This dissertation aims to integrate various learning approaches, i.e., multiple literacies, experiential learning, game-enhanced learning, and global simulation, into an extracurricular module, in which it remodels traditional ways of teaching input, specifically, the lexical- and grammatical-only approaches of business English at a private university in Bangkok, Thailand. Informed by those approaches, a game-enhanced simulation was specifically designed as an experiential space for L2 learners to experience the dynamic and real business contexts of language use. A strategy-simulation video game, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum (RCT3), was selected and used in the implementation of the pilot course. The game was embedded in a global simulation of two amusement park companies – where students worked in groups of five to form characters and socially interact with others. The global simulation involved learners in a sequence of genre-based (e.g., memoranda and business presentations) and technology-based tasks (e.g., using Gmail, Google Docs, and LinkedIn). Ten second-year students from five disciplines – Accounting, Logistics Engineering, Technology and Creative Business, Logistics Management, and Airline Business Management, participated in the study. Within this game-enhanced simulation, it turned out that each student simulated the role of a department head that was relevant to her or his discipline, for example, department heads of Financial Management, Technical Service Management, Customer Relationship Management, Legal and Operations Management, and Human Capital Management. The findings show that the learners' interactivity within the gameplay depicted the pedagogical affordances of RCT3 for a business English simulation, that is, exploratory interactivity, goal-orientedness in gameplay, goal-orientedness for roleplaying, and emergent narratives. The data present how this videogame features an interplay between two game perspectives – ludology and narratology. That is, ludic affordances in RCT3 could be activated in a narrative system: meaningful personal or emergent narrative by well-designed global simulation tasks. The simulations were established through students’ interpretation and creativity in gameplay and roleplay as related to their disciplines. Moreover, the game-enhanced simulation appeared to provide learners with an effective social context for promoting global English development and professional identity formation, which moved them beyond the learning practices of traditional coursebooks and classroom settings. Students of the study had opportunities to use professional Discourses related to their disciplines as ways to establish their desired identities within the simulated global workplace.

Although each of the life stories and cases of teachers are personal and specific, and although they have already become subjects of attention for anthropologists, educationalists, sociologists and psychologists, there is still a lack of in-depth research examining the actual processes and dynamics of teaching careers as experienced by individuals. This is especially true of China. The actual situation of teachers’ professional development in China remains a mystery. Since biography, the changes in society and their impact on education are intimately connected, this study intends to uncover and explore these connections in relation to Chinese College English teachers. It discusses and studies eight Chinese College English teachers’ professional development stories in the specific context of one university. The main aim of the study is to reveal how those teachers in a Chinese context and at different stages of their careers, construct, maintain and develop their professional identities. The study explores, in particular, how far China’s educational changes over the past sixty years (1949-2009) have impacted on these three groups of Chinese College English teachers’ professional identities. The focus on teachers’ lives in this study will enable the teachers’ voice to be heard. The study draws data from three groups of Chinese College English teachers: early-career, mid-career and late-career, reflecting the footprints of China’s educational changes over the past sixty years. It hypothesises that the professional identity construction of these teachers may be influenced by the Chinese historical background that their professional development may be a microcosm of Chinese history of education and that the career of each group may be in stark contrast with the others. To fully understand their professional development, a life history narrative was adopted. During eight-week’s fieldwork, a series of in-depth interviews combining topical interview with narrative interview were carried out with eight College English teachers at Sun Yat-sen University. A voice-centred approach combining (i) a voice-centred relational method of data analysis with four steps of reading and (ii) thematic narrative analysis was undertaken. Drawing on stories identified from Reading 1 and combining it with thematic narrative analysis method, I looked for what I think to be ‘critical events’. In Chapter 4, teachers’ stories are told in ‘I’ poems generated from Reading 2, which combines longer summaries of the content of the transcript and direct quotes to illustrate diverse and sometimes conflicting factors which influenced the development of teacher identity along with the participants’ professional teaching journeys. The narratives of each individual are guided by the processes they went through in their professional development (becoming a teacher - being a teacher - future development) and therefore were able to illustrate any general patterns that could be found in other interviews. Participating teachers’ stories illustrate the complexity of the experiences of Chinese College English teachers. Their experiences have shown the dynamic nature of teachers’ professional identity construction in times of educational changes. Their stories illustrate how the broader sociocultural and political context shapes teachers’ professional identity and how teachers play out their agency throughout the process of their professional identity construction. Based on roles emerging from Reading 2 which focuses on how the