Early Career Teachers in Higher Education: International Teaching Journeys 9781350129337, 9781350129368, 9781350129344

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Early Career Teachers in Higher Education
Part One Challenges of National/International Contexts
1 A Korean Stranger in a Japanese Classroom: Developing as a Teacher in a Foreign Country (Jongsung Kim)
2 Reverse Brain Drain and Early Career Frustrations in Nigerian Higher Education: Aspirations, Compromises and Challenges of
3 My Anatomy Teaching Journey from India to Britain: A Reflection of a Teacher, a Seeker and a Constructivist (Mandeep Gill S
Part Two Precarious Intersectionality
4 Being a PhD Student and a Teacher in Two UK Universities: Challenges and Possibilities of Liminal Spaces of Belonging (Leah
5 Balancing Teaching, Culture and Gender in Japan: Prospects and Challenges as an American Female Teacher Abroad (Sarah R. Asa
6 Othering and Its Impact on Teaching Opportunities in Australia: Gendered, Classed and Raced Subject Positions (Clarissa Card
Part Three Disrupting Identities
7 (Dis)Empowering Spaces: Drawing on Disabling Experiences as an Early Career Teacher with Dwarfism (Erin Pritchard)
8 What Has Sexuality Got To Do with It? Negotiating a Professional Identity as a Gay Early Career Teacher (Ben Colliver)
9 Early Career Teachers as Entrepreneurs in American Higher Education: The Politician, Comedian and Busker (Thomas Larsen)
Part Four Pedagogical Predicaments
10 From Passionate Engagement to Chronic Boredom in Polish Academia: An Overview of Early Career Motivation and Systemic Contri
11 Developing as a Critical Pedagogue in Brazil: Challenges, Reflections and Actions (Ana Zimmermann)
12 Learning from Learners in China: Teaching Public Policy to Continuing Education Students (Diwen Xiao)
13 Transitioning from Teaching Young Learners to Trainee Teachers in International Higher Education: Professional Identity Cris
Part Five Personal Narratives in a Wider Perspective
14 Reflections on Early Career Teachers’ Journeys: Challenges, Experiences and Strategies (Ann E. Austin)
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Early Career Teachers in Higher Education

Also available from Bloomsbury Academics’ International Teaching Journeys: Personal Narratives of Transitions in Higher Education, edited by Anesa Hosein, Namrata Rao, Chloe Shu-Hua Yeh and Ian M. Kinchin Developing Culturally and Historically Sensitive Teacher Education: Global Lessons from a Literacy Education, edited by Peter Smagorinsky, Yolanda Gayol Ramírez and Patricia Rosas Chávez Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Teacher Education: A Cross-National Study, edited by Maria Teresa Tatto and Ian Menter Locating Social Justice in Higher Education Research, edited by Jan McArthur and Paul Ashwin Narratives of Academics’ Personal Journeys in Contested Spaces: Leadership Identity in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, edited by Namrata Rao, Anesa Hosein and Ian M. Kinchin Narratives of Becoming Leaders in Disciplinary and Institutional Contexts: Leadership Identity in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, edited by Namrata Rao, Anesa Hosein and Ian M. Kinchin Navigating Teacher Education in Complex and Uncertain Times: Connecting Communities of Practice in a Borderless World, Carmen I. Mercado Reflective Teaching in Higher Education, Paul Ashwin with David Boud, Susanna Calkins, Kelly Coate, Fiona Hallett, Gregory Light, Kathy Luckett, Jan McArthur, Iain McLaren, Monica McLean, Velda McCune, Katarina Mårtensson and Michelle Tooher The Roma in European Higher Education: Recasting Identities, Re-Imagining Futures, edited by Louise Morley, Andrzej Mirga and Nadir Redzepi

Early Career Teachers in Higher Education International Teaching Journeys Edited by Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao and Contributors, 2021 Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xv constitute an extension of this copyright page. 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. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Crutchley, Jody, editor. | Nahaboo, Zaki, editor. | Rao, Namrata (Educational sociologist), editor. Title: Early career teachers in higher education : international teaching journeys / edited by Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao. Description: London ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021006777 (print) | LCCN 2021006778 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350129337 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350129344 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350129351 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: College teachers–Vocational guidance. | College teaching. | Academic life. Classification: LCC LB1778 .E27 2021 (print) | LCC LB1778 (ebook) | DDC 378.1/2–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006777 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006778 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-2933-7 ePDF: 978-1-3501-2934-4 eBook: 978-1-3501-2935-1 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Notes on Contributors Foreword N’Dri Thérèse Assie-Lumumba (Cornell University, USA) Acknowledgements Introduction: Early Career Teachers in Higher Education Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao

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Part 1 Challenges of National/International Contexts 1 A Korean Stranger in a Japanese Classroom: Developing as a Teacher in a Foreign Country Jongsung Kim 2 Reverse Brain Drain and Early Career Frustrations in Nigerian Higher Education: Aspirations, Compromises and Challenges of a Returnee Amos Pofi 3 My Anatomy Teaching Journey from India to Britain: A Reflection of a Teacher, a Seeker and a Constructivist Mandeep Gill Sagoo

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Part 2 Precarious Intersectionality 4 Being a PhD Student and a Teacher in Two UK Universities: Challenges and Possibilities of Liminal Spaces of Belonging Leah Burch 5 Balancing Teaching, Culture and Gender in Japan: Prospects and Challenges as an American Female Teacher Abroad Sarah R. Asada 6 Othering and Its Impact on Teaching Opportunities in Australia: Gendered, Classed and Raced Subject Positions Clarissa Carden and Diti Bhattacharya

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Part 3 Disrupting Identities 7

(Dis)Empowering Spaces: Drawing on Disabling Experiences as an Early Career Teacher with Dwarfism Erin Pritchard 8 What Has Sexuality Got to Do With It? Negotiating a Professional Identity as a Gay Early Career Teacher Ben Colliver 9 Early Career Teachers as Entrepreneurs in American Higher Education: The Politician, Comedian and Busker Thomas Larsen

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Part 4 Pedagogical Predicaments 10 From Passionate Engagement to Chronic Boredom in Polish Academia: An Overview of Early Career Motivation and Systemic Contributory Factors Mariusz Finkielsztein 11 Developing as a Critical Pedagogue in Brazil: Challenges, Reflections and Actions Ana Zimmermann 12 Learning from Learners in China: Teaching Public Policy to Continuing Education Students Diwen Xiao 13 Transitioning from Teaching Young Learners to Trainee Teachers in International Higher Education: Professional Identity Crises and Continual Development Natalie Shaw

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Part 5 Personal Narratives in a Wider Perspective 14 Reflections on the Early Career Teachers’ Journeys: Challenges, Experiences and Strategies Ann E. Austin

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Bibliography185 Index 223

Contributors Ann E. Austin is a University Distinguished Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education and the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education at Michigan State University, USA. Her research and publications concern academic work, careers and professional development; organizational change in higher education; doctoral education; and STEM education in higher education. Her recent and current funded projects focus on major organizational change issues in higher education: strategies for creating more inclusive academic workplaces, the preparation of future STEM faculty as effective teachers, reform in teaching evaluation and the nature and functioning of networks of organizations committed to strengthening undergraduate education. Sarah R. Asada is Assistant Professor of Comparative and International Education at Kyoritsu Women’s University, Japan and a visiting research fellow at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Her research encompasses international academic mobility, comparative international higher education and the sociocultural context of education. Asada’s recent book 50 Years of US Study Abroad Students: Japan as the Gateway to Asia and Beyond (2020) is the 2020 Best Book Award recipient from the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Study Abroad and International Students Special Interest Group. She has also contributed to research projects with the Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA – RI) and UNESCO. Diti Bhattacharya is a resident adjunct research fellow at the Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. She received her PhD in Human Geography from the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science in 2019. Her field of expertise includes human and cultural geography, postcolonial geographies, critical heritage and well-being studies. She focuses on the various material, affective, sensorial, human and non-human interactions within space, in inquiring how spatial relations function by using assemblage thinking as a conceptual tool. Leah Burch is a PhD researcher in the School of Sociology & Social Policy at the University of Leeds, UK, and a member of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University. Her PhD research focuses on the understanding and experience of disability hate crime, particularly in

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relation to the ‘everyday lives’ of disabled people. Her previous research includes an analysis of online disablist hate speech within the context of austerity and a critical discourse analysis of special educational needs policy, which is published in peer-reviewed journals, including Disability & Society and Journal of Education Policy. Clarissa Carden is a postdoctoral research fellow at Griffith University, Australia. Her work explores the intersection of morality and social change, with a particular focus on the lives of young people. She received her PhD in Historical Sociology in 2018 and her research includes scholarship on the history and present of education in Queensland, grief in virtual worlds and the history of juvenile justice in Australia. Ben Colliver is a lecturer in Criminology at Birmingham City University, UK. His research interests include hate crime, queer criminology, gender and sexuality. His most recent research projects include ethnographic methods exploring the role of ‘social exclusion’ in LGBTQ venues and the use of geosocial apps to facilitate violence against LGBTQ communities. He has recently published research that explores how transgender identities are constructed in online contemporary debates surrounding ‘gender neutral’ toilets. He is an active member of the British Society of Criminology and is currently a member of the steering group of the British Society of Criminology Hate Crime Network. Jody Crutchley is a lecturer in Modern History at Liverpool Hope University, UK. She is a historian of empire, citizenship and education and is particularly interested in the teaching of imperial identities in Britain in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Previously, she worked as a historical researcher on the BBC Radio 4 drama ‘Home Front’ and as a Leverhulme Trust-funded postdoctoral researcher on the ‘Faith on the Air’ project. She is a co-author of the forthcoming monograph Religious Education in British Broadcasting: A History and was a co-editor of Sight, Sound and Text in the History of Education. Jody is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Treasurer of the History of Education, UK. Mariusz Finkielsztein is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Collegium Civitas in Warsaw, Poland. His main research interests concern boredom and higher education. His PhD thesis was entitled ‘On the social significance of boredom: The phenomenon of boredom in a university milieu’. He recently published the article ‘Class-related boredom among university students: A qualitative research on boredom coping strategies’ (Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43 (2019)). He was also the organizer of the International

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Interdisciplinary Boredom Conference in Warsaw between 2015 and 2017. He has taught on numerous postgraduate courses on qualitative sociology (Chicago school) and creative occupations (artists/higher education) in Warsaw, Poland. Mandeep Gill Sagoo is Lecturer in Anatomy in the Department of Anatomy, School of Biomedical Education, and the Head of MBBS First Year Assessments at King’s College London, UK. She is also a visiting professor and a member of the Advisory Board at Bharath University, India. Her research is in applied anatomy, innovative teaching and assessments, and the relation of these to the cognitive psychology of multimedia learning. She has published widely in Anatomical Sciences Education, Anatomical Science International, Plastic and Aesthetic Research journals, as well as the Journal of Plastination. In 2018, she was a recipient of the King’s College GKT School of Medical Education Excellence Award in Teaching. Jongsung Kim is Associate Professor of Social Studies Education at Hiroshima University, Japan, where he teaches social studies methods courses and runs international research projects and student exchange programmes. He is interested in designing interventions that support students and teachers to overcome differences in national myths and to help achieve mutual understanding. Recently, he is working on the ‘Better Social Studies Textbook’ project that aims at creating a cross-cultural sphere where students in different countries communicate with each other’s national discourses. His work is also concerned with themes related to peace education, history education and teaching controversial issues in international settings. Erin Pritchard is Lecturer in Disability Studies in the School of Social Sciences at Liverpool Hope University, UK, and a core member of the Centre for Cultural Disability Studies. Her research is underpinned by notions of space and focuses on the social and spatial experiences of people with dwarfism within the built environment. This is evident in her book ‘Dwarfism, spatiality and disabling experiences’, which was published as part of Routledge’s interdisciplinary series. Her work has appeared in the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, the International Journal of Social Research Methodology and Geography Compass. More recently, she has co-edited a special issue on representations of dwarfism for the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. Thomas Larsen is a geographer who explores issues at the interface of nature and society. In December 2018, he earned a PhD in geography from Kansas State University, USA. During the writing of this paper, Larsen neared the end of a temporary position as lecturer and senior research associate for the Department of Geography at Texas State University, USA. From his doctoral

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studies to the present, he has developed online and in-person courses in physical geography; human geography; world regional geography; jobs, careers and professional development in geography; and field-based learning in geography. He has ongoing research interests in geographic thought, the Anthropocene, human-environment relations, learning progressions, human development and capabilities, and humanistic geography. Zaki Nahaboo is Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University, UK. His current research interests are in British imperial citizenship, theories of political subjectivity and multiculturalism. This focus builds upon his doctoral work conducted at The Open University, UK, which formed part of the European Research Council FP7 project ‘Oecumene: Citizenship after Orientalism’. Zaki’s teaching makes the case for understanding the sociological craft beyond its traditional disciplinary boundaries. His teaching is informed by new imperial history, postcolonial criticism and international relations theory. Zaki has published in Citizenship Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies and Interventions. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. Amos Peter Pofi has a clinical community health supervisory certificate, a BA/ BSc certificate in Health Studies and Business Management, MSc in Health and Social Care and Post Graduate Diploma (PGD) certificate in Education. He completed a PhD in Public Health Education at the University of Worcester, UK, in November 2016. His teaching career initially developed whilst working as an information education and communication officer, but he started working as a part-time lecturer in 2008–9 and eventually became full-time in 2010. He is involved in community services within his locality and currently works as a full-time lecturer at the Federal College of Education Pankshin (affiliated to the University of Jos, Nigeria), where he works with undergraduate and postgraduate students. Namrata Rao is a principal lecturer in Education at Liverpool Hope University, UK, where she coordinates the School of Education’s postgraduate taught programmes. Her key areas of research and publication include (but are not restricted to) various aspects of learning and teaching in higher education that influence academic identity and academic practice. She is a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy, executive member of the British Association of International and Comparative Education, and member of the Research and Development group of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education. Her recent publications include a co-edited book Academics’ International Teaching Journeys: Personal Narratives of Transitions in Higher Education (2018).

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Natalie Shaw holds a degree in Special Needs Education from Germany and a teaching qualification from the UK. She has taught internationally in China, Cambodia and Germany and has worked in an educational capacity in Thailand and India. Whilst teaching in Berlin, she completed a master’s degree in Children’s Rights and Childhood Studies, followed by a PhD in Education. After thirteen years of teaching young learners, Natalie now works in higher education as an Educational Studies lecturer in the International Teacher Education for Primary Schools (ITEps) programme at NHL Stenden University, the Netherlands. Diwen Xiao is Assistant Professor in the College of Management at Shenzhen University, China. He was also a visiting fellow at Harvard Yenching Institute, USA (2017–18) and a visiting scholar at the University of Glasgow, UK (2015– 16). He has more than five years of teaching experience in the area of public policy. His research interests include policymaking under the transformative regime of China, health policy and local governance. Ana Cristina Zimmermann is Associate Professor at the School of Physical Education and Sports at University of São Paulo, Brazil. She completed a PhD in Education at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil after having spent a period at the School of Education at the University of Nottingham. She is currently working as a supervisor in the Postgraduate Programme at the School of Physical Education and Sports and at the Faculty of Education at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research interests cover aspects of teaching, embodiment and philosophical dimensions of human movement.

Foreword The ongoing coronavirus/Covid-19 global health pandemic along with some of the ensuing political decisions for the closure of national borders and subsequent reopening have brought to the forefront issues that have been brewing for a long time. These relate to the affirmation and contestations of the post-Westphalian notion of nation states, particularly in the increasing neoliberal globalization, climate-related and conflict-generated displacement, and the broader cross-border migrations. It is worth indicating that education itself, especially at the tertiary level and particularly the university, has constituted a major trigger of migration, internally and across borders, and on a global scale. The increased movements of populations compound considerable diversity, even within old nation states, as claims of regional, ethnic, linguistic and other grounds of collective identity, of minorities, for instance, are asserted, with demands, needs and efforts to reflect them in the educational systems in general or specific programmes. There are local, national and regional specificities alongside broader patterns and similarities. Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao, the co-editors of Early Career Teachers in Higher Education: International Teaching Journeys, assert that the term ‘Early Career Teacher’ itself constitutes a ‘set of dissonant experiences and identities’. Nevertheless, the title and contents of this book embody critically insightful and timely topics incorporating voices that make meaning from institutional, local, national and international perspectives. The ‘unique national landscapes’, as indicated by the co-editors, which are inhabited by these early career teachers at the time of their respective engagement with teaching, provide a rich array of perspectives from lived experiences. Their perceived or actual trepidations and possibilities are created by the objective contexts in which they operate. These perspectives, emanating from their interactions with the learners, are shaped by the institution and by actual sharing of the learning space with the learners and their special characteristics. The teacher– learner and learner–learner dynamics contribute to give specific meaning to the experiences. In this book, whether they are teaching in their own original national/ cultural spaces or evolving in other spaces as migrants, transients or returnees who go back to their initial spaces, these ‘early’ experiences of the teachers provide learning materials for the various potential readers of the different contributions. The book also suggests the importance of multiculturalism and intersectionality

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as a multiplicity of factors intertwine and are reflected in the teachers’ identity constitution are intertwined in reflecting back to the teachers. There are fundamental questions in grappling with the basic definitions of what constitutes this professional category; as indicated above, Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao acknowledge an elusive dimension of the group in pointing out the difficulty of discerning it with precision as they refer to the ‘dissonant experiences and identities’. The lack of precision in defining the group precisely speaks to the reality of the teaching space in the world and constitutes part of the attractiveness of the book, strengthened by authoritative articulation of these local and global complexities and the individual teachers’ own evolution. Indeed, even if they are all collated in a single category of beginners, in practice they are not at the same stage, and each of them, even for a short time period in the journey, do not remain static at the point of departure. There are rich and complex dynamic processes that are unleashed and provide the framework for a reflective assessment by each of them. These rich factors encompass the contributors’ and learners’ identities, such as national origin, class, race and sexuality, which all interact and shape the experience of teaching. There are personal dispositions, including the mental state of engaging with passion that, given the convergence of institutional and other significant factors, can also evolve into boredom. The gender identity of the teacher and the institutional aspects of a majority of the co-educational institutions, when compared to an all-female institution, offer a tremendous range of experiences for the contributors. Furthermore, numerous other factors have implications. This includes teaching within or outside specific geopolitical and cultural regions of the world; it also includes the experiences of teachers who are from and teaching in countries which may be the same or different, industrial or developing. The experiences of doctoral students are distinctive compared to those who formally entered the teaching profession, or to those who transitioned from one set of students/type of institution to another group and were thus considered as being in the early career stage. In terms of the synergy of the curriculum and impact on learners of the teacher’s experience, important discernment was derived from the dynamics of indigenous knowledge versus the received knowledge deriving from dominant groups. Intra-institutional dynamics of ‘early’ career directly or indirectly allude to the interaction between seasoned/advanced-level teachers, with implications of disempowering sentiments from one case in the novice cluster. In contrast, some find empowerment by consciously engaging in action research and ‘constructivist’ pursuit.

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Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao, as co-editors, and the authors of the different chapters of the volume, offer an insightful contribution to the critical examination of the teaching profession in this moment as, following the abrupt shift to a near-universal use of distance education in response to the challenges of the coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing closure of educational institutions, new elements are making their way into intensifying debates about the role of teachers in the face-to-face learning space of the brick-and-mortar institutions in comparison to the virtual delivery mode. The conceptualization of ‘early career’ helps locate and facilitate an understanding of the different case studies in a broader global context and at the same time institutional and national specificities in the book; it also makes a significant contribution to the aforementioned ongoing and future debates on the central subject of teachers in the educational systems. Since the title refers to the ‘early’ stage in teaching and the subtitle refers to ‘journeys’, it would be very useful and informative if either a tracer study, or at least another study or time series studies, is planned and conducted in the future to provide reflective insights on the trajectories of the same contributors, whether they continue to teach in the same institutions and contexts or move on to other institutions, countries or cultural contexts within the international dynamics. This edited volume, with such insightful individual contributions, will undoubtedly be very well received by teachers individually and within their respective professional organizations in different countries, by other scholars and students of education, policymakers, grassroots organizations and various forms of civil society working to promote transformations of the curriculum and teaching/learning at the local, national and international levels. N’Dri Thérèse Assie-Lumumba, PhD Professor of African/Diaspora and Comparative/International Education, Africana Studies and Research Center, and Director of the Institute for African Development, Cornell University Distinguished Visiting Professor, Ali Mazrui Center for Higher Education Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee of UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme Ithaca, New York (USA), June 2020

Acknowledgements This book grew out of the experiences shared by colleagues at the Early Career Teachers Community of Practice, which Zaki and Jody convened at Liverpool Hope University from 2017 to 2019. Each of the contributors, attendees and presenters at the community of practice helped spark our interest in understanding the context of those new to teaching in academia. We would like to say thank you to everyone who supported or were involved in that group, but especially to Lynn Hilditch, John Bennett, Nick Almond and Natalia Vibla. It was the conversations and dialogue fostered within the community of practice that inspired us to explore the experiences of this diverse group further as they adapted to teaching. We are indebted to all our colleagues and friends who in sharing their teaching journeys have disclosed fascinating insights into teaching experiences across many continents, including Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and North America. Thank you also to Alison Baker, Senior Publisher, Education and Linguistics at Bloomsbury, for her advice and support during the editorial journey. We would like to express our collective appreciation to J’annine Jobling for her helpful comments on the final draft of the manuscript. In addition, we are grateful for the research funding from Liverpool Hope University that supported the proofreading for the volume. Finally, the best part of this project has been collaborating with such a wonderful and dynamic editorial team. We put in tireless hours of work at often unsociable hours of the day. However, sharing dinner, lots of biscuits, jokes, Skype, countless Google Docs and lengthy, record-breaking Zoom calls during the Covid-19 pandemic made the editorial process a more pleasurable experience. We must each say a special thank you to our families for their patience and support as we pursued our intellectual project.

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Introduction: Early Career Teachers in Higher Education Jody Crutchley, Zaki Nahaboo and Namrata Rao

Introduction The nature of academic careers has transformed in recent decades. Workplaces have been affected by new categories of employment and by drives to fulfil shifting government expectations of the sector (Jones et al., 2012). Broad trends towards labour casualization, the increasing professionalization of teaching, neoliberalism and precarity have intensified these developments and impacted ‘the quality of academic worklife’ (Zábrodská et al., 2016: 348). In addition, the fragmentation of academic labour – teaching, research, administration and management responsibilities – has been exacerbated by its unequal distribution between different staff groups (Jones, 2007). As contract and workload differentiation intensifies the division of labour, those employed within a traditional teaching and research model have dwindled (Peseta and Bell, 2020). Recent research has begun to suggest that these kinds of conditions have fractured academic identity and increased the differentiation of professional identity over the course of a career (Finkelstein, 1984, 2010; McNay, 2000; Muzzin, 2009). For instance, commentators have demonstrated that current conditions produce particular challenges for new entrants to teaching in Higher Education (HE) across various national contexts (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2015; Ivancheva, 2015; Norkus, Besio and Baur, 2016; Peacock, 2016). These Early Career Teachers (ECTs) gain employment in a sector where the availability of permanent academic positions has dwindled and a holding pattern of employment has developed (Roberts, 2002). Furthermore, professional experience can replace qualifications, such as PhDs, as criteria

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of eligibility for teaching in HE in many national contexts (Agarwal, 2006; Schneider and Sheikh, 2012). Included within the ECTs are doctoral students and hourly paid lecturers who frequently contribute to teaching activities whilst in their apprenticeship. As a result, ECTs traverse a more diverse route of entry into teaching in HE with fewer opportunities to gain job security (Kaplan, 2010; Powell, 2015). In addition, their responsibilities differ greatly from other faculty members as they have frequently been found to have the highest teaching workloads (Suliman and Suliman, 1997: 136). Although there is a growing and significant literature that draws attention to challenges faced by early career academics as researchers (see e.g. Lucas and Turner, 2007; Weller, 2011; Hemmings, 2012; Lesenyeho, Barkhuizen and Schutte, 2018a, 2018b; Hollywood et al., 2019; Wilkinson, 2019), their teaching identities and experiences are given less consideration. Yet, this distinction is not merely semantic. The existing emphasis on traditional academic careers not only misrepresents the diversity and complexity of contemporary academic workforces but also sustains an elitist perception of academic citizenship that marginalizes the significance of teaching. Instead, empirical studies of teachingintensive universities have shown that new entrants in these kinds of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) often prize and prioritize their educational roles (Gale, 2011; Müller, 2014). Moreover, members of the academic workforce frequently seek to locate themselves as teachers in HEIs, even though they are not trained for these roles during their doctoral studies (Austin, 2002, 2003). This edited volume therefore seeks to redress the imbalance in previous literature by giving voice to a diverse group of academics who are new to teaching in HE in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas. All selfidentify as ECTs. In doing so, this volume aims to recapture the experience of academics developing their teaching identities, practices and careers. Taken together, the journeys highlight commonalities and differences in experience. They also help contribute to our collective understanding of ECTs and of teaching more broadly within the contemporary international HE context. Given their distinct experiences within the academy, it is therefore essential to deepen our understanding of this important employee group, the ECTs, to help further reveal the complexities and diversity of their experiences within the rapidly changing academic profession. This introductory chapter advances our understanding of ECTs by exploring three core ideas. First, it characterizes ECTs as a set of dissonant experiences, identities and identifications across an international context. It argues that these senses of the self should be understood as processual. This is because the

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teaching experiences of these individuals respond to dynamic influences, within and outside the academy, and are in constant flux. It is through this process of ‘becoming’ that ECTs develop their teacher and teaching identities. Nevertheless, there are some distinct areas of commonality that cross-cut the various struggles and opportunities that they experience within their respective national contexts. Second, four peripatetic common features of the ECT experience can be identified that, at times, all navigate in different ways: liminality, sizeable involvement in teaching activities, precarity and vulnerability. Although these experiences are distinct characteristics of their journeys, their responses are diverse owing to the various social identities that individuals hold and the agency they express. Without generalizing across plural identities, such as gender, race, age, nationality, sexuality and disciplinary alignments, the ECT concept provides a useful prism through which to identify the shared and divergent experiences of those new to teaching in HE. Third, the chapter highlights the value of exploring the teaching journeys of these academics. The contributors’ narratives help foreground their subjective perspectives, thereby giving us a greater appreciation of their lived experiences. The narratives are performances that enable their authors to claim a voice in HE contexts that have traditionally marginalized their experience. Finally, this chapter concludes by drawing attention to some key themes that emerge across the thirteen teaching journeys included in the volume.

Characterizing Early Career Teachers in Higher Education New entrants to university contexts are frequently labelled as early career. From the perspective of research councils and funders, early career academics might be discerned from the time elapsed since doctoral completion or their career length after entry into scholarly employment (Bosanquet et al., 2017). Within institutional contexts and academic scholarship, the classification of early career academics is more elusive (with the exception of postdoctoral research positions). Even in academic scholarship there is little consensus about the parameters, or even the appropriate term, for this employee group. In previous literature, these academics have been referred to by a variety of names, including ‘neophyte lecturers’ (Morton, 2009; Hemmings and Kay, 2010), ‘new faculty’ (Boice, 1992; Cawyer, Simonds and Davis, 2002; Lucas and Murry, 2016), ‘probationary lecturers’ (Smith, 2010, 2011), ‘novice

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academics’ (Remmik et al., 2011; Thomson, 2015), ‘apprentices’ (Laudel and Gläser, 2008), ‘emerging academics’ (Tynan and Garbett, 2007: 422), ‘academic aspirants’ (May et al., 2011), ‘recently appointed lecturers’ (Smith and Boyd, 2012) and ‘early career academics’ (Gebru, 2016; Willson, 2019). No matter what terminology they adopted, these studies have tended to caution against generalizing this diverse group’s employment trajectories. Traditional distinctions made by age, length of employment, number of years since PhD completion or number of research outputs have all been shown to be at odds with the reality of contemporary academic work (Edwards, Bexley and Richardson, 2010). For instance, ‘early career’ academics will not necessarily occupy the most junior academic posts, nor will they always be the younger members of faculty. There is a burgeoning literature that explores new entrants to academia who change careers later in life (Mellors-Bourne, Metcalfe and Pollard, 2013). Larocco and Bruns (2006) demonstrate that these individuals have additional challenges to negotiate as they adapt to the new responsibilities and expectations of their second career. Conventional conceptions of transition from doctorate to first academic position are therefore not generalizable, nor are they desirable. Excluding PhD students from early career status has been shown to devalue arbitrarily their labour and teaching contributions during postgraduate study (Laudel and Gläser, 2008). Tensions and fragmentations therefore pervade early career identities, and, as Agnes Bosanquet et al. (2017: 890) assert, fixed institutional understandings of what it means to be ‘early career’ are outmoded. Instead, it is more useful to capture this complexity and diversity by conceptualizing ECTs as an assemblage of dissonant experiences, identities and identifications. Diverse institutional settings further hinder precise analytical definition of ECTs. Malte Henkel (2000) has shown that specific institutional contexts affect academic identities considerably. Moreover, the dynamic context shared by those new to working in academia can frustrate career aspirations (Gottschalk and Mceachearn, 2010). In addition, the pressures of precarious employment status have been verified for academics on temporary contracts (Roberts, 2002). Against this backdrop, the idea of the ‘early career academic’ can provide a useful frame for signifying mutable feelings about academic work, perceptions about the nature of quality education and reflections on job security (Gale, 2011). Nevertheless, the term ‘early’ is problematic here as it appears to imply a trajectory that is either transient or stymied. In reality, the destabilizing features of contemporary academic careers are remarkably persistent. Unlike the idealized ‘professor life cycle’, which postulates a rocky

Introduction

5

but largely uphill trajectory from an aspiring lecturer to a secure professor established as an authority in the field (Anderson and Anderson, 2011: 119– 21), many academic careers are not so straightforward or circumscribed. Rather, experiences that impress upon early career identities across different national contexts never reach a finalized or exclusive meaning. In this respect, resonances can be found between the aforementioned characterization of early career academics and the current use of the phrase ‘early career teachers’ in educational research. To date, the latter term tends to denote newly qualified teachers delivering compulsory education (Henry et al., 2014). In this formulation, school teachers experience a sense of ‘dislocation, alienation, self-doubt, and sheer exhaustion’ as new entrants to the classroom (Johnson et al., 2014: 531). Similarly, ECTs in HE experience a state of flux as they respond to a dynamic range of influences, both from within the academy and outside. In this sense, the limbo-like nature of the early career position has been conceptualized as a kind of ‘waiting in the wings’ (Bazeley et al., 1996). However, this idiom should be read with an understanding that the individual’s starring moment may never materialize. It is thus evident that a more nuanced and fluid definition of ‘early career’ is required, which reflects the dynamism and reality of individuals’ lived experiences. A possible solution to this definitional issue lies in the concept of processual identities. Stuart Hall (1996) emphasized that even seemingly stable identities are in flux and that one’s identity only assumes a guise of stability once we postpone a deferral of meaning. Hall therefore cautioned against the exclusionary power found in settled descriptions of identity, advocating instead for an analytic of processual identification. As ECT identities are demonstrably fluid and subject to constant change, they can be understood as processual. Conceptualizing ECT identities as processes entails a sharper focus on the multiple, and often circuitous, transitions that academics experience as they continuously negotiate their sense of self (Jenkins, 2014). This non-linear approach to identity sidesteps the inherent stagist implications of the term. This is especially important because it has been shown convincingly that the notion of ‘career’ in HE is problematic, as it suggests ‘a linear development pathway that is far removed from the messy realities of many academic careers (in particular, for many women)’ (Read and Leathwood, 2018: 338). The contemporary university remains a site of inequality and exclusion (Harris, 2005). Appointments, promotion processes and job security both reflect and reinforce wider social inequalities, including gender and social class (e.g. Reay, 2004). Consequently, the ECT idea must not necessarily anticipate a ‘mid’ or ‘late’ stage that might artificially exclude,

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Early Career Teachers in Higher Education

or misrecognize, certain employee groups. In practice, an individual may slip in and out of an ECT modality multiple times, depending on the challenges faced or opportunities grasped. Utilizing the framework of processual identity therefore helps to emphasize the dynamism and intersectionality inherent in ECT experiences. The processual nature of early career identities is already encapsulated in research that is concerned with academic acculturation and/or ‘becoming’ (Jiang et al., 2010: 157–9), where becoming is understood as a process, or multiple processes, of transition (Trowler and Knight, 2000; Jawitz, 2007). Transitions are experienced differently by academics. For instance, challenges faced in negotiating new national contexts vary from individual to individual (Barkhuizen, 2002). In addition, shifting and fluctuating HE contexts may result in multiple identities, or ways of being, for each individual. Thus, the development, shaping and metamorphosis of academic identity—’the becoming process’—is unique to each ECT and their specific situation (Aitken, 2010: 66). Although this means that the term ‘ECT’ lacks rigid signification or even a spatial-temporal definition, the process of becoming correlates with the findings of Bosanquet et al. (2017: 900): ‘No singular definition encompasses … [the full diversity of ECT] experience’. Reluctance to assign any singular meaning or characterization is therefore a strength, when seeking to explore the realities of ECT experiences. Instead, this book responds to Lynn McAlpine, Cheryl Amundsen and Gill Turner’s (2013) call to emphasize individual agency, discern processes of transition and facilitate narrative approaches. It does this by foregrounding the personal teaching journeys of academics who each independently self-define as ECTs. Self-identification, along with its processual and reifying tendencies, can help capture a diverse range of early career experiences and allow multiple subjectivities to emerge (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990). This edited volume therefore incorporates a range of academic voices, from doctoral students to casualized staff and junior faculty members. It explores these academics’ diverse transformational experiences. Subsequently, these professional negotiations may lead to ongoing identification and reidentification with early career identities through ‘continuous investment in becoming’ (Masny, 2004: 5). Thus, the identity and identification of ECTs are only fully discernible through the stories they themselves tell. This book examines ECT narratives collectively to help circumvent a singular categorization, thereby producing a composite and nuanced characterization of their diverse experiences of teaching in HE.

Introduction

7

Understanding the Early Career Teacher Experience The ambiguity of the ECT concept does not preclude this academic employee group from encountering shared experiences. Recent empirical research has begun to emphasize commonalities of early career positions across diverse institutional and international contexts. For example, Helen Gale (2011: 225) has suggested that academics have ‘different identities at different stages of the[ir] academic career’, where the first stage is individualistic and isolated. Further similarities have been found in new staff members’ perceptions of academic work (Jones et al., 2012), job satisfaction (Altbach, 2000), reasons for entering academia (Rice, Sorcinelli and Austin, 2000; Austin, 2003) and attitudes towards professional development (Miller, 2015). Notwithstanding the diversity, plurality and variability of experience among academics new to HE, it is therefore unsurprising to discern broad congruences and resemblances that intersect the collective narrative presented in this edited volume. The chapters suggest four distinct, but uneven, features of the ECT experience that impact each academic’s teaching journey, which they all navigate, negotiate or challenge. The first commonality of shared early career experience is peripherality. Rebekah Willson (2019) identifies early career academics’ transition from their doctorate to their first position as a process of liminality. In her conceptualization, without any formal marker of transformation as they enter the faculty, new academics must create and sustain their own narrative of change. Experiences of being neither fully ‘within’ nor ‘outside’ a recently joined department are also acknowledged by those experiencing it. In their study, Meghan Pifer and Vicki Baker (2013) demonstrate that the building of intradepartmental networks is perceived as crucial by early career academics as they seek to network, develop their career and, ultimately, gain tenure. Collegiality has been deemed crucial to the integration of new staff members, but it is often lacking for those in casualized or non-tenured jobs (Trowler and Knight, 1999; Ansmann et al., 2014). Marginalized staff are therefore more likely to experience disillusionment and feelings of isolation at the outset of an academic career (Smith, 2010). Nevertheless, ECT agencies can work to limit the impact of liminality. Individual personality traits can mitigate the effects of loneliness and render negative aspects of a work environment more bearable (Zimmerman, 2008; Hollywood et al., 2019). Similarly, independently forged, positive relationships with academic colleagues can also help to overcome experiences of peripherality (Mitchell et al., 2001).

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Early Career Teachers in Higher Education

A second unifying factor is the predominance of ECTs within the teaching activities of universities and HEIs. An academic’s first years of employment are supposed to ‘constitute a developmental period’ in which new skills are acquired and the new working environment is adapted to (Austin et al., 2007: 53). Yet, ECTs often face disproportionately higher teaching loads than other faculty members (Suliman and Suliman, 1997: 136). James Morton (2009) demonstrates that ‘neophyte lecturers’ can be distinguished from other academic staff who are in the later stages in their career by their greater teaching-related responsibilities. In consonance with Peter G. Taylor’s (1999: 41) view of the ‘situated academic’, this would make the teacher in HE perceive the classroom/lecture theatre as their major location and prioritize interactions with students. However, institutional context is important here in understanding how this affects academic identity. In her study of a post-1992 UK institution, Helen Gale (2011) conceptualizes ECTs as ‘reluctant academics’ who delight in their identity as a teacher in HE and who do not actively research, write or network – at least for the first five years. Conversely, at other institutions, not all ECTs are happy with their heavy teaching loads. As Ann E. Austin et al. (2007: 66) indicate, despite their enthusiasm and desire to impress, many ECTs in the United States are savvy enough to deduce that they will end up devoting ‘more time to teaching than their institutions will reward’. Personalized notions of success, academic authenticity and progression are therefore implicated in individual attitudes towards workload allocation. Moreover, Marc Bousquet (2002) has highlighted that graduate teaching has been de facto redefined from traineeship or an apprenticeship model to costsaving, short-term labour. This kind of devaluation of academic work can lead to job dissatisfaction for ECTs and, ultimately, high turnover. Similarly, institutional concern for the professionalization of teaching standards is reflected in probationary requirements for postgraduate teaching qualifications, but these stipulations may actually become ‘inadvertent sites for producing contention, stress and disharmony’ (Smith, 2010: 589). Thus, ECTs may vary in their attitudes towards teaching, but they are defined by their disproportionate contribution to meeting educational targets, including teaching-related administration. The third common feature that can be discerned among heterogeneous ECT experiences is precarity. Academic careers have been affected by the impact of neoliberalism on HE institutions and the rise in adverse marketplace conditions. Jack Schuster and Martin Finkelstein’s (2006: 162) seminal study of academic careers in America highlights that the contexts in which careers launch is changing, as criteria for new entrants increase while the availability of tenured jobs decreases. Each year, there are more qualified doctorates entering the

Introduction

9

international market, but fewer posts available. These structural changes have resulted in increased competition for academic positions, which has in turn triggered a concomitant rise in casualized forms of employment (Reay, 2004). Large numbers are now employed on part-time, zero-hours, temporary and short-term contracts (Ivancheva, 2015). Increased casualization has many welldocumented negative impacts on staff, including low pay, lack of job security and reduced opportunities for professional development. For example, Indhu Rajagopal and William Farr (1992) argue that Canadian university structures hinder the development of part-time faculty members as their labours are rendered invisible through a bureaucratic and economic rationalization of academic work. This serves to justify a permanent, low-cost workforce of ‘hidden academics’ (Rajagopal and Farr, 1992). Invisibility (Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group, 2017), marginalization (Davis, 2008), instability and situational precarity (Gill, 2014) are all factors that compound the liminality of academics working in these kinds of positions. Furthermore, neoliberal concerns have affected the structure and demands from members of university staff. Bronwyn Davies and Eva Bendix Petersen (2005) note that individually focused behaviours and competition are rewarded when economic imperatives are openly acknowledged, whereas meaningful teaching outputs are restricted to certain expected ‘types’. Thus, academic jobs are very different from what they were in the 1960s and 1970s (Henkel, 2000, 2005). This has affected the identities of those entering employment and their conceptualizations of HE. For instance, Louise Archer (2008) suggests that even when the younger academics in her study attempted to separate their performed self and internalized self, they were still unwittingly implicated in the pernicious neoliberal practices that they sought to resist. The intensified competition for jobs and shifts in the kinds of academic productivity deemed valuable by universities are likely to affect those in precarious employment positions, such as ECTs. Yet, precarity is not only felt in a professional sense by ECTs. It also resonates more widely. The final feature of ECT journeys is broader susceptibilities, vulnerabilities and anxieties. Kathleen Millar (2014: 35) conceptualizes a relationship between ‘precarious labour’ and ‘precarious life’, where each can destabilize the other further and cause wider effects on family life, friendships and self-confidence. Increased instability can heighten ECTs’ individual susceptibility to uncertainty and insecurity (see e.g. Jovanović, 2018). Certainly, new entrants to academia have been found to experience high levels of stress and anxiety coupled with low job satisfaction (Olsen, 1993). Factors such as segregation or liminality can accentuate external pressures. Jan Smith (2010)

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Early Career Teachers in Higher Education

has attributed general feelings of isolation and loneliness experienced by ECTs to their relatively less secure roles. Susan E. Cozzens et al. (2012) highlight that early career scientists are often among the first to suffer stress from academic pressure and workloads and identify them as the most vulnerable group in the science system. Vulnerabilities are then accentuated by disillusionment with a career that did not meet the individual’s expectations. Newcomers often demonstrate high levels of idealism about their chosen profession, which can lead to job dissatisfaction in practice (McAlpine and Turner, 2012). Nevertheless, ECTs’ enthusiasm and willingness to work hard may offer some hope. Bruce Johnson and Barry Down (2013) demonstrated that, for professional teachers, developing critical resilience can help some individuals resist stress, alleviate pressure and sustain optimism. Academic support, especially mentoring, has been shown to help in many national contexts (Hardwick, 2005; Geber, 2009; Hollywood et al., 2019). Conversely, unrealistic expectations and inaccurate perceptions of teaching can be implicated in disengagement from academia (McAlpine and Turner, 2012). Casualized working practices threaten the joy sparked from involvement in teaching and may stimulate academic cynicism instead (Kern et al., 2014). Pessimism, resignation and withdrawal are equally important, although perhaps less desirable, outcomes of mismatched expectations. Thus, while individual experiences vary wildly among ECTs, significant commonalities are the new stresses, anxieties and vulnerabilities that they must uniquely deal with as they confront an unfamiliar academic workplace for the first time.

