Professional identities of part-time academics

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the professional identities of part-time academics at a Lebanese higher education institution, mainly the factors impacting these identities. This paper is part of a larger research concerned with the study of part-timers and their professional presence. For the purpose of the research, a case study was carried out at the Western Oriental University (WOU) (a pseudonym) where 23 part-timers and three full-timers (ex-part-timers) were interviewed. To triangulate the data, four of the participants were asked to participate in diary writing. The part-timers were chosen to represent the wider population of part-timers at the University. Thus, they were chosen to illustrate particular factors characterising part-timers, such as gender, seniority, educational standing, number of work sites and type of decision behind part-time choice. Thematic analysis was used to show the effect of biographical and societal forces on identity formation, while the more implicit ascriptive forces such as gender and age, and the volatile late-modern forces were revealed by the use of discourse analysis. The two levels of analysis joined hands to reveal the impact of a whole spectrum of forces on identity formation in light of Kearney's (2003) classification. Analysis has also shown that there are many versions of the part-timers' professional identities. Instead of the managerial and democratic types presented by Day and Sachs (2004), there is a continuum of identities stretched between these two ends.