wants implemented, from the top–down, and the role of scholars is to facilitate that implementation. Um, how did I get here from The Grapes of Wrath? And is this really where I want to be?

Breaking Barriers and Blending Boundaries…

Peter

So Kate, the key question that emerges for me is something like “how can we accommodate the apparently fundamentally different epistemological positions represented by professional, academic, SoTL and managerialist identities?” Initially, my feeling was that this process of shifting identities represented something of an incremental, staged progression. Each identity was tied up with my own sense of self but represented a new iteration whereby some previous dimensions had been superseded by new ones. As I moved forward I left some things behind and picked others up. Upon reflection however, I’m less convinced that this is the case.

For one thing such a model assumes a forward, upwards linear progression, as if each of the new identities is somehow a positive progression from the previous. This is obviously untrue, for me at least. The values, beliefs, assumptions that underpin an identity rooted in the SoTL are not inherently better or worse than a professional social work identity. But it also seems to be a conceptualisation of identities that sees them as discreet and self-contained, with clear boundaries and borders. I am one or I am another. Yet this denies the influence and epistemological carryover of one identity position upon another. This is the position that I have arrived at in my understanding of this epistemological journey now—that rather than moving from one neatly defined box to the next, the process has involved blending dimensions of each epistemological position into subsequent and previous identities.

I still see myself as a social worker now, but one whose understanding of social work has been shaped and influenced by what I now know about academia, about the SoTL and even about university managerialism. I can also recognise the ways in which that original professional identity continues to exert an influence on the way I approach all dimensions of my educational and management practice. In one respect this seems obvious and I wonder why it took me so long to realise it, but I don’t seem to be alone. I think many discipline academics are resistant to engaging with the SoTL exactly because of these perceived threats to the integrity of their discipline identity.

Kate

You make an important point, Peter. I think that what you are describing is the evolution of what you might call a “fusion epistemology”: a way of understanding your persona within a blend of ways of knowing. You have truly blended the boundaries of these different modes of thinking!

This idea resonates for me, reflecting on my own experience. Unlike your own fusion however, I would consider that my understanding of SoTL and the management aspects of my role are all informed by my legal professional identity. While you have evolved your understanding of social work through other influences, I have instead developed further knowledge and skills within the framework of, or tempered by, my lawyerly worldview.

The outcome seems to be the same—that each of us engages in the dimensions of our academic practice influenced by our original professional identities. In each case though, there will inevitably be a different emphasis of one type of knowing and thinking based on our own fusion. That each academic would evolve a different blend of epistemologies is borne out by the different trajectories discipline scholars take within the academy—some into education, some policy or management, some into discipline teaching, and others into discipline research.

Hey! I can see your house from here… Kate

Meandering along my professional way I have moved in one sense through a number of external orientations: my initial choice of undergraduate education, my experience of “otherness” in the legal profession, my sense of discomfort within a purely educational context, and my disorientation in the management paradigm. These experiences have certainly helped to clarify who I am not, occupying my vantage point in the space outside their imprint. But the impact of my experience is not limited to this negative space: I have internalised my experiences to construct a positive and agentic identity through a combination of intellectualisation, emotion, relationships, and reflection.

This process of professional self-definition is of course not over yet . . . but it is clear that my identity represents a blend of my experiences and the frames of reference or epistemologies within which I have worked. Each has in some way contributed to my present professional incarnation, whether to a lesser or greater extent. On balance? Well, it seems as though I see each of my roles, whether SoTL, management, or academic, primarily as a lawyer.

Does this mean that I have become rooted in the past, rooted in an understanding of the world that won’t change? That I can’t evolve beyond my particular conceptualisation of legal practitioner? Absolutely not, in fact the shape shifting of my professional life has resulted, I think, in a growing capacity to formulate an increasingly complex narrative around what it means to be a lawyer, and what it means to be a legal educator. As this narrative becomes more nuanced, so too does my own practice as a legal academic—and thus my capacity to continue to grow.

Peter

Absolutely, Kate. When I think about what you’ve said it occurs to me that if you are head-down, tail-up all the time, focused only on what is right in front of you—the task that needs doing, the deadline that must be met—it becomes very difficult to get a sense of the big picture, of what all this “doing” really means. For that, you need some distance or some height, to get up above the fray and survey the landscape that surrounds you.

We shall not cease from exploration

and the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started

and know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot

I used to use this piece of poetry as the focus for a lesson in a class I taught on the use of self in social work practice. My point was that when we learned about “self” as an academic subject we went on a journey that started by thinking about ourselves and eventually took us back to the point where we began . . . with the self. But that this was not a static circle. We returned to where we began, but everything was now different, transformed by what we had learned and experienced as we journeyed along the way. When I try to get some height and distance on this journey of identity that we've been discussing here, what I see is a mixture of change, sometimes transformative in nature, and continuity.

The transformations have sometimes been dramatic, as in that moment when my unconscious incompetence became conscious and my very assumptions about my world and how I operated in it were shaken, and sometimes they’ve been incremental and subtle, involving gentle reorientations rather than significant shifts. Along the way there here have also been some dead ends and some glimpses of landscapes where I choose not to travel. But the continuities are equally important. I still identify strongly as a social worker. But I also identify strongly as a social work educator and a scholar of teaching and learning. Turns out that the transformative shift involved in moving from one to the other doesn’t necessarily entail “giving up” each in turn. While the epistemological positions of each may look, on the surface, different, and the congruencies not obvious, an approach to thinking about identity that ignores the boxes and barriers and looks for opportunities to engage in the development of a fusion worldview allows both continuity and change to be equally recognised and valued.

And This is Important Because. . .?

The conversation we have offered above is, of course, merely a representation of the many “real-life” conversations that the two of us have been involved in during these processes of change and reidentification. Transformative learning theory has offered us some ways of making sense of our experiences as we have had our comfortable worldviews and identities disrupted and challenged. We have recognised in our own journeys many of the stages that Mezirow (2003) described as being an integral part of transformative learning—the disorienting experience, self-reflection and the identification of limiting assumptions, dialogue with others, and, eventually, the formation of new ways of seeing and understanding the world. We now see, contrary to what both of us believed initially, that each of the major role shifts which we have undergone has not meant abandoning a previous identity as we forge a bright new sense of self but rather has involved recognising the fluid and dynamic nature of identity formation and developing a new world view which is more flexible and inclusive, but which contains within it the essential traces of all of our “previous selves.”

We noted at the beginning of this reflection that our journey was, of course, subjective and unique. Yet as we observe the world around us, and particularly our workplaces in higher education, we also see that the experience of constructing and reconstructing our professional identities, and our sense of self, is becoming ubiquitous. Whether by choice or through the demands of managerialist organisations, we are all increasingly called upon to negotiate multiple life and career transitions. For us, the opportunity to engage in critical reflection on these challenges, and to draw on the scholarship of transformative learning while doing so, has helped us to embrace and understand the change process in a positive and productive manner.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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