Early Career Teachers’ Journeys In order to access a variety of personal experiences, this book follows a narrative approach. Each contributor self-identifies as an ECT and uses the term to connote significant processes of transition in their teaching experiences or identities. Accordingly, autobiographical writings document their negotiation of the common components identified above, to greater and lesser extents. The inclusion of diverse voices helps to foreground lived experience and reveals the imbroglio of academic practice (Jones, 2011). Yet, the stories that the subsequent authors provide do not necessarily constitute or reflect an objective and externally verifiable reality. Nor do they need to. Akin to life histories, ECT teaching journeys should be understood as representations of individual realities that provide subjective interpretations of their experiences (Bosanquet et al.,

Introduction

11

2017). Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (1996: 2–3) assert that ‘we are habitual authenticators of our own lives. The way in which an individual constructs narrative is how they form self in a representation or creation of reality. Every day we are confessing and constructing personal narratives in every possible format.’ Rubby Dhunpath (2000) further reiterates that people’s lives are narrative in quality, since the way the world is experienced is through narrative. Following the aforementioned outline of processual identities, narratives should also be viewed as performative. The presentation of an individual’s ECT journey is a way for them to reflect upon contentious issues, and through the construction of narrative, subjection to oppression can be made legible and resistance possible. Storytelling can itself generate identity as authors identify themselves as subjects, define their reality and name their narrative (Chataika, 2005). This is especially important in academia where the workplace is riveted by unequal experiences, which are at times caused by ECTs belonging to discriminated groups (DelgadoRomero et al., 2003). The thirteen chapters in this book therefore comprise stories of ECTs from across the world, who experience differing transformations in their identity as teachers. Although the miscellany of academic voices is not exhaustive, the scope of the narratives indicates the breadth of ECTs’ contributions to HEIs, as well as the challenges they face as they embark on their journeys as teachers. Distinct themes emerge out of the chapters and the book is structured into five parts to reflect these wider conceptual trends. In Part One, ECT contributors frequently find themselves working across borders and within new national contexts. Their narratives reveal how these international transitions can create both obstacles to familiar teaching practices and opportunities for development. Jongsung Kim describes the struggles he experienced as a Korean teaching in a Japanese classroom, noting his feelings of vulnerability in an unfamiliar setting. However, through a prolonged period of self-reflection, he came to terms with his ascribed foreignness and began to understand his unique position as a valuable tool in maximizing student learning. He conceptualizes his development as a growth in cultural sensitivity and as a transition into a reflective practitioner. Similarly, Amos Pofi faced challenging conditions in his relocation from the UK back into his home HE context in Nigeria. He readjusted his teaching expectations when confronted with an education system characterized by reduced autonomy, a lack of resources, protectionism and even, sometimes, corruption. Amos experienced thwarted aspirations after his return home. However, ultimately, he persevered and adapted his practice to help overcome some of his frustrations. For Mandeep Gill Sagoo the transition from a student in India to a teacher of anatomy in the UK

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Early Career Teachers in Higher Education

was fraught with personal and professional change. Not only was the pedagogy of medical teaching different in the UK, but so too was anatomical methodology, as there was a reduced reliance on the dissection of human cadavers. Gill Sagoo has moved away from teacher-centred pedagogy in her early career and has collaborated with colleagues in other disciplines to help her rethink the value of teaching anatomy within her new national context. Overlapping and intersecting identities shape social divisions and hierarchies. These ascriptions and identifications organize inequalities, challenges and opportunities for individuals. Part Two of this book illustrates that ECTs are not immune to this process. As Leah Burch argues, her ‘student identity’ (a PhD student) and ‘academic identity’ (a teacher) exist in tension in her working life. This has left her with a sense of alienation from the two UK universities that she studies and works at. Her experience has been complicated further by being a young female, which she felt increased her precarious position. Sarah Asada discusses her experience of being an American female teaching Comparative and International Education at a Japanese women’s university. She stresses how her own educational background helped inform, but also jarred with, the institutional and pedagogical culture of the institution. Being a young mother has also complicated her place in the institution, as she felt it was made into a variable that hindered her progression. Identification as both a ‘mother’ and as a ‘teacher’ fed into her own understanding of her academic identity. Clarissa Carden and Ditti Bhattacharya offer a comparative account of their experiences as ECTs in Australia. Although they state that they are at the same stage in their respective careers, their comparative approach highlights a differentiation along lines of race and migration. These dividing practices facilitated drastically different experiences of academia. Lines of division informed inequalities in teaching experience and employment stability, which left Bhattacharya with a more uncertain professional future than Carden. Universities are gendered, heteronormative, racialized, classed and ableist spaces. ECTs are not disembodied subjects. They can be unavoidably enmeshed in these social hierarchies, with their professional identity becoming an important factor that intersects to both produce inequalities and disrupt normalized notions of how to be a university teacher. Part Three provides three illuminating examples of how this can operate in practice. For instance, Erin Pritchard gives an account of how dwarfism is experienced through hostile remarks in less accountable public spaces, traces of which are also found in a UK university setting. Here the socially denigrated status of those of smaller stature is indirectly juxtaposed to the ‘expected’ body of a teacher through student

Introduction

13

comments and architectural design. This renders dwarfism a present-absence in the classroom. Pritchard highlights how she cultivated an ECT identity through dwarfism, in turn re-evaluating both positionalities as a source of empowerment for herself. Ben Colliver describes the challenges of being an ‘openly gay early career lecturer’, including the difficulties of being recognized on his own terms and with his own vision for the criminology curriculum. These challenges are, in part, connected with teaching content around sexuality entering into terse relations with students’ personal beliefs. Notwithstanding a student experience driven by metrics on satisfaction, Colliver deploys his gay identification as an embodied disruption to oppressive social values in the classroom. ECT identities can also be symbolically disrupted. Thomas Larsen creatively proposes three positions that challenge the frames in which lecturers are usually conceived. Drawing upon the figures of the politician, comedian and busker, Larsen makes the case for greater reflexivity within an individual’s teaching practice. Notions of approval ratings, ‘bombing’ performances and diversifying skills for a gig economy suffuse his narrative. His story provides insightful reflections on how ECTs can gain the resilience required to weather a tumultuous and uncertain future in academia. Part Four highlights that there is sometimes incongruence and conflict between intended classroom practice and the realities of teaching. Expected identities and pedagogical approaches can be disrupted by unanticipated institutional norms, or even by the nature and diversity of learners. This can lead to dissonance for ECTs, especially as they have to negotiate shifting landscapes. Mariusz Finkielsztein explores the frustrations that lead to ECTs developing fatigue, cynicism and, eventually, chronic boredom. He highlights that this shift in attitude can occur in response to institutional factors, such as precarity, a lack of agency and the undervaluing of teaching activities, which undermine the role of a teacher in HE and contribute to declining motivation. Conversely, for Ana Zimmerman at the University of São Paulo, a disconnect in her teaching experience occurred when her desire to realize critical pedagogy in the classroom was thwarted by her institution’s focus on assessment and the commodification of knowledge. For Zimmerman, the HE context presented barriers to inclusive, dialogic teaching. She has had to adapt and find new ways to accommodate communicative relationships with students. It is not always institutional practices that create these kinds of fissures; students themselves can also provoke pedagogical change. Diwen Xiao was confronted by a group of diverse learners in the Continuing Education programme he taught that made him rethink and overhaul his teaching practice. Instead of traditional university

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Early Career Teachers in Higher Education

students, like those he taught on campus, these mature learners held part-time jobs, had family commitments and various other competing demands on their time. These students therefore demanded different kinds of relationships with their tutor. Equipped with new media and more relatable policy examples, Xiao’s experience with these students shifted his pedagogical approach in a more dialogical direction. Finally, Natalie Shaw discusses her transition from teacher in primary education to teaching young adults as an ECT. Her original teacher identity was rooted in her pedagogical style, which was appropriate for inquisitive primary education learners. However, when moving to HE, her identity was challenged by students who wanted a more formulaic instruction. This disruption was a creative process for re-evaluating her professional identity and pedagogical commitments. Finally, Part Five offers a view of the ECT employee group in a wider perspective to help draw the disparate narratives together through a researcherconstructed narrative (McAlpine et al., 2013). Although no singular identity or experience can be postulated, emphasis in this concluding part is placed on the ways in which the preceding personal narratives demonstrate resistance, vulnerability, metamorphosis and stasis. It will draw attention to this group of academics, adaptable but also susceptible to the pressure of constant change, who collectively make a significant contribution to teaching in HE. Taken together, then, the chapters in this book will focus specifically on teachers and teaching to address important lacunae in existing scholarship of early career academics. The personal narratives included in this edited volume thus provide a timely and fresh insight into the contemporary issues faced by those entering an increasingly regulated – yet frequently casualized – academic workplace. The book adopts a composite narrative approach as it seeks to recapture the diversity of experiences enmeshed within the pedagogical, professional and institutional relations that an individual ECT encounters and negotiates.

Part One

Challenges of National/International Contexts Academics have travelled in search of new ideas since ancient times (Hudzik, 2011). The movement of academics across borders has also led to reforms in educational practices (Astiz, Wiseman and Baker, 2002). Yet, these migrant academics are often treated as ‘Cultural Others’, irrespective of their origins or destinations (Turner and Robson, 2008: 10). Whilst disciplinary communities influence academics’ attitudes to learning, teaching and curriculum, these are simultaneously influenced by institutional, regional and national contexts (De Wit and Leask, 2015). Therefore migrant academics are ‘in a continuous state of “becoming” ’ (Uusimaki and Garvis, 2017: 194). This is a process where they ‘learn again the life and culture’ of their new university, where they ‘enact a number of communicative and negotiation strategies in order to participate’ (Uusimaki and Garvis, 2017: 197). The migrant academics possess a dual frame of reference: the educational practices of the country where they undertook their Higher Education (with some having also taught there) and those they are exposed to in their new national contexts. Exposure to these two sets of practices may call into question cherished beliefs and values about teaching. Academics may even be required to reconceptualize their teaching identities to position their practices in a pedagogic space that has set and preconceived ideas about teaching practice (Ndemanu, 2016). Such encounters highlight the ‘pedagogic frailty’ of migrant academics (Kinchin and Winstone, 2017: 4). For Early Career Teachers, who are still in the process of conceptualizing their teaching identity as new entrants to the profession, the reimagining of their teaching identities when exposed to the new contexts requires considerable resilience. The next three chapters capture these stories of resilience, discomfort and the negotiations that the three academics engage in as they carve their pedagogic spaces in new national contexts.

1

A Korean Stranger in a Japanese Classroom: Developing as a Teacher in a Foreign Country Jongsung Kim

Introduction I was born and raised in South Korea, but I started my Higher Education (HE) career in Japan, at a university that is well known for teacher education. Since April 2018, I have educated students seeking to become social studies teachers in Japan. Although I was, and still am, an Early Career Teacher (ECT) within HE, I was not that worried about the job of teaching itself as I had previously worked as an elementary school teacher for six years. In addition, I studied the curriculum and instruction of social studies education as part of my doctoral research. Teacher education was therefore a perfect fit for me, at least in theory, to maximize my experiences as both an educator and a researcher. However, my experience of working across national borders was less straightforward. The cultural and linguistic differences that I encountered when teaching made me realize that I was a ‘stranger’ in a Japanese classroom. My feeling of foreignness as a stranger, an individual who is in a society but not strongly attached and assimilated to it (Simmel, 1950), reminded me of the anxiety that I had felt when I first began teaching in elementary school. My unfamiliarity with the context surrounding the social studies classroom, in a selfdefined ‘ethnically homogeneous’ society (Burgess, 2010), made me appreciate the complexities of my position as an ECT. Once again, I was made nervous by these mounting uncertainties. At the university in Japan, where my foreignness became apparent, I could not reflect on my lessons without considering my status as a Korean stranger in a Japanese classroom. I needed to understand not only the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of pedagogy but also the ‘why’ – why I taught, and

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Early Career Teachers in Higher Education

still teach, social studies education in a foreign country. To tackle these issues, I conducted a self-study focusing on my ‘self ’ as a stranger and its impact on my teaching. In this chapter, I will share my challenges and struggles as a Korean stranger who tries to improve as a teacher in HE in a foreign country.

The Value of Exploring ‘Self ’ in Teaching Since the seminal work of reflection by Donald A. Schön (1983), reflective practice has been a significant method for teachers’ professional development. To improve their teaching, teachers revisit their performances and cultivate the habit of reflection. However, we also need to pay close attention to Schön’s (1987) warning: shallow and stereotypical reflection only causes a quick-fix solution and limits one’s professional growth. Changing teachers’ behaviour in the classroom is important. However, reflection without dealing with the ‘core’ (Korthagen and Vasalos, 2005) and ‘deep’ (Kelchtermans, 2009) levels, such as the teacher’s professional identity and mission, cannot maximize an individual’s teaching potential. It is impossible to divorce teachers from their teaching (Bullough and Pinnegar, 2001), and thus teachers need to ask questions about their own existence as a teacher during reflection exercises. In the 2018 and 2019 academic years, I therefore tried to explore my ‘self ’ as a Korean stranger in a Japanese classroom and understand how it affects my teaching. There are numerous ways of doing self-study (Loughran, 2004), but writing reflective essays and discussing curriculum design and instruction with a ‘critical friend’ (Shuck and Russel, 2005) worked well for my situation. After finishing each lesson, I wrote down a reflective essay about what I did with pre-service teachers during the class and the challenges caused by the internal-external versions of ‘self ’. Then, two critical friends, one of whom was a colleague teaching a similar course with me at the same institution and the other a teaching assistant of my class, critically read through the essay and commented on the relationship between my ‘self ’ and teaching. Using two years’ worth of essays and formal and informal conversations with critical friends as data, I endeavoured to discover the kinds of challenges I encountered in teaching as a Korean stranger in a Japanese classroom. Further, I examined how I struggled to navigate between these obstacles and my professional ‘self ’. After the first cycle of qualitatively coding the data, I discussed the result with my critical friends. In the second cycle of coding, I utilized the talks with my colleagues and my interpretation as new data, which I coded along with the original data.



A Korean Stranger in a Japanese Classroom

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Through this process, I could reflect on a two-year self-study journey in a more systematic way.

Struggles to Become a Better Teacher Educator in a Foreign Classroom Working in HE in Japan was foreign to me in two ways: as a Korean stranger in a Japanese classroom and, also, as a newcomer in teacher education. Since I started to explore my ‘self ’ as a Korean stranger, my position as an ECT was not noticeable at first; however, the self-study journey eventually led me to the challenges that ECTs encounter in the early stages of their careers. Here, I will explain how the different types of foreignness that I experienced, that of being a Korean in Japan and of being new to HE teaching, intersected with each other.

Deliberating the Meaning of Educating Future Social Studies Teachers in Japan In my practice, I understand teachers as ‘curricular instructional gatekeepers’ (Thornton, 2005). Teachers should therefore not be simply a curriculum ‘user’, who only reproduce the national standards or government-authorized textbooks. Indeed, in both South Korea and Japan, the aforementioned curriculum materials, especially textbooks, tend to be perceived as an ‘Answer Book’ or ‘(Study) Bible’ to teachers and students alike. However, educators need to be aware of their role as a curriculum ‘designer’. This involves unpacking the national standards and textbooks, creating lessons to take into account the needs of individual students, facilitating a good classroom dynamic and incorporating one’s own educational view. Becoming a curricular instructional gatekeeper in this way means that teachers recognize their autonomy in designing students’ learning experiences while consciously reflecting on their instructional approach. When I teach, I also want the future social studies teachers in my classroom to understand their role as a curricular instructional gatekeeper. I want them to be able to keep reflecting on their design process, thereby hopefully improving their teaching and students’ learning. In 2018, I created a syllabus for the course ‘The Theory and Practice of Curriculum Design for Social Studies Education (History and Geography)’. As the course progressed, however, I felt there was something lacking in my

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teaching. Even though the syllabus perfectly matched the title of the methods course advertised, I felt unsure and thus insecure about my status as the course instructor. I could not help but wonder if other Japanese teachers would teach the course better than I would. As a Korean teacher educator, I began to think about the meaning of educating future social studies teachers in Japan. The reasons why I chose to work in HE were clear. In my doctoral thesis, I conducted design-based research for educating citizens who are open to other countries’ discourses even though they are ‘different’ from our discourses (Kim, 2019). I devised and implemented a project entitled ‘Make a Better Social Studies Textbook’. South Korean and Japanese students analysed and criticized each country’s textbook and then suggested a better version of it based on the result of their inquiry. Throughout this process, students communicated with one another, clarified and challenged each other, in order to create overlapping discourses. I decided to work in HE because I wanted to educate teachers who can, in turn, teach their diverse students the art of pursuing mutual understanding. However, I realized that this personal teaching aim was not reflected in the syllabus of the course that I designed and taught in 2018. I began to think how I could put my personal ‘self ’ into a course that the university had already prepared for the teacher education programme. The objective of the methods course in 2019 was the same as in 2018. However, the details were different. In this iteration, I introduced pre-service teachers to a critical lens for scrutinizing national discourses in education. This time, when they were learning about the elements of curricular instructional gatekeeping, especially the national curriculum and the textbook, I prepared papers that demonstrated how each country describes the same social or historical phenomena in different ways. Additionally, I put the pre-service teachers in a comparable situation to help them rethink their own goals for pursuing a career in teaching social studies. For example, when they learned about how family and society can affect their curricular gatekeeping, I asked probing questions such as ‘If you have a student who has parents who grew up in Mainland China, would you teach the Tiananmen Square Incident in your classroom?’ and ‘When you teach the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, would you explain about South Korea’s discourses on the treaty?’ These difficult questions helped them abandon their assumption that they were only going to teach typical Japanese students like themselves. The questions got them to reflect on the fact that others, who are both inside and outside of Japan, might not actually share the same dominant discourses as they did.



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Being a teacher in a foreign country made me notice that the ‘good teaching’ I had pursued in South Korea might not be the same in Japan. To become a better educator in Japan, I needed to rethink the meaning of educating future social studies teachers. It was a process to prove the value of my existence in the new circumstance. Through understanding my ‘self ’ as a Korean stranger in a Japanese classroom, I realized that I could, and should, utilize my foreignness as a Korean stranger to maximize pre-service teachers’ learning. In the next section, I will explain the events that led me to see my foreignness as an advantage in this respect.

Accepting Vulnerability and Re-evaluating Foreignness as an Asset Owing to my own perceptions of foreignness as a Korean teacher educator, I felt a sense of inferiority in a Japanese classroom. The fact that I did not spend my childhood in Japan as my pre-service social studies students had made me think that I had insufficient knowledge of the contents of the school subject. I therefore desired, as I confessed in my reflective essays, ‘not to show my weakness’ and focused mainly on teaching how to design, rather than dealing with ‘the content knowledge of Japanese history and geography’. Also, the language and cultural barrier made me feel inferior. I could teach in the Japanese language, but my vocabulary was limited and my accent was different from a native speaker. All these elements made me anxious about how pre-service teachers would respond to me. I felt that I could not be an effective teacher in a foreign classroom. Expressing my concerns to my critical friends, however, served as the impetus for me to begin to develop a changed mindset. After reading my aforementioned confession, one of my colleagues wrote down that ‘as a novice teacher who was lacking research and teaching experiences compared to other professors [at the university], I was struggling with what I could do’. Although our practice of sharing teaching anxieties continued, I realized that feeling vulnerable happens in all teaching settings. In my case, I was paying too much attention to my foreignness as a Korean stranger and my position as an ECT. Even though I taught my students that there is no perfect lesson, it took some time for me to find out and to truly understand that I was not practising what I was preaching. I wanted to be perfect because I thought of myself as the representative of a Korean teacher in Japan; I was trapped in the notion that the teacher should be the fountain of all knowledge. The pressure to ensure that I, and my fellow Koreans, should not be judged as an incompetent teacher educator encouraged me to conceptualize foreignness as a weakness.

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Instead, realizing and accepting my own vulnerability helped create a foundation for me to reflect on and then improve my lessons (Kelchetermas, 2009). As a Korean stranger who ‘has not belonged to [a group] from the beginning’ (Simmel, 1950: 402), I felt anxiety about being different from other members of the group. However, at the same time, because I was a stranger who is not ‘bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given’ (Simmel, 1950: 405), I thought that I could bring a change in the community in which I work. I began to see my foreignness as ‘something that is lived, not resolved’ (Škorić, Kišjuhas and Škorić, 2013). Instead, I clarified my positionality as a foreign ECT in HE in Japan and shared with the pre-service teachers that ‘I do not have the same educational background as you, so there will be a time that I cannot understand you and vice versa. In those situations, please teach me.’ Additionally, I shared my self-study with students every week and talked openly with them about how I could improve my teaching. According to students’ comments after the course in 2018, I was the first teacher who shared his vulnerability with them and asked them for help. One student wrote down in his course feedback: ‘I want to be a teacher like you, who can share my weakness and create a lesson [jointly] with students.’ I needed to be brave to accept and share my vulnerability with colleagues and pre-service teachers. The courage I displayed when expressing my vulnerability to pre-service teachers allowed me to develop an open and collaborative classroom atmosphere. This helped me to learn how to become a model of a reflective practitioner for future social studies teachers. These positive reactions empowered me to proudly and confidently exist as I am, as an ECT, and to re-evaluate and reinterpret my foreignness as an asset.

Realizing the Importance of Culturally Sensitive Teaching I struggled with the lack of classroom discussions during my early teaching experiences in Japan (Misco et al., 2018). In Japan, expressing voices that are different from the majority of the community is regarded as socially improper behaviour because it is seen to harm social cohesion (Shelley, 1993). Harmony is given a higher value than other norms such as social justice. It dominates all societal communities in the country, including the classroom (Kim, 2020). I, a Korean stranger who ‘is not tied down in his action by habit, piety, and precedent’ (Simmel, 1950: 405), could see the culture of the Japanese classroom with less prejudice than Japanese educators. I recognized a social studies classroom as a place where students identify society’s problems and then discuss them;



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however, this phenomenon of encouraging class discussions looked too ‘alien’ to the students. From their childhood experiences, Japanese pre-service teachers have learned that listening to a teacher’s lecture and note-taking is the best way to be a good student. Students were therefore hesitant to share their opinions because they were afraid of offering different views to others. One student mentioned that ‘I don’t remember any activities when I discussed something with friends during [my] social studies lessons’. As a stranger, but also as a teacher who pursues educating pre-service teachers as critical and democratic citizens, the aforementioned phenomenon felt foreign and I perceived it initially as an obstacle to realizing my own educational aims. I needed to move away from the harmony-oriented classroom atmosphere and instead construct a teaching environment that fosters public deliberation. After reading papers about critical theory and social justice, my students and I talked about the importance of having different voices to help make society better. I also shared my own personal experiences as an elementary school teacher, where I successfully guided my young pupils to discuss controversial public issues. During the class, they seemed to understand why discussion is necessary for social studies education; however, their actual reaction was more sceptical. As one student said: ‘I got it, but I am not sure if I will teach it to my future students.’ This culture was deeply rooted in the Japanese classroom and would not be easily changed. As the intervention progressed, however, I realized that I was significantly taking advantage of my foreignness. Even though I felt that social studies classrooms in Japan need to adopt the style of lessons I delivered, in my opinion such an approach might not be well received by teachers and students. It might therefore be an unwelcome imposition to persuade pre-service teachers to discuss controversial public issues with their future students. Doing so might be perceived as a form of indoctrination and cultural insensitivity. Soo Bin Jang’s (2018) reflection on foreignness during her time at a teacher preparation institute in the United States helped me to introduce the importance of discussion in a more culturally sensitive way. Jang felt like she ‘lacked the authority to speak’ as other American teachers did; thus, she defined her role as ‘a questioner, instead of a lecturer’ (Jang, 2018: 119). Following this approach, instead of merely explaining something, I tried to make my students see the familiar as unfamiliar. During the methods course in 2019, I requested them to ‘teach me’ about why limited discussions took place in the Japanese social studies classroom. I asked for their thoughts on the phenomenon. In their responses, it appeared that they had taken the no-discussion classroom atmosphere for

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granted and many of them decided to become a social studies teacher because they liked the way of learning. A stranger’s question, however, prompted them to see their expected teaching style differently and to be more open to other possibilities. When they talked about the reasons why it is uncommon to experience discussions in the Japanese social studies classroom, it naturally sparked another conversation about the necessity of discussion and a debate over whether they would teach it themselves in the future. I learned that adopting the role of an interrogator in a foreign country is therefore a prerequisite to creating a safe space for dialogue and positively using my foreignness.

Pendulum Movement: Reflection as a Stranger and as an Early Career Teacher I realized that I mentioned my foreignness as a Korean stranger less frequently in 2019 than I did in 2018. Instead, discussion in 2019 with my critical friends tended to focus on how to improve the effectiveness of teaching to be a better teacher educator. By this point, I was mainly encountering the issues that most novice teachers or ECTs have, such as difficulties in acquiring the knowledge to teach teachers (e.g. Bullock, 2009). However, I did not have any other typical problems that other ECTs reported like identity shock during the transition into teacher education and the struggles to accept one’s vulnerability (Murray, 2016). The reflective practice, as a Korean stranger in a Japanese classroom, helped me bypass the typical ECT problems with little struggle. However, the relationship between South Korea and Japan, especially the history of Japanese colonization of Korea, still affected my Korean identity as a teacher in a Japanese classroom. For instance, at the end of the methods course in 2019, I held a ‘Social Studies Unit Fair’. Pre-service teachers were requested to give a presentation about their unit plan and the design rationale. This was followed by a Q&A with the audience. Among the twenty teams, two presentations dealt with how imperialism contributed to the colonized country’s modernization. Through my reflective essay about the day, I wrote down my struggles to think about what the desirable reaction as a teacher in HE would be in the following situation: Two teams designed each unit based on the concepts of modernization and imperialism. Both lessons dealt with colonization and aimed to encourage students to think about the positive and negative effects of colonialism. I am of the position that there is no reason to justify colonizing other countries.



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Understanding colonization as a process of modernizing a country is a view of invader and plunderer. However, I did not mention what I thought about it because the purpose of the fair was to evaluate pre-service teachers’ unit design and the explanation of their curricular instructional gatekeeping. At the time, I judged that it was not proper instructional behaviour to talk about any other elements except what had been set as the standards of the evaluation. Also, I was not sure how the students would understand a Korean teacher’s comment on colonization, even though their topics were not related to Korea. I therefore solely commented on their logic in designing the teaching units.

I still do not know what might have been the right reaction in the situation. From my understanding of teachers’ neutrality, I should have told the students what I thought at the time, instead of censoring myself. This is because the students will still be able to notice my personal stance from utterances, behaviours, nonvisual cues and the choice of materials read in the class (Journell, 2011). It would therefore, from this perspective, have been better that I share my point of view and then create an opportunity to talk about the topic freely. However, I thought this course of action might be improper behaviour because the students were being evaluated, and I did not want to cause any misunderstandings. Also, in that situation, I was not sure if I could create a safe space where pre-service teachers would be able to express their opinions, even if they opposed mine. Thus, even when I thought that my foreignness as a stranger became an asset, still another problem arose. The example above taught me that my foreignness could also be a source of animosity. The axis of reflection therefore moved back and forth between my foreignness as a Korean stranger and my identity as an ECT based on the situation I was in. The dynamics that these two positionalities create will thus continue to be part of my teaching work as long as I work in a foreign classroom. Using these as a lens to understand and inform my curricular instructional gatekeeping, I will be able to reflect on my teaching to be a better teacher educator.

Conclusion As a Korean teacher educator who works at a teacher preparation institution in Japan, I have encountered different types of problems as an ECT from those who work in their home country. The unique situation provoked me to explore my teaching ‘self ’ and investigate how it affected my curriculum and my instruction. It was not easy to write down my reflection on each lesson and discuss it with

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critical friends. It took some time and I needed to be brave to accept this vulnerability and be open to constructive criticism. However, the two-year selfstudy process helped me to understand who I am, what and how I teach, as well as what I can do for students and for society. Teachers in HE do not have anyone who teaches us how to teach teachers (Loughran, 2004). We need to be reflective of our own work in order to be a better educator. As a way to prepare a ground for future growth, ECTs and teachers who work in foreign countries, as well as a teacher of teachers in general, can benefit from core and deep reflection such as self-study. This process asks fundamental questions, such as ‘Who am I and why do I teach here?’ In exploring the meaning of their existence in a foreign country, ECTs might then deliberate and discover the authentic, personal aim of their teaching; foreign teachers might also think about the value of their foreignness and become a culturally sensitive teacher and reflective practitioner. From my own teaching journey, I found out that foreignness is a privilege that helps to discover one’s ‘self ’, to understand one’s own teaching and cause a fresh blow to transform the tradition and norms of the original society. Georg Simmel (1950: 402) was right: ‘To be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation.’

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Reverse Brain Drain and Early Career Frustrations in Nigerian Higher Education: Aspirations, Compromises and Challenges of a Returnee Amos Pofi

Introduction I started my career as a certified community health technician in Nigeria, my home country. After nine years of practical experience, I relocated to the UK for my bachelor’s and then MSc degrees. After I returned to Nigeria, I completed a postgraduate certificate in education and began my affiliation with the Federal College of Education (FCE), Pankshin. However, to further my career I decided to return to the UK to complete a doctorate, which subsequently facilitated my return to FCE, Pankshin, where I currently work as a senior lecturer. As a returnee to employment in Nigeria, I consider myself an example of ‘reverse brain drain’. This is a form of brain drain where human capital moves from a developed nation to a less developed country (Urwick and Aliyu, 2003). These returning migrants may accumulate savings, sometimes used as remittances, and develop skills overseas that can be deployed back in their home country. One might expect that universities would be forthcoming in offering the returnee a supportive and motivating environment to disseminate the knowledge they gained overseas to the students in their home country. However, my experience as a returnee was in complete contrast to this expectation, owing to what I perceived as ‘protectionist fear’ (Jekayinfa, 2000). In this chapter, I outline the experiences that I have had as an Early Career Teacher (ECT) who is trying to graft back into my own country, following the completion of a higher degree in England.

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In this chapter, I first present a brief contextual overview of the Nigerian Higher Education (HE) system and narrate my experiences of teaching within this system as an ECT. I highlight how my approaches to teaching have been shaped by the educational and cultural systems that I have experienced. Second, the chapter focuses on the challenges that I have faced in developing my teaching and pedagogical practice across the countries I have worked in. Third, I explore the strategies that I have developed to overcome these difficulties, drawing on the theoretical frameworks and pedagogies that I use to inform my current teaching practice. In conclusion, this chapter summarizes the kinds of issues that might be relevant to ECTs and graduates who return home upon completion of their studies abroad.

The Nigerian Education System In Nigeria, the teacher education programme exists in consonance with various levels of education, including the National Certificate of Education (NCE) and the Bachelor of Education (BEd or BScEd), which are taught in colleges of education and universities, respectively (National Policy on Education, 2004). Admission to university requires successful completion of the Undergraduate Training Modular Education (UTME), post-UTME and the choice of a specific course of study. Nigeria also has a distinct tiering of different cadres of Higher Education Institution (HEI) lecturers: for example, Assistant Lecturer III, Lecturer II, Lecturer I, Senior Lecturer, Principal Lecturer and Chief Lecturer. (The provost is the head of colleges of education.) To pursue a career as a university lecturer requires an individual to secure a first- or upper second-class honours in their degree programme; most educational institutions in Nigeria usually retain their best students within the academic system (Urwick and Aliyu, 2003). In addition, the Teachers Registration Council stipulates that there is a mandatory requirement for an individual to acquire a postgraduate diploma in education (PGDE) in order to be considered eligible for employment as an Assistant Lecturer III (the first rung in an academic teaching career). Those who secure a job as an Assistant Lecturer III will have the opportunity to start his/her lecturing career early, whilst also having the opportunity to be able to continue postgraduate training (such as an MSc or PhD).



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My Early Teaching Experiences Some Nigerians believe that lecturers are ‘God-sent’ (Ekele, 2012: 14; Ogunyinka, Okeke and Adedoyin, 2015) individuals to their universities because they prepare students for challenges both on campus and in the world at large. Furthermore, graduates from foreign countries who wish to return home to work in Nigeria after completing their studies abroad are frequently given an even more special status. Some Nigerians feel that these returning graduates are patriotic citizens and that they are potential assets for the country, because they have escaped the classic ‘brain-drain’ syndrome. Brain drain occurs when employers or governments from developed countries offer high pay incentives to attract competent professionals from developing countries on a temporary or permanent basis (Osokoya, 2010). Yet, for returning indigenes, their homecoming may not be so smooth. Indeed, they may find unexpected obstacles upon return, such as those that I experienced in the HEI where I work. Difference in protocols and institutional traditions may serve as barriers for the returnees to impart the skills that they learned overseas. For example, James Urwick and Balaraba Aliyu (2003) explained that early career returnees with international skills may encounter challenges and frustrations that may make those individuals wish they had never returned. As mentioned earlier, the term ‘reverse brain drain’ describes the process where human capital moves from a developed to a less developed country (Urwick and Aliyu, 2003). These migrants, like myself, may have acquired skills overseas that they intend to utilize and invest in their home country. However, I experienced some challenges in sharing the skills I acquired upon returning to Nigeria as my home institution could not offer me an opportunity to teach in my area of expertise. I was prevented from teaching a qualitative branch of research methodology called interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), which was important to my professional and research identity. As I understand it, this prohibition was due to an agreement the institution had signed earlier with the affiliated University of Jos. However, my HEI was optimistic that permission would be granted to all departments to teach any research methodology that is being practised at an international level. Permission was to be granted after my institution gains autonomy status, which is yet to happen. When I reflect on the experiences that I had in England, as opposed to the ones in Nigeria, it appears that the universities in England are more dedicated

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to academic excellence and diversity and that they strive towards offering a more comprehensive learning experience to students. For example, the complex student and faculty body in the UK has broadened my spectrum on managing different types of issues, and I am able to share views and ideas in an interactive classroom environment. Conversely, whilst in Nigeria I am continuously challenged to implement some of the changes I aspire to make as the teaching environment in my home country is very different to what I was exposed to in England. For example, in Nigeria, the higher institutions and lecture halls are overcrowded. There are staff shortages and faculty shortages. There is a lack of interactive classrooms, lab facilities, digital libraries and dormitories. In addition, other university facilities are often described as being in a state of ‘degeneration’. Needless to say, these stretched facilities are more than likely to have an impact on staff teaching experience and students’ learning experiences when compared to those of staff and students in England. As an ECT, I found it difficult to negotiate the change between these two environments – England and Nigeria – one where there was an abundance of available resources to support teaching activities and the other where there is a lack of basic teaching and learning amenities. My educational experience in England has helped me develop my teaching and pedagogical approaches in numerous ways. For example, it has helped me to understand how to balance the diverse learning needs of my students. In England I became skilled at designing learning activities that favour active student participation and peer-peer and student-tutor interaction. I tried to introduce this in my home country. For example, I make my lectures as interactive as my seminars. I encourage questions, use quizzes and set group tasks. In the literature, it is expected that the universities in developing countries, aspiring to catch up with more developed nations, would value the experiences that returnees to their home country have gained overseas (Kim, 1979). However, in my experience, students’ evaluation of one of the modules that I taught suggested that they may have been dismissive of my active teaching approach as they referred to the module as a ‘dance exercise’. They feel that other courses/modules that I teach within the institution have engaged them in a more participatory way than the approach adopted in this specific subject. On reflection, I can see what students mean by a ‘dance exercise’ as I use a lot of props, physical activity, bright-coloured costumes and drumming. However, despite this difficult feedback, I encourage myself to persevere, improve and evolve my teaching approach to the module. For other modules that I teach I employ imagery, storytelling, flip charts and other appropriate instructional materials (Smith and Eatough, 2006;



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Smith, 2011). I believe that these teaching strategies and the use of more active approaches help students to understand and comprehend the problematic nature of the subject. Active listening and understanding accelerate students’ interpretation and analysis of the content being taught. One of the most positively evaluated lectures I delivered was when I started with a clear, relatively simple argument. I then spent time providing evidence and gradually making explicit the complexities involved in the topic to facilitate the comprehension of the subject matter by the students. I often think of a lecture as consisting of a number of different layers (Larkin, Shaw and Flowers, 2019; Pofi, 2019), and I hope that my students understand all of them. My attempt here in this approach was to move from the concrete to the abstract knowledge to introduce a complex idea. Even if at the end of this teaching activity students only take away the overarching argument, I still feel that I have accomplished something. This has improved my confidence as an ECT, and my reflections on these experiences have further developed my teaching practice. Nevertheless, when it comes to student satisfaction, things are not always in my control. I received a shockingly low score in one of the student evaluations. I subsequently discovered that the comments were in relation to a session scheduled in the late Friday afternoon time slot that coincided with Muslim students’ prayer time. The location of the lecture hall, which was far away from their place of worship, often meant they arrived late. After realizing the reason for the lateness, I decided to readjust the time in consultation with other nonMuslim students. This solved the problem. This experience brought to light the value of considering factors outside the class which may influence the teaching and learning environment. As an ECT, I can often fail to recognize exogenous factors and end up internalizing the failure without exploring the underlying reasons which, in this case, were more operational (the distance between the classroom and the prayer room) and cultural (the timing of prayer of Muslim students), rather than pedagogical. All opportunities should be harnessed to accelerate understanding between students, lecturers and their host institutions. This will enable ECTs to experience self-reinvention and renewal and thus evolve in their teaching trajectories (Livsey, 2016).

Differences in the Work Environments Another significant problem I have encountered in Nigeria is the inadequate or poor salaries for teaching staff, and this often leads to high attrition rates in

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HE teaching. For example, in comparison with our colleagues in Ghana, early career staff in Nigeria earn half the amount paid to their Ghanaian counterparts (Ogunyinka, Okeke and Adedoyin, 2015). The disparity in teacher salary has long attracted criticism (Johnson, 2010). Salary scales of ECTs have a significant impact on their recruitment and retention in Nigeria. Teachers have different sets of skills, productivity levels or work in different contexts. The pay gap may lead to low ECT minority teacher representation in Nigeria (Johnson, 2010; Livsey, 2016). Given the peculiar situation of Nigeria, where the emoluments of academic and administrative staff represent more than 90 per cent of the annual budget of each university (Osokoya, 2010; Douglas, 2017), virtually nothing is left for the purchase of equipment needed by the lecturers for basic training and research (e.g. books, furniture, laboratory equipment, etc.). A closer look at the conditions of service for Nigerian university lecturers reveals that from the time they join, the salaries they earn are far below their expatriate counterparts (Shen, 2013). Some Nigerian lecturers argue that if the government is able to bear the exorbitant cost of employing foreign lecturers, then it should be able to pay the indigenous staff better salaries. These factors are exacerbated by the societal perception of teacher education and of teachers in Nigeria. As previously suggested, it does not help that the commonly held view is that teaching is a vocation and that the teacher’s true reward awaits them in Heaven. A lack of commitment to work and the unethical behaviour of some teachers in Nigeria is also problematic. This is exemplified by teachers failing to attend lectures, inadequate preparation and the abuse of the student-teacher relationship for personal gain. I have found it difficult when students place similar expectations on me, such as offering bribes or favours to achieve higher grades. This calls into question my personal integrity, threatens equality of opportunity, the credibility of student academic achievements and contributes to the acceptance of corruption in HE (Johnson, 2010). In contrast with my more established colleagues, as an ECT I feel greater pressure to meet students’ demands. But I remain steadfast. A lack of integrity is at odds with all of the professional, educational and personal values that I honed through my experience in the UK. Such insincere practices also make me feel like an outsider within my own institution: a potential target for disharmony, distrust, exclusion or isolation by other teaching staff who perpetrate these behaviours. It is very difficult for me to tread the fine line between cooperation and collusion with my colleagues.



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In addition, ECTs are often not properly supported to put into practice the pedagogical theories they have learnt during their postgraduate diploma in education (Jekayinfa and Kolawole, 2008). Furthermore, Edward Nakpodia and James Urien (2011) reveal that some universities fail to provide adequate support to new teachers to help them improve their teaching skills and strategies. He argues that the training period of twelve weeks is too short as it does not provide an ECT ample opportunity to gain the experience needed. In my institution, only four weeks of training is offered to ECTs, not the twelve weeks as stated by Nakpodia and Urien (2011). This affects ECTs’ level of confidence when embarking on teaching in my institution. Some supervisors do not even have time to sit down and discuss the shortcomings in their students’ research projects. Research suggests that these issues are not restricted to the Nigerian context; some of these problems are commonplace in Ghana and other West African countries (Makoju, 2005; Adewuyi, 2012; Ogunyinka, Okeke and Adedoyin, 2015). Yet, despite all of these structural issues, none of these obstacles are more personally frustrating to me than the issue of not being allowed to teach IPA (an approach that I have expertise in owing to the research I undertook during my doctoral studies in England).

Limited Theoretical and Methodological Content A lack of support for teaching new methodologies in my institution was based on an agreement with the University of Jos, with which my institution is affiliated. In Nigeria, quantitative approaches to research remain dominant at the expense of qualitative approaches. This methodological preference has its roots in colonialism, as much of the research performed in education depended on methods developed for studies in the field of psychology, a discipline that took a largely quantitative approach (Jatau, 2006). These methods usually involve using instruments, scales, tests and structured observation and interviewing. By the mid- to the late twentieth century, other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology had begun to influence educational researchers in Nigeria. Forms of data collection broadened to include what is now called qualitative methods, with an emphasis on narratives, participant perspectives and less structured observation. After discussing this issue with more established lecturers in the institution, I understood that we would be permitted to start teaching IPA as soon as we become an autonomous institution. However, this delay is very

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frustrating for me as an ECT. It was precisely my contemporary knowledge and skills that led me to be employed by FCE Pankshin in the first place. Yet I now face barriers in sharing this new methodological knowledge that I acquired whilst in England. Harnessing different research methodologies in education is fundamental for adopting a multidisciplinary research focus. I live in the hope that this restriction will be lifted soon. Currently all the departments at FCE Pankshin practice only the traditional quantitative research methodology. This has affected my professional and research identity. I am finding myself in a state where the teaching demand far exceeds my comfort zone, and thus I am forced to enter into a state of ‘coping’ (Barton, Bailey and Vignola, 1999). Yet, coping is not a permanent state. If an individual implements a strategy of ‘hope’, then this has the capacity to allow the individual to successfully reach the stage of self-adjustment, in spite of the challenging circumstances (Snyder et al., 2002). Hope theory emerged from the work of Snyder and Tanke (1976). According to the theory, hope reflects individuals’ perceptions regarding their capacities to clearly conceptualize goals, develop specific strategies to reach those goals and then sustain the motivation for using those strategies (Federal Ministry of Education, 2004). I trust in Hope theory as a cognitive and motivational model for helping me move beyond a ‘coping’ stage in my professional life. The proponents of Hope theory maintain that these components are additive, reciprocal and positively related (Barton, Bailey and Vignola, 1999). A goal can thus be anything that individuals desire to experience, create, get, do or become. In this regard, one of my most obvious goals for my teaching in HE is for students of IPA to graduate with proficiency in research skills and subject knowledge. Thus, with this goal in mind, 440 students have so far expressed interest in learning IPA. If they were allowed to study IPA, they would be equipped to bolster their research practice when they become health professionals (Smith and Eatough, 2006). Pai Obanya (1989) explained that with high hope, early career promoters of IPA are more likely to have a resilient character and will also be more committed to teaching the approach. One must have a clear reason for returning home. For me, the goal to deliver IPA helps me to adjust to the process of homecoming. My reason for coming back home is to give back to my home country what I have learned abroad and to support capacity building in educational research. This mission gives me hope that things in my institution might improve in the future.



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Protectionism In Nigeria, the older lecturers, who are mostly PhD holders, tend to be protective of the curriculum and course content. In part, this is due to their reluctance to learn new things; they are not keen to recommend that new subjects should be taught to the students. I assume they do not want to be pushed beyond their comfort zones by ECTs, who are mostly master’s-level graduates, but who do have up-to-date knowledge of their various subjects. The argument is that older lecturers have an existing knowledge of the HEI’s educational policy and its structure. They form part of the processes by which organizational schemes, rules, norms and routines become established as authoritative guidelines, and thus they find change a difficult phenomenon. All public and private universities in Nigeria were recently reminded by the executive secretary of the National Universities Commission that by the year 2020 all lecturers must possess a doctoral degree or lose their employment (Fatunde, 2008). This credentialist directive, supported by the federal government, has generated a great deal of controversy both within and beyond the Nigerian HE sector. But both supporters and opponents of the idea unanimously agree that any kind of instability and uncertainty in the fragile university system should be prevented. Thus, there was a plea that the doctoral qualifications deadline should be extended to allow affected academics to obtain their PhDs. A regulation called the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standard (BMAS), which relates to the basic qualification a university teacher must possess, was also set up by the association of university vice chancellors (Nwanekezi, Okoli and Mezieobi, 2011). The association advocated for the idea that if you do not have a PhD, you cannot teach. They stated that it has been an old regulation in the university system. If you graduate with a first class or upper-second class in this new system, you will be employed as a graduate assistant. According to them, you are a trainee but not yet a lecturer. Then, when you earn your master’s degree, you may become an assistant lecturer, but this means that you are still not a full lecturer. This reinforces the hierarchical academic system in Nigerian HEIs. These may be additional reasons why the older lecturers are being protective and will not allow certain subjects to be taught by ECTs. The more established academics, who are generally later in their careers, are in control of curriculum design. As outlined above, qualitative research methodologies, such as IPA, are currently in use in the United States, Australia and most of the European universities, but are not yet widespread in Nigeria

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(Smith, 2011; Edelenbosch and Short, 2009). This is partly owing to the reluctance of the more established academics to introduce contemporary topics into the curriculum. Furthermore, the argument continues that a lecturer is an examiner the day that they obtain their PhD, even if they have never taught before. This is evidence that obtaining a doctorate is perceived as a pinnacle moment in the process of developing as a teacher in HE. In the past, there was a dearth of PhD holders in Nigeria. Most universities in the country therefore employed people with a master’s degree as Lecturer II. This meant that academic staff with significant teaching experience, but who did not hold a PhD, were not allowed to be examiners and were excluded from institutional activities such as the board of examiners’ meetings. This reinforces an existing hierarchical division between the old members of staff and the new ECTs, as the latter are not allowed to attend regular examiners’ meetings. The question then arises: How will the ECTs learn the institutional processes to allow them to grow and develop as teachers? This becomes a vicious cycle whereby ECTs remain in a position where they cannot influence institutional decisions owing to a lack of experience and power, but they are consistently precluded from the routes through which they could gain this experience.

Conclusion This chapter contribution on ‘reverse brain drain’ has highlighted how my approaches to teaching have been shaped by the educational and cultural systems which I have experienced at home and abroad. The chapter focused on identifying the various challenges that I faced in developing my teaching and pedagogical practice upon my return to Nigeria. The chapter also explored strategies that I developed to overcome the frustrations, challenges and hitches I experienced as a returning ECT. I have shown how the strategy of hope informs my current practice, which might resonate with other ECTs returning to their home nations. My strategy of hope expresses the idea that the most successful people know what it is like to persevere (Zaiman Dorph and Holtz, 2000) and that enables them to savour victory, personally and professionally, when it finally arrives. This approach can help an ECT to negotiate the frustrations of ‘reverse brain drain’ and to navigate HE landscapes across national borders.

3

My Anatomy Teaching Journey from India to Britain: A Reflection of a Teacher, a Seeker and a Constructivist Mandeep Gill Sagoo

I am a medical anatomy graduate from India who moved to the UK twelve years ago. During my master’s degree in India, I worked as a trainee and taught anatomy to first-year medical and dental students. However, I had never worked as an academic in India, and my understanding of pedagogy and management, at that time, was minimal. I was mainly involved in delivering information and assessing students. After I completed my degree, I moved to London as a newly married woman. In the beginning, everything in my new life was challenging. I felt like I was an alien who had been dropped from a different planet with a native ally, my husband. After months of struggle to adjust in my new family life and time spent looking for work, I was finally appointed as an anatomy demonstrator at St George’s University of London. Everything was new to me at that time: my family, the working environment, most people’s accents and their mannerisms, and even the tube journey from East London to South London. This chapter focuses on how I negotiated the differences I encountered in teaching anatomy in India and the UK. The chapter is structured in three parts. The first part focuses on my initial encounter with academia in the UK as an immigrant. The second part involves David Schön’s concept of the ‘reflective conversation with the situation’ to frame a discussion around my challenges and learning phase as an Early Career Teacher (ECT) in the new environment. The final part draws together my experiences in the new environment and discusses how I overcame the challenges and evolved as an inclusive teacher.

