Values, Concerns and Identity in Academic Development

Brenda LeibowitzJames Garraway

Jean Farmer

' .... there was a great silence about our political situations and struggles ... yet they are deeply part of the relations that constitute us as persons, teachers and researchers. At the same time they constitute the world as the historical process of which our endeavours, and we ourselves, happen to be part'. (Lave, 2012: 158)

Social Order

The social order is constituted as three elements. Archer 1996:1) distinguishes between: • Structure - “roles, organisations, institutions,

systems” (Archer, 1996:1); • Culture - which is the dominant register of

ideas or propositions in a society or setting (1995).

• These are considered as causative powers if the properties of the social domains are interacted upon by people as groups or individuals.

Constraints and enablements

The causative powers generated by structure and culture are exercised as constraints and

enablements, subject to their take up by human agency and described as subjective

(Archer 2007: 10)

Our concerns

Our concerns are commitments that are ends in themselves and constitutive of who we are, for the sake of which we will be altruistic, self-sacrificing and sometimes ready to die and always, at least, be trying to live. They are also definitive of our varying forms of social engagement (Archer, 2007, p. 15/16). As Huber, Caine, Huber and Steeves (3) remark, “our very identities as human beings are inextricably linked to the stories we tell of ourselves, both to ourselves and one another”.

Similarities Differences• Individual agency and sense of

identity as being different from others in our communities.

• Prepared to stand out and say or act as we believed we should.

• Lack of shared values with family regarding “struggle”.

• Passion for knowledge and curiosity about others.

• Incidental similarities: stints of exposure in the media.

• Struggled against rigidity of institution. On the outside not wanting to get “in”.

• The strongest similarity: sense that we remain driven by a strong set of values regarding social justice.

• Careers in high school teaching.• Circularity of commitments.

• Backgrounds affluence, middle class and working class.

• Schooling: upper class/poorer.

• Family structures: conventional/single mother

• Types of sacrifices made in order to take up the fight.

• Higher ed as a natural progression/struggle to get there.

We bring our past along into the present either

consciously or subconsciously, unwillingly or

willingly.

Closing• All that the stories do is to explicate how

having been in the struggle may make the values base and make clearer the set of assumptions we work with in AD.

• The implication of this is that it may be beneficial for academic developers to undertake introspective and retrospective journeys, especially if they are in a position to reflect on these in the company of others.