Third Space Reloaded: Reflections from the Academic Development front
The newly published collection The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in Higher Education, edited by Emily McIntosh and Diane Nutt (2022), reached me at an auspicious moment. As a Senior Academic Developer at Middlesex University, I am currently writing up my Higher Education Academy’s Senior Fellowship (SFHEA) narrative. Reflecting on one’s professional journey and leadership achievements of influence is no easy task. Even more so for ‘third spacers’, who sometimes articulate their identity as if they exist in the shadows of university life. Here, I am sharing a few reflections on how invigorating I found this new book for my SFHEA writing and I duly recommended it to Professional Services colleagues, who I have recently mentored for their Fellowship applications.
The notion of a ‘third space’ in HE (Whitchurch 2012) is far from a novelty, as the editors and contributors acknowledge throughout the collection. But, now in 2022, both novice and older professionals (academic-related staff) need a ‘third space reloaded’. After a decade of profound changes in HE, the sector needs more than ever a dynamic ‘reclaiming the streets’ roadmap that will shape the lexicon of ‘impact’ for HE practitioners who work in the liminal spaces that gel Departments together. This book effectively does so and brings together new tools for HE professionals to carve out their own visible public space in the reconfigured corridors of power.
I found the book’s section on “Identities and Boundaries” an invigorating antidote to defensive or apologetic discourses that sometimes permeate the scholarship about identity formation in academic development. One example of such a discourse relates to the ‘chameleon on a tartan rug’ metaphor. Somehow this perception of academic developers as confused ‘jack of all trades’ professionals caught on in the HE collective imagination (Handal 2008; Kensington-Miller et al 2015). Along similar lines, becoming an academic developer has been described as ‘getting comfortable with being uncomfortable’ (Fyffe 2018). That academic developers tend to be based in ‘multipurpose vehicle’ departments has contributed to this still dominant narrative (Cleaver and Cracknell, 2022).
During the last six years as full-time academic developer, I have navigated through various working practices to overcome such professional identity stereotypes and to refine my modus operandi and philosophy. Contrary to the ‘chameleon’ label, I have come to realise that academic development is much more focussed than conventionally assumed; it is ideally positioned to defend HE’s ‘pedagogical peculiarities’, anchored on critical thinking and praxis against a rapidly changing policy landscape (Medland et al 2019). Academic developers, like many other third spacers, are well situated in the neutral zones of Centres that sit outside academic Departments and Faculties. This spatial liminality often empowers them to ‘take the initiative’ and impact on institutional-level educational change projects.
I joined Middlesex after a twelve-year trajectory in HE that involved combining part-time teaching with part-time academic development work. Sometimes during my doctoral and post-doctoral research, I had to put on my ‘working’ and ‘learning’ hats simultaneously, sharpening thus my ‘pedagogising of knowledge’ skills (Weller 2016). I would describe my trajectory and current role as an ‘academic third space professional’. I have worked across a wide range of HE spaces and places, both student and staff-facing, and my career would not have been the same had it not been for the enlightening conversations and relationships with colleagues from across the HE spectrum of professions and academic positions.
Every so often, professionals and academics from all walks of HE life need to press the pause button in order to reflect on their professional development. To do so, they also need to be able to ‘theorise’, i.e. ‘to view from above’, as the word’s etymology reminds us. The editors of The Integrated Practitioner unite 22 voices that build both an experiential and theoretical toolkit on how to navigate through the increasingly complex HE sector. It provides a timely collective response that will inspire new generations of third spacers to run up that hill for the panoramic ‘theory’ view over their professional journeys and identities. For sure, it has helped me to return to my SFHEA claim with a refreshed perspective into the future of academic development against an HE landscape in constant flux.
References
· Advance HE, Senior Fellowship of Higher Education
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/fellowship/senior-fellowship
· Cleaver, Liz and Laura Cracknell (2022) ‘Highs and lows, ebbs and flows: buckle up for the educational development rollercoaster ride’ SEDA Blog, https://thesedablog.wordpress.com/2022/05/05/highs-and-lows-ebbs-and-flows-buckle-up-for-the-educational-development-rollercoaster-ride/
· Fyffe, Jeanette (2018) ‘Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable: a narrative account of becoming an academic developer’, International Journal for Academic Development, 23:4, 355-366, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1360144X.2018.1496439
· Handal, Gunnar (2008). ‘Identities of Academic Developers: Critical Friends in the Academy’. In R. Barnett & R. Di Napoli (Eds.), Changing identities in higher education: Voicing perspectives (pp. 55–68). London: Routledge
· Kensington-Miller, Barbara, Joanna Renc-Roe & Susan Morón-García (2015) ‘The Chameleon on a Tartan Rug: Adaptations of Three Academic Developers’ Professional Identities’, International Journal for Academic Development, 20:3, 279-290,
https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2015.1047373
· McIntosh, Emily and Diane Nutt, eds (2022) The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in Higher Education: Studies in Third Space Professionalism. Routledge.
· Medland, Emma et al, eds (2019) Pedagogical Peculiarities: Conversations at the Edge of University Teaching and Learning. Sense Publishers.
· Weller, Saranne (2016) Academic Practice: Developing as a Professional in Higher Education. Sage.
· Whitchurch, Celia (2012). Reconstructing Identities in Higher Education: The rise of third space professionals. Routledge.