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Encountering Academia as an Immigrant My previous and current university have a shared history. Government Medical College, Amritsar (India), was established in British India in 1864 and was known as Glancy Medical College during the British Raj. The ways of formal teaching in the University have been adapted from British colonial times, long before the independence of India in 1947. This made me feel like a time traveller who had studied anatomy in the style used in the UK during the nineteenth century (Older, 2004; Drake et al., 2009), while applying the knowledge in my new position as an anatomy lecturer. My training of anatomy in India included several dedicated hours for full-body dissections, small group facilitative learning and lectures. The assessments included spotter tests, viva voce examinations and short and long essay-type questions. In the UK, I noticed that the numbers of hours dedicated to teaching anatomy are reduced and more focused on facilitating a clinically oriented, spiral curriculum from the early years (Papa and Vaccarezza, 2013). The shift in teaching from lectures to small group sessions and self-directed learning in the UK was also apparent. Moreover, oral and essay-type examinations are no longer the norm for anatomy assessment. Instead, single-best-answer questions (SBAs) and extended matched questions (EMQs) are dominant (Yaqinuddin et al., 2013; Smith and McManus, 2015). After discussions with colleagues and further reading, it became evident that vivas are seldom used in the UK because of perceptions of bias, low reliability and also because they are time-consuming (Smith and McManus, 2015). However, these seemed to have been widely used in the United States (Clough and Lehr, 1996; Fabrizio, 2013), India and other countries because of their advantages over students’ rote-learning anatomical terminology. On the first day in my job, I had a quick induction about the Human Tissue Act (HTA; 2004) that regulates the processing of human tissue in the UK, my responsibilities and the time sheet I would need to use as I was then employed as an hourly paid demonstrator. This was springtime, and end of the academic year, therefore there were no scheduled teaching sessions. Consequently, I started as a prosector and finally felt at ease in the dissecting room – the place I was more familiar with than the outside world and what was to become my new home. I was allocated a pelvis prosection to work on, and I remember being so grateful to have this job at the time that I asked no questions. The education system I arrived from as a graduate was hierarchical; autonomy was limited. The reason to highlight this is not to belittle the education system in India but rather to highlight the



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pervasive presence of ‘hierarchical’ and ‘competitive’ inequality in this complex society of great antiquity (Beteille, 2002). Although in the nineteenth century the era of hierarchical equality emerged, which was described as ‘westernisation’ by Srinivas (1952: 46–88), its reach in many avenues is still limited. Conversely, status-based hierarchies in Europe were traditionally said to have declined after the eighteenth century (Lovejoy, 1964: 183–207), but hierarchies still remain steadfast in the educational sector I work within and continue to the present day. As a postgraduate science trainee working alongside medical trainees, I was very aware of this inequality between status within our academic roles and my place in the hierarchical system in the department. This phase of my life therefore continually challenged and strengthened me, both as a teacher and as a person. Furthermore, during my transition into teaching, my previous assumptions about the universality of teaching practice were also shaken. I learnt that a significant number of institutions in the UK no longer use cadaveric resources to teach anatomy (Rowland et al., 2011). This was not the case at my new workplace, but there was a trend to produce and store good-quality specimens for years, rather than allowing students to dissect in classes. A literature search highlighted the possible reasons as the legislative constraints of the HTA 2004 and the limitations posed by having to manage a dissection room facility (Older, 2004; Liddell and Hall, 2005). This intrigued me. In India I never really thought about the procurement of cadaveric resources in-depth – perhaps because the supply of these resources were in balance with demand. I had assumed that conditions of teaching anatomy would be pretty much the same in all medical schools; however, as I encountered these differences in my old and new working environments, it made me realize that they were not. These experiences therefore encouraged me to think about where I was, where I am and where I am heading. As an ECT I expected my academic training to prepare me for any national context to teach anatomy; I expected my learning to have universal applicability. Although the scientific knowledge itself did not vary across the international boundaries, I realized that teaching styles and resources were very much socially situated. The shock of moving to a new educational context demanded that I adapt to the educational culture of UK anatomical teaching. This process of understanding practice in relation to space is something Schön (1992) calls having a ‘reflective conversation with the situation’. This refers to a reflection on knowing and reflection-in-action according to John Dewey’s perspective (Dewey, 1938). Following this approach helped me to examine my previous assumptions and to make sense of my new environment through involvement, reflection and deliberation.

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Negotiating the Differences between my Present and Past Learning Environments Education strengthens social structures and codes of being (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977), and therefore the other side to learning is the cultural perspectives that inform the Higher Education (HE) context and the learning outcomes that inform future social norms (Cervero and Wilson, 2001). Back home in India, a graduate-level education is highly prized. Perhaps this is a result of extreme competition in education and employment from the mid-nineteenth century, as a consequence of the Trevelyan-Northcote reform that replaced recruitment through patronage by recruitment through examinations (Beteille, 2002). However, ties of kinship remain covert, and its impact on education is not completely abolished in India. In addition, the introduction of neoliberal economic policies in India in the early 1990s and the drastic cuts made due to structural adjustment policies endangered HE, especially in public sectors. The lack of clarity and analytic rigour in policies and also of a vision for developing equitable HE compromised the growth of public HE (Tilak, 2012). These may have resulted in the format and content of education being somewhat similar to that of previous generations. Although I never worked as an academic in India, I had still been socialized by the culture in India that had informed the HE context. This meant that my new situation in the UK challenged my personal and academic ‘identity’. In this sense, the concept ‘identity’ encompasses how an individual conceptualizes and presents their many facets, as well as how these are interpreted by others (Gee, 2000). I believe I am expressive and courageous. However, none of these personality traits were welcomed as I started my postgraduate training. Perhaps the influence of covert hierarchical inequality in India set predefined boundaries on the presentation of individuals involved in medical training. However, in the UK, I felt as if the situation was reversed. Although I was expected to be in preset boundaries at home with my new family, my personal traits were embraced in my new working environment. While this acceptance was in my favour, it took me time to express myself comfortably in the new working environment because of the cultural differences and the intermittent language barrier. Thus, although I had preconceived notions about the teaching and assessment of anatomy, when I arrived, I had no academic identity. In order to develop my teaching practice, the conception of my relationship with the new environment as an insider was crucial. According to Schön (1992),



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the initial stage of having a reflective conversation with the situation is through involvement, that is, considering one’s relationship with space as an insider, rather than an objective outsider. I had arrived in the UK with just subject knowledge and some experience in small-scale teaching and assessments. This became apparent immediately as my comfort zone was only limited to small group teaching. I felt out of depth in any discussion beyond my subject as I had no understanding of the technical aspects of developing a curriculum and constructively aligning anatomy teaching with clinical learning outcomes and integrated assessments. This prevented me from learning from my colleagues, because of my feelings of insecurity as an ECT, so I delved into the literature for answers. In my new work environment, I recognized similarities in the set-up required to teach with cadavers. However, the HTA 2004 that is currently in operation in the UK intrigued me as it impacted the usage and storage of the cadaveric specimens for all anatomy teaching. This therefore led to the start of my journey exploring the history of anatomy in the UK and the shift in power that had occurred in the use of human tissue from self-regulated professionals to an independent regulatory body, the ‘Human Tissue Authority’. It highlighted how in the seventeenth century, growing curiosity to understand the anatomy of the human body and the reality of finite cadaveric resources gave rise to an era of grave-digging and body snatching. To regulate the situation, the UK Parliament implemented several anatomy acts. The gaps in the Acts, and ‘consent’ not being the absolute requirement, encouraged several research laboratories to use their discretionary powers to retain human tissue without public consultation (Richardson, 1988; Grubb, 1998). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this led to the shocking revelation of the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Alder Hey Liverpool Inquiries (Butler, 2002). The reports from these inquiries highlighted the failure of voluntary adherence to the ethical codes and abuse of public trust by medical professionals. This gave rise to the HTA (2004), which established a system to ensure accountability and created penalties for the breach of its codes of practice to attain the balance between private and public interests (Liddell and Hall, 2005: 172). This fallibility of the professionals and previous anatomy acts in the UK motivated me to investigate the system of body donation in Punjab, India. I subsequently found out that the Punjab Anatomy Act, which was enacted in 1963 (currently active) to supply unclaimed dead bodies to medical colleges for teaching anatomical/surgical dissection, has no explicit place for informed consent of the donors (Dange et al., 2015). These legislative differences had an impact on my transition from the Indian to the UK context. Alongside adapting

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to the teaching style and resources in the UK, I had to adapt to the social and legal contexts within which this learning and teaching was situated. Cadaveric resources have always been crucial in building my anatomical knowledge. I remember the daunting experience of being taken to the mortuary on the first day by our Head of Anatomy Department, where around thirty to forty dead bodies were placed on shelves, naked in the cold storage. Several adverse emotions kicked in at the time. The sight of so many dead bodies, the cold air and silence in the mortuary made me anxious. However, I feel that, culturally, there was an innate expectation to deal with emotions on an individual basis. As students, we spoke to each other about these experiences, but not extensively, and we never had the opportunity to express to a member of staff our feelings towards these resources. I think the idea behind this process was to toughen us up on the first day. In contrast, students in the UK have an induction lecture before they enter the dissection room, and their first encounter with dead bodies involves a slow process of revealing limbs, trunk and then the face of the dead body. I did not think about this difference extensively until we had an artist resident in our dissecting room at King’s College London. The artist highlighted, for me, the importance of emotions in anatomical learning. Her fabric mending and knitting work made links with suturing skills taught in the dissecting room. I realized the idea of having an artist resident in the dissecting room was to get everyone to reflect on the emotions that surfaced in the environment. Some students spoke about losing their loved ones and how this environment made it tough for them to cope initially. Some, however, appeared too keen to learn. Still others were put off by the resources used. I realized how I had been unconsciously shifting from an emotionally driven person outside the room to a detached person as soon as I donned my laboratory coat inside the room, who saw the cadavers only as a valuable learning resource. Additionally, I witnessed the dissecting room environment increase students’ feelings of anxiety, beneficence as well as rumination on the fragility of human life, death and indifference (Wu et al., 2020). I had experienced many others, including myself, going through this turmoil at the start of their anatomy learning. Yet, in my previous environment there was a distance between the teacher and student relationship; emotions were very much restrained in both parties. I had taken these experiences with me initially and modelled my behaviour on my own teaching. However, my experience of the dissecting room at King’s College highlighted the prominence of compassionate teaching to improving the learning experience.



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Thriving as an Inclusive and Constructivist Teacher in my New Environment At the beginning of my career, I had never thought extensively about teaching and facilitation skills, nor about the validity and reliability of an assessment, constructive alignment or value of feedback. However, I learnt about these areas in my Postgraduate Certificate of Healthcare Education (PgCertHE), which was extremely useful in revealing the deeper theory behind student learning. Eventually, my experiences helped to fit the theory together with my practice, giving me the confidence in the new approaches to teaching and learning that I was adopting. In retrospect, I feel the art of facilitating students’ learning did not come easily to me. It seemed like a weakness to me to hold on to an answer and challenge students. As an ECT, I felt that there is an expectation we place on ourselves, that as a teacher we should know everything. Thus, I tried my best to answer students’ questions. I almost became a textbook that supplied the answers for my students. Although they appreciated this, I later realized that I was eager to prove my competence in the subject and increase my confidence in my new role as an ECT, rather than facilitating students’ learning. Moreover, my understanding of the pedagogical implications of examinations broadened during my studies for a Doctorate in Education. I learned that assessments are a balance between the elements of the assessment utility model, that is, validity, reliability, feasibility, cost-effectiveness and educational impact (Van der Vleuten, 1996). I found this valuable because it showed the importance of choosing the appropriate examinations to assess the learning objectives and how the assessment utility model impacts decision making. Experiencing the differences in both systems, India and the UK, also expanded my horizons. Some of these differences helped me to reflect on my prejudices critically, and others gave me a better understanding of flexibilities, options and constraints around developing teaching and assessment activities. These experiences made me more mindful about the cultural and emotional upheaval, along with the validity of cadaveric resources and the clinical/radiological images in anatomy. This led to my realization that one size does not fit all, especially in a subject like anatomy, and that it is a delicate balance between emotions, demands, accessibility, experiences, priorities and objectives. In Schön’s (1992) framework, the next phase in having a reflective conversation with the situation is deliberation. For me, this meant expanding my repertoire and actively deciding to use old, new or blended pedagogical approaches. It involved

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taking a holistic perspective and examining the new environment alongside the activity that takes place in it. For example, I initiated an ‘out of formal hours’ hands-on anatomy academy for both students and anatomy demonstrators (core surgical trainees) at King’s College London, where all participants could learn through dissecting, ‘peer mentoring’ and ‘near peer teaching’ outside formal teaching schedules (Smith et al., 2018). This led to the development of the ‘Hands-on Anatomy Academy’, a five-week programme where we learn and construct meaning through physical, emotional and social interactions. What drove me to establish the academy was a desire to find out about participants’ perspective on the hands-on dissection method I was exposed to in India. The academy showed the potential of inclusive learning, despite the differences in culture in the two countries. It further emphasized the importance of learning anatomy through active dissection. Also, including the personal experiences of renowned speakers who had been through the journey was welcomed. I learnt that specific props could be used to guide and direct students to career path options, and stories of challenging experiences and struggle of people add a personalized element to learning. Furthermore, as time passed, I stepped back from delivering facts towards sharing experiences and stories with embedded information in it. I became more constructivist in my approach (Vygotsky, 1978). I learnt how to carefully incorporate cadaveric resources, radiological images and three-dimensional (3D) software in anatomy to assist students’ learning processes, rather than adding to their cognitive load. The process of reflection-on-knowing and reflection-in-action changed my delivery of lectures. Along with dissections, my lectures on limbs get students to stand on their feet and perform dance moves. This allows them to reflect upon how various muscles work individually and in concert. Some Pilates classes are incorporated to help teach the musculoskeletal system in action. My teaching on other systems involves role play, medical images and other props to explain difficult concepts. These experiences focused my efforts towards an inclusive, friendly, intellectually stimulating environment where students feel free to express themselves, and both students and teachers engage in the learning. This all became possible through a pedagogical approach that engaged in experiential, blended and embodied learning (constructing meaning through physical, emotional and social interactions) (Paniagua and Istance, 2018). After I began to understand the culture in UK academia, I felt comfortable in being who I am, and this confirmed my professional identity. Initially, it challenged me, but this was much more influential than any outside pressure.



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Over time, I recognized cultural and individual differences, and the need to become inclusive in every aspect of my life, not just as an academic. So, as a teacher, I endeavoured to weave myself into the learner-centred pedagogical approach and to perceive ‘mis-takes’ as lessons. This helped me evolve and develop as a teacher. I now strive to create a balance between learner-centred and social-centred philosophies. I feel it is crucial to practise education to foster students’ full potential and shape their views to enhance society. Through a process of deliberation, I was thus better able to appreciate the contextual nature of identity (Clegg, 2008) and adapt my conceptualization of teaching to my new environment. Through ongoing reflective conversations with the situation, I feel more at ease within myself, and I am better able to perform my duties with active involvement and continuous reflection. Exploring and accepting my new situation made my teaching more relevant and my examples better contextualized. Further collaboration and learning occurred for me when I designed an innovative interdisciplinary anatomy module and worked alongside people who had a diverse range of expertise. In these interactions, I experienced a unique way of scaffolding learning outcomes, which aligned teaching with assessment design. Although this is a standard process adopted in designing curriculum, a more novel approach was used to factor in students’ expectations. In the first session, students were asked to suggest what they would like to achieve from this module and this helped to refine the course objectives. Realigning the teaching to make it fit for purpose and meet students’ expectations brought equality in my relationship with my students. It helped to erode the hierarchy that I had brought with me from my learning experiences in India, which stipulates that teachers always know best. This was a practice completely unknown to me in India, but also within the UK context I experienced, which still contained significant institutional hierarchy. Although it took time, as an immigrant ECT I felt I was forging my own middle ground in my teaching practice. We are all continually learning and evolving, and I feel that it is good practice to identify and overcome academic authority, wherever it may originate from, in order to prevent it interfering with educational opportunities. The breaking down of the boundaries between arts and science, which I experienced in this phase of my development, was intellectually stimulating. I had never had artists teaching in my classroom before. Yet here I was with my students, learning from artists and experiencing a different way of learning and executing plans. The radiologists and technologists were also part of the team, and we were all (including students) learners, experts and equal stakeholders in the process.

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The intention of my new course was to make students reflect on their choices and consider ways to improve the processes to become effective problem-solvers. This experience has been a revelation to me. I came to realize that anatomical learning could be facilitated through interdisciplinary approaches. For instance, students could discover how the anatomy of specific structures/organs of aquatic, avian and terrestrial animals might be integrated to make alien prototypes, which are entities more skilled and equipped to live in all environments. Until this point, I never associated aliens, evolution, anatomy and bioengineering consciously, despite having seen many sci-fi films based on this concept. Other new learning and teaching projects married anatomy, surgery, education and bioengineering for teaching trainee surgeons and medical students using 3D printed models. Through this new curriculum, I was able to apply experiential and interdisciplinary learning to understand the value of promoting engagement and furthering learning opportunities. This journey was one of evolution for me as a teacher. I changed from someone who felt under pressure to answer all questions to a person who is willing to embrace new ideas and is convinced of the value of transposing knowledge across disciplinary contexts.

Conclusion My journey started as a graduate from India, newly arrived in the UK, taking on the role of a facilitator. I was equipped with only preconceived notions about pedagogy, which had limited transferability to my new situation. An enormous amount of literary and experiential introspection over the years made me realize that teaching does not happen in isolation. Learning and teaching are both social activities. This epiphany made me see beyond the differences between the two national contexts and appreciate the impact of culture, ethos and legality in each setting. The journey as an ECT gave me strength to accept, research, reflect, act and understand a teaching situation in more creative ways. Although there will always be a difference between a native and an immigrant teacher in a HE setting, if the immigrant negotiates this difference effectively, then opportunities to create new teaching practices emerge. Being open and transparent makes us vulnerable, which is exacerbated when you are anxious and low in confidence early in your career. However, I realized this vulnerability also brings an acceptance of one’s imperfections. Reflecting on my experiences as an ECT as I moved from India to the UK has highlighted my development from an exclusive anatomist to a more reflective and inclusive teacher.

Part Two

Precarious Intersectionality Intersectionality recognizes that multiple social identities, such as social class, gender and race, can collectively shape an individual’s experiences (Collins, 2000). Novel forms of oppression emerge at the intersection of class exploitation, sexism and racism, which in turn necessitate integrated responses from oppressed individuals (Crenshaw, 1991). Despite having emerged from Black feminist scholarship, the framework of intersectionality has been applied to a variety of contexts. This has helped researchers to understand membership of multiple identity groups and to transcend one-dimensional, reductive ideas of justice. Consequently, this field of study has been perceived as a potentially productive approach to analyse the interrelationships between social inequality, power and politics in a diverse range of situations (Collins, 2012). In Higher Education (HE), intersectionality has helped to identify the inequalities and power dynamics at play in academic roles. The application of intersectionality, which identifies individuals’ differentiated positioning in relation to diverse, dynamic and imbricated trajectories of power, helps to uncover patterns of instability in employment (King, 2018). Precarity is unevenly distributed in HE institutions. Systematic inequalities in academia and an uneven distribution of vulnerabilities among staff – heightened by the kinds of structural forces, prejudices and forms of oppression that intersectionality illuminates – exacerbate conditions of precarious employment. For instance, women are overrepresented in the non-tenured, temporary, contingent and part-time workforce (see e.g. Gappa, Austin and Trice, 2007; Sharff and Lessinger, 2008). Disparities in and between the academic precariat are therefore a function of diverse and intersecting social identities. In the three chapters that follow, each ECT provides an individual account of their teaching journey and highlights the multiple social identities that they understand themselves to hold. Taken together, these narratives

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provide an insight into the complex and multiplicitous ways in which their various identities interact and how these intersect with individuals’ personal experiences of precarity.

4

Being a PhD Student and a Teacher in Two UK Universities: Challenges and Possibilities of Liminal Spaces of Belonging Leah Burch

Introduction This chapter reflects upon my ongoing process of identity negotiation, as a new entrant into university level teaching. I am a PhD student at a ‘Red Brick’ (research-focused) university in the north-west of England, where I also work as a ‘teaching assistant’ on an hourly paid contract. As a teaching assistant here, I work closely with undergraduate students by preparing and running seminar sessions for their chosen taught modules. At the start of each term I apply to teach on modules. I then receive a weekly time sheet, which stays consistent throughout the term, unless additional teaching hours become available. Alongside this, I am an hourly paid subject tutor at a ‘post-92’, teaching-focused university, also in the north-west of England. At this institution, I am allocated my own seminar groups where ongoing teaching cover is needed. I am regularly invited to deliver guest lectures and seminars. I am contracted to a number of teaching hours at the start of each year, which can be used to cover long-term teaching allocations and additional cover. When I am able to secure ongoing weekly teaching sessions, this contract provides economic stability. However, the stability of my teaching hours often changes according to the level of cover required throughout the year. Through these different roles, I am continually moving between university spaces as both a student and an educator. I navigate professional relationships depending on the particular role I am performing and where (geographically and disciplinarily) that role is based. My PhD project is based within the field of Disability Studies, yet it is interdisciplinary in its nature. Following the ongoing

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work of critical Disability Studies, my PhD project places disability at the centre, whilst attending to the entanglement of disability with the politics of other identities, such as race, age, gender, sexuality and class (Goodley et al., 2019). My PhD explores disabled people’s understandings and experiences of everyday hate, with a particular interest in the intersectional complexities that are embedded within these experiences. Thus, the project engages with Sociology, Criminology and Policy Studies, and touches specifically upon Disability Studies, Gender Studies and Critical Race Studies. I am engaging with these different disciplinary arenas from the position of a white, non-disabled, working-class young woman and must therefore engage with continual reflection upon how my identity as ‘non-disabled’ might shape a project based upon the experiences of disabled people. According to Bick-har Lam and David Kember (2006), contextual influences as well as our personal educational backgrounds help to shape approaches to teaching in Higher Education (HE). Prior to university, my own education was based in the local primary and secondary comprehensive schools, located near my family home. University was not the expected route, but my aspirations to become a primary school teacher did lead me to apply for and gain a place at university. Although my A-level grades prevented me from pursuing an initial teaching training course, a slight detour in my planned career path led me to the field of Disability Studies – a discipline where I now feel most ‘at home’ teaching within. As a student, the field of Disability Studies felt like a safe, nurturing and inclusive community that enabled me to develop a sense of self-confidence within education that I had not experienced before. However, the transition from student to educator and, indeed, the intersection of these two identities within two different UK institutions troubled this new-found sense of security. Movement between these two different institutions has led me to the concept of liminality as a means of reflecting upon the identity work at play on the border of both institutions. Moreover, this liminal space is heightened when occupying the ‘dual identity’ of student and educator (Bennett and Folley, 2014), which creates the feeling of not quite fitting within either site. In this chapter, I use the concept of liminality to reflect upon my experience of being on the peripheries of these contrasting spaces and roles, and how it can create challenges and possibilities for an early career teacher (ECT). Since becoming an ECT, I have reflected upon my own educational background much more frequently, particularly as I move between my two affiliated universities. One of the universities has the prestigious status of being a ‘Red Brick’ university. Although it does attract a diverse student body,



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I continue to experience a sense of unease and lack of belonging, particularly when I am there to perform the teacher role. For instance, I am very conscious of my accent when I teach and have overtly attempted to conceal my ‘Brummie’ twang (Birmingham regional accent) out of fear of being judged by staff and students. Furthermore, I am relatively young to have a teaching position within the university and am regularly confused as a student by other colleagues. While I am assured that I will be thankful of this youthful appearance in years to come, the continual confusion of me as a student can be awkward, undermining and uncomfortable, especially as I am beginning to develop my teacher identity. Indeed, fear of looking ‘too young’ is not a superficial concern. It is an awareness of how our bodies constitute one aspect of our ‘presentational self ’, which has increasingly come to form the basis for judging social worth (Hughes, 2000: 560). Therefore, like many other young and female academics, I felt the increased need to ‘prove’ my academic credentials (Archer, 2008) to students and staff as a means of justifying my role as an educator. Yet, in doing so, I am aware of my own participation within the competitive and individualized nature of the neoliberal university in order to ‘write myself in’ and get a ‘seat at the table’ within academia (Burton, 2018). In the context of HE, the concept of ‘professional identity’ describes the complexities involved with ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ an educator (Olsen, 2011, cited in Pillen, Beijaard and Brok, 2013). The development of professional teacher identity is understood to be an active process of socialization that academics navigate with our colleagues as well as our students (Wilkins et al., 2012). As teachers, we continually renegotiate how we see ourselves as belonging within the different forms of social engagement and participation available to us (Jawitz, 2009). In Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), this might include participation in research centres, departmental social events or within faculty meetings and committees. These encounters can be wide-ranging and require us to continually reflect upon how we locate ourselves within the community (of other teachers and professionals) around us and the extent to which we feel that this professional space is for us. We make these judgments based upon the extent to which we feel we belong in these spaces. Importantly, our professional identity within HE is also sculpted by our sense of belonging within our institution and our discipline. Outside of the university, our professional identity might be shaped by our discipline subjects. Indeed, for Becher and Trowler (cited in Jawitz, 2009: 247), disciplines are ‘the central organising vehicle within higher education’ whereby one’s sense of belonging within a disciplinary community ‘involves a sense of identity and personal commitment’. This professional

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identity can be particularly precarious for ECTs who find themselves occupying a multiplicity of identities, experiences and positions within the university, while also engaging in the intricate crafting of their future academic career. In the context of this chapter, I have been drawn to the concept of ‘liminality’ as a means of making sense of my own experiences of moving between institutions and roles. It is important to note that liminality has become a shared experience among many PhD students and ECTs. Research suggests that for young, or new, academics, the establishment of professional teacher identity is particularly precarious (Archer, 2008; Fitzmaurice, 2013; Pillen, Beijaard and Brok, 2013). Findings show that young and/or new academics are likely to have difficulty identifying with notions of authenticity and success (Archer, 2008), both of which can help support our sense of belonging within the academic institution. These anxieties are heightened by the current landscape of HE, which calls for publishing, networking and teaching experience to ensure eligibility for potential future employment. Writing over thirty years ago, Dennis Fox (1983) argued that there is nothing flat about the terrain of teaching and learning. With the increasing influence of neoliberalism on the system of higher education in the UK, it could be suggested that this terrain is more unstable than ever. The neoliberal university, or what John Smyth (2017) refers to as a ‘toxic university’, is based upon the principles of the market, employing systems of governance as a means of corporate management (Enright, Alfrey and Rynne, 2017). Within this system, universities, educators and students are encouraged to behave in certain ways that will drive up their sense of security. The university, then, becomes inextricably bound to the workings of business (Ball, 2017) and is driven by processes that harness competition and individualization. The pressures of the neoliberal academy are distributed among all teachers within HE. Anxiety, fear and precarity have become part of contemporary academic life (Peterson, 2019). As suggested by Stephen Ball (2012: 17), we are now required to make ourselves ‘calculable rather than memorable’. Knowing how to be calculable, however, is not easy. Interestingly, a study conducted by Deborah Churchman and Sharron King (2009) suggests that, despite the various pressures that PhD students face, when compared to senior academics they are more likely to express narratives of hope for their future position within the university. In the findings, the authors explain this as a reflection of their isolation from the corporate communications within the university. According to these findings, it could be suggested that the positioning of PhD students at the peripheries of university life might actually reduce the level of insecurity that they feel.



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Researchers have suggested that ‘imposter syndrome is nurtured within the discourse of academic environments’ (Watson and Betts, 2010: 6). Without denying the pressures experienced by senior members of staff, my experiences of being an ECT and PhD student suggest differently. Indeed, for PhD students, who occupy the unstable territory between student and educator (Pillen, Beijaard and Brok, 2013), knowing how and being able to be ‘calculable’ can become a laborious process of decision making. The rise of casual and part-time labour within the university (Connell, 2013) can be detrimental for PhD students who rely on teaching for their primary income, or for those who find themselves occupying various roles within a university. These anxieties have contributed to my own sense of discomfort, marginalization and feelings of being ‘out of place’ within the professional setting of university. Moreover, my movements between student and educator, across two different UK universities, is dislocating and disorienting. At the same time, I feel that this discomfort and ongoing reflection have enabled me to develop a more flexible, open and dialogic approach to teaching. In the next section, I reflect upon some of the ways in which liminal spaces have created difficulty before moving to explore liminality as possibility as I am beginning to develop my professional teacher identity.

Liminality as Outsider and Precarity The concept of liminality refers to being in a state of ‘in-betweenness’. It refers to the threshold between boundaries, a space that has no strict lines of confinement, no stable rhythm of movement and no known destination. Liminal space offers different ways of being, belonging and knowing. Importantly, liminality can be generative whilst simultaneously posing risks (Lewiecki-Wilson and Celio, 2011). It is therefore a useful concept for making sense of the university for ECTs. Indeed, our teacher identity can be ‘dynamic, unfolding and often contradictory’ (Wood, 2012: 338) as we negotiate being in between different spaces of the university. These spaces can be material, symbolic and geographical, reflecting the movements that ECTs often make between roles and institutions. The ways that we negotiate these precarious positions help to shape our personality and our sense of agency within the classroom (Turner, 1969). The unpredictable climate of HE means that there are changing pressures and demands for PhD students and ECTs, including the expectation to publish, teach, network and obtain travel grants. Occupying the roles of both ECT and PhD student involves the negotiation of time constraints that often

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require choices to be made between teaching preparation and PhD work. These negotiations, according to the University and College Union (2018), can mean that ECTs and PhD students are continually forced to ‘cut corners’ in order to ensure that jobs are completed. It is important to note here that I am in the very lucky position of having been awarded an ESRC-funded scholarship (ES/ J500215/1) to support my PhD research. Despite this funding, I have still taken on teaching opportunities in order to gain experience for future employment and generate the additional income needed to support responsibilities outside of the PhD. Teaching opportunities, as I will explore later in this chapter, have given me unique experiences and understandings of working within HE (Bradley, 2009). Yet at the same time, the additional labour involved with teaching at two universities has, at times, been both practically and emotionally unmanageable. In terms of practice, I have had to become accustomed to different procedures to ensure that I am able to keep up with the deadlines and regulations of both universities and to ensure that my students receive the best support I can offer. On several occasions, marking responsibilities have clashed in the two institutions meaning that already tight deadlines are particularly strained. Furthermore, different grading scales, guidelines and marking expectations have made the process even more complicated. The accumulation of time pressures and my ability to competently navigate these different ways of working has meant that I have not become comfortable with using any particular system. Movement between the two universities, both spatially and temporally, has also affected my emotional and physical well-being. I do not live in the same city as either university and therefore spend a significant amount of time and money on commuting. My experience here is not unique; a recent article in Times Higher Education suggests that whilst the average Briton spends one hour commuting to work every day, academics, and especially ECTs, are more likely to be travelling for two hours door-to-door (Moss, 2019). In addition to carrying out fieldwork for my PhD project in various locations, my time spent travelling has been difficult to manage. The unpredictability of casual teaching contracts has often meant that I am unable to develop a regular weekly schedule, or know in advance where I am going to be on any given day. Although small inconveniences, this has made simple and mundane tasks difficult to organize. The unpredictability of teaching hours creates the feeling of lost control over one’s schedule, which can be particularly hard when attempting to manage and organize PhD fieldwork (University and College Union, 2018). At many points, I have internalized these organizational difficulties as a personal problem; I berate myself for being unable to keep up with the fast-paced



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regime of teaching and learning within academia (Berg and Seeber, 2016). I have become frustrated with my own body for failing to work long enough hours and questioned my ability to become a university teacher. In addition, I have often felt so subsumed with fear that, at some point, I will be exposed as being not good enough for this career. For example, some of the modules that I have taught have contained unfamiliar content and have required me to engage with an extensive range of new material and topics. While senior members of staff have suggested that this extensive preparation is excessive, it has become a strategy to keep my head ‘above water’ (Archer, 2008) and manage the overwhelming sense of imposter syndrome. This sense of imposter syndrome, most notably documented by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes (1978), contributes to an overwhelming feeling of inability and failure which can often translate into lack of confidence within the classroom. My own feeling of imposter syndrome relating to my physical appearance, lack of experience and accent becomes heightened during these periods of last-minute teaching preparation.

Liminality as Becoming In order to attend to these different roles, ECTs and PhD students are continually negotiating and renegotiating their sense of self and self-worth as an academic, an educator and a student. Although reflecting on our positionality can support critical thought and development, it can equally lead to the ongoing scrutiny of how (or if) we see ourselves as fitting in our surrounding environment and discipline. According to Marcia Devlin and Gayani Samarawickrema (2010: 118), all university teaching takes place in a context, including a disciplinary context and, clearly, such disciplinary and other contexts vary enormously between departments, faculties and institutions with consequential influence on what might be understood as effective teaching.

In this quotation, the authors note the differences between the practices and routines of different institutions that are part of university life. Informal meetings, research seminars and reading groups can help to create a sense of community within academic departments. They provide opportunities for shared knowledge and allow for collaborative scholarship and teaching. One of the most difficult anxieties that I have faced while moving between the two different universities is the ongoing feeling of being an ‘outsider’ (Hilton, 2014).

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Again, this feeling of isolation can be prompted by relatively insignificant events, such as not receiving emails about upcoming meetings and social events within a department. Importantly, Marvi Remmik et al. (2011) suggest the value of ‘Communities of Practice’ in providing a safe, informal and collective space for ECTs to discuss their developing teaching practice. Yet my precarious position at both institutions means that I am frequently unable to attend or am not invited. In this way, our process of becoming an educator can be disrupted. Although movement between these institutions and roles can be problematic for all ECTs, my age and appearance mean that I am regularly mistaken as a student waiting for their next seminar rather than a teacher waiting to be able to set up my teaching room. I do not ‘look’ like a teacher (Garvis, 2014) and often fail to be recognized as teaching staff. In an attempt to manage these assumptions, and attempt to pass successfully as a teaching assistant rather than student, I alter my physical appearance in order to appear more ‘professional’. Liminality is experienced here as I am not granted ‘teacher’ status by others and thus continue to linger on the student/teacher borderline. Yet, this liminal positioning offers a unique perspective in the ongoing process of becoming. As I begin to explore next, liminality offers a place where becoming can be navigated and experimented with on the peripheries. Although the risks associated with occupying these liminal spaces within the university can be harmful, it is also important to consider the opportunities that this peripheral position can offer. For example, Bronwyn Wood (2012) suggests that liminal spaces can enable the development of unique perspectives and understandings of the social world. Bound up with my own anxieties relating to my authenticity as a university educator, liminality has forced me to continually reflect upon my teaching practice. In particular, I have lacked confidence in my own knowledge and understanding of subject matter and questioned my presence and ability to manage a classroom. As a result, my approach to teaching has relied neither upon authority nor the ownership of extensive knowledge but on the value of shared knowledge, collaboration and preparation. Indeed, as a means of working through my anxieties of being an ECT, I have also reflected upon my own student experiences as a means of informing and developing teaching practice. Crucially, my own student experience within an open and discussion-based classroom has informed many of my pedagogical approaches – the activities and group exercises that I use in my own teaching.



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Liminality as Opportunity Constructing liminality as an opportunity draws attention to how the unstable movement between institutional spaces and teaching classrooms presents moments of possibility and development. Drawing upon Homi Bhabha’s (1994) understanding of liminality, Ajnesh Prasad (2015: 109) suggests that liminality ‘affords agency to those subjects situated at transitory sites or those subjects simultaneously occupying multiple cultural realms – thus, allowing individuals, in the latter case, to navigate between and across the rigidities and homogeneity of disparate cultures’. In my own experience, the agency afforded by liminality has helped me navigate my teaching identity with students as co-learners, adopting what Eileen Carnell (2007) terms a ‘co-constructivist approach’ to teaching. In alignment with this approach, I have sought to create an open, flexible and collaborative educational space, which values the knowledge and experiences of all. This approach was particularly useful when working with postgraduate students studying ‘special educational needs’ as part of their Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE). Throughout this course, students moved between placements in further education institutions and classroombased teaching. Teaching sessions for this course were planned in order to bring together theoretical understanding and the experiences of students in their own teaching practice. These sessions relied upon shared reflections and understandings as a means of making sense of theory and practice together. At times, these reflections became uncomfortable. We were called to question our own practice in relation to theory and, sometimes, critique the ability of theory to be implemented in practice. Moreover, as an ECT, I had to open myself up to vulnerability as I exposed my teaching sessions to the ‘unknown’. That is, I could not plan for these student reflections and thereby worked through these with students as a collaborator. These shared experiences of venturing beyond our previous knowledge and assumptions presented opportunity for new meaning to be constructed (Fook and Askeland, 2007). My own liminality helped me to make room for these new meanings to be made as part of the collaborative learning process. As Jack Mezirow (1990: 1) suggests, To make ‘meaning’ means to make sense of an experience, we make an interpretation of it. When we subsequently use this interpretation to guide decision-making or action, then making ‘meaning’ becomes ‘learning’.

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Reflection allows us to understand our experiences within a given social context and use this knowledge to develop future practice (Hickson, 2011: 831). In this way, reflection offers an opportunity to bridge the gap between theory and practice, as we develop and change our own practice through the theoretical frameworks of our disciplines. In addition to this, co-constructivist approaches to teaching have enabled me to reflect upon my own anxieties as an opportunity for collaborative knowledge-making (Carnell, 2007). I often planned teaching sessions to allow for the discussions to be driven in part by the students’ understandings. While as a teacher I felt more comfortable moving around the classroom and engaging with students in smaller groups, it simultaneously had the positive effects of redistributing the responsibility of learning to the students, thereby focusing upon what the student ‘does’ (Biggs, 1999). For John Biggs (1999), new educators are less likely to adopt a student-focused approach to learning and are instead more likely to focus on what the student ‘is’ or what the teacher ‘does’ (Biggs and Tang, 2007). In my own experience, this is partly true. My instinct to manage my own insecurities was to focus upon my own knowledge of the subject. During teaching sessions, however, I focused upon what the students could do and how they could support each other within a shared learning space. In this space, dialogue prompts reflection, critical investigation, analysis, construction of knowledge. Learners are allowed to experiment with ideas and the group is seen as a resource. (Carnell, 2007: 31)

In these moments, at both universities, I relied upon my student/teacher identity as a means of creating a safe, flexible and welcoming learning environment. I have been able to reflect upon teaching practice by drawing upon my own interpretations of the classroom from the perspective of the student as well as an increasing awareness of these classroom encounters in relation to the much broader subject curriculum and values. In doing so, I embraced my liminal positioning within the wider field of the discipline of Sociology and within different HEIs as both a student and a teacher. I drew upon liminality as a means of reflection and development. Although I still feel wedged between these different spaces and identities, I am beginning to feel more comfortable within this position – in particular, how it might help me to be and become a teacher that ‘remains fluid and able to move in many directions’ (Larrivee, 2000: 294).



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Concluding Thoughts Throughout this chapter, I have reflected upon some of my experiences as a young, female PhD researcher and ECT working across two north-western universities. In doing so, I have suggested that the concept of liminality is useful when thinking about the tensions that can arise when occupying these competing and often peripheral positions within HE. These ‘liminal spaces, where borders flow into another, particularly the borders between the social and the personal, outside and inside, others and self, are important’ (Lewiecki-Wilson and Celio, 2011: 1). They tell us about the intricate and mundane experiences of ECTs as they navigate HE’s unstable neoliberal terrain. As demonstrated in the experiences shared in this chapter, the unpredictability of HE, need for spatial and temporal flexibility, and increasing practices of regulation and assessment can further complicate and hinder the development of teacher identity for ECTs. Indeed, the insecurity of short-term and zero-hour contracts can impede the presence of ECTs within the institution and prevent them from engaging with the learning and teaching community. I have, at times, internalized the liminality I feel as a part of me, something that I am causing for myself due to my inability to keep up with the movements and changing paces involved with working and studying at two universities. Despite these difficulties, negotiating these liminal spaces in HEIs has opened up new ways of thinking about my sense of self within the university and my teaching practice. It has pushed me to be active in seeking teaching opportunities and become adept in the teaching cultures within different HEIs. This sense of possibility and agency is particularly important for this chapter and for recognizing the potential contributions of ECTs to teaching scholarship. Professional teacher identity is an affect; it is wholly subjective and fluid, depending upon the encounters and relationships with others and our engagement with teaching practices (Pillen, Beijaard and Brok, 2013). It is in a constant state of renewal and renegotiation. In my experience, this has related to movement between student/educator and between different universities. While these movements can be disorienting and uncomfortable, they also offer the opportunity to develop unique perspectives and reflections of teaching that can help to create flexible, open and student-centred learning spaces. Our anxieties and insecurities can help us to become more responsive to students, more empathetic to the instabilities they may be facing and more welcoming of their contribution to the classroom. By reflecting upon the possibilities of

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occupying several liminal positions in my early career, I have let go of the teacher that I thought I needed to become, one that had authority, presence and an extensive knowledge bank of concepts and theorists. Instead, I have come to appreciate teaching as a collaborative experience, where knowledge is sharing within safe spaces and between students and teachers alike.

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Balancing Teaching, Culture and Gender in Japan: Prospects and Challenges as an American Female Teacher Abroad Sarah R. Asada

Introduction I first visited Japan in 2001 to study abroad as a college student. The purpose of my visit was to experience life in a new country and to fulfil the foreignlanguage proficiency requirement of my US liberal arts college. Although I am new to university teaching in Japan, I am not new to the country. Following my graduation from Antioch College in 2004, I returned to Tokyo to live and work. Sixteen years later, and I am still in Tokyo. Japan has become my home. I can easily handle daily and work-related tasks in Japanese because of the language and intercultural skills I have developed. However, I remain an American at heart and my frames of understanding are largely based upon my upbringing and education in the United States. Nevertheless, living the majority of my adult life in Japan has undoubtedly challenged and changed my assumptions and views of the world. Before beginning my academic career in 2017, I worked as a study abroad programme coordinator and secondary school teacher for over a decade in Japan. I also completed my graduate-level degrees at Waseda University during this time. These experiences would later prove useful in my Early Career Teacher (ECT) journey. As a secondary school teacher, I developed my teaching skills, became aware of the English-language education system in Japan and experienced first-hand the sociocultural dynamics of a Japanese classroom. My experiences in Higher Education (HE) administration as a study abroad programme coordinator gave me insight into how to provide structural support to students. In particular, it gave me the skills to help them navigate intercultural situations

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and to adjust to new social, cultural and academic norms. Subsequently, my time studying at the Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies (GSAPS) at Waseda University, an English and Japanese bilingual programme, exposed me to the complex roles that language and culture play in multicultural classrooms due to its large international student body population. In this chapter, I reflect on my ECT experiences as an American female navigating Japanese HE. My ECT story connects the autobiographical and personal aspects of my life to wider cultural and social influences (Ellis, 2004). I reflect upon how I have dealt with the challenges that teaching and working in Japanese HE raises, particularly in regards to classroom experiences and my gender identity.

Global Studies in English in the Japanese Context In April 2017, I joined Kyoritsu Women’s University (KWU) as an assistant professor. In KWU’s Faculty of International Studies, I primarily teach courses in the Global Studies in English (GSE) Programme, which was established in April 2016. The GSE Programme is an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) course where students take half of their credits in EMI courses and the remainder of courses in Japanese. In Japan, the English language plays a major role in economic policy to foster ‘global human resources’ (gurobaru jinzai) as well as in national and institutional policy for the internationalization of HE. Japanese universities also use EMI strategies to enhance their national and international prestige. By increasing their reputation, Japanese universities become more attractive to international students, whose recruitment helps income generation. This is especially important in light of the dwindling domestic student population. In the GSE Programme, I teach academic content courses in English. My students are almost always Japanese. However, in some courses I might also have some students from East Asia. Owing to my previous experience in both a Japanese secondary school and as a study abroad programme coordinator in a Japanese university, I was already familiar with some of the practicalities of interacting with Japanese students in English. I also felt relatively confident in my teaching abilities. Nevertheless, I still felt at a loss with course design and planning initially. The information I received from KWU about the courses I would teach only contained the course titles. The freedom of designing courses from scratch was enticing but simultaneously overwhelming. I was unsure of



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where to start and uncertain of the process of course design and syllabus writing; my doctoral studies had not prepared me to become a teacher. Through my time as a study abroad coordinator, I was fortunate that I had become acquainted with a visiting professor in Japan from the United States, who was also actively involved in implementing faculty development programmes and training new faculty members. He provided me with a sounding board for my class ideas and course design, for which I was very grateful. Yet it is certainly the case that much of this support came from my own initiative and networks rather than one which was offered or organized for me. At the time of writing this chapter, I have completed three years at KWU teaching in the GSE Programme. An actor-centred study on the experiences of junior international faculty in the internationalization of Japanese universities identified three categories of experiences: integration, assimilation and marginalization (Brotherhood, Hammond and Kim, 2020). These experiences arise through the interaction between the international actor (junior faculty member) and the local environment (Japanese university). In the integration approach, there is the possibility to reform the academic norms of the Japanese university because both actors engage in a two-way process of mutual accommodation. Next, the assimilation approach means the international actor adopts the local norms of the Japanese university. Lastly, a marginalization approach refers to the process of excluding international actors from full participation at their Japanese university, via restrictions to peripheral faculty roles. As an immigrant to Japan working in HE, this framework provides an actor-centred approach to understand my experiences as an ECT in an EMI programme. The theoretical lens also helps account for how the internationalization of Japanese HE is conducted.

