Academic Identity Construction Research Articles

Refining the narrative: An autoethnographic insight into academic identity construction and development in a Chinese doctoral student's journey in the United States

What seems to be overlooked in current higher education research is the perspective of individual doctoral students in applied linguistics and how they comprehend the academic training culture within U.S. neoliberal universities. Through an autoethnographic (AE) approach, this study investigated how I as a Chinese doctoral student experienced different stages of identity negotiation in my doctoral program. The findings, which integrated theories of academic identity, the third space, and neoliberalism, were primarily derived from my self-reflection data throughout the pandemic. The arguments center around the coexistence of multiple identities and an asynchronous process of identity construction, which were influenced and shaped by study-work balance, laissez-faire supervision, the digital third space, and the pressures from neoliberal norms. The study brings insights into theoretical models from an AE perspective and recommends that higher education stakeholders adopt a flexible approach to doctoral supervision and academic publishing. Autoethnography offered a first-person perspective for in-depth meaning-making, facilitating a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of one’s academic journey of becoming.

From vocation to profession: multiple identities of Chinese management academics

The academic landscape in China has undergone a profound transformation, shifting from a spiritually rooted vocation to a model driven by managerial efficiency, catalyzed by market reforms that dismantled the traditional, centrally planned system. This seismic shift has forced scholars to adapt to a performance-oriented environment, leading to significant transformations in their professional identities. Contemporary literature, primarily centered on Western role-theory perspectives, often fails to capture the intricate cognitive dynamics that shape academic identities under the varied influence of power dimensions. This study addresses this gap by exploring how Chinese academics’ identities are constructed amidst a complex interplay of power dynamics, external changes, and internal motivations, moving beyond simplistic group-level categorizations. Employing an intersectional approach within a multidimensional organizational power framework, this research utilizes case study methods to probe deeply into the multiple identities of academics in the Business Management discipline across various Chinese higher education institutions. The study reveals a dynamic interplay among multiple power dimensions, including American research hegemony, industrialization of academic governance, self-regulation, and rebellion against ‘academic games’. These forces collectively shape distinct identity modules among Chinese academics: fanatic convert of American research, career survivor, diligent game player, and career retreater, each responding uniquely to the evolving academic pressures. This research significantly enhances our understanding of academic identity construction by extending beyond traditional role-based analyses to encompass a broader spectrum of cognitive processes. It highlights the nuanced intersectionality of academic identities, effectively integrating structuralist perspectives with personal agency. This comprehensive examination provides critical insights into the development of Management disciplines, university governance, and professional practices within the academic community in China.

Chinese university faculty supervisors’ academic identity construction in online profiles

Faculty supervisor profiles on the graduate school webpages of universities offer an explicit assertion of self-representation regarding the author’s academic identity, from which potential graduates can gain official information about their future faculty supervisors. Though scholars’ identity construction on blogs or homepages has drawn sufficient attention, supervisors’ identity construction on graduate school webpages across authors’ status, gender, and disciplines in the Chinese context has not been sufficient. Based on the analysis of moves and processes, this study explores academic identity construction across authors’ status, gender, and disciplines. Professor/Ph.D. faculty supervisors (PPSs) generally tend to use more moves than associate professors/master supervisors (APMs); different relational and material processes are used most frequently for scholars of different statuses. For gender, male academics use more words than females for move and process items. For disciplinary differences, art scholars pay close attention to education, achievement and community service, presenting more relational processes, while history and telecommunications scholars concentrate on their research directions and main publications. The results are further discussed with reference to status advantage, women’s dilemma, and disciplinary culture in the Chinese academic community.

How boundaries work in higher education: an ethnographic account of Ph.D. students’ identity formation

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that Ph.D. students’ construction of academic identity depends on the boundary-making process in academia. The presented ethnographic account of Ph.D. students at one of the research-intensive universities in Turkey is based on 15 months of fieldwork, including observations and 21 in-depth interviews with PhD students. This ethnographic study employs a two-headed approach: institution-based boundary-formation and Ph.D. students’ socialisation into academic habitus. The findings reveal that, first, the identity building process in doctoral education is constituted by the practices of institution-based boundaries, which enable Ph.D. students to accumulate symbolic and social capital; second, the practices of distinction through socialisation into academic life are developed, embodied, habituated, and integrated to academic identity and academic life as part of a habitus of doctoral education; third, identity formation is a social space of relational positions characterised by the supervisor-enforced social order, rooted in both authority and domination.

