Academic Identities: Voices from the Edge

This thesis presents the perspectives of lecturers delivering Higher
Education Business Courses (HEBCs) in Further Education Colleges (FECs)
within the Yorkshire and Humber region of the North of England during the
period 2005-2007. In particular, it focuses on issues of academic identity
for those teaching HEBCs in FECs. The study is based on data amassed via
a questionnaire survey; a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews
conducted with 26 lecturers, from focus group evidence, from an
autobiographical experience of teaching HEBCs in an FEC, and is informed
by a critical engagement with the literature. The thesis provides a brief
historical overview of both higher and further education from its
qualitative ethnographic derived account of lecturers’ narratives, whilst
exploring concepts related to academic identity, professionalism,
scholarship, institutional cultures and ethos, different resources, and
changing identities. The study reveals role conflicts, anxieties, career
crises, and individual dissatisfactions that are sharply out of kilter with
official discourses. It suggests that many of those teaching HEBCs in FECs
share concerns about their ability to deliver high quality education in the
context of what they generally experience as a marginalised, and
relatively materially deprived domain of learning, which is undermined by
associated policy and institutional framework