An American Teacher in Japan Before my first semester at KWU started, I received a memo that outlined the conceptualization of the GSE Programme. Included was something along the lines of ‘We expect students to do A LOT of homework’. In the context of Japanese HE, students often do not spend much time outside of the classroom on homework or on preparation for class. I therefore felt some relief to see this one sentence. I was told that students’ English would be of varying levels. Accordingly, I felt it would be important for students to complete readings prior to class to understand key concepts and words. I wanted to have a student-centred classroom based on

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my own learning experiences at a US liberal arts college. Thus, I took an active learning approach in my teaching (see Bonwell and Eison, 1991; Weimer, 2002), with short interactive lectures to cover core concepts. Ample time was allocated for group and class discussion in order to engage students more deeply with the class materials. Students disclosed to other faculty members and to me that they enjoyed my classes. However, difficulties remained in implementing active learning approaches in the EMI programme owing to a complex range of linguistic, cultural and structural challenges (Tsuneyoshi, 2005). The first obstacle was the range of students’ linguistic abilities as I planned my classes. As an ECT, I had limited experience in managing an EMI classroom. While my students made considerable effort to prepare for and participate in class, it was clear some students were struggling with taking a university-level academic class in English. As an educator, I felt a deep responsibility to understand my students’ experiences in the classroom in order to actively engage all students and promote inclusion and equality. While I had a suspicion that my students would face some challenges as they adjusted to taking classes in English, I had not fully anticipated the extent of the difficulties my students, and I, would face. After the first week of classes during my first semester of teaching, I realized that I needed to address these challenges to ensure that my students would succeed in my class. I decided to use joint reflexivity (Nagata, 2004), drawing upon my intercultural communication studies that I completed during my graduate programme at Waseda University. Since living in Japan, I have regularly reflected on my lived experiences in daily life to better understand how my own assumptions and actions have influenced my experiences and interactions. Yet this was the first time that I had encouraged students to practice self-reflection alongside me in a process of joint reflexivity. I was eager to receive feedback from the students about their classroom experiences and then to adjust my teaching practices if students were not meeting the intended learning goals. My role as an ECT with limited teaching experience may have also made me more open to change and the testing of various pedagogical methods as I was still locating my identity as an educator. I borrowed the practice of kansōyōshi to implement joint reflexivity. In Japan, kansōyōshi, commonly referred to as a reflection paper or reaction paper in English, are often collected at the end of each class. Kansōyōshi are understood to check students’ understanding of the class contents, provide opportunities for students to ask questions and give feedback to the teacher, and act as a means of communication and increasing trust between the students



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and teacher (see Minami, 2018). At KWU, kansōyōshi are included as one of the assessment options listed in the syllabus. Through integrating joint reflexivity with the Japanese practice of kansōyōshi, I had thus begun to adjust my teaching to better cater for the linguistic and cultural challenges faced by my students. However, the cultural challenges that we faced in the learning environment required more self-reflection on my part. As an ECT, I found it relatively easy to reflect on my previous experiences of working with Japanese students as well as to question my assumptions about students and teaching in Japan. However, with limited university teaching experience, I was not equipped with the same pedagogical resources as my senior colleagues. I knew I did not want to take a blanket approach to implementing active learning in my classrooms. This would risk imposing my own cultural and educational background as an American in a Japanese HE context. On the other hand, as a foreign faculty member, I was brought on board to teach academic coursework in English, promote students’ intercultural competencies and use active learning approaches to internationalize the curriculum and university. These competing aims caused a tension arising from the students’ experiences and expectations of university-level classes. Students jokingly complained how my homework took them one hour while homework for classes conducted in Japanese could be completed in twenty minutes or was even non-existent. This was further compounded by directives from senior management, prompted by the Ministry of Education, to increase the amount of study time outside of class. However, I held steadfast in my belief in the importance of homework. My educational experiences of US liberal arts illustrated to me how completing homework was key to gaining the requisite knowledge to critically engage with classroom learning material. However, as a reflective practitioner and an ECT keen to develop my teaching practice based on students’ comments, I reviewed my homework assignments to check if they aligned with my students’ English and knowledge level. Students’ weekly reflection papers, and end-of-semester class evaluations, gave me confidence in my teaching approach and emphasis on class preparation. Students commented on their increased confidence in reading skills. They also noted that their completion of homework helped them participate more comfortably in class. In addition, joint reflexivity provided me insights into the student experiences, which in turn allowed me to reflect on my teaching practices, taking into consideration the cultural dynamics of the classroom. For instance, several students told me it was difficult to engage in group discussions with older classmates. Indeed, within educational hierarchies, kohai (junior) and

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senpai (senior) identities frame the sociocultural aspects of group discussions in the classroom. Senpai is someone who is older, and kohai is someone who entered the same school after their senpai (Arai, 2004). First-year students (the lowest-rank students) are most strongly influenced by senpai (Ono and Shouji, 2015). Some students shared in their reflection papers how it was difficult to ask questions or share their ideas during group discussions when their senpai were present. I reflected on the rationale I had for requiring mixed school-year group discussions and how my own educational experiences in the United States influence my beliefs and bias. I also took into account what students told me they hope to gain from group discussions. I now preface discussions by explaining that I hope my students gain cultural competencies to perform in international classrooms during study abroad experiences (Jon and Kim, 2011), with a view to developing a career in English-language intercultural environments. I also share my own story of overcoming difficulties in engaging in group discussions as a college student. As the sole international ECT in the GSE Programme, in a faculty with only two other Japanese ECTs, I was concerned that my junior faculty status may influence students’ experiences in my classes and interactions with me as a person. In my US liberal arts college, it was quite common for students and teachers to engage in critical discussions. These liberal arts students often challenged the core concepts discussed in class. I now realize my concerns also stemmed from teaching courses relating to contemporary American society, which is only vaguely related to my research speciality of comparative and international education. As an American, I do have a certain degree of familiarity with what is happening in the United States. Admittedly, I have lost understanding of the complexities of American society after living in Japan for so long. My ECT status, compounded by my role of teaching courses outside of my area of expertise, resulted in me over-preparing for classes. However, my realization that students possess limited knowledge of the United States prompted me to better understand my own country to competently explain its dynamics given the varying linguistic abilities of my students. As an ECT in a contract-based faculty position, I saw an opportunity to undertake administrative leadership drawing upon previous work experiences to enhance institutional awareness of my role in the GSE Programme and leverage for future job applications. I proposed an international teaching assistant programme (ITAP) to address the challenges of large classes (Ippolito, 2007) and to promote group discussions in my classes. Although I successfully developed and delivered a similar programme as a study abroad programme



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coordinator, I remained concerned about how the ITAP would be received by my dean and the senior administrative team. My apprehension stemmed from being an ECT and a relatively new staff member. This concern was also due to my suspicion that the ITAP might be viewed by other colleagues as unfair, since teaching assistants are scarce in Japan. In the end, the ITAP was approved and has continued to receive funding each year since its inception. Students’ reflections confirmed that the ITAP successfully motivated them to use English in group and class discussions. An extract from one student’s reflection paper sums up their experiences: TAs always help us organize our opinions and give advice when we have a hard time in discussions. Also, the students and TAs talk in English, so we can have chances to tell our own opinions in English. I think this situation is good for us to improve our English skills.

Overall, creating and implementing the ITAP proved an important part of my journey as an ECT. Inviting teaching assistants made me reconsider my course design and class contents. The ITAP helped me better understand how to pinpoint the learning outcomes that I wished my students to achieve and to understand the value of constructive alignment in curriculum design and delivery (Biggs, 2014). In turn, I felt more confident to streamline my course design. My newfound confidence spilled over to my non-ITAP courses. As I revised my class materials each year, I carefully considered how the short lectures would segue to group and class discussions. In the end, the ITAP was successful in helping me replicate the dialogue I once experienced at my US liberal arts colleges into all my classes at KWU. Furthermore, it helped me position myself and my teaching within the institution. The ITAP approach has now been extended to other large size classes with the GSE Programme and is highlighted in the university’s strategic action plan. The skills I gained as a student and developed through my role in the international office did not itself foster agency. At the time I often felt compelled to assimilate in order to fit in and develop an understanding of the environment, particularly the language and the culture. However, when moving on to my first academic teaching role, my position as an ECT appeared to offer limited agency and my initial approach was, again, to assimilate into the environment. However, the responsibilities and opportunities that accrued from my position as an international academic did facilitate agency to influence change. I found myself integrating (influencing change) rather than assimilating to my environment. This one-way process of assimilation was, in

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part, rejected owing to my position as a migrant with experiences of a different educational context. Within the framework for ECT experiences in Japanese universities by Thomas Brotherhood, Christopher Hammond and Yangson Kim (2020), my teaching experiences showcased an integration approach. My university and students openly welcomed my teaching while I adjusted my student-centred approach with active learning strategies to the context of Japanese HE. As an ECT, the receptive nature of my university and students has also empowered me to see the value of new ideas and have confidence in proposing and using new innovative techniques. Finally, I believe joint reflexivity with my students was key to my successful integration of American and Japanese HE teaching practices. It allowed me to better understand the cultural and linguistic challenges of EMI in a Japanese university, while challenging my own assumptions and knowledge.

Being a Mother in Academia As an ECT in a contract-based faculty position, the pressures and challenges I experience are further amplified by being a female with caring responsibilities. Kelly Ward and Lisa Wolf-Wendel (2012) argue that academic mothers are expected to navigate the ‘greedy institutions’ of motherhood and academic work with total commitment and dedication to both without sufficient time, support and resources for either. Indeed, this highly resonates with me as I balance my roles as an ECT and a mother in Japan. In Japan, it is often assumed that the mother will be the primary caregiver. I am grateful that my career choice and the working environment of my university allows me the freedom to be present for my child. However, my partner’s role as a father, constrained by the patriarchal context of Japanese occupational culture and Japanese gender norms, limits opportunities for my professional development. I often receive invitations to participate in kenkyukai (study groups for researchers), seminars and lectures related to teaching practices and my research area. However, these often take place in the evenings on weekdays after 6.00 pm and on weekends. It is nearly impossible for me to attend such events as a mother of a young child. I have to make the most of the daytime hours to complete my work and often forego professional development opportunities. By not attending seminars and lectures, I miss out opportunities to grow and receive recognition for my work and presence in Japanese academia. Moreover, my absence at events at my university



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and within the wider scholarly society, due to caring responsibilities, may have been interpreted by some as a lack of collegiality and dedication to academia. The pressure as an ECT without a clear path to a permanent position is significant. In light of my precarious job situation and having caring responsibilities, I feel I must demonstrate that I am giving it my all to prove that being a female academic with a child does not hamper my work productivity (Garvis, 2014; Coate, Kandiko Howson and de St Croix, 2015). My current research and teaching productivity influences whether I can make it past the gatekeepers of future positions and remain within academia. The most challenging part is balancing research while classes are in session. My research requires continuous progress to complete projects and meet writing deadlines. However, teaching and preparing for classes can feel all-consuming. My personal experiences of an increased workload in relation to preparing for these classes, owing to the students’ limited English language ability, are not isolated (see Tsuneyoshi, 2005). Moreover, it is commonly demonstrated that female academics often have larger workloads (Barrett and Barrett, 2011). My contract position means I have a heavier class load compared to tenured staff. My extra classes are supposed to replace attendance at certain administrative meetings. However, the time spent teaching and preparing for these classes is always much more than what would be required to attend such meetings. Further, my course enrolments are consistently the highest amongst the GSE Programme courses, which results in more student consultations and more marking. This means I have increasing demands on my work time. I place a high priority on my teaching. However, the prospect of hitting the job market almost immediately after beginning my position left me feeling pressured to prioritize my research agenda over my teaching (Mitsuno, 2019). Conversations with Japanese and non-Japanese ECTs, as well as senior academics in Japan, suggest that publications and competitive research grants from the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) are fundamental to progression. Although I have been successful in publishing and securing grants during my first three years as an ECT, it did come at the cost of my work-life balance and my well-being. For the first two years, it was impossible to limit my teaching responsibilities and research activities to daytime hours. I did not want to sacrifice my teaching, so I often spent several hours after my child went to sleep at night and in the morning before he woke up completing unfinished tasks to stay on track. This pressure was further compounded by my partner’s health crisis six months into my ECT journey, which resulted in additional caring responsibilities for me. Struck with the fear of being the sole breadwinner of our family, I felt a sense of urgency to

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perform above 100 per cent in terms of teaching and research to ensure a secure financial future for my family. As I enter the fourth year of my five-year contract, I have achieved a better work-life balance. This is due to gaining more experience and confidence in my teaching, as well as developing more attainable research goals. However, the uncertainty of my academic career remains. I must face the reality of a competitive job market that requires that I prioritize my research agenda. As my family is based in Tokyo, I cannot easily relocate to other areas of Japan or the world. Most importantly, Japan is my home now and the country where I will develop my academic career. Japan has been the steady backdrop of my life since 2001 when I first came to study abroad for one year. The only pull for me to return to the United States is my family. However, it would be very difficult to relocate near them because of the competitive job market in the American academia. In fact, being in Tokyo has been essential to my success as an ECT; my partner and his family have also offered unconditional support as I balanced an active research agenda requiring international fieldwork. In the balancing of teaching and gender, I have sought guidance from others as I navigate academic and gender norms in my university and Japanese academia in general. I have reached out to select senior female colleagues when navigating challenges within my university, such as the scheduling of classes that conflict with childcare availability. While these individuals are always supportive and openly offer me insider knowledge, they are often unavailable because of their own busy schedules. As such, the social networks I developed during my graduate level studies in Japan have been important in establishing myself as an ECT in Japanese academia. The physical and emotional support from former PhD colleagues, offered during my graduate studies, has evolved to online support through WhatsApp (see Bayfield et al., 2019). Our focus has been the ECT journey as non-Japanese female academics in Japan. Most importantly, this group provides a safe space to discuss the difficulties facing women with caring roles in the academic precariat. As I reflect upon the role of gender in my ECT journey within the framework of Brotherhood, Hammond and Kim (2020), I feel the pressure to assimilate to the norms of a heavy workload while somehow balancing caring responsibilities. I worry about being marginalized within my profession for being a mother. Moreover, I feel a responsibility to assimilate because the Japanese HE system remains tethered to Japanese language and norms. Although my integration approach to teaching practice is successful, I feel the risk of being closed off from career development opportunities. I feel excluded from full participation



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in Japanese academia if I do not take an assimilation approach. In simple terms, the failure to assimilate risks hampering my career progression.

Conclusion The first three years of my ECT journey in Japanese HE cannot be clearly categorized as either integration, assimilation or marginalization as per the framework postulated earlier in this chapter (Brotherhood et al., 2020). As an immigrant to Japan, an integration approach would allow me to build upon my own knowledge and skills while adapting to Japanese HE, such as seen in my teaching practices. However, the reality remains that the integration approach requires cooperation from local actors, such as students, colleagues and the institution. My current situation allows for integration. Future positions may not. As I grapple with the challenges of being a female academic raising a child with an uncertain career path, I feel the pressure to pursue an assimilation approach to prove myself worthy in Japanese academia. I worry my decision to actively place priority on a work-life balance that allows me to care and be present for my family outside of daytime work hours comes at a cost. I wonder if others view me as not being serious about my career, resulting in marginalization and even termination of my teaching and academic career. Fortunately, the early years of my ECT journey are marked by support through my university, colleagues and social networks that have helped me to establish my academic career in Japan.

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Othering and Its Impact on Teaching Opportunities in Australia: Gendered, Classed and Raced Subject Positions Clarissa Carden and Diti Bhattacharya

Introduction In terms of experience, scope and practice, the Higher Education (HE) teaching space in Australia is a diverse setting where educators and researchers from a variety of sociopolitical, economic and ethnic backgrounds coexist and work together. Keeping this in mind, we have chosen to write this chapter collaboratively in order to better explore the intersection of identity and othering on the experience of early career teaching in an Australian university. In some ways, our narratives are very similar. We are both women near the age of 30. We both began our doctoral studies in 2015, and both began teaching in HE as doctoral students. We completed our doctoral studies within a year of each other. We have both maintained sessional teaching loads throughout our doctoral studies and beyond, and have both now graduated into lecturing and tutoring at the university. We teach very similar courses, to the extent that, in the past year, we have shared three separate courses – with Diti lecturing (delivering lectures to the full cohort of enrolled students) and tutoring (running smaller, more interactive, post-lecture sessions) at our institution’s Gold Coast campus, and Clarissa lecturing and tutoring at the Nathan campus in Brisbane. Despite these similarities in age, gender, discipline and career stage, we have had very different experiences as Early Career Teachers (ECTs). Within the Australian HE landscape, the experiences of women who work multiple shortterm, casual contracts are under-represented in broader discourses around casualization (Crimmins, 2016). Taking up and extending upon this observation, in this chapter we examine our own narratives in order to demonstrate that the

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experiences of ‘women’, vital as they are to this important conversation, are diverse and mediated by several factors. These include, but are not limited to, class, race, country of citizenship and maternal status. We begin by introducing our HE context before analysing our own narratives.

Early Career Teaching in Australia: Sessional Labour There is significant ongoing debate within the Australian academy about the casualization of HE teaching. This debate was crystallized in April 2019, when an article published in The Conversation suggested that there were benefits of casualization for sessional teaching staff, as well as for universities (Wardale, Richardon and Suseno, 2019). Although the article weighed in competing perspectives noting both the advantages and disadvantages of casual teaching, among other things, it failed to take into account some of the significant gender and ethnicity-based realities that are faced by teachers in the HE sector. Casually employed HE teachers – mostly, but not solely, ECTs – responded with ire. Their response is perhaps best summed up by the representative for Early Career Scholars in the Australian Historical Association (AHA), André Brett, when he wrote, Surely the core point should be that casualisation has created a vast underclass of academics scraping together jobs simply to get by—bad jobs not designed with the best outcomes in mind for employees or their students. Casual academics work in a system that could remunerate them sufficiently to avoid poverty, overwork, mental health crises, and the like, but it is one that chooses not to. (Brett, 2019)

Brett’s comments came as part of a series on the AHA’s Early Career Researcher’s blog, which provided a thoughtful, multifaceted analysis of the difficulties – and, occasionally, triumphs – faced by educators whose careers are built of multiple sessional contracts (Barnes, 2019; Brett, 2019; Karageorgos et al., 2019). Along similar lines, a response to this article was also published in the Overland literary journal, in which Kate Cantrell of the University of Southern Queensland and Kelly Palmer of the Queensland University of Technology responded to the complex layers of precarity glossed over by The Conversation’s article (Cantrell and Palmer, 2019). Our lived experiences as ECTs have occurred within this milieu and, like casual academics interviewed in one New Zealand study, we



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have begun to build careers course-by-course whilst still seeking to obtain fulltime employment (Stringer et al., 2018). As a result of this precarious employment, we, alongside many other Australian ECTs, have found ourselves in a particularly difficult position. Unable to reliably predict how much – or, indeed, whether – we will be asked to work in the future, we take on all the teaching work available to us in the here-and-now. Overwork has the potential to endanger the quality of the education we offer our students, and it is, perhaps, this threat which has led much of the debate over casualization to be framed in terms of the quality of teaching and marking (e.g. Smith and Coombe, 2006; Smith and Smith, 2012). Our experience has been one in which we frequently work more hours than we are paid for. Thus, the most significant threat for us as been the one posed to our own careers. Like other sessional academics, we compare ourselves to permanent colleagues and vie for permanent positions (Richardson, Wardale and Lord, 2019). However, we work in an environment in which permanent academic positions and even full-time contract positions like postdoctoral fellowships are awarded based predominantly on publication outputs and grant income. As Rachel Pitt and Inger Mewburn, in their study of Australian academic job advertisements, noted, ‘The “publish or perish” maxim held true in our data’ (Pitt and Mewburn, 2016: 95). In this context, the time devoted to teaching, and particularly the time spent over and above what we are paid to do, can place other, more long-term, plans at risk. Indeed, the difficulty in balancing a high volume of teaching work with the research required for career progression is recognized in the practice of ‘buying out’ teaching time for academics working on large projects (e.g. Smith and Smith, 2012). This is one symptom of the ‘unbundling’ of academic labour, wherein the work of teaching and research have become separated, with teaching often devalued and carried out by a casual workforce, while research is valued as the primary work of the ‘core’ workforce of permanent scholars (e.g. Kimber, 2003). The situation is made even more complex by the reality that, despite the casualization of academic labour, there is, at least in our institution, insufficient sessional work available to meet the financial needs of all of the PhD candidates, ECTs and long-term sessional staff. While the situation differs from institution to institution and between different schools within our own university, sessional work is often allocated by permanent members of academic staff. The permanent academic staff primarily designs, and sometimes teach within, the courses which need to be staffed. There is, thus, an expectation that PhD candidates and ECTs will gain experience of teaching, which sits uneasily alongside the reality that

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work is unevenly and inequitably distributed in practice. In this context, the narrative around casual employment is that it is an ‘advantage’ or a ‘perk’ to be given this opportunity. The power of this narrative – made more compelling by the very real inequalities in the system – was captured by Cantrell and Palmer (2019) when they stated, ‘To be given casual work is a gift,’ noting that ‘there’s a queue behind you, and this queue is long’. There are important socio-economic considerations and tensions at play here. Our capacity to accept or decline the ‘gift’ of casual work and thus to determine our own teaching load is shaped by our economic circumstances. Despite our different class backgrounds, we have both found ourselves in situations in which we are required to take on more work than we could complete comfortably in order to meet our economic needs. Academic precarity has had a significant impact on our lives, both socially and financially. Clarissa is the primary breadwinner for her partner and young child and, as a person from a working-class background, she cannot rely on family support to meet any financial shortfalls. Diti has struggled financially as a result of Australia’s deeply inequitable and expensive visa system. She and her husband are both living and working in Australia on temporary visas. Although they aim to become permanent residents, achieving this goal is contingent upon demonstrating ongoing employment and paying exorbitant visa application fees. As a result of these quite distinct situations, we have both had to compromise ‘writing’ time to accommodate teaching work, knowing perfectly well that teaching experience is devalued in the Australian academic job market, especially in comparison to a scholar’s publication record. In addition to these long-term consequences, we have also found that institutions outside of academia, such as banks and government institutions, are often unprepared to accept multiple short-term contracts as evidence of employment.

Our Narratives – Identity and Academic Labour Clarissa’s Experience Clarissa began her PhD in 2015 and began teaching in early 2017. Her experience as both a teacher and a researcher has been shaped by her position as a working-class woman and mother. She initially viewed this position as a threat to her career, and this fear was supported unintentionally by some wellmeaning and sympathetic permanent academics who praised her for succeeding



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in teaching and research despite being a mother. Amanda Rockinson-Szapkiw, Lucinda Spaulding and Rebecca Lunde (2017) found that doctoral students negotiating multiple identities as mothers, professionals and academics were more successful where they had access to supportive social and professional networks that allowed them to express and develop those identities. For Clarissa, one significant factor in gaining confidence as a scholar was finding a role model who was herself successful as an academic and a mother, and who refused to view the identities as separate or incompatible (e.g. Amsler and Motta, 2019). Unlike many sessional teachers, Clarissa has never had to request or ask for teaching opportunities. Her PhD supervisors either provided or facilitated her early tutoring work. Despite this support, her initial experiences were overwhelming. In her first semester of teaching, a mature-age male student accused her of being ‘too young’ to understand sociology. She had no response. Over time, she has become more confident in the classroom and has accepted that her position as a (relatively young) woman does not devalue her knowledge and experience. She has also developed a stronger sense of her identity as an academic and a mother and has worked to make this dual position visible in a context in which women are still all-too-often discouraged from forming families (Egley Waggoner, 2008; Amsler and Motta, 2019; Carden, forthcoming). Over the past three years, several members of academic staff approached Clarissa to take on roles as a tutor, lecturer and course convenor. She has come to teach not only her own discipline of sociology but also security studies – a related, but distinct, subject area which is concerned with understanding and responding to human vulnerabilities on an international scale. Despite initial misgivings, she has come to view teaching as a central aspect of her academic work. Taking on Andrew Metcalfe’s (2013) vocational approach to teaching sociology – and by extension the related disciplines in which she works – she has come to recognize that teaching in the humanities and social sciences can support students in learning ‘how to live well, in open relations’ (Metcalfe, 2013: 542). Recently, Clarissa was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by our institution. This fellowship, awarded based on a strong publication track record and a promising research proposal, provides two years’ full-time research employment. This opportunity will allow Clarissa to develop a research profile, which is competitive for both full-time permanent positions and national research grants. It will not, however, allow her to continue teaching. This speaks to the difficulties involved in forging an academic identity which takes both teaching and research seriously in an international context in which research is largely valued over teaching (McCune, 2021).

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Diti’s Experience Diti’s experience of early career teaching and developing a profile as a scholar has been quite different. Diti migrated to Australia from Kolkata, India, in 2013. She began as a doctoral candidate in early 2015 and began teaching in 2016. Her first role was as a tutor within the discipline of cultural studies. Unlike Clarissa, who has felt consistently supported in her efforts to gain teaching experience, Diti has experienced both finding and maintaining work to be a struggle. In part, this is due to her ethnic background. From the outset, Diti was consistently reminded that teachers in Australia are more ‘relaxed’ and ‘informal’ than those in India – despite the fact that, prior to commencing her doctoral studies, she completed a postgraduate degree in Australia. As such, she was very much aware of the typical classroom environment in Australian universities. The assumption – present in the feedback of the course convenors under whom she worked as well as the more casual advice of other postgraduate students – that she was ‘different’ and that, therefore, her methods of teaching must be ‘different’ was unfounded. In an international context in which the potential for positive cross-cultural exchanges offered by the internationalization of student and staff is often ignored, however, even the perceived potential for ‘difference’ can be a threat (e.g. Fabricius, Mortensen and Haberland, 2017). Advice of this nature, provided to an international student entering the Australian teaching workforce for the first time, added an additional burden to her teaching experience. Finding work – something which, as we have identified, can feel like an achievement in itself – was not enough. Diti had to get the tutoring gig and prove that she was delivering the content within the accepted social and cultural norms. This is in keeping with the observations of Louise Morley et al. (2018), who note that, while some migrant academics experience positive impacts on their perceived identity, others, particularly those who are members of groups subject to persistent stereotyping, may be labelled as ‘outsiders’. Unlike Clarissa, Diti has had to consistently request academic work, both during her doctoral studies and afterwards. At times, her ability to find work has been hampered by her background. For example, she was refused employment on multiple occasions on a subject that dealt with academic writing. When she requested a reason, she was told that, while she had good English skills, she writes ‘Indian English’. The fact that her entire educational training (two postgraduate degrees and an undergraduate degree) was conducted in English and she was writing her thesis in English was often overlooked. In the classroom, too, she has often found that her background renders teaching work more difficult. Students



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often insist on focusing solely on Australian examples when discussing global social, political and cultural issues, which undermines the benefit of having an academic with an international background teaching in an Australian university. Negative attitudes occasionally make themselves apparent in students’ end-ofcourse feedback. In one instance, a student anonymously suggested that Diti should not teach subject-matter related to Australia unless she was Australian.

Shared Identities and Experiences Our identities have not simply impacted our ability to obtain teaching work and the way in which we negotiate the classroom. Our identities – particularly our citizenship status – have also affected our relationship to the impermanence of casual labour. There is, in our institution, as in many others in Australia, a tension between the expectation that sessional teaching staff are impermanent (insofar as they are often seeking a full-time position) and the reality that sessional work is not necessarily a short-term stopgap but can become a form of semi-permanent, but always insecure, career. The possibility that some staff may become permanent – either through obtaining a permanent job offer or through continuing to engage in sessional work – is recognized through the pedagogical training our institution offers to sessional teaching staff. However, this training is not equally distributed. At the beginning of our employment as teachers in HE, neither of us were required to undertake pedagogical training. This is not an uncommon situation. There is, largely, an expectation that academics will learn to teach on-the-job. Increasingly, however, Australian universities have begun to formalize the requirements for HE teachers, in part by encouraging their staff to become members of the UK-based Higher Education Academy (Harrison Graves, 2018). In our institution, a part-time Graduate Certificate in University Learning and Teaching has been developed specifically to assist teaching staff in meeting the requirements of membership. This programme is available to both permanent and sessional staff and is paid for by the institution itself. Clarissa, now on a two-year research-only contract, is halfway through a part-time Graduate Certificate of University Learning and Teaching, provided and paid for by our institution. She completed her qualification in 2020, at which time she was halfway through her research-only contract. The decision to continue this programme reflected a desire to maintain a scholarly identity, which includes teaching. She took it seriously, even in the context of a focus on research excellence. This option is not available to everyone. Diti, who plans

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to continue teaching for the foreseeable future, is ineligible for this formal pedagogical training. An employee on a visa, even one who is working through the long and expensive process of applying for permanent residency, is not permitted to take part. The perceived impermanence of Diti’s residence within Australia here becomes more significant than the real impermanence of Clarissa’s teaching career (at least within the next few years). While it has previously been acknowledged that sessional teachers’ commitment is not always recognized through the provision of career development opportunities (Crimmins, 2017), our shared experience demonstrates that opportunities are not available to all teaching employees. In an international context in which the value of teaching excellence is increasingly recognized through membership of organizations like the Higher Education Academy (Lankveld et al., 2017), there is an urgent need to open up opportunities for participation to all scholars. A failure to do so risks entrenching a classification based on residency status within an already deeply divisive system.

Making Meaning in an Unequal System Despite our similarities and shared experiences, we have distinctly different identities concerning our physical appearance, accent, citizenship status, class background and family responsibilities. The significance of these differences is demonstrated through the very different ways in which we have been responded to by students and also by our institution, as outlined above. We both occupy identities, which are more or less marginalized in Australian HE. However, Clarissa’s working-class, maternal identity is less immediately visible than Diti’s migrant identity. So far, the consequences for differing from the perceived norm have affected Diti far more seriously than Clarissa. Despite the distinctions in our experiences, we have worked collaboratively, as colleagues and friends, to develop constructive approaches to negotiating our careers. We have come to recognize that, just as we differ from the normative model of what an Australian academic is, so too do many of our students differ from the perceived norm of what an Australian student is. We teach students from varied national, linguistic, class, professional and family backgrounds. In this context, we can reconceptualize our identities as a strength. We have both had the experience of ‘otherness’ in our history as students and both recall feeling intimidated by specific teaching staff who used long, complicated words and assumed that students who came to university were able to navigate the ‘hidden



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curriculum’, or those aspects of the experience of learning and teaching which are not expressed within the official curriculum (Sambell and McDowell, 1998). We know, on a personal rather than merely theoretical level, that the expectation that students inherently know the rules of learning is an assumption particularly disadvantaging those students who already experience social marginalization (Freire, 2000). In drawing on our lived experiences of difference, we have developed approaches that mirror José Víctor Orón Semper and Maribel Blasco’s (2018) suggestions to improve relationality between teachers and students in order to address the hidden curriculum. For example, when introducing a course, both of us explain why we find the subject matter interesting, why we wished to study it initially and what we have learned about it. Our pedagogical approaches cannot respond adequately to the problems in the broader academic system in which we work. As part of a permanently impermanent teaching workforce, we are powerless in addressing the structural issues which both generate the casualization of the academic workforce and perpetuate inequalities between sessional labourers. Until Australian universities move from a model of focusing on short-term planning to one that engages with long-term investment, sessional labour is here to stay (Ryan et al., 2013). However, as we have experienced, sessional staff are often recruited directly rather than through clear processes and are expected to begin teaching with little or no training. Existing research has raised concerns about the impact on the quality of marking (Smith and Coombe, 2006) and student experience more broadly (Byers and Tani, 2014) in situations where sessional staff are insufficiently supported in their roles. In our experience, however, the biggest threat is not teacher quality so much as teacher availability: while institutions may vary, sessional academics are often not paid to meet with students outside of class time and often do not have private office space in which to do so. We are, however, in a position to use our individual identities and experiences to create safer, more diverse and more inclusive learning spaces for our students during the time we spend with them in class. As other academic teaching staff have noted, making marginalized identities visible within academia can help students to feel as though they have a place within the university (e.g. Cunningham, 2015). A key challenge in the development of an academic identity is establishing the boundaries between one’s private self and one’s identity as a teacher (Trautwein, 2018: 1003–4). In developing identities as scholars and teachers, we have come to recognize that a degree of openness about who we are, where we come from and why we teach is valuable and can help us to become a supportive presence within the classroom. This increased openness is in line with the best practice in

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our areas of teaching and research (e.g. Metcalfe, 2013). Furthermore, in making our identities visible, and in teaching in a way that responds to the gaps left in our own undergraduate experiences, we are able to find meaning in situations which are, at times, very difficult.

Conclusions In the context of an institutional environment that makes precarious work feel like a privilege, we have both felt relatively ‘fortunate’, insofar as we have been able to obtain enough teaching work to live relatively well and to support our households. This feeling of having been ‘fortunate’, however, speaks less to the positives of sessional work and more to the painful reality that, for many ECTs in Australia, it is not possible to scrape together enough sessional work to ‘get by’. We recognize the financial benefits that we have received, but, at the same time, we are in firm agreement with other Australian scholars who have railed against the inherent injustice of overreliance on sessional labour (Barnes, 2019; Brett, 2019; Cantrell and Palmer, 2019; Karageorgos et al., 2019). The financial rewards that we have received have come at a high personal price. We have both struggled as a result of the high volume of work we have needed to undertake in order to meet our financial needs. Teaching in itself is a time-consuming process that extends far beyond the classroom, and the additional labour required, including responding to emails, planning content for lectures/tutorials and marking, can take up more than the allocated hours of work. Our experience as early career sessional teachers has been shaped by those characteristics we share, such as gender, age, discipline and career stage and, equally, by those that we do not. Our narratives demonstrate that embarking on early career teaching in Australian HE demands a complex negotiation between gender, class and racially defined identity and a system that thrives on precarity. We have also identified the difficulty inherent in being a worker who relies upon teaching work for survival, but whose opportunities for career advancement rely predominantly on demonstrating a track record of high-quality research. At the heart of many of these difficulties lies a systematic disregard for HE teachers and, in particular, the sessional staff who disproportionately engage in this work. We wish to be clear that this is not a problem that is centred within any specific institution. Rather, it is a barrier, which must be faced by the vast majority of ECTs in Australian academia.

Part Three

Disrupting Identities The relation between social identity and identification is complex. George Herbert Mead ([1934] 1967) helped reveal that complexity by demonstrating that the self is composed of stories that we tell about ourselves, which are formed by the perceptions others have of us. This helps shape our individuality, for better or worse. Individuals are ascribed descriptions of ability, class, gender and race that are not always of their own choosing. The effect of the label is dependent on its attendant power relations and how these are appropriated. They are situational, becoming more or less salient depending on who we are with or where we are (Törrönen, 2014). However, these kinds of identities do not stalk individuals in perpetuity. Drawing from speech act theory, Judith Butler (2005) notably argued for a declarative approach to identities. The act of declaring an identity is itself a performative gesture that produces the identity. Teaching also has this ‘embodied’ and ‘performative character’ (Vick and Martinez, 2011: 179). An idealized image of the teacher compels one towards a particular set of accepted behaviours and bodies. Gendered, classed, ableist and racialized expectations pervade the teaching space, yet not all teachers choose to perform to expected conventions. Disruption marks a break from the anticipated citations of identity in relation to a particular convention. For Hannah Arendt, disruption is a political gesture which helps to introduce a new conception of the public and their ends (Dikeç, 2012). Early Career Teachers (ECTs) can break from the habits of authorized and stipulated conventions for being a teacher. This disruptive activity opens up new possibilities and guidelines for acting as an ECT. The subsequent chapters highlight three ways in which individuals can creatively disrupt traditional conceptions of the ‘ideal teacher’. In turn, they each give new possibilities for being a teacher that interrupt their students’ expectations or reimagine their professional environment.

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(Dis)Empowering Spaces: Drawing on Disabling Experiences as an Early Career Teacher with Dwarfism Erin Pritchard

Introduction As an Early Career Teacher (ECT), I am still trying to develop my own effective teaching style within the discipline I teach in, Disability Studies. According to Marvi Remmik et al. (2011), an ECT’s ability to learn how to teach is a process that develops over time. In this chapter, I will be exploring how sharing my experiences as a disabled person has both helped me to develop my teaching style and empowered me as a disabled ECT. I argue that, in these cases, sharing my personal experiences helps to complement the teaching materials and, as a result, increases my confidence as a teacher. However, this teaching style is deeply personal and also poses some challenges. I will be utilizing spatial analysis to understand how sharing my experiences has shaped my teaching style. In particular, I will highlight how different teaching spaces and the different students occupying those spaces can affect whether and how I choose to share particular, personal experiences in the learning environment. In this chapter, I therefore demonstrate how teaching spaces can be both empowering and disempowering for me as a disabled ECT. In the first section of this chapter, I question who should teach Disability Studies. In Disability Studies, the ‘disabled identity’ of the teacher is important to consider. It is argued that disabled teachers can offer knowledge through their bodies and experiences (Sheridan and Kotevski, 2014). This adds another dimension to the teaching and learning experience for students of the discipline of Disability Studies. I then move on to explore how teaching spaces can be empowering for me as a disabled ECT. I focus on the importance of ‘space’ within

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the context of constructing identities, building confidence and teaching. This provides a base for understanding how spaces can be empowering. However, in the last section I also complicate this by showing how teaching spaces can also be disempowering, depending on the type of student cohort who also occupy those spaces.

Who Teaches Disability Studies? Disabled people are often marginalized or excluded from Higher Education (HE) (Cassuto, 1999; Brown and Leigh, 2018). Problems such as inaccessible campuses can automatically restrict access to HE for a number of disabled people. As a disabled ECT, I disrupt traditional exclusions, which render disabled people invisible in academia and in leadership positions. I therefore consider myself to be in a privileged position as a disabled ECT. Yet it is still the case that my disability has often made me feel insecure in my occupation. Furthermore, as Remmik et al. (2011) point out, it is common for ECTs to feel insecure in HE, especially as they often start with limited or no teacher training. I had had very little training when I first started teaching. Although later I was enrolled on to a Postgraduate Teaching Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, I still felt I lacked practical experience. Thus, as a disabled ECT I felt very insecure about my identity as a teacher. However, drawing on my experiences as a disabled person aided in building my confidence as an ECT. My knowledge and experiences shape my expertise within Disability Studies. I use my personal experiences as a way to supplement the teaching material, making them auxiliary to knowledge transfer and to the students’ overall learning experience. In the Disability Studies literature concerning teaching and the nature of the discipline, whether or not the lecturer has an impairment is an important topic of debate. It has been shown that a non-disabled teacher does not have the same level of insight about disabling experiences as a disabled teacher does (Smart, 2001). For instance, as a disabled ECT, I have a different experience and perspective of the world in comparison to a non-disabled teacher. Rob Kitchin (2000) suggests that only disabled people know what it is truly like to be disabled and thus only they can accurately express disability knowledge. For example, when I was giving a lecture exploring dwarfism in the media, I explained how their media representation leads people with dwarfism to experience unwanted social attention within society. Here, I am not arguing



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that non-disabled academics should not teach Disability Studies, but rather demonstrating that being disabled and using my own standpoint has added an extra dimension to my teaching practice. It enables me to make abstract theory concrete through the narration of examples from my everyday experiences. Drawing on real-life experiences in my teaching has therefore helped me to develop as an ECT and has given me confidence in the value that I bring to teaching within my discipline. Of course, not all disabled people share the same experiences. My conversations with a professor who works at my institution, and who is visually impaired, made me especially attuned to the fact that the experiences of a disabled individual cannot be universalized. Furthermore, intersectionality is a factor that needs to be considered. For example, as a female with dwarfism, from a working-class background, my disabling experiences will differ to a man with dwarfism from an upper-class background.

Converting Disabling Spaces into Empowering Spaces Spaces can be both empowering and disempowering, depending on their intended purposes (Cresswell, 2015). For example, a classroom is identified as a space of learning, whereas a pub is viewed as a space to socialize. These spaces have different meanings that help acknowledge how different bodies and their identities are perceived within them. According to Doreen Massey (1994: 3), an economic and social geographer and a key theorist within spatial theory, ‘the social relations of space are experienced differently, and variously interpreted, by those holding different positions as part of it’. For example, a space can be gendered (Massey, 1994) or ableist (Gleeson, 1999). I argue that it can also be dependent on a combination of these identities; for example, I can experience spaces differently as an ECT or as a female ECT with dwarfism. How we respond to different people is dependent on their identity within a particular space. As a person with dwarfism, I navigate spaces differently due to the social attitudes within them. I avoid certain spaces (such as my local shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon) in order to avoid being stared at, called names or even photographed. Avoiding spaces because of unwanted attention is a disempowering experience. When I enter a teaching space, my identity changes as I become an ECT with dwarfism. Having to present in front of a few hundred students may seem daunting to some people, but to me it is an empowering experience: I create a platform to share my experiences

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and educate others. Dwarfism provides me with material that enhances my learning and teaching activities, and this has aided my development as an ECT. The materiality of a certain space can also be disempowering, especially as spaces are predominantly constructed to accommodate the average-sized, ablebodied person. I am aware that my encounters with inaccessible spaces can draw more attention to my body size. It feels like everyone is looking at my inability to do something, especially if it is something perceived generally as simple, such as opening a door – this frequently occurs because the handle is out of reach. As a disabled ECT, especially when I was hourly paid and not on contract, I did not want to raise with the university some of the access issues I was experiencing. I felt that if I complained about the barriers I encountered, or if I asked for accommodations, then this would have been reason enough for the university not to give me a permanent contract. However, dealing with disabling barriers has turned out to be an unexpected teaching tool. The disabling barriers I encounter within the classroom are unavoidable and cannot be hidden from the students. This has forced me to use these barriers as a teaching point/tool, rather than attempting to hide them or compensate for them. For example, when I give a lecture, I have to stand on a chair to see over the standing lectern. At first, I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable having to do this in my position as an ECT as I was performing the task in front of the class. Since it was unavoidable, I decided to raise it as an issue with the students. A disabled teacher thus provides supplementary and contextual learning about disability (Sheridan and Kotevski, 2014). Using them as a teaching tool helps me to develop as an ECT. The first experience I shared was when I was an ECT at a university in the north-east of England. I was teaching a group of Human Geography students about the subject of geographies of disability. The students were required to complete a disability audit of the building they were situated within. None of them had any visible impairment. It was possible that they lacked any first-hand experience of being disabled. When I asked them if the building was accessible for disabled people, their response was ‘yes, it was’. Due to having a lift, the students claimed that the building was accessible for disabled people; they equated disability with being a wheelchair user. I then asked if I was disabled. They replied ‘no’. That meant that they did not see me as a disabled person, yet I had encountered many disabling experiences in that building. I then asked them: why did I have to ask one of them to turn on the lights as they entered the classroom? This helped to question their understanding of what disability



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actually is. I shared this experience to challenge dominant attitudes towards disability prevalent in society. Andrea Revell and Emma Wainwright (2009: 215) explain that ‘students highlighted that embedding lectures in the “real world” increased the relevance of what they were learning and encouraged them to make integrative links with their own experiences and interpretations of reality’. Questioning students’ understanding and using my own examples of interacting within a disabling environment helped them to be more thoughtful when it came to completing their disability audits. This I felt was an accomplishment for me as an ECT, as my experiences were used to help them to do better on their disability audit assignment. They had considered a wide range of impairments, including body size, as opposed to just wheelchair users. It was during a conversation with one of my students that I realized that they are aware of some of my disabling experiences in the classroom. The student told me how they recognized that I had to stand on a chair to see out of the window and that they thought that it was unfair that the campus was not fully accessible for me. I had not used these examples in my teaching, but the students were still picking up on them, which provoked a surprising teaching opportunity for me. When the student was explaining her observations to me, I sensed a sympathetic tone, which is a common reaction towards disabled people. I thought it was important to steer away from this as the intention of Disability Studies, even with a personal connection, is not to evoke pity but to show and give an insight into disabling environments (Chouinard and Grant, 1995). I did not challenge the student’s pity towards me but instead redirected her concern and asked her how we could make these spaces more accommodating. This again became part of the learning experience that is relevant to Disability Studies. It also helped me to develop as an ECT as I become aware that I could use these instances as a form of teaching to give me confidence in my teaching practice by treading on the more familiar terrain I felt I could talk about and relate to with more confidence. I am aware of the importance of striking a balance between presenting subject-based knowledge and sharing my personal experiences to enhance understanding of the subject matter. I am often worried that my teaching may just turn into a long ramble about my own experiences. As an ECT I felt unsure of the balance between sharing stories and teaching as I did not feel experienced enough to make a judgement on how much of what I was sharing was actually useful for my students’ learning. Leonard Cassuto (1999) argues that it is important to make a distinction between the professional and personal. It is

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essential for the students to fulfil the set learning outcomes in order to complete their studies. I want to ensure that my examples are only used to support rather than supplant my teaching. A good teacher is often conceptualized as selfreflective, and this self-reflection is an ongoing process (Biggs and Tang, 2011). As an ECT, I found it important to constantly reflect on my teaching style. This has helped me to develop a teaching style that brings curriculum content to life by providing relevant anecdotes. My ability to share my experiences is down to confidence. Samantha Wilkinson (2019) explores how as an ECT she had to employ a number of coping strategies in order to develop her teaching abilities and to be taken seriously in her role. Confidence as an ECT is something I have had to develop. Getting to know the students has allowed me to judge how much information I should share as well as what to share. At first, I did not know how they would respond to my social experiences. When I first began working as an ECT, I was more worried about how the students would react to the experiences that I shared, especially towards some of the social encounters I have experienced off campus. There is this tension between sharing experiences to help students understand something and not wanting to construct yourself as a freak. As a disabled person, the messages people convey to me in the street can often make me feel inferior, which I do not want, as an ECT, to be seen as. For example, being photographed in public because someone finds my dwarfism amusing is a humiliating experience. Telling someone else about such experiences can make you feel powerless, which is not the image you want to project when you are new to teaching in HE. As an ECT, you seek to feel more in control of the class, which provides you with an empowered identity within that space. However, having the confidence to share these experiences and use them as a teaching tool helped to turn them into empowering experiences. I first noticed the difference between student reactions and other members of the public towards my dwarfism when I was teaching about the topic of disability hate speech. Disability hate speech can include the use of terms such as ‘midget’ and ‘retard’. These terms are generally used in public and within the media, so I knew that the majority of my students would be aware of them. I am often called a ‘midget’ when I am out in public, but I have never experienced it being used towards me on campus. As a class activity, I asked students to shout out whatever disablist terms they could think of. I wanted to draw attention to these terms in order to generate discussion. The room went silent. I began to realize that reactions towards me in and out of the classroom differed, which allowed me to create something positive out of them. It also helped to build my confidence



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as an ECT, who started to feel more in control of the class and felt more aware of their behaviours. The reaction to this experience helped to highlight the respect students had for me, which helped to enhance my confidence as an ECT as I recognized the classroom as a safe space. As an ECT I often feel inexperienced in my role, so I am looking for ways to improve on my profession; this includes finding ways to improve student engagement. If students do not engage in class discussions, I often feel that it is my fault as I do not have the right skills to facilitate and encourage student participation. Wilkinson (2019) explores how ECTs can often feel inadequate and undeserving of their new teaching roles. Sharing my experiences has helped prompt and encourage discussions, which has made me feel more confident that my role as an ECT is deserved. Of course, my personal experiences do not cover all topics within Disability Studies. For example, I cannot use my experiences to speak about dyslexia, as I do not have first-hand experience of this impairment. Vera Chouinard (2000) argues that disabled academics must be responsible speakers; they should not claim to speak on behalf of all disabled people as this works to invalidate other experiences. What I can do is encourage disabled students to share their experiences. Being a disabled ECT makes me more sensitive to their experiences; my ability to connect and show empathy means the student may be more comfortable sharing their experience. Alternatively, it can help them share experiences that relate to a disabled friend or family member. This is particularly helpful within seminars, which I have found are often difficult to engage students with, as students do not always like, or feel confident in, talking in class. During seminars, students are required to discuss particular topics either in small groups or as a whole class. For some disabled students, sharing their experiences is not an easy task. Some can feel embarrassed or think they are going to be judged by other students or myself. I share my experiences to demonstrate an understanding with the students and to show that they have nothing to be embarrassed about in relation to their disability. Kitchin (2000) points out that disabled people will only tell partial stories to a non-disabled person for fear of embarrassment. When I demonstrated how inaccessible the lecture theatre is for me, another disabled student pointed out how it was also disabling for her due to her hearing impairment. I used this as a topic of conversation in order to generate a discussion about how the space is inaccessible for a range of disabled people. The student seemed to be more confident in sharing her experience once I had shared mine. Her ability to share her experience as a result made me feel more confident as an ECT as I had found a way for students to share their

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experiences, which generated discussions and prompted the students to think about their own disabling experiences.