‘Playing the same game differently’: constituting academic identities in four disciplines

AbstractWhilst many studies have explored academic identity construction, very few take a comparative perspective to examine the various ways of constructing academic identities within and across different disciplines. This paper analyses a key policy document used for evaluating academics’ performance along with semi-structured interviews with 37 academics from Chemical Sciences, Medical Sciences, Nursing and Education working in a research-intensive New Zealand university. The use of Foucault’s theoretical construct of games of truth provides a novel perspective to investigate the ways in which academics in different disciplines play the academic ‘game’ and how this might affect their construction of an academic identity. Our analysis suggests that the path into academia is a key factor in their trajectory of academic formation. The study suggests three types of ‘valid’ academics. It problematises the standardised definition and evaluation of academics and offers contextualised, multiple, dynamic and agential understandings of being and becoming set up through the interplay of forces arising from disciplinary, institutional, professional and personal spheres.

Constructing Academic Identity Through Critical Argumentation: A Narrative Inquiry of Chinese EFL Doctoral Students’ Experiences

This study aimed to explore the experiences of Chinese EFL doctoral students in constructing their academic identities through critical argumentation in their thesis writing in an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) context. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Narrative analysis was used to examine participants’ thesis writing to gain insights into their experiences of academic identity construction. The results revealed that Chinese EFL doctoral students face challenges in developing a critical voice and authorial position, synthesizing multiple sources, and positioning themselves rhetorically in their writing. Furthermore, the results open possibilities for a broader understanding of academic writing that values international graduate student’s educational background and cultural diversity in target English language discourse communities. While the narrative inquiry study on Chinese EFL doctoral students’ academic identity construction through critical argumentation is insightful, there are several limitations to consider, mainly due to the small sample size of only two female Chinese respondents.

A Study on Identity Construction of First Person Pronouns in Academic Papers from the Perspective of Evidentiality

The first person pronoun plays an important role in identity construction, however, there is few study on it from the perspective of evidentiality. This paper took the first person pronouns as evidentials, and conducted a comparable analysis on the frequency of them and the identities they constructed in academic papers between soft and hard sciences, aiming to find the differences between different discourse communities and explore their preferences for academic identity construction. The results showed that both fields prefer to use plural and subjective cases of first person pronouns, and they both prefer to construct the authorial identity of “researcher”, but scarcely construct the authorial identity of “responsible person”. Researchers in hard science use less evidentials than researchers in soft science, and they prefer to use evidentials “we” and “statement”, which weaken the authorial identity. Evidentials that embody authorial identity, including singular first person pronouns and “participation” evidentials, account for higher proportion in soft science than those in hard science.

Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic Identities in Nigeria

There is an increase in brand marketing on the websites of universities in a bid to present the kind of identities that will best promote them. This study examines the identities universities project to market their brands within the context of consumer culture of the contemporary higher educational setting. Data for the study were obtained from the websites of 24 public and private universities in Nigeria and were analysed based on Fairclough’s (2015) dialectical relational theory and Roper and Parker’s (2006) insights on branding. The findings reveal seven kinds of identity: professional, national, transnational, humanist, Afrocentric, ethnic and religious. These identities range from the ideal to narrow-interest ones. The study concludes that identity construction in any university should aim primarily at advancing knowledge and producing total graduates who would be able to adapt and survive in any part of the world and contribute meaningfully to societal development.

Constructing university-based teacher educators: serendipity, complexity and community

ABSTRACT While previous studies have explored many aspects of teacher educators’ identities, limited attention has been paid to how teacher educators understand the process of their academic identity construction in higher education. To address this issue, we draw on interviews and other supplementary data collected from 19 teacher education academics in two New Zealand universities. To bring the participants’ voices to the fore, we analyse the interview data thematically. The findings show that the participants conceptualise the process of academic identity construction across two interrelated dimensions. They perceive it as a development of professional identity, practice and as a learning journey that is entangled with contestation, reflection, and negotiation with multiple but conflicting forces from professional school teaching and academic spaces. We conclude by suggesting that academic identity construction is a non-linear and unfinished process. It involves the teacher educators continuously moving back and forth between different communities, with constant reflection, negotiation and renewing of identities in response to dynamic, complex socio-cultural contexts.