teachers speak about themselves and combining it with thematic narrative analysis, teachers’ professional identity construction is examined through the lens of what they do (their professional role identities) in Chapter 5. The findings show that no matter which career stages they were at, they are all capable of taking on the roles of manager, professional, acculturator and researcher. The construction of role identities is a self-internalised process, which needs continuous negotiation through interactions in specific social settings. In Chapter 6 teachers’ professional identity construction of the relational context of teaching was explored by combining thematic narrative analysis with Reading 3 which focuses on how teachers talked about themselves in relation to others. From the difference between teachers at different career stages, the findings reveal the teachers’ professional identity construction is a process of self-mirroring based on their understanding of how others (especially students and colleagues) perceive them. Moreover, there are two steps of the self-mirroring process: the individual recognises who she or he is and the individual identifies her or his uniqueness. Since the second step only showed in the mid and late-career teachers’ stories, the first and second step appears to be in a sequence. The connection between the teachers’ professional identity construction and the context was investigated in Chapter 7. In this chapter thematic narrative analysis is combined with Reading 4 which sets the context by placing the teachers within the cultural context and social structure. Analysis showed the teachers’ sense of professional identity appears to be largely characterised by their personal histories and experiences and it is constantly reshaped by the new relationships developed within the professional context where the initial conception of teaching and teachers confronts changes. Throughout the participating teachers’ life stories, even though they were unique, they were not disengaged from society and context. On more than one occasion, they made reference to different social and contextual issues that were shaping their selves either consciously or unconsciously. Additionally, when the narratives of all participating teachers are brought together they reveal important aspects of how the broader community - society and context - behaves and evolves. The contextual influences in teachers’ professional identity construction in this study could be classified in three main categories: micro-social, meso-social and macrosocial, which are interwoven with each other. Furthermore, the study provides the evidence to show that teachers’ career stages, employment status and life stage/age all contribute to their perceptions of their professional identity construction. Through each teacher’s stories, we are able to get to know each teacher as a whole person with complex lived realities. Those individual voices can be put together to show the collective voices from each group and those groups can be put together to show the collective voices from the cohort of eight College English teachers. The research is significant in collecting individual voices from Chinese College English teachers, and building their collective voice through exemplification, orchestration and amplification. Individual stories are examples which show how teachers live and struggle in their meso context with cultural uniqueness and the macro context of reforms. The hypothesis (see page iii) was not fully upheld – i.e., personal/individual and meso context seemed much more significant than macro. Teachers’ experiences and interpretations are orchestrated through comparing, contrasting and building theory/theories from the ground stories as an attempt to produce a new but coherent narrative at an intellectual level. The orchestration of teachers’ voices can be amplified in terms of its scope of impact and to inform the public of the subjective reality experienced by teachers. This small-scale, in-depth research project attempts to begin that process. It is anticipated that it will resonate with teachers who lived under the same context, and illuminate their perspectives for those who did not.

[pt] Esta dissertação discute o impacto das relações interpessoais e das atividades desempenhadas no trabalho na (re)construção de identidades profissionais, tendo como foco narrativas de estória de vida de Secretárias Executivas. Para tanto, foram realizadas entrevistas individuais com seis secretárias de Presidência e Vice-Presidência de empresas de grande e pequeno porte, públicas e privadas, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. A partir de uma perspectiva interacional e à luz da teoria da narrativa proposta por Linde (1993), este estudo investiga o modo como avaliações, crônicas e explicações são utilizadas como recursos lingüísticos capazes de conferir coerência às trajetórias profissionais dessas secretárias. Os resultados apontam para a importância de aspectos como gênero, idade e aparência física na composição do perfil da secretária, bem como para a relevância da discussão de questões como: obrigatoriedade de formação acadêmica para atuação na área de secretariado, autonomia, status, poder e prestígio social dessa profissão. / [en] This dissertation discusses the impact of interpersonal relationships and activities performed at work in the (re)construction of professional identities, focusing on life story narratives of of Executive Assistants. Therefore, individual interviews were conducted with six secretaries of the Presidency and Vice Presidency of large, small, public and private companies, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Under an interactional perspective and the narrative theory proposed by Linde (1993), this study investigates how evaluations, chronicles and explanations are used as linguistic features that convey coherence to these Executive Assistants’ career paths. The results indicate the importance of issues such as gender, age and physical appearance for the composition of a secretarial profile, as well as they highlight the discussion of issues such as mandatory academic training for insertion in the secretarial work, autonomy, status, power and social prestige of this profession.