Disempowering Spaces As an ECT in Disability Studies, I started as an hourly paid tutor without a contract. I took on any opportunity to teach. In part, this was because I am used to having to work harder than my peers do in order to prove myself and to challenge problematic misconceptions about disability in relation to employment. Nicole Brown and Jennifer Leigh (2018) suggest that disabled teachers work harder to maintain a role in academia. As a disabled person, at first I felt like I did not belong in academia. I was suffering from the well-known imposter syndrome, experienced frequently within academia (Parkman, 2016). I thought I was going to be found out, which I had experienced many times throughout my education, with my intelligence being questioned by so-called professionals due to their perceptions of disability and more specifically dwarfism. Ruth Butler and Sophia Bowlby (1997) suggest that there is an assumption that people with a physical impairment also have learning difficulties. As a person with dwarfism, I have been told that I am stupid because I am small, and school teachers told my mother that I would amount to nothing. Even though I had gained a PhD and was working in HE, I still felt that there must have been a mistake made somewhere and that I was stupid. I have often felt that I have had to prove myself in order to become a recognized member of staff. A disabled person occupying the role of teacher is often discredited (Campbell, 2009). John Bricout and Kia Bentley (2000) point out that employers are less likely to hire a disabled person than a non-disabled applicant with the same qualifications and experience. Furthermore, Wilson et al. (2006) found that disabled teachers felt that their disability hindered their career progression as their teaching capacities were underestimated. I felt this when a colleague who had not yet gained her PhD was put on contract before me (I had achieved my PhD the previous year). In addition, my identity as a disabled, female ECT can also have a negative effect on my teaching process. Jacqueline Granleese and Gemma Sayer (2006) argue that female academics are discriminated against both because of their age and gender in ways that their male counterparts are not. Being both female and disabled created a unique form of discrimination that posed difficulties in performing as an ECT.



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Part of my role as an ECT is to teach at one of our two network campuses, which make up the ‘Network of Hope’ (NoH). The network campuses are based in Further Education colleges in the north-west of England. They act as satellite sites for our university. The purpose of the NoH is to allow people to study for a degree alongside other commitments, such as work. The NoH spaces are dominated by a different type of student, usually women who are older than me and have experience teaching in schools. The different type of person occupying a space can subtly change its meaning and the dynamics of the space. Who occupies the space influences how the space is constructed, in this case as ableist and ageist. This can change the power relations within the space. I have found teaching at the NoH to be an intimidating experience rather than an empowering one, especially as a much younger, disabled woman. Karen Rodham (2018) points out that it is not unusual for young, female academics to experience ageism from mature students as they struggle to be taught by someone younger than them. This means I have to pick which classes I choose to share my experiences with, as I do not want to share experiences that may undermine my authority within the classroom, particularly as they might contribute to existing perceptions of my age, gender and disability that may make me seem inferior and powerless to students. Some of the ageist and ableist attitudes from the students have helped them to dominate the space, and this has impacted upon my confidence as an ECT. Some students have asked me directly if I had a PhD, even though my title clearly states ‘Dr’ in the course handbook and via email communications. These attitudes have undermined my capabilities as a teacher, especially because I do not yet feel established in my profession. As Wilkinson (2019) points out, ECTs can often feel that they lack knowledge of the course content and feel unprepared for teaching. Sometimes NoH students would question my teaching abilities in front of the class, and one particular student would try and act on par with me and subsequently try and dominate the classroom. For example, she would tell me that I would have to stay until 9.00 pm and if I skipped any PowerPoint slides she would highlight this as an issue. These behaviours exacerbated my imposter syndrome, as I felt my teaching was not adequate. According to Tim Cresswell (2015), the meaning of a space can impact the power relations between the people who occupy them. As an ECT, delivering material close to my expertise, I should have held more power. However, the student’s behaviour interfered with the expected dynamics. Consequently, I try to avoid academic spaces that can be disempowering, as they can compound negative feelings and experiences for me.

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Conclusion The type of teaching space an ECT occupies can influence their teaching practices. Sharing experiences can be beneficial for teaching and learning in numerous ways. As a teacher who was new to the field, I had to develop my own effective ways of teaching. This primarily involved sharing my personal disabling experiences, which worked to enhance students’ learning by making the abstract concrete. Building a rapport with students allowed me to grow in confidence in my teaching practice. Sharing personal experiences can be beneficial for developing teaching practice. Although this can be difficult to do, and sometimes goes against my instinct to demonstrate authority in the classroom and counter my own imposter syndrome, sharing my experience has helped me develop as an ECT. Nevertheless, the experiences that I have shared here cannot be applied to all disabled people. Even other people with dwarfism will have experienced different situations, especially when influenced by their other identities, such as their ethnicity and gender.

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What Has Sexuality Got To Do with It? Negotiating a Professional Identity as a Gay Early Career Teacher Ben Colliver

‘Welcome, today we are going to be talking about gender, sexuality and Queer Criminology.’ *Muttering, giggles and disruption* ‘So, we will be talking about the historic criminalisation of gender and sexual minorities, looking at how homosexuality has been constructed as deviant.’ *Group of male students laugh, collect their belongings and leave the session*

Introduction Although the experience described above is not an everyday occurrence in my professional life, it is certainly not a unique experience either. In this chapter, I seek to offer personal reflections upon such experiences in my transition from working in industry to teaching in Higher Education (HE) as an openly gay, Early Career Teacher (ECT). This transition is somewhat unique, in that my professional identity outside of HE centred, and depended, upon my personal identity as a gay man. Transitioning into HE, my personal identity was no longer core to my professional identity. It is important to contextualize my experiences as an openly gay ECT in the social setting within which I negotiate my identity. I teach in a large inner-city, post-92 university in the West Midlands. The location of the institution is important, as the diversity of the student population is reflective of the wider community population. Although a diverse student population can facilitate co-learning and have a positive effect on educational

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outcomes (Chang, 1999), it can also create difficulties when teaching culturally sensitive material. There is currently a surge of queer culture and lifestyles in mainstream consciousness, most notably through the rise in popularity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people within the arts and popular culture (Peele, 2007). This contributes to the possibility of living an authentically queer life within a heteronormative world (Stryker, 2006). Although Susan Stryker was specifically discussing issues of gender identity, the same argument can be made for broader LGBTQ+ communities who have moved from increased representation to the opportunity to live an authentic reality. It is important to note that white, gay men tend to be overrepresented in comparison to more diverse LGBTQ+ communities, and this reinforces notions of ‘homonormativity’ (Podmore, 2013). The increased acceptance and assimilation of LGBTQ+ lives into the mainstream is not universal and sets expectations around what ‘type’ of LGBTQ+ person is acceptable in particular settings (Brown, 2012). Expectations of the way LGBTQ+ people should present themselves influenced the way I constructed my professional identity as an ECT. However, alongside the growing visibility of queer culture, we also live in a political climate that legitimizes hate speech. With the acceptance of discriminatory language used by those who are most powerful in society, it is unsurprising to see rising levels of hate shown towards minority groups within the UK (Home Office, 2019). This has contributed to minority groups feeling insecure, unsafe and censoring their behaviour in order to conceal their ‘difference’. It has been over fifteen years since ‘Section 28’ prevented the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by local authorities and schools in Britain, but we are still engaged in the same debates concerning the appropriateness of teaching lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) content in schools. This has been most notable in the protests across the West Midlands, but particularly in Birmingham in response to ‘No Outsiders’ – an educational programme that seeks to address issues of equality, diversity and acceptance in schools (Colliver, 2019). The narratives surrounding the protest mobilize discourses of mental health, religion and nature to delegitimize LGBTQ+ people (Colliver, Coyle and Silvestri, 2019). Although HE has not been the focal point of these protests, the content and geographical proximity of the protests has had an impact on my self-identification as a gay ECT. Negotiating a professional identity that remains true to my authentic personal identity in a social climate that seeks to silence my voice, to suppress my existence and to position me as the ‘immoral other’ is a complex and difficult task.



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In this chapter, I offer a personal reflection on my career transition from industry to HE and the various challenges that I have encountered as an ECT throughout this transition. The chapter begins by offering a contextualization of my previous work in industry and how my sexual identity was central to my professional identity in this role. I then move on to discuss the changing landscape of HE within a neoliberal context, specifically focusing on the implications that this has for ECTs in relation to ensuring student satisfaction. I highlight the impact that these concerns can have on what content is taught and how it is taught. I finish the chapter by offering a more detailed account of issues I faced when teaching gender and sexuality within HE; I reflect upon the additional emotional labour that comes with teaching the personal (Koster, 2011).

Transitioning from Industry Before beginning a career within academia, I worked for a leading equality and diversity organization as an LGBTQ+ youth worker. My role involved supporting young LGBTQ+ people across a number of issues they faced routinely, including hate crime, mental health, substance use and sexual health. My lived experience as a gay man was therefore core to my professional identity and practice in this role. As such, my personal and professional identities were interconnected, interdependent and intertwined. This was not simply a personal sense of affinity between the personal and professional. Under the Equality Act (2010), organizations can stipulate that potential employees must identify as LGBTQ+ if there is a genuine occupational requirement that justifies this recruitment procedure. Owing to the specific group of young people I intended to work alongside, I gained my employment in this role on the basis of my identification as a gay man (alongside my other experiences and qualifications). Consequently, it became difficult at times for me to distinguish between my personal and professional identities. As a vocal and visible supporter of the LGBTQ+ equality movement, my identity as an activist was nurtured and encouraged throughout my time as a youth worker. Not only did I consider my role as a youth worker to be activist in nature, the organization I worked in also had an activist agenda. This made it easy to locate my own values and biography within my professional role. However, the type of professionalism that is required for teaching in HE is different from the type of professionalism required for youth work (Corney, 2006). Both industries require staff to be relatable, adaptable and able to work under pressure, but these qualities are manifested very differently. My

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experience as a youth worker required me to be significantly more informal, in both language and appearance. I was predominantly seen as a mentor and ‘client focused’ rather than an educator and ‘institutionally focused’, despite having an educational role. The focus on education was thus grounded in co-production (Wood, Westwood and Thompson, 2015). Whilst the educational elements of youth work were highly structured, they were delivered in a way that appeared much less structured than they actually were. This helped redress the general want and need for young people’s informal learning. On the other hand, students within HE position me as an educator first and as a mentor second. Students expect me to provide structured, coherent and fluid content and this was significantly different to my experience as a youth worker. As an ECT new to academia, this transition period into my new role proved to be a time of uncertainty, rediscovery and reformation of the self (Sinner, 2012). Not only was I adjusting to new institution rules and regulations, but I also was adapting to a new method of engagement with the young people I worked with. Despite this, I tried to adopt some of my experiences as a youth worker to provide a different learning experience for students that centred on active and problembased learning (Pedler and Abbott, 2013). As a youth worker, I could only engage students through active, practical forms of learning. Part of establishing a stable identity as an ECT involved me bringing my understanding and experiences as a youth worker to bear on forging this new professional identity. However, it was not simply the methods of engagement with young people and students that was reshaped during my career change. I also engaged in a significant shift in the focus and content of my work. My role as an ‘LGBTQ+ Youth Worker’ saw me engaged primarily with content and issues that relate to gender identity and sexuality. The transition to HE as an ECT involved a reorientation of this focus. Although still the focus of my research, issues of gender identity and sexuality as topics of teaching were located on the periphery of my lecturing role. Although I still have the opportunity to teach and engage students with content that relates to gender identity and sexuality, this is often as a ‘guest lecture’ within an existing programme. In other words, the content is not embedded throughout the core curriculum. It is important to note the specific discipline that I work within at this point, Criminology, which has been characterized as a ‘masculine’ discipline (Wilson, 1991). Mainstream, commonly taught Criminology topics are still characterized by heteronormativity and a reliance on a binary understanding of gender and sexuality (Dwyer, Ball and Crofts, 2016). Additionally, the institution of HE has also been described as a heteronormative space, which reproduces and reinforces heteronormativity



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(Matthyse, 2017). As an ECT with an activist life history, I have struggled to centre issues of gender identity and sexuality within this masculine, heteronormative discipline. This has implications for my own journey in establishing a professional identity within the confines of disciplinary norms and expectations. In this sense, I engaged in a ‘double searching’ for identity during this transition period, both trying to establish an authentic professional identity as an ECT and developing a professional identity that met the needs of my personal values and my gay identity. It is important to note that this is not a search that is unique to teachers in the discipline of Criminology, as researchers have noted the heteronormativity of the curriculum across HE (Epstein, O’Flynn and Telford, 2003). These issues of heteronormativity are compounded by the institutional culture of universities operating in an increasing neoliberal landscape (Taylor and Lahad, 2018).

The Neoliberal University and Student Comfort Following the expansion and reform of HE in the 1960s, many scholars have claimed that access to university was transformed from elite to mass access (Trow, 2010). Prior to and alongside this transformation, scholars had begun to challenge the purpose of education (Dewey, 1900, 1902). University was being conceptualized as a place of intellectual growth, challenge and stimulation through which social reform should take place (Dewey, 1900). In this sense, it was argued that the purpose of university was to interrogate, displace and shift students’ opinions and assumptions. Nevertheless, the university institution has transformed again owing to the growth of a neoliberal society (Decuypere and Simons, 2019). As a result, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK are primarily and increasingly concerned with league table positions, their National Student Survey (NSS) results and the so-called student experience (Thiel, 2019). As an ECT, I bring my own biography and history with me to the learning environment. I have expectations and assumptions regarding what creates an effective teaching experience. At the same time, I have to create this environment whilst meeting the expectations of the institution and students (Flores and Day, 2006). Additionally, as an ECT on probation, my fear of complaints and of student dissatisfaction caused by my challenging their assumptions limits how free I am to engage in transformative education (Taylor and Lahad, 2018). The neoliberal institution can therefore actually prohibit transformative learning – that is, learning which contradicts and contests students’ assumption, prejudices

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and oppressive thinking (O’Sullivan, Morrell and O’Connor, 2002). This has been a particularly difficult experience for me as an ECT who tries explicitly to engage students in critical thinking around the gender binary and non-normative sexualities, especially when my discussions and suggestions are met with resistance from students who may hold very fixed, binary understandings of the world. As an ECT, these experiences make me apprehensive about continuing to address these issues for fear of student disengagement and dissatisfaction. Extended probation periods, continual student evaluations and a strong focus on NSS results may also prohibit ECTs from engaging in teaching that disrupts students’ comfort zone. Given that ECTs are especially vulnerable to student satisfaction metrics, the pressure of conformity to student expectations may be overwhelming to the point where challenging content is avoided. This is situated in the wider landscape of HE, in which job security is increasingly difficult to establish and fixed-term contracts are commonplace, with an estimated 33 per cent of academic staff in the UK on fixed-term contracts (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2019). As an ECT who is motivated by a commitment to disrupt oppressive understandings of sexuality and gender identity, navigating this neoliberal institutional landscape is extremely complex. In the next section of this chapter, I will provide some examples of difficulties that I have faced when engaging students in this content and the impact this has on me as an ECT.

Professional Teaching of Personal Issues It has been noted that students believe the most effective teachers are those who convey an ‘authentic’ identity (Wright, 2013). Although the definition and meaning of ‘authenticity’ is contested (Kreber et al., 2007), it arguably denotes a teacher who fuses both their personal and professional identities (Cranton, 2001). Being an openly gay lecturer in Criminology is an important personal choice. Given my experience within industry where my personal identity played such a pivotal role in my professional identity, it was important for me to not lose a sense of self when establishing a new professional identity within a heteronormative institution (Matthyse, 2017). The perceived benefits of teachers within HE ‘coming out’ have been documented (Clarke and Braun, 2009). It has been argued that being openly LGBTQ+ within the classroom can be empowering for the teacher and contributes to an authentic learning environment (Orlov and Allen, 2014).



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However, being an openly gay ECT within a heteronormative discipline is not without challenges. As an ECT who strongly believes in challenging heteronormative assumptions, I feel a strong commitment to integrating issues of gender and sexuality into the Criminology curriculum. I believe that doing this will help to avoid situations such as those described above, as LGBTQ+ content will become less remarkable as it is more fully integrated across the curriculum. Although a need to challenge heteronormative assumptions is not specifically related to my identity as an ECT, the resources available to me in order to achieve this are affected by my early career position. I have experienced apathy from some colleagues when designing new modules which centre around the lives and experiences of queer people. On the other hand, some colleagues are extremely supportive, but institutional restrictions and policy can prevent the ease of integration of new modules and content. As an ECT, I feel a need to assimilate into existing institutional culture rather than to challenge or disrupt the status quo. As a result, I am apprehensive about pushing an agenda that centres queer lives when I sense resistance. Additionally, as an ECT, I do not feel authoritative enough to be able to interrogate institutional policies or practices that hinder the integration of more critical forms of Criminology into the curriculum. Interestingly, colleagues demonstrate support for teaching issues of gender and sexuality when it fits within the broader needs of the institution, in relation to its responsibility to equality and diversity. In this sense, issues of gender and sexuality are welcomed when they coincide with wider institutional processes that may be more about appearance rather than a desire to critically engage students with content. As a staff member new to teaching and new to the institution, I often feel powerless in relation to what I teach. This can cause issues, particularly when teaching on modules in which the content I am expected to deliver feeds in to heteronormative assumptions. As an ECT I feel a lack of authority and experience that renders me less able to question the content provided by a more experienced colleague. I often feel a sense of frustration when expected to deliver content that fails to acknowledge an issue through the lens of gender and sexuality, particularly when adopting this stance would offer a more insightful, critical perspective. I often find myself moving away from providing content and engaging in a more critical form of activist-focused teaching. However, this is inconsistent, as I am critically aware of my position as an ECT and the precariousness of my position. This is not always the case and I do have relative freedom in terms of content that is provided within modules that I coordinate.

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Nevertheless, I often still feel restricted in introducing LGBTQ+ content into the curriculum as a result of student responses and perceptions. Experiences of discrimination and the negative perceptions of teachers who are openly LGBTQ+ within the classroom have been documented, with some students perceiving visible LGBTQ+ messages as a cry for help or revealing an unhealthy obsession with sexuality (Clarke, 2019). For me, these kinds of issues ring true and match up with some of my own experiences. I have been asked by students why I paid so much attention to LGBTQ+ issues. Research has pointed to problematic student perceptions of LGBTQ+ lives when they are used as examples within teaching (Ripley et al., 2012). In my teaching, the use of around three examples of research exploring LGBTQ+ issues within a twelve-week module was perceived by some students to be a significant amount of attention. This experience reinforces the unremarkable nature of heterosexuality and that this provides a lens through which students conceptualize LGBTQ+ content as remarkable and more noticeable when discussed. As an ECT who is establishing a professional identity that centres around issues of gender and sexuality, significant tension between students’ expectations of taught content and my desire to address heteronormative assumptions arise. Given my relatively recent transition into HE, I often question the content of my sessions due to experiences described above. Whilst I still seek to raise greater awareness of heteronormativity and give an increased level of visibility to nonnormative gender and sexual identities, I lack a certain level of confidence that may be gained with experience. I also find that in sessions which have examples that relate to LGBTQ+ issues, students challenge and question me around broader criminological issues that are not specifically related to the content being engaged with. As an openly gay ECT, I perceive these challenges to be directly related to my identity as an ECT and as a gay man. It feels as though students impose my gay identity on me as a master status and see me as an educator second. As such, as an ECT, they interrogate and question in order to establish how knowledgeable I am on wider criminological issues that do not centre on gender and sexuality. This directly links to my status as an ECT, in that students may perceive me to be less experienced, less knowledgeable and therefore less appropriate as a teacher. If my personal identity did not influence my professional identity and I engaged students with content and material that was more readily associated with Criminology, I may be perceived as being more authoritative in the discipline. As a result of experiencing these barriers to integrating LGBTQ+ content across the curriculum, I adopted new methods and approaches to expose



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students to non-heteronormative content. I now adopt a performative element in my teaching. For me, it is a conscious decision to be an openly gay teacher, and in establishing an identity as an ECT, I have decided to engage in a performance of ‘high camp’, that is, an intentionally exaggerated and artificial ‘campness’ (Macwilliam, 2014). As an ECT, adopting a performative element to teaching eases the tension between my personal identity and expected professional identity. This approach perceives the teaching space as a performance space, one that can inherently disrupt heteronormative assumptions in the delivery of teaching. As argued by Norman Denzin (2009), performance can be understood to be activist in nature; it aims to interrupt and resist dominant narratives about particular social issues. I therefore engage in a ‘camp’ performance in my teaching practice as a form of activism, to unsettle students’ expectations about who teaches Criminology and to expose students to issues of sexuality and gender performance throughout the curriculum, even if it is not directly related to the specific content taught. Consequently, students’ assumptions about masculinity and heterosexuality are challenged by my performance, even when they engage with heteronormative Criminology content. Being ‘camp’ may be assumed to be an expected way for gay men to present themselves, often reinforced by media representations which commonly draw upon stereotypes in an attempt to ridicule LGBTQ+ people (Raley and Lucas, 2006). However, given the heteronormativity of the discipline, it challenges students’ expectations around who engages with and teaches Criminology. Whilst this approach does challenge student assumptions, it can also create issues when engaging in teaching. Engaging in a ‘high camp’ performance has enabled me to engage a number of students with the content being taught. However, there are some instances where I feel that this style of performance, alongside my status as an ECT, undermines my authority in the learning space. In some instances, students may take me less seriously when they are asked to complete a task, or refrain from talking. Adopting a performative style when teaching can also contribute to making classroom management problematic, as there are times in which an apparent division manifests between the ‘performer’ and the ‘spectators’. Resultantly, students are expecting to observe, and to view, rather than engage and take direction. As such, classroom management can become difficult, as students have come to expect a performative experience, rather than a traditional authoritative, teacher-student experience. Nonetheless, despite the setbacks mentioned, I have found opportunities to engage students explicitly with LGBTQ+ content. I teach on a module that explores the way a number of issues are socially constructed, including gender

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and sexuality. Originating from women’s and LGBTQ+ movements throughout the 1970s, the concept of ‘safe spaces’ within an educational setting has received numerous critiques (Flensner and Von der Lippe, 2019). Whilst I agree with Robert Boostrom (1998) that education should at times be disruptive and uncomfortable, I try to create this in relation to challenging oppressive and problematic beliefs. I attempt to prevent already marginalized students experiencing discomfort, through interrogating and deconstructing prejudicial, delegitimizing and discriminatory language. I therefore operate within a framework of ‘respectfulness’. Within this context, students are required to be considerate of others within the learning space when choosing what language to use. However, as I simultaneously require students to be open and honest about their perceptions, it is difficult to challenge oppressive perspectives if they cannot be voiced within the classroom. It is also important for me in establishing my identity as an ECT to balance my activist values and my role as an impartial facilitator of learning. For instance, I am acutely aware of the negative impact exposure to discriminatory language can have on minority groups. Navigating this requires significant personal negotiation between addressing ‘problematic’ viewpoints and acknowledging that my interpretation of ‘problematic’ is subjective. My status as an ECT also compounds these tensions in a number of ways. Some students may perceive me to be less experienced, less authoritative and less likely to challenge problematic language than more experienced staff. On the other hand, some students may not always feel comfortable disclosing opinions around gender and sexuality that they feel may be in contradiction with my own personal beliefs. This might be due to me being a ‘teacher’ figure and/or a young ECT who is relatively close in age to a number of students. As a result, students may also perceive me to be more of a role model or mentor (without the paternal connotations). This comes with a huge pressure and sense of responsibility in relation to continually challenging oppressive or problematic perspectives, as I have to take on the personal responsibility of embodying activism. The content of student assessments contained varying levels of homophobia, transphobia and elements of heteronormativity underpinning the critical discussion, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. This was a particularly challenging time for me as I entered HE and had to begin to distinguish between my personal and professional identities as an ECT. My professional identity required me to engage with student assessments in an objective, fair and transparent way. On the other hand, my personal identity urged me to challenge



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students more directly. Establishing a balance between the professional and the personal proved to be a complex task. Certainly, the impact on my professional identity was notable, as I had begun to question how effective I had been in facilitating a transformative educational experience. Simultaneously, I found that I began to experience significantly more turmoil in my personal life as well, because of my exposure to such discriminatory and prejudice language. It is therefore important to acknowledge the additional emotional labour that teaching the personal can bring. It is important to acknowledge that this additional emotional labour resulting from teaching the personal is not necessarily unique to ECTs. However, teachers who are early in their careers may not have the experience or expertise to manage the impact of this emotional labour effectively (Lindqvist, 2019). This was particularly challenging for me within a professional context, given my professional identity before teaching was always focused on uplifting and positive messages of sexual liberation and diversity. I have noted that being an openly gay ECT, I am often called upon to engage students in issues of sexuality. This contributes to the additional emotional labour I experience, as the responsibility for challenging heteronormativity tends to only fall upon a few members of staff, often early career, rather than being an overarching, institutional goal. As an ECT, when I am ‘called upon’ to engage in issues of gender and sexuality, I often feel pressured to agree because of my status as an ECT. This is because it is important for me to establish myself as a ‘team player’, and part of this involves participating in activities and initiatives that may increase the emotional labour I experience. Although all ECTs may be ‘called upon’ within different contexts, not all tasks will bear an additional emotional labour for the ECT, in the way that engaging in the personal does.

Conclusion In this chapter I have reflected upon my transition from industry to HE as an openly gay ECT. I have contextualized my experiences within the transformed landscape of my institution, which operates in a British HE sector that is underpinned by neoliberal values and that positions students as consumers. The current landscape of HE within the UK can create difficulties for ECTs to engage students in critical thought and to challenge problematic perspectives that contribute to the oppression of others. Moreover, I experience additional emotional labour as an openly gay teacher who engages students with LGBTQ+

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content and sometimes feel additional pressure as one of the only people responsible for delivering this content. Emotional labour cannot be quantified or documented in relation to workload. As an ECT, the emotional labour that I experience in my teaching role as a result of openly identifying as a gay man significantly impacts upon my understanding of my professional identity, especially in relation to my effectiveness. However, despite the additional emotional labour I experience, I continue to disclose my sexuality publicly in order to provide oppressed and/or minority students with a role model within a largely heteronormative discipline. Despite some challenging encounters with students, I continue to engage in a performative style of teaching, to continually destabilize and disrupt students’ expectations and perceptions of masculinity and heteronormativity. The performative element to my teaching has been crucial in me building and developing a professional identity as an ECT that eases the tensions between my personal and professional values and expectations. However, as outlined in this chapter, a performative style of teaching can result in a perceived sense of undermined authority, which can create difficulties in effective classroom management, especially when you are relatively new to teaching. Being an openly gay ECT, who professionally teaches the ‘personal’, has been particularly challenging for me.

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Early Career Teachers as Entrepreneurs in American Higher Education: The Politician, Comedian and Busker Thomas Larsen

Introduction It was a school night, 1 October 2019, when I made the forty-five minute drive from San Marcos to Austin, Texas. At the legendary Antone’s nightclub, I saw one of my favourite bands, Hiss Golden Messenger. In the middle of the concert, the bearded lead singer, MC Taylor, asked if there were any teachers in the audience. Hands raised, along with my own. Applause erupted and gratitude united the room. Hiss transitioned to the sentimental title track of its album, ‘I Need a Teacher’. The initial lyrics depict the American condition, ‘Another year older/Debt slightly deeper/Pay check smaller’. The stanza ends with the punchy line, ‘Goddamn I need a teacher’. Early Career Teachers (ECTs) might rephrase Hiss’s title track to ‘Goddamn, I Need a Job’. Doctorate in hand, I naively thought I was entitled to a tenuretrack professorship if I wrote prolifically, taught well and contributed actively in departmental activities. Expectations like these are outdated in a changing world that rewards Jacks and Janes of all trades rather than the master of one (Epstein, 2019). Like many of my peers, I undergo the desperate uncertainty of applying to any and every academic job opening – tenure-track, adjunct, lecturer, research staff, whatever. Forty folders containing separate applications gather digital dust on my hard drive. Sitting on a fold-up chair at my wobbly, salvaged desk (where much of my dissertation was agonized over), I am an itinerant teacher, forced annually back to square one, wondering what advice I would give to someone in a similar position. I write these words while enduring Covid-19 quarantine in a two-bedroom apartment, a lecturer finishing out a first temporary contract

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with a university. At this point, many faculty searches have frozen, leaving many ECTs facing possible unemployment. ECTs in Higher Education (HE) can take cues from social entrepreneurs who succeed by adapting quickly to emerging contexts, discovering alternative outlets beyond established structures and diversifying skill sets (Bornstein, 2007). In this case, the term ‘entrepreneur’ is not used strictly in the economic sense. It is not someone who necessarily adopts a neoliberal disposition towards private enterprise, for the purpose of profit making. Rather, the ‘entrepreneur’ refers to ECTs who undertake new types of projects, seek ways to broaden the impact of their teaching and become their own self-promoters. In this chapter, I begin by assessing the ‘wickedness’ of academic careers. It becomes clear that ECTs, like me, are planting their first step in the equivalent of a thousand-mile Tough Mudder race. Afterward, I explore how three seemingly unrelated professions – the politician, comedian and busker – can instruct ECTs in how to become more entrepreneurial. Throughout this discussion is a collage of books, podcasts, stories, articles and music that somehow contributed to the larger picture of my development as a teacher. The act of arranging and deciphering these fragments of knowledge represents my individual search for meaning as an educator, geographer and human being (Tuan, 2012).

PhD Population Bomb and Peak Enrolment Crossing the threshold from graduate student to faculty member, I learnt a sobering lesson: having a doctorate neither ends one’s problems, nor does it always unlock doors. Competition and exclusivity in academia overwhelm the oft-neglected search for identity and purpose in one’s professional career (Wedemeyer-Strombel, 2019). Shifts happen, and early career educators must accommodate to survive (Lambert and Morgan, 2010). To a point, conditions have improved because more teachers can speak out and provide training against toxic work environments (Bartos and Ives, 2019). There is also greater institutional understanding of how these dire conditions may strain academic relationships (Bartos and Ives, 2019). Yet, teaching then ultimately becomes an experiment in modernity, with instructors making sense of and responding to major social and material changes (Lambert and Morgan, 2010; Konnick, 2020). In HE, ECTs operate within wicked learning environments, ones that stress hyper-specialization and narrowly focused career prospects (Epstein, 2019). Employers traditionally do not consider the doctorate as a versatile degree



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(Wood, 2019). Lingering student debt burdens postgraduates seeking a job in HE with a liveable wage (McKenna, 2016). Two related phenomena contribute to the American situation: the PhD Population Bomb and Peak Enrolment. PhD Population Bomb: There are too many qualified academics with doctorates and not enough positions (Malloy and Berdahl, 2019). The idea of the PhD Population Bomb was inspired by Paul Ehrlich’s famous book, The Population Bomb (1968), which described the global surge in population following the Industrial Revolution. ECTs are needed at all learning levels and geographic contexts, but not all institutions need teachers. Doctorates awarded by US institutions have increased over 600 per cent, from below 8,773 in 1958 to 54,664 in 2017, enough to fill Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium (NSF, 2017). Of those 2017 postgraduates, a full third (33.4 per cent) did not report a definite commitment, which is an agreement, through a contract or other method, ‘to accept employment, including a postdoc study, in the coming year or to return to pre-doctoral employment’ (NSF, 2016: 14). Indeed, definite commitments for recent postgraduates have steadily declined since the early 2000s (NSF, 2016). Impacts of global pandemics (e.g. Covid-19) and economic recessions encourage decisions favouring temporary, non-tenure track employment over secure, tenure-track faculty positions (Frige, 2020). Market stress has often pushed postgraduates to seek employment outside of academia (Malloy and Berdahl, 2019; Wood, 2019). In response, professional organizations like the American Association of Geographers are working to support postgraduates through professional development programs, doctoral career fairs and resource sharing (Kaplan, 2019). Peak Enrolment: Universities have been expanding rapidly, but experts wonder for how long (Frige, 2020). In 2008, the global economy tanked. Cashstrapped Americans had fewer children in the years following. By 2026, offspring born after the 2008 Baby Bust will enter college. Estimates predict noticeable drops in enrolment in the 2020s (Grawe, 2018; Fox, 2019). Since the recession, over five thousand colleges and universities in the United States have increased tuition by an average of 4 per cent each year while augmenting annual spending and employee numbers (Frige, 2020). The Covid-19 shutdown decelerated the neoliberal growth of colleges and universities. Student enrolment peaked at around 2011, and it is unlikely to recover any time soon (NCES, 2020). Reflecting on my own experience, I can identify three entrepreneurial identities that help to make me a more effective, adaptable ECT in HE: the politician, comedian and busker. The politician acknowledges her status as a public figure and carries on regardless of her popularity at a given time. The

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comedian regards teaching as humility-in-practice and an opportunity for refining her act. The busker is a performer who elevates her visibility beyond the classroom through videos, podcasts and writings. Oriented from these three perspectives, a novice faculty member can build a sustainable career, even while uncertainty pervades long-term employment in HE.

The Politician ECTs are like politicians. Both have public-facing occupations. Citizens and journalists rate them on social media platforms. Educators and politicians concern themselves with appealing to diverse audiences. Though there is no catch-all strategy for a politician to win elections, general guidelines are available. Political scientist Allan Lichtman (2016) famously prophesied multiple US presidential elections (yes, even Donald Trump’s 2016 upset victory) with his thirteen keys to the White House. I do not have that many keys for ECTs, but I can provide at least three to manage the public side of teaching. Accept your status as a public figure: Positioning oneself in front of a roomful of college students guarantees being the subject of some judgement or scrutiny. It took three steps for me to fully realize this unsettling shift. I first noticed my new-found role as a public figure when a Rate My Professors profile materialized on the internet for me like morning dew. My eyeballs scanned students’ unfiltered evaluations of me – many positive, some negative – and the perceived difficulty of my classes. A second revelation happened after transitioning from small classrooms to large lecture halls. I caught students slyly taking pictures and videos of me speaking. The third revelation arrived when I overheard students outside my office lamenting about my mid-semester decision to make participation mandatory. From then on, I became hyper-aware of the image I projected. At times, paranoia crept in regarding how that image would be interpreted (or perhaps misinterpreted) by students and outsiders. Things have gotten better as my skin has thickened, but being in any spotlight still makes me feel nervous, anxious and frustrated. Consequently, I feel empathy for politicians, even those I find ludicrous and intolerable. Throughout my brief career as a teacher, I studied the Stoic philosophers. They offer sage advice on the public aspects of teaching. Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic born in 121 ce, penned a helpful line for public servants: ‘In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them’ (Aurelius, 2002: 60). For teachers, mentoring



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students is a proper and necessary occupation, regardless of personal difficulties that lie ahead or fester in our memory. Seneca, a Stoic born in 5 bce, said that we can never ‘be carefree when we think that whenever we are observed we are appraised’ (Seneca, 1997: 103). Calling too much attention to ourselves breaks down our resilience. Paraphrasing Seneca, only by thinking our way through difficulties can harsh conditions be softened, restricted ones be widened and heavy ones weigh less for those who bear them (Seneca, 1997: 91). Eventually, I had to accept my role as a public figure, complete with the responsibilities and side-effects that accompany it. Carry on, despite what the polls say: The braver we are, the happier we are, observed Seneca (1997). No ECT is exempt from negative student reactions. The ability to carry on is a striking feature about many politicians, as they are able to maintain their composure, even when they are widely unpopular. Polarity plagues the United States, though tough decisions, scandal, gossip and conspiracy theories touch both sides of the party line. Teaching, similarly, can become reduced to a popularity contest or a collection of poorly worded ad hominem attacks. Teaching evaluations required by universities often say less about how the course ought to be improved and more about students’ biases towards the teacher (Gupta, Garg and Kumar, 2018; Fan et al., 2019). Educators in my field of geography stress getting some mental distance from student evaluations, seeking a trusted colleague’s opinion and determining which comments are constructive and which are inflammatory or useless (Dawson, 2009b). Time is limited and valuable, so it benefits ECTs to prioritize tasks and be systematic in response to student feedback (Foote, 2009; see also Box 9.1). I handle the feedback issue by reminding students of three things: I am human, constructive feedback is an important leadership skill and I care about making this course better for future students. At some point, ECTs make unpopular decisions which negatively affect students’ perceptions and teaching evaluations. Aurelius affirmed, ‘If an action or utterance is appropriate, then it’s appropriate for you. Don’t be put off by other people’s comments and criticism. If it’s right to say or do it, then it’s the right thing for you to do or say’ (Aurelius, 2002: 54). Making tough choices in the classroom does not always elicit the desired response from some students. I learned the hard way that managing courses is just as crucial as designing lectures. During my first year as a doctorate, I had trouble managing two 122-person lecture halls. The textbook company I used was deploying its new subscription service to make all its eBooks available, a clever attempt to monopolize the textbook market. Students who purchased the subscription discovered that it was incompatible with the university’s learning management

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Box 9.1: Example of creating systematic responses to student feedback In like a lion, out like a lamb When student replies turn negative, do not engage them through email. Students tend to have more time on their hands than teachers. It is a waste of valuable time to craft long-winded responses to common issues. Respond with a standard message asking them to come to your office: Dear [Student]: Based upon your response, I am assuming that there is some confusion or miscommunication. I would like to better understand your side. When I get these types of messages, I have a rule to meet with the student face-to-face to work through issues regarding the assignment in question. Are you free on [Date], or immediately after class? When I encounter such students, I will print off the email thread and read it back to them. Rather than ridicule or discipline them, I inquire about what they were feeling when writing the message and ask them to help me understand their side of the story. This approach works to humanize both teacher and student. Many students I speak with are unaware of how their electronic messages sound when read in a professional context. The meeting usually concludes with both parties feeling less defensive and more sympathetic. I also create email templates for other common classroom issues, such as requests for extra credit, curving the final exam, cell phone use and questions about required textbooks.

system (LMS). My students could not access the required textbook. Hours were wasted talking with representatives on the phone and composing emails to disgruntled students. The problem did not get resolved until one month into the semester. On top of this, I made the error of declaring participation optional, optimistically predicting that students would come to class. No matter how engaging I made my lectures, I saw my 122-person classes dwindle to less than 50. Lesson learned. I phased in a new rule for participation. Most students understood why I made the decision, but others took it as a grave offence. I spent my early years as a teacher trying to be liked by my students, while struggling to manage the class appropriately. Gaining more confidence helped me set proper boundaries between student feedback and personal feelings.



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Well-meaning students have validity when conveying frustration with aspects of the course. I take these grievances into account when I improve upon course design for future semesters (see Fink and Ganus, 2009). Too often I encounter ECTs fixated on select students who use anonymity to make foul, sexist and racist remarks. It takes bravery for a teacher to move forward despite such radioactive responses. Giving power to these words can overtake an ECT’s life. Some teachers convert these situations into opportunities for personal transformation and professional development (e.g. see Bartos and Ives, 2019). Build your base: Despite facing tough decisions and student biases, ECTs can assemble a diverse, supportive network of students and faculty. Politicians build their base through focus groups with citizens from diverse backgrounds. Similarly, ECTs meet the needs of an increasingly diverse body of students with differing modes of communication, time management and response to persons of authority (Lambert and Morgan, 2010). Numerous students I encounter are overcome with anxiety, depression, lack of purpose and other repercussions of the hyper-digital era (Lukianoff and Haidt, 2018). ECTs can build their base through exploring students’ motivations, sense of belonging and curiosities. An inclusive curriculum entails listening to one’s audience and seeking advice from seasoned instructors. Experience has taught me that diversity and inclusion statements on course syllabuses are not enough to advance diversity and inclusion in HE. It is wise to venture beyond being theoretically inclusive to encourage educators to attempt the imperfect but necessary process of being empirically inclusive. As a graduate student, I taught in a majority-white university in a blood-red, Republican state. Following my doctorate, I transitioned to a minority-majority institution in the Lone Star State serving mainly Latinx students. In my classes, I encountered students of various ethnicities, races and political orientations. A question continues to occupy my mind: how do I design a significant learning experience for all students, regardless of their background or ideology (see Fink and Ganus, 2009)? To address that inquiry, I built my base researching student motivations. In my world geography classes, I distributed a fifty-item questionnaire gauging students’ career aspirations and attitudes towards aspects of geography. To gain a deeper sense of student motivations, I also interviewed as many enrollees as possible. Students I interacted with felt validated by the initiative and more inclined to stop by my office to review material and ask questions. I found that motivations vary among students and that I could adjust my class to appeal to aspirations across academic specialties and sociocultural identities. As a public figure and ECT, I aim to teach effectively. Success involves a Stoic mindset to

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relish the process, make tough decisions, set boundaries and acknowledge our humanness. With these qualities in mind, we may progress to the joy of teaching as a lifelong craft.

