Professional identity and the restructuring of higher education

ABSTRACT Higher education has undergone immense changes over the last 30 years. These changes, involving the fragmentation of the academic workplace together with increased differentials between individuals in respect of status and autonomy, have had a profound effect on the role of university teachers and on their sense of professional identity. Nevertheless, university teachers have important insights to bring to the debate on higher education. This paper sets out to present some of those insights. The analysis is based on evidence drawn from interviews conducted with higher education lecturers in two different institutions: an 'old' and a 'new' university. The interviewees' understanding of what makes for good practice—and what institutional conditions are necessary for such practice to flourish—are examined and the implications of that understanding discussed. Any effective restructuring of higher education must, it is argued, take on board this professional perspective and, in so doing, rethink the relation between teaching and research and between the various traditions and styles of research.