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1. Choosing our identities
Why Irish higher education professionals undertake
doctoral research

3. … a man has as many social selves as there are
individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in
their mind.(William James, 1890)

4. People by nature lead storied lives
and tell stories of those lives,
whereas narrative researchers
describe such lives, collect and tell
stories of them, and write narratives
of experience’
(Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 2)

5. Narrative Inquiry
A knowledge of the particular, the unique
 Study into and understanding of experience
Charts identity across human life span
Life Stories social, cultural & historical
Transactional not passive – transformed
Stories with truth

7. ‘biography is, and always will be, the crucial factor
affecting perceptions and experiences. What has
happened to us in the past affects the things that
happen to us in the present’
 (Wellington and Sikes, 2007)

8. 1. Previous educational experiences
2. Doctoral motivations
3. Relationships
4. Support networks
5. After the Doctorate…
6. Identity
Main Themes

9. Associated Motivation sub-themes
Credibility
Dropout of college
Peer pressure
Professional development
Personal ambition / research interest

10. Associated Identity sub-themes
Being a professional
Labelling
Identity within HEIs
Being a female
Doctoral identity

11. Identity issues for all HEPROs
Multiple identities enacted
Changing identities – self-definition
Contrasting identities equals stress
Space to express voice, re-negotiating
Labels place value on roles

12. Identity
Relationship between an individual and society re-negotiated
‘What it means to be who one is’
(Burke, 2003)
‘People’s source of meaning and experience’
(Castell, 1997)

13. 1. Self
2. Structure

14. Communitarian Concept
Distinctive and embedded
Identity influenced by specific contexts &
traditions - family, culture, community
Community - defining moral space for individuals
to make sense of their world

15. Professional Identity
 Professions can be important source of identity
 Identity formation in education settings - workplaces
 Argument that power institutionalised – hierarchies race, gender, class
 Universities producing professionals and content of professional
knowledge

16. Changing identities in HE…

17. Academic identity
 communitarian concept present for formation academic identities
 ‘scholarly community of which they are a part rather than the specific institution
in which they work’ (Delanty, 2008)
 ‘Core workforce’
 Unique, bounded and protected space’ (Henkel, 2010)
 Change causing crisis between self and collective identity – less cohesive
 Redefining themselves, roles and boundaries, partnerships

18. Librarian Professional Identity
 Spaces widened for HEPROs including librarians
 Blurring boundaries
 Exclusionary issues, binary perceptions
 Some HEPROs have own professional affiliations
 Widening participation - contribution to learning & teaching

20. The world of the teaching
librarian is diverse, challenging
and often contrary
(McGuinness, 2011)