Bien que le nombre de femmes, travaillant dans des cabinets de conseil et à des postes à haute responsabilité, ait augmenté, il reste cependant moins élevé que celui des hommes. En effet, la promotion au statut d’associé est le critère utilisé pour marquer la nature et l’existence, au sein des entreprises de services professionnels, de ce qu’on appelle en français le ‘plafond de verre’. De même, devenir associé constitue une des évolutions professionnelles les plus complexes qui soit, le futur associé devant s’inventer une identité professionnelle nouvelle et différente. Dans ce contexte, l’objectif de cette recherche est double. Tout d’abord, elle s’attache à mieux comprendre comment les femmes et les hommes consultants, au sein d’une culture organisationnelle sexualisée, se construisent leur propre identité professionnelle. Ensuite, son objectif est également d’approfondir les connaissances sur la façon dont l’identité professionnelle contribue à expliquer l’existence et la nature de ce ‘plafond de verre’ dans les entreprises de services professionnels.Cette perspective se base sur une étude qualitative réalisée auprès d’hommes et de femmes consultants et cadres supérieurs, et en particulier, mais pas de façon exclusive, auprès de ceux qui ont été promus associé. L’étude a été menée auprès d’associés et non associés évoluant au sein de quatre grands cabinets de conseil français et de deux grands cabinets américains. / Although there has been an increase in the number of women entering the management consulting firms, they are still proportionally much fewer in the highest levels of the hierarchy than men. Indeed, the promotion to partner is the criterion used to establish the nature and existence of the “glass ceiling” in professional services firms. At the same time, the transformation to partner is one of the most complex professional transformations there can be, in which the aspiring partners must assume a new and different professional identity. In this context, the aim of this research is twofold. On the one hand, the present research aims to better understand how women and men consultants construct their professional identities, in a gendered organizational culture. On the other hand, it also aims to deepen, in particular, the understanding of the ways in which professional identity contributes to explain the existence and nature of the glass ceiling in professional services firms. The perspective developed here is based on a qualitative study of male and female consultants and senior executives, primarily, although not exclusively, those who went through the promotion to partner. The research was conducted with partners and non-partners from four large management consulting firms in France, and two large management consulting firms in the United States.

This research study sought to understand how Canadian counsellors in the province of Ontario negotiated and constructed their professional identity amid unfolding regulatory changes. These changes would bring restrictions to both title use and practice of psychotherapy once the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario was established and legislation was fully enacted. For those who identify with the title of ‘counsellor’ and share overlapping scopes of practice with psychotherapy it is uncertain what they will draw upon to construct, rework or maintain their counsellor professional identity. The intention was to build a descriptive, experiential account of the identity work being done by counsellors as they navigated through the uncertainty accompanying this period of transition. A qualitative single case study design was used to explore the particularity of this contemporary occurrence of professional identity construction employing multiple data collection sources to garner a holistic picture of this phenomenon. Input was gathered from twenty-four Ontario counsellors who were students, novice or experienced practitioners who either participated in two semi-structured interviews (n=10) or an asynchronous virtual focus group hosted in the discussion forum of Blackboard Learn™ (n= 14). Additional data sources included the use of a demographic questionnaire, participant observation, and document analysis. In order to augment more subtle or deeper meaning levels additional data collection instruments were employed and these included the use of participant diagramming, a request for a descriptive metaphor, and graphic elicitation diagram. Using a thematic analysis strategy, a within case and cross analysis of the embedded subunits was undertaken. Findings from the data analysis revealed a number of salient themes that offered insights into how counsellors construct their professional identity during periods of uncertainty. There were five higher order or global themes which emerged: (a) counsellors have a sense of agency around the construction and communication of their professional identity, (b) identity construction is a process of organic, emergent growth that continues throughout professional life; (c) the shaping and negotiation of counsellor professional identity is guided by values; (d) when change contexts arise counsellors safeguard identity integrity by protecting its distinctiveness, definitional parameters and characterization in practice settings; and (e) during transition periods counsellors are willing to execute adaptive shifting as part of their identity work provided this does not infringe upon their professional values. Results indicate that meaning, values and agency galvanize the professional identity work done by counsellors and during transition brought about by a significant exogenous change event, such as the recent moves toward professional regulation, these negotiation strategies prevail. This case study took advantage of a contemporary instance of counsellor professional identity construction during unprecedented change to provide not only a rich description of this phenomenon but also to introduce a thematic diagram to act as a starting point for further discussion. Implications for counsellors, counsellor education and training programs, the profession, and future research are each discussed along with ideas for fostering informal avenues for counsellors across the experience spectrum to nurture their professional identity in a protean, agential manner.

