Making a mess of academic work: experience, purpose and identity

Malcolm, Janice; Zukas, Miriam

doi:10.1080/13562510903186659

Cited by 66 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The majority of staff employ this strategy to keep up with work. Malcolm and Zukas (2009) note that universities 'would collapse if academics took seriously the "notional" hour allocation' for work (p. 496). Working outside 'normal' hours has long been part of some academics' lives, but as the bar is raised higher, and as work-life boundaries become more blurred through information communication technology (ICT) accessibility, this becomes more pervasive (Pocock, 2010).…”

Section: Strategies For Quality Teaching With High Workloadsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Finding time for quality teaching: an ethnographic study of academic workloads in the social sciences and their impact on teaching practices

Hemer

2013

Higher Education Research & Development

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University workloads, their impact on staff and how they can be managed, are the subject of considerable research and discussion. This paper addresses strategies to deal with the impact of workloads on teaching practices in higher education. In particular, it aims to discover the implicit theories and tacit assumptions that underlie perceptions of what constitutes quality teaching in the social sciences. Using an ethnographic approach, the research revealed that the strategies used by staff are linked to how they identify themselves: as researchers or 'good' teachers, and highlights a mismatch between the value academics place on quality teaching and what is rewarded by universities. The paper illustrates that strategies rely on assumptions about the nature of time, and the links between time and quality. Academics have little opportunity for critical reflection on teaching practices in order to be responsive to the changing contexts of higher education.

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Section: Strategies For Quality Teaching With High Workloadsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Finding time for quality teaching: an ethnographic study of academic workloads in the social sciences and their impact on teaching practices

Hemer

2013

Higher Education Research & Development

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“…Malcolm and Zukas (2009) argue that academics construct identities as part of several communities -for example, their disciplinary community, their departmental working group, and their research team. Trowler and Knight (2000) suggest that 'project identities' develop as academics become involved with particular interest or research groups.…”

Section: Studies In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It's an amazing learning curve to be part of the project’: exploring academic identity in collaborative research

Leibowitz

Ndebele

Winberg

2013

Studies in Higher Education

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This article reports on an investigation into the role of academic identity within collaborative research in higher education in South Africa. The study was informed by the literature on academic identities, collaborative research and communities of practice. It was located within a multi-site study, with involvement of researcher collaborators from eight South African higher education institutions. Eighteen academic development practitioners recorded their perceptions of their participation in one higher education research project. An analysis of the research team members' experiences of participating in the first phase of the research project lent credence to the factors influencing participants' academic identities. The study found that collaborative research provided potential for knowledge generation and personal and professional growth, but noted that in order to enable participation, attention needs to be paid to the interrelationship between researchers' academic individual and collective identities and their sense of expertise in the field of educational research.

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“…Surveillance is certainly a negative word for autonomous academics. At first, the time allocation system was perceived as being too complicated, since it is not easy to say how many hours you spend on each task, or to differentiate one task from another (see Malcolm and Zukas 2009). Furthermore, it was seen as having no purpose other than surveillance.…”

Section: Data and Analysismentioning

confidence: 97%

The ‘entrepreneurial university’, family and gender: changes and demands faced by fixed-term workers

Nikunen

2014

Gender and Education

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Managerialism and neoliberal changes and demands influence the work and family lives of academics differently in different positions and contexts. In this article, I explore how Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts have been treated, and how they interpret recent changes and their effects on their work and private lives. I ask how the demands and changes are gendered and what consequences they have for work-family balance and gender equality, as well as whether the changes have been internalised or resisted. Managerialism seems to create new ways to govern oneself and to approach academic work, home, children and gender. I argue that these profound changes are veiled by more visible reforms that seem to threaten academic autonomy, such as time surveillance.

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Making a mess of academic work: experience, purpose and identity

Abstract: All articles available through Birkbeck ePrints are protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law.

Cited by 66 publications

References 17 publications

Finding time for quality teaching: an ethnographic study of academic workloads in the social sciences and their impact on teaching practices

Finding time for quality teaching: an ethnographic study of academic workloads in the social sciences and their impact on teaching practices

‘It's an amazing learning curve to be part of the project’: exploring academic identity in collaborative research

The ‘entrepreneurial university’, family and gender: changes and demands faced by fixed-term workers

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