Exploring the ways of studying academic identity as a dynamic discursive performance: the use of diary as a method

ABSTRACT As universities are undergoing transformations produced by trends towards marketisation, massification, new public management, and ‘third mission’ of socio-economic impact, higher education (HE) researchers are increasingly concerned with the implications of the HE sector change on academic practice, professional identities, and even wellbeing. This paper is situated within the complex interplay of policy incentives and governance mechanisms that appear to be resulting in the rising bifurcation and precariousness of academic careers and identities. In this context, drawing on a pilot study of ‘third space’ academic identities, and the methodology that combines work diaries and narrative interviews, it discusses the use(fulness) of (inter)action-, positionality-, and affect-driven methods in studying the academic identity construction. It argues that diverse methods that go beyond the usual interview- and questionnaire-based approaches are needed to better understand and support the existing and emergent academic practices and communities.

The Role of Contexts in the Construction of Academic Identity in Selected South African Universities

Using qualitative interviews and document analysis, that is, national and institutional policies, the study is embedded on the assumption that the purpose of the academic career is knowledge creation, dissemination, and the acquisition and promotion of high-level skills that contribute to scholarship and the support of the economy of knowledge. This implies that academics create knowledge in pursuit of the academic career to develop scholarship. Given the identity-subjectivity-agency theory, the study set out to examine the global and local contexts or dynamics that affect the academic career in constructing academic identity and how they apply to the South African higher education landscape. We argue that the legacy of apartheid affected academic careers differently as higher education institutions were divided, separated, and segregated along racial lines with different purposes. They shaped the roles of academics in different ways, with some enjoying academic freedom and autonomy while some are operating as public servants. Moreover, university academic staff should be encouraged and enabled to advance knowledge. Thus, the study recognizes the need for high-level skills and knowledge creation, which require greater attention to the nature of academic careers.

Rhetorical Questions and Ruminations

Transitioning from graduate student to early career faculty can often provoke uncertainty and questioning. This study explores the rhetorical and revealing nature of such questioning (i.e., Am I really this lost? Am I in the right place?). Utilizing methods from arts based research (Barone & Eisner, 2012), specifically poetic inquiry (Prendergast et al., 2009; Richardson, 1992), we created found poetry around rhetorical questions from our existing collaborative autoethnographic journal. We frame our findings with a selection of poems to provide insight into our lived experiences of transition. The question poems illustrate that our first year as assistant professors were preoccupied with managing tasks, balancing work, avoiding burnout, building relationships, and discovering how to belong in the new context. While rhetorical questions do not necessarily produce answers, questioning in a collaborative space allowed us to explore the struggle, complexity, and ambiguity of academic identity construction as early career faculty.

Acculturation, perceived discrimination, academic identity, gender and Chinese language learning among Ethnic Minority Adolescents: a structural equation modeling analysis

ABSTRACT Parents, teachers and policy makers are concerned about how immigrant students acquire the mainstream language and achieve academic success. Therefore, researchers face an urgent need to examine the broader ecological factors that influence immigrant students’ academic identity construction and mainstream language learning. This study investigates the nexus of acculturation, gender, identity and Chinese language learning among 881 South Asian immigrant adolescents in Hong Kong. The results indicate that students with stronger academic identity report superior Chinese reading and writing, and the results show that among ethnic minorities, girls reported higher level of Chinese reading and writing than boys. Paradoxically perhaps, students who perceived greater discrimination didn’t show significantly different academic identity from other students and reported higher proficiency in reading and writing Chinese. This implies the necessity of providing more school and social support to these students. The study also shows that students with greater assimilation have weaker academic identity and hence report poorer Chinese reading and writing. The negative link between assimilation and mainstream language learning suggests the importance of maintaining the heritage identity and sense of belonging to heritage culture for enhancing the ethnic minority students’ mainstream language learning. This result informs policy makers developing suitable immigration policy.