The Comedian I remember posting a list of my upcoming two dates on Instagram … in North Dakota and one in South Dakota. A woman commented, Living the dream. I’m guessing she was being sarcastic. I doubt she would’ve said this if my tour dates were Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. I didn’t respond to the comment, but I would’ve liked to yell at her, ‘WHAT DREAM ARE YOU LIVING?!’ That would have annihilated her. (Barry 2017: 9)

ECTs are like stand-up comedians. Both are prone to mobile lifestyles working on their material and themselves. In Thank You for Coming to Hattiesburg, Todd Barry (2017), a deadpan comedian with a silky-smooth voice and bonedry delivery, recounts his treks performing stand-up in smaller cities around the United States and Canada. On the road, he describes seedy motels, grimy bathrooms, quaint downtown areas and artisanal coffee shops. Numerous places were rendered unrecognizable to me, and I am a geographer – names such as Mulvane, Kansas; South Bend, Indiana; Lawrenceville, New Jersey; and Ogden, Utah. A career as an ECT is analogous to the comedian’s journey. Teachers toil to find their voice and improve upon their teaching style. Most ECTs in the United States do not start the morning unlocking their offices on the ornate campuses of Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale or Berkeley. Rather, they teach online and in-person courses in one of America’s five thousand colleges and universities, many placed in lesser known cities like Frostburg, Maryland; Hays, Kansas; Angelo, Texas; and Cedar Falls, Iowa. Like comedians, teachers can use these places to hone their craft. Comedians possess three hard-won lessons for ECTs. You will bomb someday: Amy Schumer recalled her initial break as a touring comedian ‘dying’ on stage every night, crying in the tour bus and repeating the routine in a different place on the next evening (Apatow, 2016). By the end of her first major tour, the young comedian felt ‘pretty desensitized. I’d just been in so much pain every night that I stopped caring—and once that happened, it became more about my experience onstage’ (Apatow, 2016: 84). Schumer’s ascent to fame as a writer, actor and stand up came with consistency and thick



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skin. When Jerry Seinfeld bombs onstage, he reframes the event as an amusing spectacle (Apatow, 2016: 17): Bombing is a riot. The looks on people’s faces is just priceless. They look up to me going, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came for a show, and you’re the show and I don’t understand you. You seem normal but you don’t make any sense.’

In a similar way, the most memorable teaching experiences are rarely the good ones. Teachers and comedians encounter tough crowds. Some lines or stories do not work. Outbursts from hecklers throw off the speaker’s timing and distract the audience. I have ‘bombed’ during lectures in ways that are significant to me but often too subtle for my students to notice or remember. Like many teachers, I endure times when I feel like I am an impostor, fearful that students will discover how little I know (Dawson, 2009a). Teaching imparts the taken-forgranted gift of humility. It helps us realize that being an expert in a discipline does not mean that we are experts in helping others to master that discipline. Cherish the process: Gathering and testing material for a one-hour stand-up special (or even a ‘tight five’ slot on an open mic) requires effort and time. Schumer equated jokes to ‘works of art’ that ‘take years to figure out’ (Apatow, 2016: 71). Teachers can relate. For a given semester, full-time teachers deliver multiple one-hour specials every week, usually with different material each time. Prepping those lectures and activities involves a lifetime of revising and refining. Lectures will not be perfect by the first, second or third iteration. Sometimes, they are a hit with students. Other times, teaching will feel like slogging through a giant slope of information and bullet points. Nevertheless, every teaching experience is a learning experience. Teachers tinker with courses as new information emerges. At the beginning of every semester, I remind students that I am learning just as much from them as they are hopefully gaining from me. I keep a running document to record observations and reflections, many of which are featured in this chapter. Through cataloguing class experiences, ECTs can build material to write detailed and impactful teaching philosophies often required for applications to academic positions (Montell, 2003; Lang, 2010). Further, ECTs can track their progress and discover their voice. Discover your voice: In the memoir Save Yourself, comedian Cameron Esposito (2020) depicts a path common to both funny people and teachers: the sometimes traumatic, sometimes cathartic, search for identity and acceptance in one’s profession. Esposito’s comedic instinct took shape in childhood and adolescence while navigating queer identity in a traditional Catholic household

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in a white Chicago suburb. Comedy therefore became a medium for engaging with identity, managing societal expectations and finding solidarity with others undergoing similar experiences. This process of discovering your voice and identity can also be similarly cathartic for ECTs, especially if you accept that difficult, and sometimes traumatic, experiences can still help you develop as a teacher. If life is like an extended field trip, then teaching is fieldwork for the professional educator (Palmer-Moloney and Bloom, 2001; Tuan, 2001). Like comedians, I experiment with different approaches. Through trial and error, I have tried everything, like reading prepared remarks, marking on the whiteboard, chalking up the blackboard, administering death-by-PowerPoint, stimulating discussion, distributing handouts, coordinating classroom activities, filming YouTube videos and organizing field trips. I figure out what I like and what I do not like. Ultimately, active learning methods – pairing students for discussion, staging one-minute free-writes, creating concept maps, polling, setting up scenarios, presenting case studies, encouraging students to compare notes – appear to be most effective in fostering significant learning experiences (Fournier, 2009). In any case, ECTs should engage the audience, consult other teachers for advice and resources, and test multiple teaching strategies. Comedians remind ECTs to be adaptable as job opportunities become scarce from the PhD Population Bomb and Peak Enrolment. Marc Maron (2014) started over in his forties. The middle-aged comedian was thrice divorced, cashstrapped and jobless. About to lose everything to the bank, he began hosting a podcast in his garage. Ground zero for Maron was a drafty room with a concrete floor, boxes of his life piled all around him and a door that rolled up from the ground. When the podcast rose to popularity, celebrities and public figures visited the garage and talked with Maron, including President Barack Obama. Maron’s breakthrough came from employing a modern-day grassroots approach to reach the public. ECTs have the potential to access alternative channels, too, and thus become more flexible, resilient and adaptable to thrive within an increasingly competitive context.

The Busker Finally, ECTs are like buskers performing in front of passers-by. Both buskers and ECTs call for outlets to showcase their craft. The most influential ‘busker’ in my life is Henry Rollins. In the early 1980s, Rollins tore through the Washington,



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DC, punk scene while holding a job scooping Häagen Dazs ice cream. In 1981, he became the lead singer of the legendary punk band Black Flag. Following his tenure with Black Flag, Rollins established a book and record publishing company, 2.13.61. When I was a young aspiring drummer, I scoured the music section of bookstores in search of Rollins’s self-published diaries (see Rollins, 2000). Entering adulthood, I attended his spoken word tours. In the venue, I sat transfixed as Rollins energetically told stories for two to three hours, sweating profusely but never stopping once for a sip of water. Emulating Rollins, ECTs should never believe the empty promises of future employment and tenuretrack positions. Rather, ECTs should believe in their capacity to adjust career trajectories. Even the most respected and effective instructors get laid off, suffer family crises and feel a need to leave undesirable work environments. Being resilient and adaptable have been important skills to develop during my time as an ECT. Use your job as a career investment: Every semester provides a chance for ECTs to participate in the knowledge economy, as workers who ‘work with their heads to produce or articulate ideas, knowledge and information’ (Lambert and Morgan, 2010: 23). However, when the path did not suit Rollins, he scavenged for an alternative career in the knowledge economy. The tattooed intellectual then became the publicist of his various travels and projects. He used ‘every part of the deer’ to transform himself into a formidable and prolific writer, photographer, musician, actor and public speaker (Gaudette, 2019). Self-reliance and industriousness similarly afford leverage to propel the careers of ECTs. For instance, writing textbooks is one way to invest in a teaching career. Harm de Blij (2000: 138), geographer and textbook composer, remarked, In my experience … a successful and original course with a well-developed outline forms the best basis for a good textbook. Few faculty members teaching geography courses are satisfied with the assigned text; there always are opportunities for improvement. These may take the form of substitute handouts; in turn, the supplementary material might coalesce into drafts of chapters. And thus a textbook might be born.

My first three semesters’ teaching introductory world geography left me dissatisfied with the glossy, expensive textbooks that students rarely read. Students did not see the payoff to spend hundreds of dollars on a book for one semester of classwork. Frustration motivated me to collaborate with a fellow early career colleague on a digital textbook that combines affordability, approachability and multimedia. ECTs have an intimate sense of student learning experiences, having

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recently made the transition from student to faculty. Sensitivity to student needs is a strength for textbook writing and is an example of how resourcefulness can help further an ECT career. Expand beyond the ivory tower: As the job market ebbs and flows, ECTs are limited to temporary faculty positions or considering leaving academia altogether (Malloy and Berdahl, 2019). Other channels exist, including informal education and teaching at elementary and secondary levels (see Cross, 2010; Wing, 2018). Michael Wing earned a bachelor’s from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from the renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography. For over two decades, Wing performed fieldwork, obtained grants and published in peer-reviewed journals – as a science teacher at Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo, California. The high school teacher noted, ‘I have many of the perks of a university faculty position, without the years spent trying to get myself onto the tenure track. I have a long-term microbiology project that takes me to deserts, polar regions, and mountaintops around the world’ (Wing, 2018). Wing’s story provides hope for ECTs who are open to alternative job and career paths while still pursuing their research. Diversify your talents: Teachers can ‘upskill’ in various ways. User-generated content, such as podcasts and video channels, have proven effective for enhancing student learning while elevating the visibility and marketability of educators (Salmon, 2010; Almeida-Aguiar and Carvalho, 2016; Mykhnenko, 2016; Ranga, 2017; Teckchandani and Obstfeld, 2017; Mooney, 2019; Saurabh and Gautam, 2019). I used my first position as a lecturer to learn everything I could from colleagues working in the distance education department. I took advantage of free subscriptions to software for mapmaking, photography and film. I studied how to produce and edit videos and began recording lectures about topics in geography. Proficiency in these programmes helped highlight my teaching style for future employers and expand the reach of my content. Thus, what began as a few three- to five-minute video clips grew into a larger project, called Original Geographer or O/GEO (originalgeographer.com). ECTs and others upload podcasts, write blogs, curate a lively social media following and publish informal journalistic pieces (Mykhnenko, 2016; Teckchandani and Obstfeld, 2017; Mooney, 2019). Public platforms are critical for developing ECTs and meeting the needs of learners who have been ‘born digital’ (Lambert and Morgan, 2010: 156). Waiting for a train in Budapest in January 2020, I stopped in my tracks when I heard exquisite music coming from an anonymous violinist. Rarely do I ever drop my bag to listen to a busker of any kind. There I was, sipping coffee in a chilly,



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open-air train station and seated across from an unidentified virtuoso. Sounds radiating from the instrument took me back to when I was a child falling asleep listening to Mozart. Interrupting the moment was a Hungarian pretending to be my buddy, and I left to my platform to catch the train to Zagreb, Croatia. The busking violinist confirms that there is no shortage of opportunities to impact lives through one’s craft while also trying to make a living. Perseverance and diversification are therefore some other keys to success for an ECT.

Finding Beauty in the Broken American Moment Alas, we return to the question of how to capture fully the necessarily entrepreneurial spirit of an ECT. Channelling the politician, ECTs accept their status as a public figure, maintain course regardless of popularity and build their base through listening to students and faculty. Embodying the comedian, ECTs bomb gracefully, cherish teaching as a process of discovery and cultivate their voice as educators. Inspired by the busker, ECTs practise self-reliance while they invest in their careers by seeking alternative markets adjacent to HE. Lessons learned from the politicians, comedians and buskers interlink with the qualities of successful entrepreneurs listed at the beginning: adapting quickly to emerging contexts, discovering outlets beyond established structures and acquiring new skills (Bornstein, 2007). ECTs may find inspiration in the diary of Rollins (2000: 239), 18 October 1997, when he travelled through Osaka, Japan: I have to stay focused. [The future] will be hard and full of confrontation … I don’t know if I am doing something right or wrong. I guess it’s always a challenge and you have to keep rising up to meet it. I know that it’s always been that way for me. I always seem to have something in my way. I also know that it’s always me who put the obstacles there so I have nothing to complain about. I have a good life.

Being an ECT is not over for me. My next chapter begins with accepting a two-year instructor position, one that will have this itinerant teacher moving from Texas Hill Country to Iowa’s Cedar Valley. I have much more to learn and many more mistakes to make. During the interview for the Iowa job, a search committee member asked, ‘What was your greatest accomplishment?’ The question stopped me in my tracks and engendered a long pause for me to contemplate. I realized that my greatest accomplishment did not happen when I achieved a doctorate, published a peer-reviewed article or ran a half-marathon.

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It happened when the first student walked into my office to notify me that they changed their major to geography because of my class. Nothing could be better for an ECT to hear than this kind of involuntary student feedback. The thought sends me back to the October 2019 concert in a packed Austin nightclub, with Hiss Golden Messenger playing at the other end of the bar. Throughout the song, ‘I Need a Teacher’, MC Taylor sings the mantra, ‘Beauty in the broken American moment’. For an ECT like me, that American moment signifies a period of uncertainty and competition in an overcrowded HE system. Regardless of how difficult it is to get a job, ECTs can remain optimistic and entrepreneurial to remind themselves of why they became teachers and to make the most of the situation.

Part Four

Pedagogical Predicaments Teachers often find themselves having to participate in ongoing development and innovation in order to adapt, survive and thrive within a shifting higher education context (Hamel and Valikangas, 2003). Pedagogic frailty exists amongst university teachers when there is a mismatch between the qualities of interaction within their teaching environment and the pressures that inhibit teaching practice (Kinchin and Winstone, 2017). For an early career teacher (ECT), it can be risky to attempt to innovate or implement teaching practices that align with their personal teaching identities. This approach can be rewarding if individual values and identities are in harmony with their teaching environment, but when teachers’ values are in conflict with institutional practices, pedagogic dissonance develops. If this disconnect occurs, an ECT either may be rendered pedagogically frail or may become more resilient, forging new identities as they adapt to change. A significant factor that determines how an ECT may react to this kind of situation is risk aversion. This is understood as ‘a general unwillingness to accept choices where the outcomes are uncertain’ (Winstone, 2017: 35). The institutional environment can also have an enabling or limiting effect on an individual’s desire to engage in pedagogic transformation. This variation is, for instance, dependent on how highly student course evaluations are valued. Resilience can take the form of creativity, where risk stimulates experimentation or innovation. Thus, individuals do not simply endure an environment that they have no control over; resilience is metamorphosis, not stasis (Clark and Flores, 2014: 7). Even when ECTs have taught in other contexts, their transition can be striated. Their process of adaptation can involve ‘struggle, denial, acceptance, revitalisation and validation of self ’ (Clark and Flores, 2014: 6). The following four chapters explore the stasis, morphosis and metamorphosis of each ECT’s teaching identity as they navigate their personal institutional milieu.

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From Passionate Engagement to Chronic Boredom in Polish Academia: An Overview of Early Career Motivation and Systemic Contributory Factors Mariusz Finkielsztein

Introduction It is common for many Early Career Teachers (ECTs) in Higher Education (HE) to experience mixed feelings of enthusiasm, motivation and apprehension. The initial enthusiasm diminishes, only to be superseded by opportunity cost (the cost of the lost opportunities due to engagement in an activity), frustration, fatigue and/or boredom in teaching. The institutional context usually plays a considerable role in attitudinal change. The above situation constitutes an adequate explanatory model of my experience as an ECT in the Polish academic system. This chapter provides a reconstruction of the transition between the enthusiastic approach towards teaching that I had at the beginning of my PhD studies and the dispiritedness that I experienced by the end. The chapter examines the systemic factors that have contributed to the shift in my attitude towards teaching over the course of my initial years in the role as a teacher. I will focus on (1) precarious conditions of work, job insecurity and lack of belonging to the institution; (2) limited career prospects for academic teachers and teaching overload; (3) undervaluing of teaching and the sense of opportunity cost caused by socialization towards a primarily researcher identity; and (4) a highly hierarchical Polish academic system leading to a limited sense of agency amongst ECTs.

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Although this chapter is based on my teaching experiences within my own institutional context, many of the issues raised here, to some extent, are shared by many young academics starting their teaching career in Poland (Finkielsztein, 2019). I started my teaching activity in a big state university (with more than fifty thousand students) with well-established internal structures (more than twenty departments with many institutes, centres, etc.). My teaching history is to some extent characteristic of many Polish ECTs in social sciences working within state academic institutions. As a fresh PhD student, I occasionally taught classes to cover for a senior teacher (my PhD advisor or colleagues from my unit) in their absence. At the time, it was a totally new experience for me, characterized by substantial stress and a sense of both responsibility and mission. I wanted to teach in an interesting, engaging, less tedious and not-so-strictly-academic way that I had experienced from some of my own teachers. To some extent, it seemed to work quite nicely as long as it was a one-off teaching session. Then, in my third year of PhD studies, I started to co-teach my PhD advisor’s classes, which was the only real opportunity for me to gain a sustained teaching experience in the institution. I was lucky to have a liberal and open-minded mentor who gave me considerable freedom in running these sessions. I was even able to propose my own course that aligned with my PhD research. Sometimes I taught almost all classes during a semester-long course. In other cases, classes were split evenly, which meant that I taught classes (three or four courses) every two weeks. After two semesters of teaching collaboration, I was surprised to find that my initial enthusiasm and excitement for teaching was slowly superseded by fatigue, general dispiritedness and ‘chronic boredom’. To be clear, I was not bored in class. I was engaged in every single classrelated activity, yet I felt a diminishing general engagement in and enthusiasm for teaching. Of course, this can be explained by the opponent-process theory of motivation (Solomon and Corbit, 1978), which claims that every affective experience that can be described in terms of pleasure/displeasure is followed by an ‘opponent process’. Thus, with repeated exposure the primary process wanes while the opponent process is amplified. In the case of teaching, this meant that the initial positive affective experience of thrill, along with the prolonged exposure to the same set of circumstances, was followed by an opposing process of chronic boredom. My motivation towards actual teaching was significantly fading. This had been influenced by a plethora of reasons, including, among others: (a) the fact that I was not additionally paid for teaching (I had a PhD scholarship that did not include teaching responsibilities); (b) I was spending



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almost the entire week on preparing classes (the subject of the majority of classes was not in my area of doctoral research), which made it difficult to fulfil the rest of my obligations (especially PhD research, writing, publishing); (c) as the end date for my PhD studies was approaching, it significantly increased the feeling of opportunity cost of teaching; (d) I was familiarizing myself with the implicit rules of academia, which consist of the relatively low prestige of teaching, a precarious employment situation and dubious career prospects for young, early career academics. Later, when I started teaching courses at various Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) on short-term contracts, I faced similar enthusiasm-related problems. Below I raise some of the systemic contributory factors that I have found to have contributed to my decreasing motivation for teaching. Ultimately, I have found myself in the paradoxical situation where I am keen about teaching but not particularly eager to actually teach.

Precarity, Employment, Unbelonging and Anomie The context of academic work in Poland has changed tremendously in the last three decades. This is largely due to a technological shift (including the IT/digital revolution) but even more profoundly due to modifications in the financing system, particularly owing to the move from hard to soft money and the introduction of a neoliberal employment policy (Shore, 2010; Couldry, 2011). A shift from steady financing and permanent positions in Polish HE to a grant system and increasing short-term employment contracts strongly corresponds with similar changes in other Western academic systems. This kind of employment policy and organization setting significantly affects not only the nature of academic development but also the approach to the work itself and an individual’s well-being. Precarious forms of employment characterized by flexibility and job insecurity, based on uncertainty and lack of stability, create a particular mindset in those who are subjected to such a system (like myself). The main outcome of such a system in my case has been ‘the difficulty [in] projecting’ myself ‘into the future’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 421). Therefore, I now perceive an academic job as one which provides little prospect of long-term career development. I am dubious about whether my actions (especially my teaching activity) will have any positive consequences for my career, and when ‘the future seems devoid of opportunities for possibly making a personal difference’, boredom emerges (Brisset and Snow, 1993: 240). Yet this is not a situation-dependent, easily reduced or remedied feeling that the

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majority of us understand as quotidian boredom. Rather, I experienced chronic boredom. This means a deeply hidden, low-intense mood associated with a sense of meaninglessness, futility and general dispiritedness, which is similar but not equal to the ‘burnout’ syndrome. As Wilmar Schaufeli and Marisa Salanova (2014) explain, boredom and burnout share some of the causes and consequences, yet boredom seems to be merely one of the contributory factors to burnout, which is less severe and less overwhelming (Campagne, 2012). Competition for positions, vigorously introduced by the neoliberal employment system, might result in a higher motivation to work – especially to produce measurable outputs that form a basis for performance evaluations. However, my lack of security and feeling of instability also resulted in ‘periods of doubt in the chosen career path, which in turn results in a lack of deep involvement in the work’ (Wagner, 2014: 57). The anomic sense of insecurity and limited prospects, due to a professional life replete with conditional ‘ifs’, made my work pattern resemble sinusoid. My productive periods were interrupted by recurrent experiences of dispiritedness, dejection and discouragement. These are symptoms that have been similarly diagnosed in many PhD students (Levecque et al., 2017). In my own experience, I would characterize this as a kind of (de) motivational ‘cycle’. Initially, (1) I was working with joy and strong motivation; (2) I then became fatigued, but I continued to work because ‘if ’ I worked then my career prospects would (potentially) grow, and if I prepared for the classes more thoroughly, then students’ evaluations of my teaching should be better; and at the end of such a cycle, (3) I reminded myself about my precarious situation (job insecurity and uncertain future vocational prospects). The anomic anxiety emerged from the perception that all I had been doing was cursed to be ultimately futile because I could see no future for me as a teacher and academic. Thus, I perceived all my efforts as meaningless, having no real impact on my career prospects. When I was teaching during the first period of such a motivational ‘cycle,’ I came to class bursting with ideas. I was eager to teach and to improve things. Yet, when the classes took place in the third phase of the cycle, I came to class reluctantly. I procrastinated over doing necessary preparations, felt bored in anticipation of taking classes and minimized my effort and the input of novel ideas. My resigned approach stemmed from a feeling that my actions would fail to influence anything. Passive and frequently disengaged students also helped facilitate these feelings. I experienced a deep crisis of agency. I was on a specifictask (course) contract with no real prospects. I was not even certain if I would be an academic teacher in two or three years’ time. I was not involved with one



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particular institution. I identified myself with none. Indeed, I felt disaffiliated (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007), alienated and detached. I did not belong anywhere, even to the institution in which I was studying for my doctorate (as it was obvious that there was no place for me there). As a freelance teacher/ researcher I did not belong to any institution, either; I was merely formally affiliated to some university in order to be able to possibly secure research grants and bring money to a HE institution. The lack of a strong teaching identity (see below) certainly contributes to a decreased sense of belonging, as teaching is the activity that is the most closely connected with institutional functioning. Such an anomic and disaffiliated situation led me to a recurrent desire to drop out. This resulted in the first symptoms of a cynical and detached attitude towards teaching. Precarious employment schemes, such as short-term contracts, may therefore result in lowering one’s engagement with the institution. This may lead to exhaustion and dispiritedness, which is further exacerbated by generational inequality (Ivancheva, 2015). Junior staff are subjected to a very competitive system based on performance, with little employment stability, while the ‘older and oldest generations can feel safe—they can participate in an ongoing game with changing rules … but they do not have to participate’ (Kwiek, 2016: 225). These ‘double standards’ significantly affect the attitudes of junior, early career staff by lowering involvement with the institution, heightening indifference and encouraging concentration on primarily individual achievements (especially measurable ones i.e. number of prestigious publications). As in my case, this all occurs at the cost of overall work engagement – particularly in relation to teaching.

Academic Career Prospects – Insecurity versus Teaching Overload My general motivation towards teaching was also affected by my limited academic career prospects. ECTs in Polish academia have basically three potential options, none of which seem to be appealing enough to boost teaching motivation. First, they can consider freelancing teaching ‘gigs’, that is, teaching courses at different HEIs in an hourly paid scheme with no, or limited, stability (courses are launched only if there are sufficient student numbers at an institution), or on the basis of specific-task contracts (or similar) in the private sector. Second, they might drop

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out of teaching altogether, either by securing a research grant and resigning from their teaching position or by finding a job outside HE. The latter might involve employment in a research institute, non-governmental organization or similar forum. Third, and most rarely, an academic in Poland might fortuitously land full-time permanent employment at one of the public or non-public universities. Academic workers, according to Polish law (Ustawa z Dn. 20 Lipca 2018 r. Prawo o Szkolnictwie Wyższym i Nauce (Dz.U.2018.1668), 2018: 114), can be employed in one of three kinds of positions: (1) research-teaching, (2) research-only or (3) teaching-only position. However, the vast majority of Polish academic teachers work on the first kind of contract, while the second is almost exclusively limited to those holding research grants. The third career path is perceived as inferior to the first two and is limited mainly to graduates of language studies, employed to teach foreign languages and introductory courses. As the first kind of above-mentioned employment option is the most common in the Polish academic system, and because I am now employed on this type of contract, I shall now focus exclusively on this kind of academic employment. The terminology adopted for a teaching-research position in Poland suggests the dual character of such employment. This is not anything unusual by itself. Yet in the context of the Polish law, it makes the whole system a little more schizophrenic. This is because, according to the law (Ustawa z Dn. 20 Lipca 2018 r. Prawo o Szkolnictwie Wyższym i Nauce, 2018: 127.2), the annual requirement for didactic duties for an academic teacher amounts to 240 teaching hours (one teaching hour equals 45 minutes), which means eight 30-hour courses a year. However, this is not the upper limit from a legal position. The Act also specifies that ‘in special cases, justified by the necessity of the realisation of the education programme, an academic teacher may be required to conduct didactic classes for oversize hours’, and these cannot exceed a quarter of the workload of the research-teaching position (Ustawa z Dn. 20 Lipca 2018 r. Prawo o Szkolnictwie Wyższym i Nauce, 2018: 127,6). An academic teacher is thus compelled to accept up to 60 additional teaching hours per academic year, which amounts to a maximum of 300 hours (albeit additionally paid). Additionally, the law enables university governors to demand even more teaching hours from staff ‘in an amount not exceeding twice the annual teaching workload’ (i.e. up to additional 540 didactic hours annually) with the consent of an academic teacher (Ustawa z Dn. 20 Lipca 2018 r. Prawo o Szkolnictwie Wyższym i Nauce, 2018: 127,7). Unfortunately, many ECTs are not in a position to refuse such propositions. From my experience, such a research-teaching position functions as either two separate, and mutually hindering, positions for a single salary or an



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almost purely teaching position owing to a shortage of time in which to conduct research (during the year I did a lot of teaching, not a single line of my PhD thesis was written). Academic work in general is ‘sold’ to young people like myself with the promise of making a difference and the thrill of discovery. At first glance, the system appears to forge self-dependent, creative researchers that elevate the status of Polish academia in Europe and the world. In reality, the opportunities that are offered after obtaining a PhD are not so inspiring. Instead, Polish academia provides only limited opportunities to foster this kind of research identity. For me, a (former) PhD student socialized into the system of high research-output competition (measured by various quantitative tools) and into the role of highly skilled researcher, ‘standard’ research-teaching employment was not an inviting prospect. Such employment, which is very difficult to obtain, leads to a significant slackening of research activity for a two- to three-year period during which an ECT accommodates to the new role. I must complete tasks, such as preparing new courses from scratch, frequently outside my research expertise; learning the content and the way of conducting commissioned courses (some of them are very broad, introductory courses); and familiarizing myself with the formal and informal systems and teaching culture of a particular institution. It must also be remembered that I am still employed on a one-year temporary contract and that my final work evaluation will be based on measurable research outputs (predominantly publications and grants). These criteria significantly dampen my motivation towards teaching. It is also worth mentioning that such an excessive teaching workload is not encouraging for me as a teacher. I am forced to make painful compromises on the quality of teaching; it is difficult to maintain my own personal teaching standards with a yearly duty of 240 teaching hours.

Underestimation and High Opportunity Cost of Teaching A consistent factor that curbs my enthusiasm towards teaching is the fact that, in the Polish academic system, teaching seems to be devalued both by the reward system and, perhaps as a result, among academics themselves. The researcher identity is favoured in the current neoliberal system. PhD students, including myself, are socialized to the role of researchers, not academic teachers. There is virtually no teaching training at the doctoral level in Poland and I have never received any substantial guidance concerning this aspect of my academic work. My boredom may thus be a signal that teaching is somehow distant from or not

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fully compatible with my core identity of a researcher. In the periodical evaluation of academic employees, teaching is assessed in a strictly numeric manner. The only thing that matters is whether teaching duties (workload) were achieved and whether the academic teacher undertook the given number of teaching hours as per their workload allocation. Thus, as long as the contractual teaching hours are undertaken and student evaluations are at least average, there are no further concerns. Such a system provides no motivation for any additional engagement with teaching on my part, which at times demotivates me, because being a good, valued by students lecturer has no consequences for the teacher other than personal satisfaction. It does not bring any advance in position at university or recognition in the academic world. (Marciniak, 2008: 99–100)

In this kind of system, there is no difference, in terms of any kind of rewards, between engaged, enthusiastic, active and highly valued teachers and those who are not (cf. Wagner, 2011). As ‘the rewards are insensitive to the quality of performance (for example, the salary at the end of the month is the same), there is no point producing at an H [high] level of quality’ (Gambetta and Origgi, 2013: 11). This encourages mediocrity in teaching because there is no difference in rewarding between, using the terms proposed by Gambetta and Origgi, L (low-quality) doers and H (high-quality) doers. This corresponds to a commonly held view among my colleagues (both junior and senior) that people occupying teaching positions must have failed in their research. Therefore, being on a teaching-only contract is frequently perceived as failing in research rather than a preferred career route individuals would willingly opt for. Usually one wants to pursue a research career, but in Poland the most prestigious institutions (i.e. universities) do not employ on research-only positions but almost always on research-teaching positions. This means that teaching is frequently not the choice of a prospective academic but rather a side-effect of being a researcher employed at a university. This phenomenon describes my experience well. I started my teaching engagement to accrue the much-needed teaching experience to secure a permanent position in a university, which often encompasses both teaching and research, and therefore it is expected that individuals have prior experience of teaching as well as the research skills obtained during doctoral studies. Polish academic teachers are thus expected to simultaneously pursue teaching and researching, yet they are evaluated virtually solely on the basis of their research output. It prompts the feeling of being in a cul-de-sac no-win situation. When I am more engaged in my teaching, I am frustrated that many



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other tasks that I must pursue at the time distract me. I am left without enough time to prepare classes to a personally satisfactory level. I feel like an artisan labourer because, in such circumstances, teaching is no longer a deeply creative and interactional process. Instead, teaching conditions feel like assemblyline work (Szwabowski, 2014; Kowzan et al., 2015). However, if I am heavily involved in my research, I get frustrated that teaching takes an excessive amount of time, and I begin to perceive teaching as a burden, a bitter duty, a chore, which results in minimizing my personal input of time, energy and attention as much as possible. What is worse, this strategy seems to be highly recommended for career progression. Academics are virtually solely dependent on their publication output for their career progression. Teaching therefore distracts me from other seemingly more significant tasks for my career development or simply more imminent duties that must or should be performed at the same time. Teaching becomes, on many occasions, rather like an interlude between them – a kind of albatross around my neck, slowing my research achievement and, in consequence, career advancement.

Hierarchy and Limited Agency The aforementioned ‘standard’ academic employment, though difficult to obtain, provides young academics with only a fragile illusion of stability. It places them at the bottom of the Polish academic hierarchy. These factors increase, rather than minimize, problems with long-term job involvement, especially in teaching. This was part of my experience as a PhD student, and to some extent it still is after being employed. Precarious employment, lack of agency (the sense of having a real impact on institutional functioning) and lack of control over one’s professional destiny ‘may result in less and less involvement in the attempt to change or even lack of identification with your own university’ (Kowzan et al., 2015: 144). The situation that characterized the everyday experiences of PhD students is amplified owing to its regularity. I, as an ECT, am ‘the last in the food chain’ (Zawadzki, 2017: 76), and I am definitely not in a position to choose the courses I teach. Instead, I am delegated with some of the least ‘popular’ courses to teach that the majority of staff treat as a ‘necessary evil’ and whose delegation to junior staff is interpreted as a ‘relief ’. The same process occurs in the case of ‘unwanted’, time-consuming administrative/bureaucratic tasks. In the first week of my employment, one colleague asked me which courses I taught. When I provided her with that information, she commented that these were standard

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courses that were given to early career academics, and she suggested that they were the most boring ones. She also expressed relief that she no longer had to teach them. Thus, I work in an environment where teaching is underestimated, marginalized and, consequently, not rewarding in any significant way, yet it still occupies the majority of time in my working week. In such a system, I am a full-time employee but on a one-year contract that gives me no security; I am an independent researcher dependent on others to tell me what to teach, with limited agency and control over my vocational trajectory. I am employed to teach but my professional competence is evaluated on the basis of my research outputs. Thus, many of my efforts, especially in teaching, seem meaningless from a career development point of view. Such circumstances resonate with Gerhard Riemann and Fritz Schütze’s concept of trajectory, which describes social processes structured by conditional chains of events that one cannot avoid without high costs, constant breaks of expectations, and a growing and irritating sense of loss of control over one’s life circumstances. One feels that one is driven, that one can only react to ‘outer forces’ that one does not understand any more (1991: 337).

The original concept of ‘trajectory’ (Strauss and Glaser, 1970) emerged from research into terminally ill patients, whose dying was quintessentially an unstructured anomic experience of losing control over their life. Later, the notion was found applicable for many kinds of life experiences connected to an extremely limited sense of agency (e.g. migration). In my academic life as an ECT, ‘institutional expectation patterns’ (normative principle of biography) overwhelm ‘biographical action schemes’ (intentional principle), disturbing the ‘existing structures of social order’ in my biography (Riemann and Schütze, 1991: 339). My expectations, ideals and visions of my vocational biography clash with institutional requirements and the realities of the research-teaching university position. This, in turn, results in a sense of losing control over my vocational life. At times I feel completely overwhelmed, dispirited and extremely fatigued by the institutional/organizational frames that pull me down and hamper my progression. Thus, I am an example of how institutional circumstances can shape the attitude, motivation and emotions of ECTs in Poland.



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Conclusion While I am still far from being ‘burned out’ (Schaufeli and Salanova, 2014), I can clearly see the first symptoms of this malaise. My enthusiasm and sense of mission have decreased. Periodical disengagement, reluctance and some elements of cynicism have also crept in to my approach to teaching. Yet, I am far from treating teaching as a necessary evil to allow me to do research. I do not conduct classes by reading from slides, reduce sessions to repeating myself each time, lower the level of passing the course or not try to interest the students or demonstrate the usefulness of the topic I am talking about (see Izdebski et al., 2015: 92). Nevertheless, I have certainly become more sympathetic towards my own teachers whose classes I had not evaluated highly in the past. Job insecurity associated with precarious employment, reduced career prospects, teaching overload, the underestimation of teaching tasks and the high opportunity cost of teaching in a system that values research over teaching have all contributed to a lowering of my initial enthusiasm for and engagement in teaching. Over the past few years, my early career teaching experience has cultivated feelings of chronic boredom in me.

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Developing as a Critical Pedagogue in Brazil: Challenges, Reflections and Actions Ana Zimmermann

Introduction This chapter will focus on my teaching journey as an Early Career Teacher (ECT) at the University of Sao Paulo (USP). Brazil is a recent and fragile democracy with persistent inequality, but education is perceived to offer social mobility (Carvalho, 2004). Although a public system of education started during the nineteenth century, it was only in the 2000s that Brazil sought to universalize elementary education. In such a context, social inclusion within Higher Education (HE) is a huge challenge. Those working in the sector are immersed in a competitive educational system that is directed towards assessment and metrics, which helps preserve the status quo (INEP, 2017; IBGE, 2019). The concept of meritocracy is frequently invoked to justify this system, but, in reality, social disparities prevent equality in the learning process (Hall, 2003; Chauí, 2014b; Silva, 2017). Different cultures understand the purposes of education and the definition of knowledge in diverse ways (Irobi, 2012; Maturana et al., 2017). However, the Western hegemonic influences that prosper in Brazilian institutions typically promulgate the fragmentation of knowledge, as well as the hierarchical duality of mind over body. Educational systems reproduce this understanding in their structures, particularly through their curriculums, buildings, time schedules and methodologies (Chauí, 2014b). Bureaucratic activities at the university, often with exaggerated control structures and excessive management procedures, are time- and energy-consuming for academics. More and more universities prioritize economic demands, at the expense of questioning the role of knowledge, researching and teaching in HE. Criticism directed at the

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technocratic management of universities and its consequences is present in many different national contexts (Giroux, 1988; Freitag, 1995; Chauí, 2014a; Reiger, Schofield and Peters, 2015). As an ECT, it is necessary to learn how to deal with these demands without losing enthusiasm for teaching. It is quite common to hear the advice of older colleagues, ‘You are still new here, you don’t know how it works’, dispensed with a discouraging tone. The management and evaluation processes are exhausting for both teachers and students. This tiring situation with a high administrative workload makes it more challenging to pursue an academic career whilst also being able to engage in ‘critical pedagogy’ (Freire, 1970). In this chapter, I reflect on my experiences as an ECT at USP and examine how the fragmentation of knowledge, assessment and classroom design presents barriers to a more communicative and inclusive teaching. I start by presenting a brief explanation of the context of HE in the public system in Brazil. This specific educational context is a crucial element in my formation as a teacher and pedagogue because it made me think about the importance of critical pedagogy to help facilitate a shift from an exclusive HE system to a more inclusive one. The second section of the chapter then highlights some challenges I faced during my career as an ECT in trying to think like a critical pedagogue. The final section presents some examples of the experiences I had when trying to improve dialogue in educational processes at the USP. Throughout my practice and experiences, my pedagogical thinking and values are informed by the work of the philosopher Paulo Freire (1970, 1996, 2001), one of the pioneers of decolonial and critical pedagogical thinking. In the current context, Freire’s work is even more important in facing the disempowering reality driven by economic demands (Giroux, 2016). In this chapter, I invoke Freire’s thinking on essential knowledge to the teaching practice of critical and progressive educators from his book Pedagogy of Autonomy (1996). From Freire’s proposal for autonomy, I especially stress the need for embodiment of words, for example, risk-taking, critical reflection on practice and availability for dialogue.

Higher Education in Brazil USP (2019) is considered one of the best universities in Latin America, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. It was founded in 1934 and currently has about 60,000 undergraduate students, 30,000 postgraduate students, and over 5,500 academics. There are 335 undergraduate



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courses, which are distributed over eleven campuses. The main campus is located in São Paulo within a privileged locality. The students do not pay fees to study at any public HE institution and scholarships help support some students in their educational pathway. Furthermore, student housing and university restaurants are subsidized. Unlike similar private institutes, public institutions like USP provide early career academics with some of the best conditions for working in HE. Having a permanent position in this university is dependent on being successful in a very competitive selective process. Obtaining a teaching position at USP was a great relief for me because it brought me job security, as well as offering me opportunities to develop as a teacher and researcher. During my own education, I had the opportunity to access both good-quality public schools and universities. However, my previous experience was largely gained in the countryside, and my situation was completely different to what I now face in São Paulo. Working at USP brought me to a huge institution in the largest city in Latin America. This experience changed my perspective as I faced exacerbated problems but also better working conditions. In the first year of my career I felt that I needed to exercise my leadership position, as was required by the university. This was demanding since I faced the obstacles of being an ECT but also the pressure to reach high standards and gain top-quality results. A permanent position in a public university like USP includes full-time teaching, research and engagement in cultural and extension programmes, such as short courses or cultural events open to the community. More than 95 per cent of the registered research projects and publications come from public universities (Moura, 2019), and unlike the Brazilian education system in general, the public system of HE is rated highly, both domestically and internationally. These circumstances encouraged me to think about autonomy, both in terms of teaching and researching. Access and admission to USP reflects the country’s social inequalities (INEP, 2017; Felicetti, Morosini and Cabrera, 2019). Since investment in basic public education has typically not been very high, despite its success (OECD, 2016), it is often the case that the best positions are occupied by elite students who were able to afford to attend private schools for their primary and secondary education (Piotto and Nogueira, 2016). Nevertheless, in the last few years, USP has been engaged in inclusive policies that are beginning to make a difference in terms of access to tertiary education for students from public (state-funded) schools. The number of students from public schools has therefore increased from 24 per cent in 2006 (USP, 2016a), to 41 per cent in 2019, and from 12 per cent Afro-Brazilians and indigenous people to 25 per cent of students among

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these new enrolments (USP, 2019). Nevertheless, despite some recent advances that have been the result of struggles from social movements for civil rights and against prejudices, such as the ones organized by women, Afro-Brazilians, LGBTI+, indigenous people and students, inequality is still a massive problem across Brazil (IBGE, 2019). In addition, the myth of meritocracy also applies to me as a teacher in relation to gender inequality. Data from USP indicate that women take longer to progress in teaching careers (USP, 2016b). This structural issue resonates with my own view of career progression. Thus, the inequality in Brazil’s education situation has a profound effect on my overall teaching and learning, experience. As an ECT, the initial challenge at the beginning of my career was therefore to understand the complexity of such an educational context. I believed that my actions could help redress some of the inequalities in the system. I came to understand that real change requires working as a collective to modify structures. This understanding helped me to deal with the sense of failure that I faced many times at the beginning of my career. Indeed, one of Freire’s main ideas is about the process of conscientização, which is related to the wakening of critical consciousness (Freire, 1970). This process implies rediscovering one’s self by dialogue with the world and reflection on one’s historical reality. Through conscientização, we become aware of our position in the world and therefore are able to assume our historical position as subjects. After I started working at USP, I became engaged with colleagues in a constant struggle to address what I perceive to be a vital mission to defend the quality of public HE and working conditions. It has meant that during these past few years I have been in contact with colleagues from different faculties in a variety of events, commissions and meetings. This experience has had a great impact in my formation as a teacher because when I am preparing my classes I realize that everything I choose – content, texts, methodology and assessment – has an impact on how students perceive the role of education in society. Consequently, ever since I started teaching at USP, I feel the necessity to update the references and methodology of my courses every semester. Understanding the context made me feel a bit lost sometimes trying to choose which problem to reach first. However, during this period, I found that it was crucial to remember some essential questions for formal education: what kind of human beings do we ultimately want in our future society? What kind of humanity should we help to create? Furthermore, how could my actions as an ECT help students and the university respond to these questions?



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Developing as a Critical Pedagogue: Some Challenges I studied critical pedagogy during my formation as a teacher, and so I had some good democratic and inclusive experiences within the public education system. However, by living this reality as a teacher, I began to understand how contradictory this system is in its practical operation. For instance, at USP I encounter students and colleagues who support strategies for privatization and other political consequences that result from the extension of a liberal economy. Although I had a dream of helping to change society via education and hoped to tackle these kinds of ideas among students, this actually requires a lot of time and can provoke conflicts. I also had competing demands as part of my employment to manage the pressure of preparing students for the labour market and to maintain the existing social structure. Difficult experiences and dilemmas, such as these, have had a great impact in my formation as a teacher. It was very difficult for me to prepare classes for a public system that should bring together all different social groups when I actually faced a group that were exclusively white middle class and who had attended private schools. It seems to me that most of the anxiety I experienced during my formation as an ECT comes from this everyday experience of facing a reality full of inequalities in an environment where this was not a central question. In my studies, I have learned that the educational sphere will always be a field of tension; I had still wanted to act reflexively in my practice in order to support critical action. However, I realized by the end of the semester that the students had become more concerned about giving me the ‘correct answers’ according to what they imagined my expectations were rather than developing their own viewpoints. The students’ perspectives in relation to the course content revealed that the current education system generally marginalizes diverse outcomes as ‘errors’. Moreover, I realized the presence of a consensus quickly developed among the students in relation to controversial questions, for instance, those concerning gender or race issues. Thus, the discourse adopted by students in general was politically correct but did not engage with or problematize the inequalities we experienced in our closest reality. Facing the contradictions of the public system therefore encouraged me to try to bring inequality issues into our central discussion in classrooms. However, this desire merely served to illustrate to me the insufficiencies of my teaching methodology. This kind of realization was very frustrating. I started posing different questions to try to elicit a more philosophical and sociocultural perspective.