Associée à beaucoup de clichés, d’idéalisation et de nostalgie, l’école rurale constitue un objet de recherche renouvelé depuis les années 1980, tant au niveau national qu’international. Les petites écoles rurales françaises, espagnoles, chiliennes et uruguayennes (écoles à classe unique ou à deux classes) présentent des points communs en termes d’organisation (structure multi-cours) et d’implication des acteurs locaux (en particulier des parents) dans leur fonctionnement. L’immersion des enseignants dans le territoire rural à travers l’activité professionnelle, la confrontation à la structure multi-cours, à la culture locale, aux traditions de l’école rurale bouleversent leur identité professionnelle en mettant souvent à mal leur système capacitaire (Costalat-Founeau, 1997). L’étude réalisée grâce à une méthodologie qualitative auprès de 43 enseignants, montre que les enseignants mettent alors en œuvre de nombreuses actions professionnelles et personnelles en direction du territoire, avec le territoire, à la recherche d’une validation sociale par celui-ci. Ces actions visent également à un apprentissage du territoire en réponse à l’expression d’une curiosité cognitive. Le déséquilibre du système capacitaire, le manque de validation sociale peut conduire les enseignants à une forme de repli sur soi en fermant la porte au territoire. En retrouvant un équilibre du système capacitaire, ils modifient alors leur représentation du métier, leur rapport au savoir, leur rapport à l’autorité, leur rapport à l’institution, leurs pratiques pédagogiques et donc l’ensemble de leur développement professionnel. Ils construisent progressivement une identité professionnelle et une proposition éducative territorialisées. Celle-ci s’exprime parfois par un conformisme important à la demande sociale, mais souvent par l’intégration des problématiques locales dans leur proposition éducative. / Rural schools, associated with many idealized images and nostalgia, have constituted a renewed subject of research since the 1980s, at both the national and international levels. Small rural schools (schools with one or two classes) in France, Spain, Chile and Uruguay have points in common in terms of their organization (multi-year) and the implication of local participants. The immersion of teachers in the rural territory through their professional activity, and their confrontation with a multi-year structure, local culture and the traditions of the rural school tend to upset their professional identity and often damage their “capacity system”(Costalat-Founeau, 1997). This study – undertaken with 43 teachers using qualitative methodology – shows that, as a result, teachers engage in numerous professional and personal activities both directed at the territory and with the territory, on a quest of social validation by the latter. These activities are also intended to quench the teachers’ intellectual curiosity by enabling them to learn about the territory. An imbalance in the “capacity system” and a lack of social validation can lead teachers to turn in on themselves by shutting out the territory. By re-balancing their capacity system, they modify their representation of their own profession; their connection with knowledge, authority and the institution; their educational practices; and thus their whole professional development. They gradually construct a territorialized professional identity and educational offer. This sometimes finds expression in conformity with social expectations, but more often in an integration of local issues into the educational offer.

The research reported in this study is located in a major curriculum reform programme commissioned by the Cypriot government and introduced into all public primary schools in September 2011. The study has a specific focus on teacher professional identity in changing times, not least through examining how teachers engage with an external intervention. The study identifies and deploys conceptual tools to examine how and why teachers have been positioned through this reform, and how there is a need to recognise their role as architects and key agents to curriculum reform policies. This research uses a case study approach and operates on three levels. At the micro level, I report on four primary school teachers’ professional lives utilising multiple sources of evidence. At the meso level, I locate these four teachers into a wider context by reporting on data collected from 308 questionnaires distributed to teachers in 29 schools before the implementation of the reform programme and a year after. Finally, at the macro level I report on the national policy context by looking at documents and interviews with two purposively selected curriculum coordinators. Research data revealed that teachers’ professional identity and its underpinning constructs such as emotions, job satisfaction and professional commitment, autonomy, and confidence were constantly challenged and negotiated within the changing educational setting. Contextual and professional factors were found to affect to a great extent teachers’ identity. The unfolding of the research findings derived from the three levels of this research and the use of Foucauldian governmentality as a theoretical lens led to the exposition of the power relations embedded in teachers’ professional lives and contributed to the further analysis of teachers’ identity within educational policy. The case is made that the complexity of professional identity needs to be taken into account by reform designers because teachers are the ones who embrace, reinterpret and develop such efforts. The way and degree to which teachers understand, adjust, perceive and enact on reforms are affected by the extent to which these innovations interact with and challenge existing identities. This research project examines how policy interplays with practice as well as how teachers in a highly centralised system experience and respond to changes in their professional lives, what constitutes, shapes, supports and undermines their practice, thus, making a contribution to the evidence and theory base for the educational policy field. The study enriches the international literature on professional identity and fills in the gaps with respect to teachers’ professional identity at a time of system wide change at a national level in Cyprus. Finally, there is a methodological contribution as it concentrates on primary teachers and utilises methods which are not widely used as the majority of undertaken research is based mainly on surveys and interviews and focuses on secondary teachers.