An autobiographical narrative inquiry of academic identity construction of PhD candidates through L2 authorship development

In two recent decades, academic authorship and construction of (academic) identity, more specifically in graduate bilingual/multilingual writers, have drawn attention in second language (L2) writing studies. From ‘social identity’ framework, the interconnection between bilingualism/multilingualism status and academic writing has played a very critical role in construction of their academic identity. Regarding this topic, autobiographical narratives proved a valuable methodological approach to understand deeply graduate bilingual/multilingual writers' insights about their academic authorship identity in their own words. There are very few studies that have examined the insights of individual graduate writers from their own words in narratives approach. More specifically, this issue has been less examined in English PhD programs which play a critical role in writing education. Thus, the present study, through Tajfel's (1978) social identity framework and autobiographical narratives, aims to create an effective platform for future graduate bilingual/multilingual writers' studies, in particular PhD candidates in English programs. To this end, the insights of two PhD bilingual/multilingual graduates in an English program have been examined to explore their insights about the interconnection between their bilingualism/multilingualism status and academic writing. This study also explores possible affordances and potential difficulties in constructing their academic authorship identity. The findings revealed that bilingualism/multilingualism status has influenced and constructed multiple identities for the two participant narrators in their academic writing education. Moreover, the findings readdressed the very significant role of higher education, and teaching profession that influenced and constructed academic identity of graduate writers. Finally, the current study offers some suggestions for future studies of graduate bilingual/multilingual L2 writing; it ends with implications for L2 writing education development.

Identity projection in the oral presentations of Colombian PhD students: Disciplinary differences

This study analyses how Colombian PhD-level EAP students use pronouns in their oral presentations (OPs) to construct and project their academic and language learning selves. Pronoun use was explored in a corpus of 58 OPs transcriptions (47728 tokens) to identify (1) the types of identity projected, phraseology, and discourse functions performed and (2) how these varied in terms of the disciplines represented in the study (hard vs soft). To achieve these objectives, quantitative (normalised frequencies, statistical significance) analyses were performed. These were complemented with corpus and discourse analysis procedures. The analyses show that disciplinary knowledge and not individual variation influences pronoun selection and identity projection. Hard fields favour the selection of pronouns and discourse devices that reflect their methodological practices while soft fields favour the expression of opinions regarding existing knowledge in the soft disciplines. This report concludes discussing the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications of the findings, which might be generalized to any context where academic identity construction and projection in EAP is researched or taught.

Constructing academic identity in the changing Russian higher education context: preliminary perspectives

ABSTRACT Currently, Russian academics are facing significant demands because of a new, urgent requirement to pursue their research in accordance with international standards. Until recently, these academics were used to working within a familiar community and communicating their research via the Russian language, but now, they are expected to move beyond that and function on a global level, which can challenge their academic identities. A qualitative study was carried out in a research-intensive Russian university. The aim was to explore academics’ experiences and perceptions of the dynamic changes in their academic work with a particular focus on the limitations and pressures they meet in their career path towards global research. The data were collected by means of reflective journals during a course on English for academic purposes. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The results showed that global trends turned out to be unachievable for Russian academics due to the lack of specific knowledge, attributes and skills required to do research globally. This might be the first study from Russia contributing to the literature on academic identity construction. The article provides insights into the experiences and perceptions of Russian academics and offers a research agenda for further investigation to bridge identity shifts in academia. In terms of practical purposes, the results will be used as a source of preliminary data within a broader research project aimed at supporting Russian academics in their research in an international English-speaking academic context.

The interplay between ethnic and academic identity construction among South Asian students in Hong Kong tertiary education

This qualitative study investigates the interplay between the ethnic and academic identity construction of a group of university students with South Asian backgrounds in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that ethnic identity and ethnic socialization have protective and facilitative effects on learning motivation and academic achievement. It is found that these ethnic minority students receiving tertiary education, holding congruent views of ethnic and academic identity, display a sense of agency and critical reflectivity of both the host society and their heritage communities and see facilitating community uplift and developing a more positive social image of ethnic minorities as their generation’s responsibility. Reconstructing an ethnic identity and developing new social images therefore motivate them to pursue academic success. The findings indicate that the South Asian students figured out ways in which to interact with the outer world and set up new roles and spaces (i.e., a heritage community with more positive social image). The findings shed light on how to provide better opportunities for and assistance to ethnic minority students when they pursue higher education.

