Abstract Academic practices in Western universities continue to be reshaped by shifting and emerging conditions, including dramatic changes like the massification of higher education, digital transformation of teaching and learning, globalisation of university education, and accountability-driven reform. This article asks what really matters in academic practice—what do academics themselves regard as essential to sustaining their professional and ethical commitments in times of turbulence. Based on reflective journals and interviews with academics in Australia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden during 2020–2021, and analysed through the theory of practice architectures, the study identifies three indispensable elements of academic professionalism: caring about consequences and doing the ‘right’ thing by others; reflecting on and in practice to navigate uncertainty; and enacting agency and everyday activism in the face of unjust conditions. Although constrained by the pressures of a particular historical moment, these elements were reasserted as central to academic professionalism. We argue that such values-informed labour should not rest solely on the initiative of individuals but be supported collectively. Universities must nurture practice architectures that place caring about consequences, reflection and reflexivity, and conditions that support academic agency and everyday activism and praxis at the heart of academic work, safeguarding its critical and democratic purposes.
Mahon et al. (Thu,) studied this question.