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For instance, from a simple assumption such as ‘Physical activities are good for health’, I asked more complex questions, such as ‘What does health mean?’, ‘Does health depend merely on individual choices within our society?’, ‘Do different communities have the same access to physical activities?’ With this heterogeneous and privileged group of students, it was easy to see how difficult it was to foster dialogue between different areas of knowledge, such as biology and the humanities. Fragmentation present in the whole structure of HE challenged me constantly. As a researcher, I am less concerned with disciplinary boundaries and compartmentalized learning. Yet as an ECT, bound by institutional structure, I am compelled to fragment knowledge and thereby provide a teaching and learning experience that is thoroughly at odds with my critical approach to pedagogy. In reality, though, a curriculum should not be a simple sum of small parts of knowledge and methods. Henry Giroux (2013: 168) highlights this problem when he criticizes the proliferation of ‘teach-proof ’ curriculum packages that reduce teachers to the role of technicians. In such packages ‘knowledge is broken down into discrete parts, standardised for easier management and consumption, and measured through predefined forms of assessment’ (Giroux, 2013: 168). Questioning these ideas is challenging because the students and teachers are used to finding standardized solutions that usually require individuals to seek common results. For example, ‘I did my part’ is a typical student response to a group task and teamwork, as if it were enough to act simply as a part of a machine for solving complex social problems. Assessment processes also demonstrated to me interesting ways for changing my teaching. I noted that the students recalled moments where they had to tackle simple problem-solving questions – for instance, ‘How would you organize a class for a heterogeneous group where all students could participate without unfair competition?’ Although the students remembered little from the lectures I spent hours preparing, they could explain the solutions they found for different problems that were posed during the module. They were able to present reasonable solutions for questions on practice, such as preparing teaching situations. This therefore triggered me to rethink my teaching approach and reinforced one of the simple principles proposed by several pedagogues: becoming a teacher does not mean taking the position of truth but is about being able to reconstruct the paths of curiosity, without giving up the knowledge learned (Rancière, 1991; Freire, 2001). I needed to raise the intellectual bar in sessions by posing questions, which can help abdicate my position as the authoritative speaking subject (Zimmermann and Morgan, 2015). Opportunity for dialogue, with curiosity for life and its challenges, is an important element mentioned by Freire



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(1996) to help develop a pedagogy of autonomy. I believe that my position as an ECT makes me more open to these changes because I also face uncertainties about my own position and perspective. Freire (2001: 259) warns that ‘the ethical, political and professional responsibility of the teacher places on him the duty to prepare, to qualify for his teaching activity. This activity requires that their preparation, training, and formation become permanent processes.’ Over the years, I learnt that searching for authors, appropriating theories and discussing research concerning an observed reality are therefore fundamental elements that should accompany the course of every teacher. At the beginning of my teaching journey, it was frustrating to avoid a ‘master-explicator’ position (Rancière, 1991: 6) in which I tried to explain every theory or concept from my perspective. However, as I began to face a changing profile of the student cohort accessing our university, I realized that questioning and listening is an excellent starting point for a critical approach and that this should be an integral part of my teaching practice. Nevertheless, a significant challenge for me is to find a balance in my dialogical position. It can also feel stressful to work in an evaluative, standardized environment where our teaching innovation may be perceived as useless, pointless or dangerous (hooks, 1994). Conventional pedagogical standards are still prevalent, whether in connection to the teaching of classes or for research and publication (Giroux, 1988). As I endeavour to adopt a dialogical perspective, these demands feel contradictory to me.

Finding Possibilities for Dialogue As an ECT, I have been trying to find the best methodological options in coherence with the theories I believe in. Freire (1996) suggests that a pedagogy of autonomy requires the embodiment of words by example. Furthermore, it was important for me to realize that genuine dialogue, such as that in the framework proposed by Martin Buber (2002), does not allow for the control, or even prediction, of the results of such an encounter. Hence, I needed to relinquish control over the teaching situation. Instead, I attempted to design the learning activities in consultation with the students in a way that welcomed and met their interests, required joint elaboration and therefore involved conflicts and tensions (Morgan and Guilherme, 2014). From the outset, the most difficult aspect for me was not to offer prompt solutions for the difficulties students were experiencing in their learning. In fact, during some teaching experiments it was

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exciting to observe the different ways that students constructed their responses and the way in which they sought answers for themselves. Considering the diversity of students and the constant change in the sociocultural and political contexts, as previously mentioned, I assumed it would be necessary to update the curriculum content. For this, I needed to learn how to listen to the demands of the students and to try to connect their interests and knowledge with theoretical references. Hence, I tried to engage in dialogue (Freire, 1970; Buber, 2002) with the students to arrive at a mutually agreeable and comprehensive curriculum concerning the subjects I work on. Acting upon the contributions from a diversity of students enriched my teaching practice. All this was challenging for me as an ECT because of the continuous judgement I was exposed to when facing students and colleagues who were expecting a more conventional approach. I perceived a dialogical approach to initially cause discomfort for the students because they needed to create responses in a different way from that which they were used to. They used to ask the same question: ‘How do you want me to do this?’ However, I did not want students to follow models as this would reinforce the existing failure of our educational system that had contributed to the social inequalities in Brazilian society mentioned earlier in this chapter. The more I perceived the reality of the public system changing and the complexity of the social problems we faced, the higher my expectations were to find new solutions in a cooperative manner. I wanted to be able to work in a reflexive way where the students and I discuss new possibilities. I feel very frustrated when I am trying to explore theories that consider concrete problems and students ask for recipes. However, it has been possible for me to observe more engagement and inclusion in my classroom as students begin to bring their cultural background to bear upon the classroom activity. It is also invigorating for me as I can view the problems through different perspectives. In addition, letting go of my urge to control student learning is now yielding results as the students no longer try to present responses to my questions as they imagined I would like to hear them. Instead, they give answers that they have arrived at based on well-reasoned discussion and dialogue. This experience has contributed to my formation and development as an ECT because, although I still consider it my responsibility to act as a teacher, I now feel more relaxed about my position. Another aspect that challenged me during my early experiences as a teacher was the hierarchical duality of mind over body. As some part of my research is on embodiment, I suggest that attention to human corporeality may help pedagogy to rethink educational temporality and spatiality more inclusively. African and



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indigenous cosmology, for instance, stress this corporeal dimension of human beings (Irobi, 2012; Saura, Matta and Zimmermann, 2018). With this perspective in mind, I realized that even the organization of a classroom space can influence the levels of student participation and the role of the teacher in teaching and learning activities. It was difficult to propose more collective engagement in class with students sitting in rows without any mobility. Additionally, I observed that the position of students in a classroom and the ability to circulate (or not) in the different spaces of the campus mirror and reproduce the wider social structure. In trying to bring more autonomy to my position as a teacher, I looked for changes in the arrangement of space and furniture to encourage teamwork with engagement in more creative processes (Kowaltowski, 2011) and to overcome the theory and practice dichotomy (Ball, 2000). My students and I also tried different places for classes, from libraries to gardens, looking to improve interaction. Thinking about how to bring the theories I was studying to my daily teaching experience was a process of experimentation and therefore involved putting my own classes under a critical lens. Freire (1996) highlights that a pedagogy of autonomy requires the possibility for risk. Initially, taking risks seemed troublesome for me as I was trained as a teacher to facilitate specific outcomes. As an ECT, I sometimes feel that I need to prove to the students that I am able to perform as a teacher who presents the subject and predicts all the steps of learning by performing expected teaching behaviours. However, when the students realize that I am also prepared to take risks during my classes, they understand that this is an essential attitude for learning. Unexpected results cease to have a negative connotation and become the impetus for new paths and attempts.

Concluding Remarks These situations and reflections help to capture my struggles to be a better teacher, whilst simultaneously facing challenges in my role as an ECT. This experience, connected with the social environment of the university mentioned in the first section, helped me to change my practice during my early years as a teacher in terms of understanding inclusion. Thus, after a few years of teaching experience in HE, I now understand that real social inclusion is not simply a matter of providing access to formal education. It also needs to include the possibility of enriching and rethinking the whole educational system. This realization forced me to improve my theoretical references in order to respond to some demands

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such as the decolonization of the curriculum, including different subjects, authors and methodologies (Irobi, 2012; Maturana et al., 2017; Santos, 2017). My teaching experiences therefore demonstrated the persistent inequality in Brazil’s society to me, and my position as an ECT disclosed to me that racism and gender inequalities are structural within the social and educational reality that I operate in. Nevertheless, in attempting to face the complexity of this challenge, I have learnt to look for small changes I can make in my daily work that helps to maintain my main objectives and excitement for teaching. In this chapter I have presented some ideas on how the fragmentation of knowledge, assessment and classroom design made me consider alternatives for a more communicative and inclusive relationship with students. However, my broad experience as an ECT working in a university with the proportions of USP made me believe more in my autonomy to propose collective projects. Even choices that may seem simple carry with them world views, ideologies and expectations. In education, there is no neutrality as we express ourselves and defend ideas. Therefore, it is crucial that we have continuous training in terms of our depth and openness to dialogue. As an ECT engaged in critical thinking, I believe that our way of staying the same and remaining as critical academics is, paradoxically, by allowing ourselves to constantly change.

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Learning from Learners in China: Teaching Public Policy to Continuing Education Students Diwen Xiao

Introduction Interactions between students and teachers can benefit adult students in many ways (see e.g. Strauss and Volkwein, 2004; Trigwell, 2005; Rugutt and Chemosit, 2009; Zepke and Leach, 2010). Equally, teachers are able to identify their deficits in skills and knowledge during course teaching by interacting with their learners (Chris and Myhill, 2004; Betz and Huth, 2014). Ideally, this experience would prompt teachers to adopt new teaching methods and to enhance their knowledge base. However, insufficient attention has been paid to teacher/part-time student interaction and its impact in Higher Education (HE) on teacher improvement (Komarraju, Musulkin and Bhattacharya, 2010; Spilt, Koomen and Thijs, 2011; Hagenauer and Volet, 2014). Furthermore, the contribution of teacher-student interaction to teacher development has been even less explored in the context of Continuing Education (CE), especially in relation to increased participation of mature students (Cook-Sather, 2006). Therefore, this chapter focuses on my teaching experiences in the CE programme at Sun Yat-sen University. In particular, it focuses on how I have been influenced in my teaching by teacherstudent interactions. The chapter is structured as follows. The chapter will briefly introduce the characteristics and development of China’s CE system and explain the reason why PhD students tend to teach on CE programmes. It then describes the interactions between students and teachers, detailing what teachers may learn from their students and how this can contribute to their development as teachers. This chapter seeks to contribute to our understanding of the value of

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teacher-student interaction in enhancing the teaching practice of Early Career Teachers (ECTs).

Continuing Education Programmes in China The Self-taught Higher Education Examination (SHEE) was launched by the Chinese State Council in 1981(Chinese State Council, 1981). Students who pass the SHEE gain an equal opportunity to apply for postgraduate programmes and become competitive in the job market. The SHEE is very suitable for parttime students, especially considering there is no time limit for them to finish the coursework and to pass all the exams. The number of admitted candidates has therefore risen sharply from less than one million in the early 1990s to more than fifty-five million by the end of 2018. However, as the SHEE had a graduation rate of less than 2.5 per cent during 2013–17 (Li, Li and Li, 2019: 90), it has actually stimulated demand for teachers to guide students. Therefore, the self-taught form of HE has increasingly been augmented by CE programmes to help students pass their exams. In the 1990s, the CE programmes mushroomed nationally owing to the increasing importance of the SHEE (Bao, 2005). These programmes have become quite popular in urban areas, particularly the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, where significant numbers of migrant workers and high school graduates desire to gain access to HE. Thus, the SHEE has opened HE to all Chinese citizens without restrictions, such as those posed by gender, age, race, education, physical condition and place of residence. Consequently, the demand for full-time and part-time lecturers has also surged and this includes an increased demand for PhD students who are now frequently engaged to teach on these programmes. As a PhD student, I started my part-time teaching career at Sun Yat-sen University in 2012. This began just a few days after being admitted onto the public administration doctoral programme in the School of Government. I received the part-time teacher recruitment email from the CE office in early September 2012. At that time, teaching part-time adult students was quite a challenge for me since I had no experience of delivering classes to this cohort of learners. However, as I did plan to find a university teaching position after graduation, this required me to have had prior teaching experience. Therefore, I decided to apply for the job. It was a relief when the director of the CE office informed me that there would be a weekend of training for those beginning employment as part-time teachers. Two other part-time PhD students were invited to the



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training as well. In the training, they reminded us to stay confident and keep an open mind in the CE programme. They also pointed out that it is easy for PhD students to teach well, if they prepare well. However, the training was more like a tick-box exercise with limited practical relevance. After the training, I joined the ranks of hundreds of other part-time ECTs. In my case, I was assigned to teach two courses per semester at two branches each weekend. Alongside my new responsibilities, I still needed to act as a teaching assistant for my supervisor’s undergraduate students at Sun Yat-sen University in the first year. I had to deliver tutorials for two courses during the weekdays. According to the university management, I was expected to communicate with undergraduate students regularly by conducting group discussions and holding after-class meetings, when required. This experience gave me a good opportunity to obtain and interpret the course feedback from undergraduate students. From time to time, I also compared the difference between the CE students and full-time students on campus. By doing so, I gained a much better understanding of the CE students which, in turn, helped me to rethink my status as a teacher and the teaching skills applied during the lectures. Engaging in this comparative reflection on each type of student cohort also improved my performance during standard tutorial work on campus.

The Influence of Part-time Students on Early Career Teacher Development As a full-time PhD student, I found the experience of being a part-time public policy lecturer in the CE programme valuable. During three years of teaching on the CE programme I built my teaching identity with inputs from my parttime students. My students connected me to the ‘real world’ and helped me rethink what it means to be a teacher of public policy. I also obtained precious opportunities to polish my teaching skills and to benefit from interactions with my students, which helped me to redefine my teaching approach and the curricular content. Interactions with the part-time students played an important role in nurturing my identity as a teacher.

Participants as Unique and Diverse Learners The diversity in the experiences and background of the CE students had a tremendous effect on me as an ECT. The part-time students participating in

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CE programmes were significantly different from those studying full-time on campus and were a very heterogeneous group (Busher et al., 2014). Since there are no enrolment criteria for CE programmes, the age of students ranged from teenagers who had just graduated to senior blue-collar and white-collar workers who had been in work for many years. However, in general, these students are typically mature learners (Cullity, 2006; Burton, Lloyd and Griffiths, 2011). Additionally, most of them do not have the background knowledge required by the course. Their understanding of the course therefore varied significantly, as did their openness to accept new knowledge. Some students followed the course delivery easily, while others felt confused after class. Some of the learners, in their thirties or forties, also had daytime jobs. They had to switch between multiple social roles, such as caregiver, income earner and part-time learner (Johnston and Merrill, 2009). Most of the students in my class were migrant female workers. This was perhaps unsurprising. A survey conducted by the South China Normal University in the Pearl River Delta found that more than 70 per cent of the female workers came from neighbouring provinces and less than 20 per cent of those female workers held college degrees (Zeng and He, 2008). These part-time students had to finish their work before coming to the class. It was not easy for them to strike a balance between work, family and study. During the weekend classes, some of the students’ children would sneak into the classroom to seek the comfort of their parents, the female students in particular (Gouthro, 2009; Gorard and Selwyn, 2005; Christie, Munro and Wager, 2005). It was also quite difficult for students to focus and to remember the key points after their demanding work schedule. I often came across students who dozed off in the evening classes. It was also common for students to ask for a leave of absence because of plans to gain overtime in their job or owing to physical discomfort. Moreover, there is often limited opportunity for CE students to spend time reviewing learning material outside class. Most of the coursework thus needed to be completed in class. Students’ study in CE programmes was therefore highly affected by their socio-economic circumstances (Willans and Seary, 2011). It was quite difficult for me, as an ECT, to cope with the needs of those parttime students. This was owing to my limited previous teaching experience. In comparison with undergraduate students on campus, the part-time students held a more pragmatic attitude to participation as working professionals (Woodley et al., 1987; Roessger, 2015). The unequal power relationships perceived by the students also mattered (Arnot and Reay, 2007). They regarded me as a distant authority figure and seldom talked to me during the first few months. Most of the time they kept very silent and donned what I perceived to be a poker face during



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the class. In order to break the silence, I tried to approach them by increasingly asking questions related to the course. Meanwhile, I tried to decentralize my position as a knowledge disseminator by inviting the younger students to give comments about questions I proposed, whilst encouraging the mature learners to make a comment on opinions expressed. Eliciting student dialogue worked well and the more mature students gradually started joining in. This reminded me of the need for an ECT to cultivate student engagement by being approachable as a teacher (Denzine and Pulos, 2000). Particularly when teaching mature students in a situation like mine, an ECT can benefit from acting as a friend and offering students an atmosphere of equal status and mutual respect. Part-time students’ approach to learning forced me to make quick adjustments to my teaching and to be adaptable as a teacher to meet learner needs. After having learnt their needs, I tried to make changes to the syllabus and my style of lecturing. I tailored the new syllabus to align with mature learners’ interests and strengths by adding material which was more familiar to them and their life experiences. Meanwhile, I cancelled the student presentation section of my course and added an introduction to key concepts in public policy to help build foundational knowledge in the subject. It seemed that part-time students demonstrated greater interest in public policies that were linked to their lives and personal milieus rather than those from a foreign context. I therefore replaced the examples from the Western countries in the textbook with recent local Chinese cases. In sum, I forced myself to try my best to ensure that students could meet the learning objectives before leaving the classroom. As a teaching assistant at Sun Yat-sen University, I noticed that full-time undergraduate students were more enthusiastic about theory. The undergraduate students always had lots of ‘why’ questions during the lecture, while the parttime CE students were normally quiet during these sessions. The latter’s priority was passing the SHEE as soon as possible. They regarded the programme as an instrument to get the degree (Macrae, Maguire and Ball, 1997) and were particularly concerned about whether a particular session could be helpful to the exam. Some of them, usually male students, would ask questions about parts of the lecture that would relate to the exam. Hints for exam content would be requested by the students, especially in the last lecture. Conversely, the full-time undergraduate students would pose questions about their research papers. In order to fulfil my teaching task, I had to steer the part-time students’ attention towards learning rather than succumb to the assessment-driven approach they seemed to have adopted. In addition, I had to help alleviate their anxiety by playing the role of a mentor. Maintaining academic integrity was challenging for

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me because I was concerned about receiving poor feedback if I did not cave in to student demands. As an ECT, I was, and am, particularly vulnerable to these performance measurements. Through an appreciation of the particular learning needs of my students, I therefore made adjustments to my teaching approach. I noticed that most part-time students were fond of watching videos on their cell phones during the course break. In order to get their attention during the lecture, I thus played short videos from Weibo (a microblog) and TikTok (a video-sharing platform) in the classroom to demonstrate topics. This use of new media was a risk for an ECT like me, as moving from the conventional instructional material viewed as a norm required me to leave my comfort zone. Yet by doing so, I received positive feedback from the part-time students, particularly as other lecturers had not adopted this flexibility in their teaching approach. The videos also helped the part-time students to gain a better understanding of the cases and to appreciate the abstract norms of public policy more quickly (Burgess, 2008). We work in sheltered academic settings that can sometimes feel dislocated from the so-called real world. The use of social media helped resolve this disjuncture. Students’ positive responses to the use of this kind of media made me reconsider the attributes of a ‘good’ lecturer. Interacting with the CE students in class reminded me that I need to perform less like an abstract theoretician and more like a conversationalist, who could engage with examples drawn from students’ day-to-day lives. The students also reminded me, as an ECT, to stay reflexive during the lecture, even during the course break. This helped me to adopt an approach which was less transmissive but one that focused on co-creating knowledge and content in a way that met my students’ strengths and interests. In general, the mature learners would focus too much on textbook knowledge and knowledge retention owing to their focus on assessment. This was far too time-consuming and unhelpful to enable meaningful learning. In order to meet the requirements of the mature/diverse part-time learners, I acted as an instructor to help them to analyse policy cases rather than as an academic encouraging undergraduate students to do academic research. This experience highlights a stark contrast between what I did at Sun Yat-sen University as a teaching assistant and as a teacher preparing students for the SHEE. I told students that it would be easy to pass the SHEE if they focused during the lectures. I praised those students who regularly raised and answered questions. After the courses, I contacted them through WeChat and email to offer peer support to do the tutorial work. WeChat communication helped them connect the course with their everyday life, thereby making abstract knowledge more concrete. I also



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reminded them to develop their independent learning skills rather than merely focus on obtaining a degree. This shifted their attention to learning knowledge, alleviating some of their exam stress. One of the surprises I encountered, and adjusted to, was just how central it was to instruct students how to learn. As an ECT I expected students to have background knowledge and techniques to engage in the rigours of academic learning. The significant demands of the SHEE course also placed demands on me to consider the pastoral aspects of my role as a teacher. As an ECT, I found myself comforting my students who experienced significant anxiety due to the demands placed by the course and their social and economic backgrounds. Tutoring parttime students helped me to appreciate that the teacher needs to be both a good lecturer and someone who is empathetic of students’ personal circumstances. I began to realize that it is quite important to build students’ confidence from the outset. The part-time students, in particular, need encouragement from the teacher since most of them would have failed in their high school or received limited education in their early years. As an ECT, I used to think teaching was all about conveying knowledge. However, teaching CE students reminded me to cultivate a classroom environment that fosters good mental health. Initially, this was something I did not think was particularly important in teaching. However, after three years of lecturing in the CE programme, I gained a more comprehensive understanding of the roles a teacher needs to play as one who needs to be inclusive of learners’ academic and personal diversity, adapts to engage students in the learning and considers students as partners in the learning process whilst also being an empathetic educator who acts as a mentor to their learners. An appreciation of these various facets of a teacher’s role helped me to grow as a teacher.

Participants as Course Reviewers and Social Observers Quality teaching is a dialogic process (Mercer and Howe, 2012). In this regard, I actively encouraged the part-time SHEE students to join in with classroom discussion. However, some learners seemed embarrassed when asked to share their opinion due to an apparent lack of confidence. Some students, judging by their reactions, were quite afraid to provide an incorrect answer. In order to break the silence, I carried out policy experiments during the lecture. Students were invited to join the experiment as decision makers and key stakeholders. The quality of the lecture was enhanced considerably by learners’ active participation. Students began to ask engaging questions – for example, how to identify the

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policy agenda setting, whether doctors at public hospitals could be regarded as street bureaucrats. Furthermore, they reacted very enthusiastically to topics that were relevant to their professional contexts, such as the minimum wage and social insurance. Learners who joined the debate or expressed their views on policymaking and implementation improved in their levels of confidence and in their learning and understanding of the subject dramatically. From my perspective, I also learnt that the life experiences of part-time learners could be used by the lecturer as teaching material for public policy studies. After a while, I noticed the importance of treating the CE students as partners in their learning to help achieve higher quality in-class interaction. As time went by, participants gradually became willing to comment on the government and on public policies. At the very beginning, they had a stereotypical impression of the Chinese government at different levels. Government, in their eyes, was inefficient. According to the students, government employees had a bad reputation as incompetent bureaucrats. However, after policymaking analysis was introduced, the learners began to realize their misunderstandings. This was especially true when I initiated discussions between the students and myself regarding case-study analysis. I asked them to treat me as a friend who was doing his PhD programme, rather a lecturer who is all-knowing and should not be questioned. It was easier for them to accept me, compared to other more senior lecturers, as a friend during the class, and this is perhaps where my ECT status worked to my advantage. When there was alignment, students often saw me as someone with similar perspectives on life. Where it differed, older students saw me as receptive to their experiences. My collegiate and friendly approach received significant positive feedback from them which, in turn, helped me to encourage student participation. Interaction with part-time students also taught me, as an ECT, that I need to review popular beliefs with caution and to provide balanced reading materials for students during the course to ensure I was not endorsing a particular view informed by my own biases. Doing so would avoid enforcing an uncritical view on a policy. From the academic perspective, policy target groups’ voices in China were hardly heard, especially on social issues. That lack of receptivity has caused huge misunderstandings in policy research which, in turn, provided limited opportunity for full-time undergraduate students, and scholars, to unpack policy implementation processes (see Zhu, 2010). For example, in our discussions on the one-child policy, some female students indicated that they were willing to give birth to more than one child. In their opinion, it would be beneficial for their family since an extra child could bring more happiness and



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joy both to the parents and to the other child. However, their willingness to have another baby got little support from the state. This evidence indicated a great contrast between the popular belief that Chinese women’s willingness to have children had decreased over time; this might have been because many women keep silent in front of their family and did not raise their concerns publicly. When I started my full-time teaching career in 2018, stories shared by part-time students became the cases that I used for my full-time undergraduate students. At the end of each course, part-time students were invited by the programme manager, as reviewers, to give comments and feedback on each teacher’s lecturing performance. Their final comments would weigh heavily with my teaching contract the following year. In addition, I conducted face-to-face interviews with them to collect information that helped me to improve my teaching during the course. They were encouraged to share their feelings and to explain their views on the teaching process. I also asked them to review the course carefully and provide detailed feedback, which related to my style and content of teaching. These initiatives were driven by the ethos of students as partners (Cook-Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014). In this instance, the part-time students played the role of an ideal course reviewer by pointing out the weaknesses in my teaching and by giving positive feedback where they liked my teaching/session. Compared to the undergraduate students, part-time students were generally more comfortable in approaching me directly after they got used to my way of teaching. Some students, males in their thirties, even came to me directly and gave advice on my lecturing during the course break. They made their requests quite clear, such as giving comments on local public policies or the need to elaborate on the theory discussed in the last class. They also told me in their anonymous feedback that they did not care about my Mandarin having a local accent but asked me to keep a slow pace when it came to key concepts, particularly the ones which were of interest to them. Their reviews mirrored my shortcomings in teaching. As an ECT, this helped me to improve my teaching skills and establish a more comprehensive understanding of the teaching process. Teaching on the CE programme enabled me to collect useful advice on the role of students in my teaching development. In sum, their feedback reminded me to adjust the strategies that I could use during the lecturing and delivery of course content. CE students from diverse trades and professions did not share the academic trajectory I had experienced as an ECT. This became apparent throughout my teaching. After-class interactions with students was a good way to support them in their learning (Dobransky and Frymier, 2004). Therefore, one of the things

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I did was to ensure the learners were supported beyond the classroom. For instance, at the final lecture of each semester in the CE programme, learners were encouraged to keep in touch with me by email. I also created a WeChat account and an asynchronous online forum for students to use. The part-time students from different regions, as social observers, would raise various concerns on public issues. Some of them would often consult me via emails or WeChat when they came across new policy initiatives. They brought a wealth of information and knowledge about the outside world to me via their emails and WeChats. These after-class communications highlighted the need for me to adapt the teaching content and teaching approaches to suit the needs of my learners while enabling me to learn from their perspectives. The ongoing communication between the students and myself inspired me as a teacher to introduce new readings to the course. As an ECT teaching mature part-time students, I learnt from those who had been affected by policy issues that extended far beyond my own positionality and research experience. Interacting with the CE students after class therefore forced me to rethink how and what to teach within a public policy course. The students’ cognition and expression of policy issues and policy processes in the after-class interactions clearly reflected a set of policy discourses that differed greatly from the government discourse system. They would normally regard the government and street bureaucracy as disconnected benefactors lacking a sense of accountability. Their questions and views on policy implementation were more focused on equity rather than transparency and efficiency. Based on the after-class conversations with the part-time students, I added reading materials on policy discourse into the comparative public policy course and reminded my students to pay more attention to discourse analysis in Chinese public policy.

Conclusion Three years of lecturing the part-time CE programme students highlighted my shortcomings in teaching and as a teacher but also allowed me to appreciate the value that my students can offer in the development of my teaching practice. Giving lectures to the part-time learners gave me the opportunity to learn to communicate with students, both as a teacher and a friend. Part-time students from various regions with different backgrounds also helped me to cope with the pressures of lecturing by adjusting the syllabus and presenting policy cases accordingly. The diverse body of CE students brought many challenges to my



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teaching. The fruitful teaching experience also made me realize that a good lecturer participating in the CE programme held multiple roles, including mentor, pastoral carer and friend. In addition, interacting with the part-time students helped me to acquire further understanding of public policy research in China. This, in turn, inspired me to notice where I needed to make teaching reforms. Through classroom interaction, the attitudes of policy target groups towards public policies became apparent. This has not received much attention in existing Chinese public policy research. Therefore, it could be an important line of inquiry, especially in policy implementation and undergraduate courses. Learning from the part-time students, I recognized that the constructivism analysis framework had potential to be applied in Chinese public policy research. Including constructivism literature on public policy into the course syllabus for the undergraduate students became a must. As an ECT, I gradually recognized that it is quite important for a good lecturer to bridge the research with teaching and build close relationships between teaching and professional learning. My CE students always reminded me to share their curiosity and policy interests. To some extent, teaching helped me see the policy world as an experience that is deeply enmeshed in everyday life and my own professional activity.

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Transitioning from Teaching Young Learners to Trainee Teachers in International Higher Education: Professional Identity Crises and Continual Development Natalie Shaw

Introduction This chapter offers a reflection on the transformation of my identity when transferring from early childhood teaching into lecturing in teacher education on an initial teacher training course for international school teachers in the Netherlands. I actively negotiated a redefinition of my role as a teacher and, more fundamentally, redefined my professional identity. As I engaged in identity (re)negotiation, I had to reconsider what I was doing in the classroom – both in regard to my daily teaching activities as well as in the overarching sense of situating my teaching within a shifted landscape of beliefs and values from a school to a Higher Education (HE) context. In this chapter, I sketch out the journey in which I redefined my role as an Early Career Teacher (ECT) in HE. Ultimately, I arrived at an identity that embraced the additional requirements of being a facilitator of learning for young adults whilst recognizing the students’ own identity construction as learners (Warner Shaie and Zanjani, 2006). The first section of the chapter gives examples of the moments of crisis I experienced that triggered processes of identity (re)definition. The second section explains how I arrived at a metaphor that supported my identity negotiations, and the third section describes the tools that I have found helpful along the way, which may be of benefit to other ECTs in similar contexts.

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Identity I view identity as a dialogical (Dunlop and Walker, 2013) and narrative process (Johansen, 2017; Taylor, 2017), but I also acknowledge essentialist aspects of identity (Dunlop and Walker, 2013). In line with the ‘onion’ model offered by Fred Korthagen and Angelo Vasalos (2005), I accept the existence of ‘outer layers’ of identity, which are more dependent on a specific setting and context and the challenges presented therein. Conversely, the central core of identity, according to Korthagen and Vasalos’s model, is an expression of innermost belief in the purpose of one’s work. In my view, the process of identity formation actually occurs through communities of practice, as originally conceptualized by Etienne Wenger-Trayner and further theorized by Omid Omidvar and Roman Kislov (2014), and Kevin Patton and Melissa Parker (2017). Identity negotiations are thus influenced by the processes within organizations (Johansen, 2017), by interactions between professionals (Omidvar and Kislov, 2014; Patton and Parker, 2017) as well as through individual processes of self-definition and representation (Dunlop and Walker, 2013). A core trait of identity is its social nature: the creation of professional identity is dependent on dialogue with others while also involving a wider audience. Terms found for this in the literature include ‘small-story research’ (Dunlop and Walker, 2013: 241) and ‘micro-level narratives’ (Johansen, 2017: 179). Both involve dialogical situations in which identity is negotiated with others; in a school setting this might be, for instance, colleagues, students or parents. Dialogue permeates all levels as theorized by Korthagen and Vasalos (2005), from the more contextually based outer layers to the inner circle of a deepseated belief about one’s core task within and meaning for the profession. Jenelle Reeves (2018: 100) refers to the latter as ‘telos’ – the expression of a teacher’s reason for entering into, and remaining within, the teaching profession. No less socially embedded, but less spontaneous, are ‘big stories’ (Dunlop and Walker, 2013: 241) – narrations about one’s own professional and life journeys that are frequently edited and added to but that still strive for coherence over time. Big stories contribute to a teacher’s telos and thus their core identity. Arguably, this undergoes redefinition over time. However, it remains more stable when compared to the incidental dialogical processes of creating external layers of identity by positioning oneself in response to a spontaneous or dynamic situation (Dunlop and Walker, 2013; see also Taylor, 2017).



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This interaction between identity processes was illustrated for me by an event from my first few months after transitioning into HE as an ECT. I recollect that I gave a shamefully behaviourist recommendation for a classroom management approach to a colleague, which did not readily correspond with my telos as a social constructivist. My recommendation was to simply ignore a student’s constant use of her mobile phone and to instead comment positively on moments when she contributed to the class. This advice was intended to subtly signal to my colleague that, despite being ‘new’ to the context of HE, I still knew how to manage an unruly student. The fact that the recommendation itself was contrary to the way that I thought (and taught!) about behaviour management made me question my initial suggestion. My sense of my telos and my core teacher identity had been affected in the transition from school to HE. Consequently, this reflection prompted me to amend my teaching content. I began to include caveats when teaching about classroom behaviour management and no longer extolled only the social constructivist principles that most readily corresponded to my core teacher identity. Instead, I made the case for the occasional behaviourist approach in the classroom. This approach resulted in students opening up more about moments when they themselves had reacted differently from their intended teacher identity. Together, we were then able to examine the small incongruences of ongoing identity construction, a process fraught with inherent contradictions (Johansen, 2017). Minor misalignments are accepted as part of identity construction. However, Reeves (2018) points out that they can also reveal more profound crisis points. She describes the occurrence of these incidents as ‘values schizophrenia’ (Ball, 2003: 221, cited in Reeves, 2018: 100) and notes that they are characterized by experiences of profound misalignment between a teacher’s claimed innermost belief and the structures that surround a teacher’s work. Within this context, Reeves explicitly draws attention to the wider environment, specifically the neoliberal structures that can prevent a teacher from acting in accordance with her/his core identity, beliefs and values. The following section of the chapter focuses more specifically on moments of crisis during my period of transition from primary teaching to the HE context.

Professional Identity Crises From the first moment I set foot into a HE context, I felt that I lacked a consistent professional identity as a HE teacher. I initially subscribed fully to

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the logic of taking what appeared to be simply ‘the next step’. My career at this point had spanned initial teacher training and two academic degrees in the field of education, and I had recently completed a PhD that had focused on teacher education. Laura A. Taylor (2017) cautions that moments of transition trigger shifts in professional identity. However, I actually began my HE career with confidence, convinced that my new professional role would extend naturally from my previous activity as a teacher rooted in an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning (Keiler, 2018). Despite this confidence, I soon encountered various crisis points.

Crisis 1: Implementing Critical Pedagogy Applying the categorizations offered by Rodrigues et al. (2018: 147), I always positioned myself as both a ‘progressive’ professional and one that adhered to a ‘social critique’ school of thought. I negotiated a professional identity that centred on enabling learners to think critically, strongly influenced by the works of critical pedagogue Paolo Freire (2018). Yet, one of my first challenges as a new teacher in HE was closely connected with this emancipatory approach. It appeared to me that encouraging young children to adopt a questioning attitude towards given power structures in a developmentally appropriate way was entirely different from encouraging the same questioning attitude in young adults. Having lived within and come to accept the status quo of their respective social realities, my university students felt insecure and were clearly challenged by a teacher who questioned some of their accepted truths. I recall a discussion about the students’ educational biographies as learners up until their entry into university. When I questioned whether their divergence in pathways might be due to factors beyond differences in academic abilities, I naturally intended to direct students’ critical attention to factors such as socio-economic background. Some students, especially those who had struggled more and taken more circuitous routes to arrive at university, connected readily with my point. Others felt challenged in their identity as ‘good students’, a label that they proudly carried over from secondary education. Those students were less likely to accept my challenges to this learner identity. As an ECT, I was initially not prepared for the impact of this discussion. In particular, I had not reflected deeply enough prior to the lesson to prevent creating a feeling of unease among my students. Essentially, I was not able to conclude the discussion in a way that would have encouraged my students to reflect upon structural barriers and themselves as learners. Not unlike many



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educators, I had optimistically constructed my professional role to be that of a ‘change agent’ (Taylor, 2017: 24). As I reflected on the episode, I realized that in reality I had not produced the desired change. What I had achieved was a sense of alienation that offered little connection with the students’ understanding of themselves as learners. During this particular session, I neither empathized nor meaningfully connected with my students at a level that would have advanced their conceptual understanding. Instead, I contributed to identity confusion as I talked at, but not truly with, my students. This experience was compounded by my position as a teacher new to HE. Despite my self-identification as an advocate of critical thought, I seemingly abandoned these core ideas as I encountered difficulty trying to transpose the principle of starting from the learners’ level of knowledge and skill to the HE context. What I had thought of as a strong pedagogical conviction and the ‘telos’ of my professional identity was not actually as firmly located at the core of my beliefs as I had previously thought.

Crisis 2: Expectations of Passive Learning My students, as I discovered, were not the learners that I had anticipated. Consequently, I could not rely on my previous experiences with open-minded 6-year-olds when I interacted with my university students. Prior to the start of my HE career, I had naively assumed that I would encounter curiosity and motivation to the power of the number of years students had spent in school. Most students appreciated that I had recently joined the university from an active background as an international classroom teacher and administrator. As a result, they were eager to hear the anecdotes I had to share. That desire was perfectly understandable. Many of them had limited prior exposure to the world of international education. However, many of the students appeared to be seeking formulaic recipes for issues such as ‘How would you deal with a child with autism/an angry parent/an argument between you and a colleague?’ (to name but a few of the dilemmas). I came to regard these requests with very mixed feelings. As I had recently transitioned from a curriculum that emphasized independent critical thinking, the thought of being forced to act as a provider of standard pedagogical recipes worried me. Would my suggestions, meant only as one possible interpretation of a number of equally possible (re)actions, be taken as gospel? Would my narrated, contextually situated solutions be faithfully reproduced in a myriad of classrooms, without the reflection necessary to allow for meaningful adaptation to the actual classroom realities?

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At a time when the idea of learning as a direct result of teaching had been called into question (Omidvar and Kislov, 2014), my students confronted me with an unending, traditional thirst for ‘being taught’. Not surprisingly, this approach was well reflected in the language students often used. The passive concept of ‘being taught’ frequently outweighed the active concept of ‘learning’ (see also van Rossum and Hamer, 2010). Students professed disappointment when I encouraged them to pursue individualized learning paths or offered differentiated learning experiences. Anything not directly transmitted in a lecture or through a clear activity with a sequential structure appeared to be met with initial unease. I was perplexed to find myself in a situation akin to ‘values schizophrenia’. Unlike the situation described by Reeves (2018), however, I found that narrowing the scope of my professional action was not due to a restrictive organizational structure as providing evidence for achievement targets was not prioritized over student learning at my institution. Additionally, I was in the luxurious position of not having to worry about negative student evaluations, as our university did not operate with a rating mechanism. Rather, I found that it was the students themselves who brought about a narrowing of focus. Their demands for predictable teaching and learning replaced the external neoliberal pressures that Reeves (2018) highlights. However, I concluded that my students were the products of educational systems where a neoliberal focus on outcome, achievement and comparison of results was prevalent. Students had naturally learnt to adapt to the requirements of their respective systems. The result was learners who appeared keen to please, but uneasy with a teacher who demanded active involvement and independent intellectual activity. This disconnect between my expectations towards the students and their established ways of learning was, I felt, connected to my former occupation as a teacher of young children. Within early childhood classrooms, I had worked with children at the very beginning of their institutional careers in schools; I had always adopted a pedagogy aimed at independent learning, critical thought and societal progress. When I witnessed the outcomes of institutional careers in the form of my students’ dispositions, I was disillusioned. I had always viewed schools as places that affected change for the better. As an ECT, I struggled to make sense of my emancipatory outlook and my self-attributed, deep-seated label as a ‘change agent’ when faced with learners who preferred lectures to self-directed, active learning. Although I was unaware of it at the time, I clearly experienced a case of ‘values schizophrenia’. This was triggered by the difference between the context I was used to and the HE context I found myself in, whereby I was confronted with learners at a very different point of their learning trajectory.



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Framing the Dilemma I wished to understand my students’ point of view alongside my own teaching dilemma (Biesta, 2017). Therefore, I needed a metaphor to conceptually frame, and subsequently examine, my teaching activities (Bain, 2004). As teachers are frequently identified as the ‘sage on stage’ (Biesta, 2017: 55), the image that spontaneously emerged was one of teaching as enacted stage play. I reflected that my innermost beliefs corresponded well with both emancipatory and critical theatre (Young, 2016), both with regards to the evolving role of the audience and the ethical need for egalitarian power structures. The latter particularly connected with my background in critical pedagogy and reflected the collaborative nature of student–teacher relationships that I experienced on campus. In emancipatory theatre, maintaining a passive spectator role is impossible. Rather, the audience must become involved and help to actively broaden the scope of possibilities. Furthermore, in the concept of ‘(l)iving (t)heatre’ (Young, 2016: 303), the very idea of distinct ‘audience’ and ‘actor’ roles is called into question. This idea was something that resonated strongly with me as a new teacher of future teachers. More egalitarian power structures, where students were not merely relegated to the spectators’ seats, connected powerfully with my expertise of many years. Developing teachers and honing teaching skills had always been at the heart of both my own teaching as well as my work as an administrator. As I had recently established myself as a HE teacher, I also felt a distinct need to highlight my expertise and to indicate what I had to offer. The idea of teaching as dramatization is not unusual (see the edited volume by Radulescu and Stadter Fox, 2005). Nevertheless, it afforded me some surprising insights that remained hidden until framed in this particular way. With the aid of the dramatic metaphor, which inspired my initial guiding question of How can I get this audience to be more involved?, I was able to essentially reword the question: What does this audience need to be able to participate? Changing the subject from ‘me’ to ‘the audience’ mirrored the subtle shift my understanding took, as I reconnected with the core premise of learner-centred teaching (Kidman and Casinader, 2017). As I utilized the stage play metaphor, I began to fully appreciate just how vast the distance was between students’ conceptualization of what should be happening on the social stage of university learning and my own ideas as an ECT. Indeed, what was clear to me was that an unreflective insistence upon my preferred emancipatory approach might well result in a figurative audience ‘walk out’, akin to a traditional theatre audience leaving an avant-garde performance in disgust. I was determined to prevent this by helping to build

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my students’ confidence, enabling them to participate in a capacity other than a mere spectator. Based on this understanding, I began to adopt a new teaching approach.

Teaching as ‘Stage Play’: Rediscovering Inquiry and Critical Pedagogy The aspect that connected both of my crisis situations was the difference between the principles that I wished to adhere to and the way in which my actual teaching activities merely paid lip service to those principles. In both, I imparted knowledge about inquiry and critical pedagogy, but I did not fully translate their premises into practice with my own students. The stage metaphor helped me to appreciate the needs of my students and to use these as a starting point; thus, this approach allowed me to concentrate on the essential steps necessary to affect a change. I began to more consciously invest in my students’ feeling of emotional safety as a necessary prerequisite of learning (Illeris, 2016). As an early childhood teacher, this had been an essential element of my professional repertoire and identity. However, I had not initially been successful in transferring it across contexts. While I engaged in friendly and lively interactions with my students, I needed to go further if my ultimate aim was to coax students a little closer to the stage. To achieve this, I reflected on the parallels between my primary and university students. Just like my primary students, my university students were in need of having the more substantial learning challenges broken down for them. Instead of letting students take over entire scenes on the conceptual stage, I carefully prepared short moments where students were invited to enter the limelight. I allowed for rehearsal time and took care to build confidence. One strategy I found particularly helpful was to identify routine activities within each session that corresponded with typical teacher behaviour, for example, taking notes on the board, directing a short discussion or conducting a refresher activity. These tasks were regularly shared out among students, and moments of students taking over parts of the session became a commonplace occurrence that students came to expect. As an early childhood teacher, I valued the feeling of being on a quest of knowledge with my students. Shaping my lectures along these lines afforded me the reassuring feeling that I successfully transposed this aspect of my early childhood teaching. Most importantly, it communicated my message of inquiry-based teaching far more powerfully than any of my lectures could ever have done. I finally felt I practised what I preached. I connected with



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students and no longer merely lectured on the value of connection as a premise for effective education. The sessions I was able to frame in this way located me, for the first time without reservations, within the landscape of HE. As I gently invited my students towards the imagined stage of the educational space, I felt reassured that I was not failing them as a critical pedagogue. In my understanding, critical pedagogy’s core premise is to equip learners with the skills needed to succeed in a complex world of power relations (Giroux, 2011). I realized that I could not give in to students’ requests and adopt the role of the traditional teacher they so evidently craved. Given the current demands placed upon the teaching profession to be more than a ‘fount of content’ (Keiler, 2018: 10), my doing so would have suggested that there was a way for my students to still be professional ‘content expert[s]‌’ and ‘explainer[s]’ (Keiler, 2018: 13). I knew that this was no longer an appropriate option. I was determined to support my students towards becoming confident practitioners in a world of decreasing absolute truths (Kincheloe, 2008; Giroux, 2011). The fact that I had undergone a radical challenge to my sense of professional self helped me to develop an empathic understanding for the identity shift that students were required to undertake as part of this process. I arrived at the question Who are we as learners and future teachers? as a central guiding principle in these activities. As an ECT and new lecturer who was (re)negotiating her professional identity, I found that the process of supporting students in their identity development offered space to realize that the struggles I experienced were not always counterproductive. As Rodrigues et al. (2018) point out, differences in opinion and fruitful debate are not only inevitable when facilitating a new generation of reflective teachers but also are the very foundation of this professional task.

