The changes to the university system in Australia have precipitated much discussion with regard to their impact on the academic profession. Much of this deliberation is grounded in pre-Dawkins definitions of academic tasks and does not appear to reflect the experiences of many of the academics who participated in this study, which was undertaken in an attempt to identify and describe some of the ways in which continuing and casual academic staff at a single post-Dawkins university are making sense of their role in the academic profession and reflexively constructing a sense of identity. The discussion is contextualised by an understanding of the multifarious influences which have buffeted the profession throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. The complex nature of tertiary institutions and the nature of academic work are but two of the factors which have fostered the creation of multiple academic identities. / Recurring dominant themes expressed by participant academic staff during interviews have helped to reveal some of the institutionalised discourses of academia. The data indicate that academics create their own sense of reality through the structuring of their discourses. The thesis draws heavily on the notion that discursive strategies can structure systems of presence and absence within organisations, through which some types of academia are normalised and others are marginalised (Mumby 1994). These discourses of explored through key meta-narratives of academia in The University, which hosted the study. / Members' symbolic and selective participation with an identity group is central to the creative process of constructing alternative versions of academia. As Daniels, Spiker and Papa (1997, p254) argue: 'there is nothing quite so powerful as the assumption within a group that things are or should be a particular way'. Affirmation of these shared assumptions can be found in the stories and symbols which are meaningful to the members of a group. / The study is underpinned with elements of Ernest Bormann's symbolic convergence theory (1972) as a useful method of accounting for creating, raising and maintaining of a shared group consciousness through communication. Symbolic Convergence Theory, with its attendant method of fantasy theme analysis, enabled identification of clusters of academics who shared that which Bormann describes as rhetorical visions, being a collection of fantasy themes which give participants a broad view of some aspect of their social reality. Such communities of academics come to share a common symbolic reality, evident in meta-narratives. It is contended that these meta-narratives that people call on and enter in everyday life provide them with a set of interpretive procedures for making sense of the academy. / The study demonstrates that this construction of multiple academic identities is not inherently problematic, but that shifting government and institutional policies rescinding the protection of tradition and autonomy mean that the academic profession is vulnerable to an artificial homogenisation. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267655 |
| Creators | Churchman, Deborah Anne |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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