Construction at Work: Multiple Identities Scaffold Professional Identity Development in Academia.

Identity construction – the process of creating and building a new future self – is an integral part of a person’s professional career development. However, at present we have little understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underpin this process. Likewise, we have little understanding of the barriers that obstruct it, and which thus may contribute to inequality in career outcomes. Using a social identity lens, and particularly the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC), we explore the process of academic identity construction among doctoral students. Through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 22 Ph.D. candidates, we observe that the identity construction process relies on a person’s perception of a navigable pathway between their current self and their future self. Importantly, participants who were able to access multiple identity resources were more likely to perceive a navigable pathway to a future professional self (e.g., as an academic), unless they perceived these identities to be incompatible with those held by leading members of the profession (e.g., their supervisors). This research suggests that the identities that people are able to access as they progress in their careers may play an important role in their ongoing professional identity construction and career success.

Pains and gains of working in Chinese universities: an academic returnee's journey

ABSTRACTOver the past decade, an increasing number of overseas Chinese PhD graduates have returned to China to develop their career. For these academic returnees, one of the challenges is to (re)construct an academic identity in a familiar context that is also strange because they have been absent for a few years. In this autobiographical paper, the researcher describes and reflects upon the pains and gains experienced when re-entering and working in Chinese universities as a PhD returnee, revealing the process of his academic identity (re)construction when adjusting to different academic assessment policies. This writing offers an individual perspective on the challenges to returnees’ academic identity (re)construction and argues for the need to set up in-between spaces for inter/cross-disciplinary academic discourse between returnees and local scholars at Chinese universities. This paper aims to contribute to pedagogic debate on the development of more open research practices in Chinese universities.

Mind the Gap: Transitioning from Doctoral Graduates to Early Career Faculty

Aim/Purpose: Graduate programs aim to prepare students for future professional roles, yet doctoral graduates often earn faculty positions at institutions that differ from those in which they were socialized. Navigating this “preparation gap” can produce feelings of uncertainty, tension, and, ultimately, dissonance. This collaborative autoethnographic study explores the gap as it was experienced by two early career faculty in a U.S. context. Background: The landscape of academia is rapidly changing, meaning graduate programs cannot prepare each graduate student for every potential professional role offered to them. Therefore, as doctoral graduates emerge from their respective graduate programs, an inevitable gap in preparation exists. This gap in preparation mirrors a gap in the graduate socialization literature, which is limited in describing how early career faculty are socialized into their first positions. Methodology: The paper discusses a year-long collaborative autoethnographic study conducted by two tenure-track early career faculty in Education & Arts fields at universities in the U.S. The study employs Clancy’s (2010) theory of Perpetual Identity Constructing as a theoretical framework to examine the perceived dissonance produced during the transition from doctoral graduates to early career faculty. Contribution: This collaborative autoethnographic account of two early career, tenure-track faculty members’ transition from doctoral graduate to assistant professors expands the literature on doctoral socialization, academic identities, and the potential of qualitative modes of inquiry. Specifically, it recognizes that doctoral graduates experience dissonance and undergo identity construction during the first year. Findings: Our findings revealed three categories repeated in our collaborative autoethnographic data that potentially serve as a window to illuminate the complexity of the dissonance across the gap: support, connection, and control. Each category includes varying levels of dissonance with the self, department, institution, and fields of which we were part. Using Perpetual Identity Constructing theory, each category was examined through the three-stages of academic identity construction. Recommendations for Practitioners: The study has implications for practitioners, specifically those who help to prepare doctoral students for positions at teaching-intensive universities. We recommend doctoral granting institutions expand formal and informal socialization programming to enhance students’ awareness and preparation for the contexts and tensions they may encounter. Recommendation for Researchers: Additional fine-grained studies, like ours, are warranted to further illuminate the complex interaction between the gap in socialization and the academic identity construction process as early career faculty. Impact on Society: Awareness that deconstruction and reconstruction of identity continues beyond doctoral socialization could better prepare future faculty for the perpetual identity work across a career; it has the potential to produce better adjusted early career faculty who improve student outcomes and conduct research that impacts society. Future Research: Based on the findings of this study, future areas of research should further investigate the experiences of early career faculty, in particular their socialization experiences during the transition from candidacy to first career positions.