Implied Identity: Conceptualising professional identity development in higher education

Abstract

Educators in higher education and professional development are highly concerned with facilitating the development of learners’ professional identities. However, the underlying mechanism of professional-identity development is still an understudied area and requires further conceptualisation. My main aim in this dissertation is to propose a new approach to studying professional-identity formation and its development by looking at the dynamic interplay of self and environment. My thesis argument is that implied identity is a helpful concept to understand this relationship. As individuals reflect on objects and people’s acts, they interpret them in relation to aspects of professional identity. Implied identity refers to different aspects of professional identity that are perceived by individuals as legitimate ways of being through interaction. The term has its origins in implied reader from the literary studies and refers to the suggested aspects of being a professional that are experienced by learners within a particular context. The implied-identity framework extends the previous conceptualisation of learning as moving towards normative identities and instead proposes a view of learning as the process of negotiating implied identities. The proposed approach is helpful for advancing the relevance of the structure-agency debate in the context of higher education. In addition, it informs the investigation of the influence of educational design on learners’ agency in the process of professional-identity formation. I apply the approach in three empirical studies to address three research aims: (a) understanding the relationship between the context of learning and learners’ perception of the profession, (b) understanding learners’ perception of opportunities for practicing professional identity through interaction and in response to educational design, and (c) understanding shifts in learners’ identities as a consequence of long-term participation in the context of educational programs. Study 1 unpacks the relationship between beliefs about the profession and the context of learning. I apply phenomenography informed by the implied-identity approach to guide my investigation and explore learners’ beliefs about the (engineering) profession in relation to their experiences across different contexts of the university, society, and the workplace. I conclude that different beliefs about engineering are related to different contexts of learners’ experiences. This study calls into question decontextualised inquiries of beliefs when looking into how beliefs are formed. It further advances understanding of how beliefs influence professional-identity practices and explains the relations between the two. I suggest further investigation is needed to answer how the context of learning (including educational design) helps with the formation of beliefs and facilitates professional-identity practices. This leads to my second research aim. Based on the implied-identity approach, answering the question of how requires understanding of learners’ perception about opportunities of being through interaction and in response to educational design. In Study 2, I apply an ethnomethodologically inspired case study to investigate a collaborative decision-making session at the micro level. I use conversation analysis informed by an implied-identity approach for an in-depth investigation of the selected episodes of participants’ talk in interaction in order to explore how professional identities are negotiated. I conclude that the ongoing interplay between personal beliefs about the profession and the learning environment facilitates the emergence of professional identities. In addition, this process is mediated by implied identities that are negotiated by participants while they communicate their beliefs in response to the learning environment (including the designed task). I suggest that applying the implied-identity approach enables a balanced investigation of learner agency and contextual constraints of instructional design. Participation in learning activities provides learners with opportunities to practice aspects of professional identity that are initially intended by educational design. However, it requires understanding of how these opportunities are interpreted and responded to by learners to understand the effectiveness of learning activities and educational programs in facilitating the development of professional identities. I use this assumption to apply my approach for addressing the third research aim. In Study 3, I apply the implied-identity approach to understand the effectiveness of a professional-development program in relation to participants’ shifts in professional identities. To this purpose, I look at the example of a teacher intervention program, which was preliminarily designed with the aim of improving teacher knowledge and practice in relation to students’ motivation and engagement in mathematics. I qualitatively investigate data from pre- and postintervention concept maps and focus groups and examine if a year-long teacher learning intervention provided learners with implied identities that were supportive of student engagement in mathematics. I suggest that reported shifts in teachers’ beliefs and practice are indicators of implied identities perceived by them during their participation in the program that may potentially lead to changes in their practices. Considering that the main contribution of this dissertation is theoretical, at the end, I further advance my proposed approach in light of the main finding of the three studies and conceptualise (a) educational design, (b) identification processes, and (c) change in higher education. The current dissertation demonstrates the application of the proposed approach in higher education. I suggest that future research applies this approach to explore other dimensions of one’s identity.