Identity and Academic Community From my account so far, it might seem that I was exclusively engaged in solipsistic self-discovery throughout my first year as an ECT in HE and that I used solely my own insights and reflections to develop my practice independently. In reality, connections with both students and staff were vital elements that contributed to my journey and provided a context for the professional transformation that is described in this chapter. The theory of communities of practice recognizes professional learning as a deeply contextual activity, requiring a collective negotiation of meaning (Patton and Parker, 2017). Although it is possible to think of the integration of a newcomer as a process of induction led by more seasoned professionals, and the subsequent adoption of the habitus of the organization (see

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also Johansen, 2017), my own experience of identity negotiation in community was actually very different. I happened to join my university at a fortuitous time. During my first year, staff and students collectively prepared for a major curriculum change to incorporate approaches of design-based education (DBE). DBE draws on principles of inquiry-based learning, emphasizes student activity and firmly places the learner at the centre of the educational process (Coffman, 2017). DBE also combines the iterative design component with an inquiring learning process, responds to current core challenges in the field of education and offers potential for transformation in a world marked by systemic inequality (Mintrop, 2016). Furthermore, DBE aligns with a new focus within education, based on forging ‘thinking communities’ (Ritchhart, 2015: 203). Within this pedagogical approach, students typically collaborate to solve problems and thereby directly transfer knowledge into practice. In our faculty, it appeared that we found common ground on two dimensions of communities of practice: ‘mutual engagement’ and ‘a joint enterprise’ (Wenger, 1998: vii) were evident in both our teaching discourse and our teaching practice. As a faculty, we shared a passionate dedication to supporting young people to be the very best teachers possible and hoped to make international education a more equitable enterprise. Implementing DBE, we all agreed, was a logical extension of our shared and deep-seated beliefs regarding the necessity of educating for the future (Mintrop, 2016). Nonetheless, when it came to the actual implementation of DBE, the third aspect of ‘shared repertoire’ (Wenger, 1998: vii) was a point of contention between staff. Applying the stage metaphor to the situation we found ourselves in as faculty, we had only a vague notion of the kind of play that was required to be performed, and there were wildly differing ideas about the roles that we foresaw for ourselves as educators. Opinions oscillated between enthusiasm and scepticism, which required us to frequently engage in the kind of professional dialogue that Omidvar and Kislov (2014) indicate as supportive of collective identity work. The faculty, inclusive of students, also had to integrate a myriad of viewpoints based upon our previous identity constructions (Reeves, 2018). We were required to collectively calibrate new ways of teaching within an unfamiliar curriculum context. As an ECT, I perceived my entrance into the institution at a time when discussions about innermost values and core beliefs were regularly on the agenda as an inviting experience. Had I joined a year earlier, I might have struggled a lot more than I did with the disparities described in this chapter. My being embedded in a professional community that valued talk about identity supported me in articulating the teaching journey



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I have sketched out. This helped me carry out the necessary identity work that I had initially neglected. It helped me address the erroneous idea that stepping over from primary school to university teaching would not require adjustment.

Conclusion Essentially, a core recommendation that arose from my professional journey was the need to accept the transition process into teaching in HE as a profound change. I needed to proactively prepare for and constantly reflect upon the change. I did not prepare thoroughly enough for this transition prior to making it. Yet I would encourage fellow ECTs to most definitely do so: to take stock of the aspects of their previous professional identity that they wish to keep across contexts and to do so prior to the transition. ECTs may then find it easier to identify identity incongruences when they occur, both during and after the transition. My experience has shown that the crises I faced could not be avoided. Moreover, these crises created a state of disequilibrium that I needed in order to advance my professional learning. These crises were therefore both inevitable and necessary to my teaching journey as an ECT. However, the key learning in relation to these moments of identity challenge was that, in order to use these opportunities for professional development successfully, I needed to employ my background knowledge about identity concepts. In my experience, this enabled me to theoretically contextualize and analyse the identity processes and challenges as they unfolded. Finally, the fact that I was part of an active community of practice supported me during my early career steps in HE and helped me to (re)locate my identity within this teaching sector.

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Personal Narratives in a Wider Perspective Although there is a diversity of factors that can influence the trajectories of Early Career Teachers (ECTs), this group exhibits a striking amount of congruence in experience (Austin, Sorcinelli nd McDaniels, 2007: 54). The chapters in this book also highlight a degree of commonality in the experiences of ECTs, including the kinds of pressures they face and the opportunities that they have access to. Moreover, ECTs are likely to face a disquieting and important gap between their expected academic career and the reality (Rice, Sorcinelli and Austin, 2000). In the concluding section, a panoramic view of the preceding thirteen narratives is offered. The chapter synthesizes how the authors negotiate meaning in their professional lives as teachers and, in so doing, grapples with issues of professional identity and belonging, the purpose and responsibility of being a teacher, and the implications of place and context. In addition, strategies that ECTs adopt to cope with the challenges are also highlighted and these include collaborative relationships, developing innovative teaching strategies and personal resilience. Drawing attention to the kinds of issues that affect the experiences of ECTs enhances the probability that they achieve professional satisfaction as teachers (Austin, 2010). The concluding section therefore highlights connections across the other chapters to help frame questions that will be useful to readers considering their own professional journeys as ECTs or to those supporting the career development of early career academics.

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Reflections on Early Career Teachers’ Journeys: Challenges, Experiences and Strategies Ann E. Austin

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) rely heavily on their Early Career Teachers (ECTs), whose work is essential to educating learners, one of the primary missions of Higher Education (HE). Yet, despite their critically important role, these academics face considerable challenges as they strive to engage in their work, create their journeys as teachers and envision what long-term careers in academe may be possible. This book, which provides narratives that offer a probing look into the lives of a set of ECTs, is designed to highlight the journeys of ‘becoming’ of these academics. As the editors explained in their opening chapter, the journey of each academic is individual and unique, and a single portrait of ECTs would oversimplify and, in fact, undermine full understanding of the challenges, experiences, agency and perspectives of those at this career stage. However, at the same time, across the narratives, shared themes are woven into the overall tapestry describing the ECT experience. The volume is organized into several parts to highlight various kinds of experiences among ECTs. The editors have created several groupings: narratives that address the challenges of crossing borders (Part One), those illuminating the ‘precarious intersectionality’ that frequently punctuates the lives of ECTs (Part Two), narratives exploring how and why ECTs engage in ‘disrupting identities’ (Part Three), and a set that illustrates the ‘pedagogical predicaments’ (Part Four) that can challenge ECTs (and which I suspect are not infrequent in the experiences of many ECTs). In this final chapter of the volume, I look across these narratives and chapter groupings to identify and discuss common themes in how ECTs negotiate meaning-making around their professional identities

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and develop strategies for addressing challenges and exerting agency in their own careers. I have organized this chapter into three sections. Each explore themes that emerge across many of the narratives while acknowledging the specificity and uniqueness of the experience of each ECT. First, I offer a brief review of the challenges confronting ECTs. Second, I explore how the ECTs discuss the overarching task of negotiating professional identity, which seems to be the major issue pervading the experience of each writer. Third, I delineate strategies that these ECTs have developed to manage their work and lives as they advance in their professional journeys. In the final section of the chapter, I reflect on questions raised by these narratives for others negotiating the early career academic journey. Issues of support and encouragement are emphasized as ECTs strive to create careers in the volatile and demanding context of HE today.

Pressures Impacting Early Career Teachers Over the past two decades, a body of literature has emerged on the early career experiences of academics, which is reflected in the many citations throughout the chapters of the volume. As one of the contributors to that literature (Sorcinelli and Austin, 1992; Rice, Sorcinelli and Austin, 2000; Austin, 2003; Austin and McDaniels, 2006; Austin, Sorcinelli and McDaniels, 2007; Gappa, Austin and Trice, 2007), I follow this body of work with interest. The literature includes research from a range of countries and institutional types, yet it is consistent in highlighting key pressures and challenges facing ECTs – and the narratives in this volume echo these issues. Here, I provide a brief overview. Most ECTs have had little preparation for teaching during their own graduate experiences. In the past two decades, some universities have begun to incorporate teaching preparation as well as broader career preparation into the graduate experience, but the typical doctoral experience heavily emphasizes research preparation within the scholar’s discipline. While preparation for academic careers is an intensive and time-consuming process, finding a permanent position at the end of the intensive doctoral experience is not guaranteed and is very difficult. As highlighted by the editors and throughout the narratives in this book, precarity characterizes the work of ECTs (i.e. for those who do find academic positions). Short-term contracts, juggling teaching assignments across several institutions, teaching outside one’s areas of expertise and facing few prospects for long-term appointments are typical of ECTs’



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experiences. In an apt description in their chapter about their academic work in Australia, Clarissa Carden and Diti Bhattacharya wrote about being part of the ‘permanently impermanent workforce’. Those who do find employment typically carry heavy workloads to make ends meet. They find, however, that research is the currency of advancement and that their teaching loads often leave little time for completing dissertation work or producing the research publications that open the door for more long-term academic appointments. The irony is that the work they must do is not the work that will advance their careers – and, in fact, their commitment and time investment as teachers may actually undermine their long-term success as academics. Not surprisingly, the narratives of ECTs, in this volume and across the literature, is replete with expressions of dissatisfaction, disillusionment, loneliness and diminishing motivation. But what is also noteworthy is that, in the face of systemic pressures and daunting challenges to those interested in making their careers within the academy, many ECTs persistently hold on to their vision of what their work and what HE can be. Individual ECTs, as evidenced by the narratives in this volume, find ways to negotiate their identities on their own terms, to support their students’ learning in innovative ways and to hold up images, although sometimes modest and incomplete, of the kind of lives and work and the kind of academy that they hope to create. The ECTs writing in this volume, and many others, are the future of HE. Opening space to hear their hopes, values and aspirations is important to all who care about the future of HE. In the rest of this chapter, I highlight what I have learned in reading the narratives of the ECTs writing for this volume, focusing first on how they negotiate professional identity and then on the strategies that they have developed as they strive to pursue their dreams.

Negotiating Professional Identity and Related Challenges Negotiating one’s own professional identity as an academic and teacher, often within a context that does not fully value one’s work, is a significant task for every ECT. Reflecting on her work as a PhD student and teacher in two universities in the UK, Leah Burch explained that she is continuously negotiating and renegotiating what it means to be an educator and what it means to have a sense of belonging. Natalie Shaw struggled to find her professional identity as she moved from early childhood teaching into lecturing in a teacher education programme, where students did not approach their education with the engagement and

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agency she had expected. Occupying roles that are not highly valued within the hierarchy of HE, uncertain about what future career options will be available, and often struggling to meet the time demands of multiple roles, ECTs grapple with their identity as an academic professional. Having a sense of professional identity relates to how welcome and secure one feels within both a discipline and an institution. Short-term positions and working at more than one institution can mean little time and opportunity to connect with colleagues or to settle into the institutional space. Needing to take teaching assignments that are not always within one’s primary area of expertise can mean one’s work as a teacher is not leading to deeper disciplinary connections. The end result, as Burch and others explained, can make it hard for new academics to feel authentic and successful. Instead, it can lead to feelings of alienation and anxiety. Overall, establishing a sense of belonging and a clear and consistent professional identity can be difficult for ECTs. A strong theme throughout the narrative relating to how ECTs negotiate a sense of professional identity is the pervading feeling of being an ‘outsider’, or even more challenging, feeling like an ‘imposter’. The specific experiences and messages that stoke those feelings, which undermine a clear professional identity, vary by individual and circumstance, but the resulting lack of confidence is common. Carden and Bhattacharya, both ECTs in Australia, explained that their work as teachers exceeds what they are paid to do, yet they perceive that others think assigning a course to an early career academic is ‘a gift’. Their careers are developed ‘course by course’, always with uncertainty about employment in the future. They are not seen as valued and respected professionals but rather as newcomers who should be happy for any opportunity. Reflecting on HE in Poland, Mariusz Finkielsztein echoed these observations and highlighted the limited agency experienced by early career academics. They are at the bottom of the academic hierarchy with no security, assigned the least popular courses and able to exercise little agency. Feeling a need to prove oneself and push against the imposter syndrome is a common element of the working experience for most of the authors. Erin Pritchard, an ECT with dwarfism, discussed ‘disempowering spaces’ in academe that exacerbate her experience of being an imposter. For example, her students, often older and more established in the world of work than traditional students, sometimes ask whether she indeed has a PhD and question her decisions, choices and abilities as a teacher. Physical appearance also undermines Burch’s perceived identity as a capable professional. Some think she does not ‘look’ the age of a teacher so she is not always given teacher status.



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Returning to Nigeria to teach in HE after studying in England, Amos Pofi felt frustrated, isolated and excluded. This was largely due to his teaching ideas, which were cultivated during his education in Britain. Students and colleagues resisted the engaged teaching approaches he had learned during his graduate work. Ben Colliver, grappling with his identity as a gay man, while finding his stance as an ECT, reported feeling ‘a need to assimilate into existing institutional culture rather than to challenge or disrupt the status quo’. He felt he did not have the authority to change policies or practices and that he could not question senior colleagues. He reported an overall feeling of being precarious, seen first as a gay man and then, second, as an educator. These perceptions, which lead students to question his expertise as a teacher of criminology, undermine his authority. For a number of the ECTs who have shared their stories, the feeling of being an outsider or an imposter is accompanied by a sense of being overwhelmed, sometimes exhausted, and losing the enthusiasm that had originally brought them to academic work, overall, and teaching specifically. Finkielsztein lamented that ‘academic work in general is “sold” to young people like myself with the promise of making a difference and the thrill of discovery’. However, the narratives of the authors show that the circumstances of academic life wear down the enthusiasm, tarnish the promise and threaten the clarity of the professional identity of ECTs. They enter their work as ECTs having had little preparation during the doctoral experience for their teaching roles; they are often assigned courses outside their areas of expertise and with minimal time for preparation, and those who teach in several institutions have little opportunity to interact with institutional peers in communities of professionals. These circumstances contribute to diminution of their confidence and enthusiasm. Furthermore, their efforts to respond to and support their students can involve significant emotional labour, as mentioned by Colliver. They find too that the overall academic system rewards research over teaching, but their teaching assignments often preclude time to spend on research (Austin, Sorcinelli and McDaniels, 2007; Gappa, Austin and Trice, 2007). The chapter narratives in this volume reveal the emotions and thought processes that challenge ECTs’ sense of professional identity – and, in fact, that undermine their sense of well-being and purpose. In explaining how she moves between roles as an educator and a student, Burch labelled her journey of becoming an educator as ‘dislocating’ and ‘disorienting’. Working in a prestigious university in Brazil, Ana Zimmermann described her efforts

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to engage in critical pedagogy that challenges societal inequities as difficult in an institutional context valuing competition, emphasizing high standards and promulgating gender inequities. She feels that her teaching methods are insufficient and that she is failing in her goals as a teacher. Finkielsztein asserted that his early career experiences in Polish academia have led him to feel boredom, meaninglessness, ‘general dispiritedness’ – which have resulted in fatigue, resistance to deep involvement and a ‘deep crisis of agency’. In one word, he feels that his teaching is a burden, ‘an albatross’. His original excitement and motivation have been undermined: ‘Job insecurity associated with precarious employment, reduced career prospects, teaching overload, the underestimation of teaching tasks and the high opportunity cost of teaching in a system that values research over teaching have all contributed to a lowering of my initial enthusiasm for and engagement in teaching.’ While negotiating a professional identity and grappling with sometimes overwhelming pressures are themes throughout the ECTS’ narratives, the specific experiences vary by individual and context – and can be further complicated by the intersectionality of individuals’ identities. Several of the narratives illustrated how similar themes play out in particular ways based on individual circumstances and identities. The chapter by Carden and Bhattacharya revealed similarities in their experiences filling short-term casual contracts. However, as an immigrant not holding citizenship in Australia, Bhattacharya faced additional challenges, including being ineligible for professional development given her visa status and having less opportunity to teach due to what she was told was her style of speaking English. Colliver, whose chapter appears in Part Three on Disrupting Identities, shared poignant reflections on his experiences as a gay ECT. Prior to teaching criminology, he worked as a youth worker, in a role where his identity as a gay man was central to how he carried out his work. As an ECT, his efforts to establish his professional identity involved ‘double searching’, in which he was striving to develop an identity that included both his personal values as a gay man and his developing ideas and role as an ECT. In his words, ‘negotiating a professional identity that remains true to my authentic personal identity in a social climate that seeks to silence my voice, to support my existence and to position me as the “immoral other” is a complex and difficult task’. For each ECT, establishing a professional identity in a societal and educational context that does not fully value their work as teachers is fraught; for those with intersecting identities that are not fully accepted, the experience can have additional challenges.



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Strategies for Managing Early Career Teacher Challenges While ECTs struggle with the expectations they face and the uncertainty of their career futures, they also show noteworthy resiliency and innovation in how they manage their situations and roles. Across the narratives, several kinds of strategies are evident: learning from others, including students; developing authentic teaching strategies; and implementing a range of personal coping mechanisms.

Seeking to Learn from and with Others Across the narratives, a number of ECTs wrote about collaborating with and learning from others, which requires a willingness to be vulnerable. As an American female teacher in Japan, Sarah Asada appreciated the graduate student networks she had formed that continued to be of help as she started her teaching career. Moving from India to Britain to teach anatomy, Mandeep Gill-Sagoo also valued collaboration as a strategy for coping. Gill-Sagoo came to view others (including students) as learners, experts and equal stakeholders, explaining: ‘I changed from someone who felt under pressure to answer all questions to a person who is willing to embrace new ideas and is convinced of the value of transposing knowledge across disciplinary contexts.’ In Australia, Carden and Bhattacharya appreciated the support they gave each other as friends who had experienced graduate education together, and they also mentioned benefiting from a role model, who, like them, was an academic and a mother. Some of the ECTs highlighted in this volume embarked on a process of learning about, from and with their students. For example, wanting to learn about his students’ motivations and situations so that he could design learning experiences relevant to their various backgrounds, Thomas Larsen interviewed and surveyed his students. In Nigeria, Pofi sought to understand his students’ views of the learning experience, a process that reminded him not to internalize personally every problem in his classes. As a self-proclaimed ‘Korean stranger in a Japanese classroom’, Jongsung Kim also learned to ask the students for help. While acknowledging how hard it is to be sufficiently brave to be open to constructive criticism, Kim saw the importance of ‘culturally sensitive teaching’ and chose to ask questions of the students and invite them to offer their opinions. Burch’s teaching roles involved moving in what she called the ‘liminal space’ between two universities, which challenged her

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sense of belonging and gave her little time to engage in collegial interaction with other teachers. In this context of uncertainty, she chose to exert her own agency by seeing her students as co-learners with whom she could collaborate, construct meaning together and share the responsibility for cultivating learning. By expressing flexibility, openness and a co-constructivist approach with her students, she diminished her worry about not belonging fully to either institution where she taught. The part-time students in China whom Diwen Xiao was assigned to teach were more diverse and mature than his traditional students, handling work and family duties as well as their studies. As he wrestled with how to teach effectively in the context of the lives and needs of these students, he decided to ask for their input, to make them partners and to co-create the learning experience with them. He expressed respect and interest in their lives, acted like an approachable friend and, overall, ‘de-centred’ his position. He drew examples from their lives and used videos in new ways to help them relate to the material, and he highlighted less theory in favour of emphasizing experiences and ideas relevant to the students. His teaching shifted towards less performance and more conversation. In his chapter, Xiao reported that, while his students’ learning was enriched by this approach, his own thinking and professional practice also improved. His interactions with his students, he explained, helped him to redefine and build his teaching identity. Furthermore, the ideas that his students expressed about public policy issues helped him to develop new insights into how everyday life relates to public policy.

Developing Teaching Strategies Consonant with ECT Identities A strong theme throughout the narratives of the ECTs is a search for and commitment to being true to one’s own sense of identity and developing the sense of agency to bring that identity into the teaching. In short, each ECT was motivated to develop an authentic approach to teaching. This was expressed in at least three ways: how they used their own identities and experiences to inform their decisions about teaching; their efforts to create safe and supportive environments for their students; and, in some cases, with the realization that, while their status in the HE enterprise might be low in comparison to others, they could still make an important impact through small changes. In regard to using their own identities as teachers, Carden and Bhattacharya organized their chapter around their ‘gendered, classed and raced subject positions’ that directly impacted their professional opportunities and the nature



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of their experiences as ECTs. In the face of daunting constraints (that differed between them based on their own identities and backgrounds), they chose to ‘reconceptualize our identities as a strength’. They recognized that their status does not enable them to change structural inequalities in the system that have explicit implications for them as sessional staff (such as not having offices or not getting paid for their work done outside of the classroom context). However, they did make explicit choices of how they would use their own identities and commitments as tools within their teaching. For example, they explained to students what motivated their own interests in the topics under study and used their own experiences to inform discussion. Similarly, Pritchard drew on aspects of her own identities to inform her approach as a teacher. As she explained in her narrative, her personal experience with dwarfism has led to her greater awareness of disabilities (seen and unseen) that her students may experience. She has found her own disability has helped her to connect with and be empathetic to her students; the support she extends to them enhances their confidence – which in turn has contributed to an increase in her own confidence and the development of her own style as a teacher. Teaching within the discipline of Disability Studies, she also discovered that sharing her life experiences as a person with a disability – including such practical matters as self-consciousness about reaching for light switches or needing a stool to speak at the podium – complemented the class material in ways that helped make abstract ideas more concrete for her students. At the same time, however, she shared her sensitivity to the need to distinguish between the personal and the professional, and to use examples as supplements rather than as a replacement for teaching the course material. Colliver described his journey in learning to use his own identity in his work as ‘teaching the personal’. Prior to becoming a teacher in a criminology programme, he was a youth counsellor in a programme where his identity as a gay man was helpful to his work. In his initial work as a HE faculty member, however, he found that he was not sure how to integrate his sexual identity into his role. Ultimately, he decided to bring a performative element to his work by expressing an exaggerated ‘high camp’ image of an openly gay man. He chose to disrupt heteronormative assumptions about who works in the criminal justice sector by challenging normative assumptions and using ‘teaching space as performance space’. His accentuation of his own sexual identity became an explicit strategy to challenge students’ assumptions around masculinity, gender and sexuality issues. However, just as Pritchard recognized the importance of finding a balance between the personal and the professional in her teaching

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practice, Colliver also saw the need for a careful strategic approach. He aimed to maintain his commitment to his own identity while also ensuring that students take him seriously as a professional and respect his overall authority in the learning context. As ECTs become more comfortable with how their own identities and life experiences intersect with the identities they wish to create as teachers, some also reflect on their commitment to ensure safe learning environments for their students. Colliver discussed the importance of creating ‘safe spaces’ that model consideration and respect for others in the learning environment. Several ECTs mentioned that their memories of their experiences and concerns as students themselves helped them create supportive and safe spaces for their own students. Some learned to relinquish control in favour of creating more supportive environments. For example, striving to find ways to be a ‘critical pedagogue’ in a prestigious university in Brazil, Zimmermann learned to welcome and encourage dialogue and to let go of her efforts to prove she could ‘perform’ successfully as a teacher. As she learned to take some risks as a teacher, she took practical steps to make the classroom more welcoming and supportive, such as changing the furniture and the location of the learning experience.

Integrating Personal Coping Strategies into their Work In addition to the strategies already discussed, ECTs also develop and use personal coping strategies to help them deal with the challenges and frustrations they face. One strategy, reflected in all the narratives, is to develop and demonstrate resilience. Larsen, a self-described ‘itinerant teacher’ in the United States, urged ECTs to be adaptive, increase their self-reliance, diversify their talents and try roles beyond the Ivory Tower. Pritchard’s expression of resilience is to convert ‘disabling spaces’ into ‘enabling spaces’ – that is, to recognize that her experience with dwarfism gives her opportunities to repurpose difficulties as examples to use in her teaching, which makes her feel empowered and confident. Asada explained that she must show that having a child does not hurt her academic work and that she can ‘do everything’. Her statement seemed more an affirmation of her resilience than a lament about her challenges. Two of the narratives called up the notion of ‘hope’ in the face of very difficult challenges. Burch wrote about the importance of having ‘narratives of hope’ as counterforces to fear and anxiety about whether she can succeed in establishing a professional identity. Similarly, Pofi drew on a ‘strategy of hope’ in coping with the frustrations of returning from the UK to teach in



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Nigeria. The key coping mechanism for each of these ECTs is resilience coupled with perseverance. Another personal strategy used by virtually all the ECTs writing in this volume is reflection (Schӧn, 1983). The comments offered by the ECTs reveal different ways in which reflection can be used and its various outcomes. As a strategy for grappling with issues of identity and mission, Kim, a Korean writing about his experience of teaching in a Japanese classroom, wrote reflective essays and engaged in purposeful discussions with a critical friend, and spent two years analysing the themes in the essays and conversations. Gill-Sagoo, who found that teaching anatomy in the UK was quite different from processes in India, engaged in a ‘reflective conversation with the situation’ (Schӧn, 1992), which resulted in an expanded repertoire of teaching ideas. Writing about being an American teaching in a Japanese university, Asada explained the benefits of ‘joint reflexivity’ with her students. Students wrote reflective papers at the end of each class, which enabled her to reflect on how her teaching related to Japanese cultural traditions. For Burch, the concept and experience of ‘liminality’ has contributed to useful reflection. The concept of liminality or ‘in-betweenness’ (LewieckiWilson and Celio, 2011, cited by Burch) helped Burch reflect on the material, symbolic and geographic spaces through which ECTs move as they negotiate different institutions, roles (educator and student) and identities as co-learners with their students. For Burch, the liminality in her work and daily life leads to useful reflection. The outcomes of the reflection, as she explained, influence her sense of who she is as a teacher and professional in the academy: ‘Negotiating these liminal spaces in HEIs has opened up new ways of thinking about my sense of self within the university and my teaching practice. It has pushed me to be active in seeking teaching opportunities and become adept to the teaching culture within different HEIs.’ In addition to cultivating resilience and engaging in reflection, a useful personal strategy cited by some of the ECTs is to emphasize, in the words of Zimmermann, the value and impact of ‘small changes’. Across each narrative, we see the challenges, frustrations and uncertainties that punctuate the experiences of ECTs. At the same time, however, we see that many ECTs claim their individual agency to teach and create careers of integrity. Reflecting on her struggles and the structural challenges she encountered as a teacher, Zimmermann claimed that, nevertheless, she realized she could make ‘small changes’ that would help her stay excited about teaching. Asserting that there is ‘no neutrality’ in teaching, she set about making changes in her own practice and developing new ways

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to work with students that would align with her beliefs about the potential of education to effect change.

Questions and Actions for Early Career Teachers and Those who Support Them By highlighting the voices of ECTs, who together illustrate a range of experiences, this volume opens a window on the lived experiences of how those starting careers in academe are experiencing their work and creating pathways forward. The narratives and this analysis of the cross-cutting themes suggest some questions and actions that other ECTs may want to consider as well as questions and actions appropriate for advisors, supervisors and senior colleagues who care about those in the early career as well as about the future of the academy. I suggest several questions for ECTs to ponder: (1) What challenges am I experiencing – and to what extent are these challenges individual to me or the result of systemic issues? (2) In what ways am I responding to these challenges and pressures? Specifically, how am I exploring and working to create my own sense of professional identity – and how does the professional identity that I am creating intersect with and take into account key elements of identity that are core to who I am and want to be? (3) What strategies can I cultivate to aid my ability to manage the pressures impacting my work and career and to nurture the professional identity most consistent with my values and aspirations? To what extent am I finding others with whom to share ideas and learning? In what ways am I developing teaching strategies that are both effective and consistent with my values? Am I cultivating greater resilience, engaging in reflection and celebrating the small changes and impacts I am able to achieve? Are there other strategies that help me cope, and how can I use them more frequently and consistently? In addition to exploring these kinds of questions, I also encourage early career colleagues to be proactive and purposeful in finding peers and more senior colleagues with whom to talk, share experiences and seek support. Time is always short, especially for those in their early career. However, creating trusting relationships with others who understand and can offer support is an important strategy for those negotiating the pressures of the present-day academy. For those who advise graduate students and early career academics, who strive to supervise with both compassion and honesty, and who lead teaching



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or professional development centres, I also suggest considering some important questions: How can HEIs create spaces and opportunities to engage in deep listening to ECTs? In what ways can the graduate experience and the early career experience be organized to include more explicit preparation for teaching informed by research and evidence? What kinds of conversations could be integrated into the graduate experience and into the processes of supervision of ECTs to enable them to consider, with support from more experienced colleagues, strategies for integrating personal and professional identities and values, and approaches to bringing their voices more fully into decisions within academic programmes and course planning? Advisors, supervisors, department chairs and leaders of professional development programmes also need to find ways to create spaces within the flow of academic work for such questions to be explored. Within these spaces, early career colleagues need to feel welcome and safe to interact with others. When established academics initiate such conversations and express their commitment to learn about and support less secure colleagues, they are taking symbolic and practical steps to make a difference. Finally, while these suggestions for questions and actions merit attention, even more serious and difficult issues need to be raised. In the context of HE today, those in the early career need to think carefully about the depth of their interest in an academic career, whether they are prepared to manage the challenges involved in academic life, and whether they see their life work to be involved in shaping and cultivating the future of HE. Similarly, those who support, advise and supervise early career academics need to examine their beliefs and values about the purpose and nature of academic work – and their own role in promulgating or in challenging and changing the factors and pressures making academic careers very difficult. In addition to the strategies that ECTs can cultivate and the support that advisors, mentors and teaching centre directors can provide, there are systemic and organizational factors that create the challenging HE environments in which ECTs work. In many institutional and national systems, teaching is not valued or rewarded at a level commensurate with research. With the gradual but persistent decrease in permanent academic positions and the increase in short-term and contingent academic positions within many HEIs and national systems, the attractiveness of the academic career path is diminished. A bifurcated system is emerging where academics who engage in teaching-related work are less valued, less supported and less rewarded, while other academics hold prestigious wellsupported research-related roles. This increasing division undermines morale,

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as well as institutional and career commitment among a growing group of academics. The potential loss of talent threatens overall institutional vitality. HE and governmental leaders face the opportunity and, arguably, the moral responsibility, to consider ways to advance systemic approaches that increase equity and inclusion among the academic workforce. The future of HE needs dedicated, creative and well-qualified academics, who work in organizational contexts that enable them to create satisfying and rewarding careers. Those who value the essential role of HE in the broader society have a responsibility to create pathways for those entering the academic career to see a promising future and to feel supported in creating satisfying, productive and meaningful careers.

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Part Five Austin, A. E., Sorcinelli, M. D., and McDaniels, M. (2007), ‘Understanding new faculty: Background, aspirations, challenges, and growth’, in R. P. Perry and J. C. Smart (eds), The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: An Evidence-Based Perspective, 39–89, Dordrecht Springer. Austin, A. E. (2010), ‘Expectations and experiences of aspiring and early career academics’, in L. McAlpine and G. S. Akerlind (eds), Becoming an Academic: International Perspectives, 18–40, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rice, R. E., Sorcinelli, M. D., and Austin, A. E. (2000), Heeding New Voices: Academic Careers for a New Generation, New Pathways Inquiry No. 7, Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.

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Index ableism 205 ableist 12, 83, 87, 93 academia 4, 7, 9–13, 37–8, 44, 47, 51, 55, 68–71, 76, 81–2, 86, 92, 97–8, 108, 109, 118, 123, 125, 127, 129, 176, 186, 188, 191, 199, 201–2, 205 academic 1–12, 14–15, 18, 28, 30, 32, 35–7, 39–40, 45, 47, 51–3, 55, 61–5, 67–71, 75–81, 93, 100, 107–8, 113, 115, 123–32, 136, 149–53, 160, 165, 169, 171–5, 177, 180, 183–91, 195–6, 198–204, 206–9, 211–13, 218, 221–2 academic identity 1, 6, 8, 11–12, 40, 77, 81 academic systems 28, 35, 81, 123, 125, 128–9, 175 academics 2–9, 14–15, 35–6, 51–2, 54, 69, 70, 74–9, 81, 87, 91–3, 109, 124–5, 129, 131–2, 135–7, 144, 169, 171–4, 182–5, 187–92, 198, 200, 203–6, 209, 210, 214, 221 active learning 64–5, 68, 116, 162, 193, 201, 206, 209 activism 103–4 activist 97, 99, 103–4, 202 African 33, 142, 187–8, 194, 208 Afro-Brazilians 137–8 ageism 93, 205–6 agency 3, 6, 13, 53, 57, 59, 67, 100, 123, 126, 131–2, 171–2, 174, 176, 178, 181, 207 alienation 5, 12, 161, 174 American 12, 23, 61–3, 65–6, 68, 70, 107, 109, 119, 120, 177, 181, 186, 190, 198, 210, 214, 221–2 Anatomy 12, 37–46, 177, 181, 196–8 Anthropology 33, 189, 198, 213 anxiety 9, 17, 22, 42, 52, 113, 126, 139, 149, 151, 174, 180 apathy 101 apprentice 4, 188 Asian 202

aspirations 4, 11, 27, 50, 113, 173, 182, 185, 221–2 assessment 13, 38, 40, 43, 45, 59, 65, 135–6, 138, 140, 144, 150, 191, 194, 197, 204 assistant 18, 28, 35, 49, 56, 62, 66, 147, 149–50 Australian 73–6, 78–82, 202–4, 217 authenticity 8, 52, 56, 100, 185, 198, 207–8 authority 5, 23, 41, 45, 56, 60, 93–4, 101, 103, 106, 113, 148, 175, 180 belonging 11, 49, 51–3, 113, 123, 127, 169, 173–4, 178 borders 11, 15, 17, 36, 59, 171, 201 boredom 13, 123–6, 129, 133, 176, 212–3 brain-drain 29 Brazil 135–6, 138, 144, 175, 180, 189, British 38, 105, 189, 196, 198, 205, 208, 217–8 bureaucratic 9, 131, 135 busker 13, 107–10, 116, 118–9 campness 103 campus 14, 29, 73, 89, 90, 137, 143, 147–8, 163, 219 capitalism 212 capitalist 190, 198 careers 1, 2, 4–5, 8, 12, 19, 35, 74–5, 80, 105, 108, 117, 119, 138, 162, 171–4, 181–4, 186, 189–90, 206, 210, 214, 217–18, 221–2 caregiver 68, 148 caring 68–70, 114 Casualization 1, 9, 73–5, 81 cathartic 115–16 childcare 70 Chinese 146, 149, 152–5, 188, 216–20 class 5, 18, 23, 25, 31, 35, 47, 50, 63–7, 69, 74, 76, 80–3, 88, 90–1, 93, 112–13, 115, 120, 124, 126, 139, 140, 143, 148–50, 152–4, 159, 177–9, 181, 217–18

224

Index

classroom 5, 8, 11, 13, 17–25, 30, 31, 45, 53, 55–6, 58–9, 61–6, 77–9, 81–2, 87–91, 93–4, 100, 102–4, 106, 110–12, 116, 136, 142–4, 148–51, 154–5, 157, 159, 161, 177, 179–81, 192, 201–2, 206, 208, 211, 216 co-constructivist 57–8, 178 co-learners 57, 178, 181 collaboration 45, 56, 124, 177, 221 comedian 13, 107–10, 114–16, 119 continuing education 13, 145–6, 191, 216–17, 219–20 Criminology 13, 50, 95, 98–103, 175–6, 179, 207–8 critical pedagogy 13, 136, 139, 160, 163–5, 175, 215, 220, culture 12, 15, 22–3, 39–40, 44, 46, 57, 59 61–2, 67–8, 96, 99, 101, 129, 135, 175, 181, 191, 193, 196, 198, 207–9, 211–12, 218, 220–1 curriculum 13, 15, 17–20, 25, 35–6, 38, 41, 45–6, 58, 65, 67, 81, 90, 98–9, 101–3, 113, 135, 140, 142, 144, 161, 166, 192–3, 197, 204, 206–7, 217, 219, 222 cynicism 10, 13, 133 decolonization 144 democratic 23, 139 dialogic 13, 53, 151, 218 dialogue 24, 58, 67, 136, 138, 140–2, 144, 149, 158, 166, 180, 198, 215–6 disability 49–50, 85–93, 179, 186, 199–200, 205–6, 222 Disability Studies 49–50, 85, 86–7, 89, 91–2, 179, 205 discrimination 92, 102, 207 disempowering 85–8, 92–3, 136, 174 disillusionment 7, 10, 173 diversity 2, 4, 6–7, 13–14, 30, 95–7, 101, 105, 113, 142, 147, 151, 169, 203, 206, 210 doctoral 2, 3, 6, 17, 20, 33, 35, 63, 73, 77–8, 109, 125, 129–30, 146, 172, 175, 189, 198, 200, 204, 214 dwarfism 12–13, 86–8, 90, 92, 94, 174, 179–80 Early Career Academics 2–5, 7, 14, 125, 132, 137, 169, 174, 182–3, 185, 187–91, 200, 206, 221

Early Career Teacher 1, 5, 15, 17, 27, 37, 50, 61, 73, 85, 95, 107, 121, 123, 135, 146, 157, 169 ECTs 1–14, 17, 19, 21–2, 24–5, 26, 28, 30–7, 39, 41, 43, 46–7, 50, 52–6, 59, 61–75, 82–3, 85–129, 131–2, 135–55, 157, 159–60, 162–3, 165–7, 169, 171–83 educator 17, 19–22, 24–6, 49–53, 55–6, 64, 73–4, 98, 102, 108, 110–11, 113, 116, 118–19, 136, 151, 161, 166, 173, 175, 181, 192–3 emancipator 160, 162–3 embarrassed 88, 91, 151 employment 1, 3–4, 8–9, 12, 27–8, 35, 40, 47, 52, 54, 75–9, 92, 97, 109–10, 117, 125–9, 131, 133, 139, 146, 173–4, 176, 186–7, 189, 204, 206–7 empowering 85–7, 90, 93, 100 enthusiasm 8, 10, 123–4, 129, 133, 136, 166, 175–6 entrepreneurs 107–8, 119, 209 experts 45, 109, 115, 177 fear 27, 51–2, 55, 70, 76, 91, 99–100, 180 feedback 22, 30, 43, 64, 78–9, 111–12, 120, 147, 150, 152–3, 203, 209 feminism 198, 206 feminist 9, 47, 186, 191, 198–9, 201, 208 foreignness 11, 17, 19, 21–6, 192 full-time 75, 77, 79, 115, 128, 132, 137, 146–49, 152–3 gatekeeping 20, 25, 193 gender 3, 5, 47, 50, 62, 68, 70, 73, 74, 82–3, 92–105, 138–9, 144, 146, 176, 178–9, 202, 204, 206–7, 209, 210 Geography 19, 21, 88, 111, 113, 117–18, 120, 187, 188, 191, 193, 201, 206, 209–11 globalisation 190, 192 government 1, 32, 35, 38, 76, 146, 152, 154, 185, 194, 217 governmentality 208 Guangdong 217, 219 habitus 165, 190 hegemonic 135 heteronormativity 98–9, 102–6, 206 heterosexuality 102–3

Index higher education 1, 2, 15, 17, 28, 40, 47, 50–2, 54, 61, 73, 79, 80, 86, 95, 99, 100, 107–8, 121, 123, 125, 135–6, 145–6, 157, 171, 185–94, 197–208, 210–12, 216–22 hourly-paid 200

225

Nigerian 27–8, 32–3, 35, 195 non-heteronormative 103

Japanese 11–12, 17–24, 61–3, 65–6, 68–71, 177, 181, 192, 201

pedagogue 135–6, 139–40, 160, 165, 180 pedagogy 12–13, 17, 37, 46, 136, 139–43, 160, 162–5, 175, 192, 203, 207–8, 214–15, 217, 220 performance 3, 13, 18, 103, 126–7, 130, 147, 150, 153, 163, 178–9, 191, 196, 203, 206–7, 214–15 performativity 198, 205 Poland 124–5, 128–30, 132, 174, 214 precarious 4, 9, 12, 47, 52–3, 56, 69, 75, 82, 123, 125–7, 131, 133, 171, 175–6, 189, 200, 204 precarity 1, 3, 8–9, 13, 47, 48, 52–3, 74, 76, 82, 125, 172, 187, 188, 190, 198, 213 professional 1, 6–10, 12, 14, 18, 29, 32, 34, 44, 49, 51–3, 56, 59, 68, 77, 80, 83, 89, 95–100, 102–6, 108–9, 112, 113, 116, 126, 131–2, 141, 152, 155, 157–62, 164–7, 169, 171–6, 178–83, 185–7, 193–5, 197–201, 209, 212, 214, 218–21 professional identity 1, 12, 14, 18, 44, 51, 95–100, 102–6, 157–61, 164, 165, 167, 169, 172–6, 180, 182, 198–201, 221 public policy 145, 147, 149–50, 152, 154–5, 178

labour 1, 4, 8, 9, 53–4, 74–76, 79, 81–2, 97, 105–6, 139, 175, 187, 190, 207 liminality 3, 7, 9, 50, 52–3, 55–9, 181, 191

quality 1, 4, 11, 75, 81, 129–30, 138, 151–2, 191–2, 199, 202, 204–5, 210, 212, 218

management 1, 37, 52, 65, 103, 106, 111, 113, 135–6, 140, 147, 159, 187–9, 203–6, 209, 214, 219–20 meritocracy 135, 138 motherhood 68, 202–3 motivation 13, 34, 123–7, 129–30, 132, 161, 173, 176–7, 201, 214, 218 multicultural 62, 201

racism 47, 144 racist 113 reflective conversation 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 181 reflective practitioner 11, 22, 26, 65, 193, 222 reverse brain drain 27, 29, 36

identities 2–7, 9–13, 15, 47–8, 50, 52, 58, 66, 77, 79–83, 86–7, 94, 97, 100, 102, 104, 109, 113, 121, 171, 173, 176, 178– 81, 183, 187, 190, 196, 198–200, 203–5, 207, 218, 220 ideology 113, 200 indigenous 32, 137–8, 143 industriousness 117 insecurity 9, 41, 52, 59, 123, 125–7, 133, 176 integration 7, 63, 68, 70–1, 101, 165, 217 intercultural 61, 64–6, 201–2, 207 international 2, 7, 9, 11–12, 15, 29, 39, 62, 63, 66–7, 70, 77–80, 157, 161, 166, 185–7, 189–93, 196, 198, 200–206, 217, 220–1 intersectionality 6, 47, 87, 171, 176, 186, 198

narratives 3, 6, 11, 14, 33, 47, 52, 73–4, 76, 82, 96, 103, 158, 169, 171–3, 175–8, 180, 182, 203–4 neoliberal 9, 40, 51–2, 59, 97, 99–100, 105, 108–9, 125–6, 129, 159, 162, 198–200, 207–8, 221 neoliberalism 1, 8, 52, 186, 213 Netherlands 157

scholarship 3, 14, 47, 54–5, 59, 124, 137, 185, 221–2 security 2, 4, 5, 9, 50, 52, 77, 100, 126, 132, 137, 174 self-reliance 117, 119, 180 sexism 47 sexist 113 sexuality 3, 13, 50, 95, 97–106, 179 Social Studies 17, 19–24

226

Index

spaces 12, 15, 49–51, 53, 56–60, 81, 85–9, 92–3, 104, 143, 174, 180–1, 183, 200–1, 203, 206, 211, 221 spatial 59, 85, 87, 196 storytelling 11, 30, 211 stranger 17–19, 21–6, 177, 193 stress 8–10, 108–9, 111, 124, 136, 143, 151, 190 struggle 24, 37, 44, 78, 93, 121, 138, 177, 196, 212 students 2, 4, 6, 8, 13–14, 17, 19–35, 37–9, 42–6, 49, 51–5, 57–69, 71, 73–5, 77–81, 83, 85–95, 98–106, 110–13, 115– 17, 119, 124, 126, 129–31, 133, 136–55, 157–66, 173–5, 177–82, 186, 189, 192, 196–8, 200–1, 206, 208–10, 213, 216–20 teachers 1–6, 10–12, 14–15, 17–26, 28, 32–3, 36, 44–6, 48, 50–2, 60, 66, 73–4, 77–83, 85, 92, 99–100, 102, 105, 107–10, 112–16, 118, 120–4, 128–30, 133, 136, 140, 145–6, 157, 163, 165–6, 169, 171–4, 176–8, 180, 182, 184, 188, 192–5, 197, 200–1, 204–8, 215, 220–1 teacher education 17, 19, 20, 24, 28, 32, 157, 160, 173, 187, 193–5, 207, 214, 221 teacher identity 14, 51, 52–3, 58–9, 159 teaching and learning 31, 42, 46, 52, 55, 79, 81, 85, 94, 138, 140, 143, 160, 162, 185–6, 205, 211, 217–18, 220, 222

technocratic 136, 215 tenure-track 107, 109, 117, 212 training 28, 32–3, 38–40, 50, 63, 78–81, 86, 108, 129, 141, 144, 146, 147, 157, 160, 202, 209, 218–19 transition 4, 6–7, 10–11, 14, 24, 39, 41, 50, 95, 97–9, 102, 105, 118, 121, 123, 159–60, 167, 186, 191, 197, 199 unemployment 108 university 3, 5, 9, 12–13, 15, 17, 20–1, 28–30, 32–3, 35, 37–8, 49–56, 59, 61–5, 67–8, 70–1, 73–5, 79–81, 88, 93, 95, 99, 108, 111, 113, 118, 121, 124, 127–8, 130–2, 135–8, 141, 143–50, 160–4, 166–7, 175, 180–1, 185–7, 189–92, 194–210, 212–22 unpredictability 54, 59 values 13, 15, 32, 57–8, 97, 99, 104–6, 121, 133, 136, 157, 159, 162, 166, 173, 176, 182–3, 212 vulnerability 3, 11, 14, 21–2, 24, 26, 46, 57, 193 well-being 54, 69, 125, 175 working-class 50, 76, 80, 87 workload 1, 8, 10, 69–70, 106, 128–30, 136, 173, 191, 201