Amidst calls to incorporate inquiry meaningfully into the practice of laboratory work in secondary school chemistry and calls to investigate how teachers negotiate their professional identities under widespread reforms in education, this study sought to explore the interface of teacher professional identity and how teachers facilitate inquiry for learners during practical activities. Utilising a social constructivist lens and a qualitative case study approach, the study focused on three inquiry actions; namely, question posing, experiment procedure design and articulation of solutions through a teacher identity lens. Data capture comprised a mix of semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, observations, field notes and a research journal. Data was analysed utilising the content analysis method. Findings were fourfold. First, teachers displayed four identity positions in Inquiry-based Laboratory work, which was interwoven with their professional training, personal school experiences, beliefs and attitudes and sense of agency. Second, teachers’ professional identity influenced how they engaged learners in question posing, experiment design procedure and giving solutions as inquiry actions. Third, teachers held strong beliefs in chemistry as a two-pronged subject and utilised laboratory work to consolidate and develop learner understanding of scientific concepts and theories. And fourth the manner in which teachers facilitated inquiry in the chemistry laboratory manifested as an interface between teacher professional identity and the principles of IBLW. / Thesis (PhD--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / Unrestricted

Este estudo de tese propõe uma discussão sobre as conexões existentes entre os cursos de qualificação profissional, gestados pelos programas governamentais PLANFOR e PNQ, e a formação da identidade profissional dos agricultores familiares na região de Januária - MG. Estes programas, gestados no início dos anos de 1990, num contexto de profundas mudanças no mundo do trabalho, foram implantados, também no meio rural, na busca por uma profissionalização do agricultor, capaz de conceber-lhes uma identidade profissional e integrá-los ao novo modelo de desenvolvimento. A disseminação dos novos padrões relacionados com a produtividade fez com que se tornassem mais complexas as relações com o mundo do trabalho e, por consequência, uma maior exigência de especialização dos trabalhadores. Pelo menos teoricamente, o acesso à tecnologia através da qualificação tende a proporcionar aumento da produção e da produtividade, o que geraria excedentes que levassem o agricultor a comercializar e se inserir nos mercados consumidores. Esse modelo de desenvolvimento para o campo se desenvolve a partir das políticas públicas de qualificação, mas nem todos os agricultores familiares assimilam essa receita e constroem estratégias de manutenção das suas condições de agricultura de tradição camponesa. A construção de identidades profissionais de agricultores se consolida naturalmente pelos processos sociais, mas também por mudanças nas estruturas produtivas e nas formas organizativas de sociedade. Dessa forma, a identidade profissional dos agricultores está relacionada com a qualificação e ao acesso à tecnologia de produção, com o uso da terra, com o crédito, ao mercado e, principalmente, ao reconhecimento social da profissão de agricultor. A qualificação profissional tem contribuído para o processo de profissionalização, mas, infelizmente, depende de outros elementos importantes de natureza econômica, institucional e social para a sua concretização. / This study thesis proposes a discussion on the connections between the professional qualification courses, gestated by government programs PLANFOR and PNQ, and the formation of professional identity of the farmers in the region Januária - MG. These programs, gestated in the early 1990s, in a context of profound changes in the world of work were deployed also in rural areas, in search for a professional farmer, able to design them a professional identity and integrate it into new development model. The spread of new standards related to productivity made them become more complex relations with the world of work and, therefore, require more specialized workers. At least in theory, access to technology through training tend to provide increased production and productivity which would generate surpluses that led farmers to enter the market and consumer markets. This model of development for the field develops from public policy qualification, but not all farmers assimilate this recipe and build strategies to maintain their conditions of peasant farming tradition. The construction of professional identities of farmers established itself naturally by social processes, but also by changes in production structures and the organizational forms of society. Thus the professional identity of farmers is related to the qualifications and access to production technology, with land use, with credit, market, and especially to social recognition of the farming profession. The qualification has contributed to the process of professionalization, but unfortunately, depends on other important elements of economic, institutional and social for their achievement.

