Abstract
AbstractWhile working towards tenure, faculty members are rewarded for enacting ideal worker norms (Acker, 1990) or prioritizing work resulting in high levels and quality of production over other components of one's life. Striving to meet ideal worker norms has real costs to faculty members who may experience high levels of stress, negative health outcomes, or strained relationships. However, failing to comply with these norms also has implications and may impede individual's career advancement. Having achieved promotion and tenure, mid‐career faculty are uniquely positioned to renegotiate their relationship to ideal worker norms in the academy and can use their agency to contest them. Accordingly, this chapter examines the construct of the ideal worker (Acker, 1990) and how it affects faculty work before providing insight on how mid‐career faculty may change their relationship with ideal worker norms and notions of productivity in their lives and at their institutions.
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