Diversos pesquisadores têm sinalizado que o impacto da globalização e das modernas tecnologias da informação e comunicação transformou a noção de como o trabalho é desenvolvido nas organizações. No atual contexto, antigas promessas de estabilidade de emprego não conseguem mais ser sustentadas, fazendo-se necessário repensar os paradigmas de desenvolvimento profissional. Frente a este cenário, surge uma abordagem denominada carreiras sem fronteiras, onde os indivíduos transitam mais livremente entre diversas organizações, desatrelam suas identidades de empregadores específicos e incorporam outras dimensões da vida humana, além da profissional, como elementos vitais à sua realização pessoal. Além disso, o novo paradigma comporta de forma mais natural interrupções temporárias de carreira, entendendo-as como parte da evolução profissional e de vida do indivíduo. Neste sentido, pesquisadores americanos têm crescentemente investigado um movimento denominado \"revolução opt-out\", descrevendo indivíduos altamente qualificados e com alto desempenho que, em busca de maior realização pessoal, voluntariamente tomam alguma decisão de carreira que vai de encontro às tradicionais premissas de evolução profissional. Alguns modelos explicativos têm sido elaborados buscando compreender as motivações de tais profissionais, dentre os quais o modelo ABC de carreiras caleidoscópio utilizado neste trabalho. Embora muito se discuta sobre o cenário acima no exterior, não existem estudos científicos investigando se o movimento opt-out ocorre no país, e se ocorre, quais as suas características e qual o perfil dos profissionais que o adotam, sendo este, portanto, o objeto de pesquisa deste trabalho. Para examinar tais questões, realizou-se um censo quantitativo e descritivo de 248 ex-alunos de graduação e pós-graduação da Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo (FEA USP), que estiveram presentes em encontro de ex-alunos realizado em 10 de novembro de 2007. Os dados coletados foram analisados por meio de estatística descritiva e estatística inferencial (testes qui-quadrado, t de Student, análise de variância, análise de correspondência e análise fatorial). Os resultados obtidos levaram à aceitação das quatro hipóteses propostas para o trabalho, indicando que uma parcela significativa dos respondentes já fez movimentos opt-out ao longo da carreira, e foram comprovadas vinculações significativas entre o perfil dos respondentes e a realização de opt-out; entre o perfil dos respondentes e os motivos apontados para a decisão; e entre os tipos de movimento opt-out e as razões subjacentes à decisão. / Several researchers have indicated that the impact of globalization and modern information and communication technologies transformed the notion of how work is done in the organizations. In the present context, previous promises of job stability can no longer be sustained, resulting in the need to rethink the paradigms of professional development. In this scenario, it comes into play a concept called boundaryless careers, in which individuals move more freely among different organizations, dissociating their identities from specific employers and incorporating other dimensions of life - beyond their professional activities - as essential elements for their personal fulfillment. Furthermore, the new paradigm accepts temporary career interruptions in a more natural way, considering them as part of the evolution of professional and personal lives. In that regard, American researchers are increasingly investigating a movement called \"opt-out revolution\", describing highly qualified and highly performing individuals who voluntarily make a career decision contrary to the traditional premises of professional evolution. Some explanatory models have been elaborated in order to understand the motivations of these individuals, including the ABC model of kaleidoscope careers used in the present study. Despite the intense discussions abroad regarding such scenario, there are no scientific studies investigating if the opt-out movement occurs in Brazil and, if it occurs, what characteristics it has and what is the profile of professionals who adopt it - and these are the objectives of the current study. To examine these questions, a quantitative and descriptive research was performed involving 248 graduate and post-graduate alumni from the School of Economics, Management, and Accounting of the University of São Paulo (FEA USP), who attended the alumni meeting occurred in November 10th, 2007. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (qui-square test, t-Student test, analysis of variance, correspondence analysis and factor analysis). The results permit to accept the four hypotheses proposed for this study, indicating that a significant amount of the respondents had done opt-out movements along their careers, and significant connections were found between the respondents` profiles and the adoption of opt-out movements; between the respondents` profiles and the reasons for making such decisions; and between the type of opt-out movement and the reasons for making the opt-out decisions.