Identifying career paths and supporting career development of the university third space
Conference Contribution ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Developing further the topic of the university third space professionals and the dissonance between the third space of working and third space practitioners, on the one hand; and the perceptions held among the wider university community about third spaces and their inhabitants, it is timely to discuss career opportunities and deliberate career development of those integrated professionals. Whether an individual works in more clearly defined spaces of academic development, learning design, library and research administration, or is an occasional project-based third space resident, this individual is likely to encounter identity changes, challenges and opportunities related to such cross-boundary working. Recently published systematic literature reviews discuss professional staff careers (Gander, 2019) and professional identities of university staff working across organisational and cultural boundaries (Veles et al., 2023). These reviews present rich empirical evidence of continued work on de-invisibilisation of all professional staff and advancement of third space professionals’ self-identification. The research collection of integrated professionals’ first-hand accounts (Bossu & Brown, 2018; McIntosh & Nutt, 2022), case study analyses (Whitchurch, 2012, 2023; Veles, 2022) and the diversity of higher education practitioners’ insights of the Third Space Perspectives (https://www.thirdspaceperspectives.com) blog, explore inter alia the career trajectories and career development of integrated practitioners. In this article, the author draws on these published accounts and complements with her own reflection on experienced identity plasticity while working across and between university spaces. The article emphasises the need for research on how career development as a deliberate practice can support new third space professionalism. The author argues that continued career development support of these professionals – whether they are temporarily working in third spaces or identify as fully formed integrated professionals – is likely to contribute to sustaining collaborative capital and supporting individuals’ positive views of future selves in the complex and irrefutably contested continuum of university spaces.
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Online Symposium of the Higher Education Third Space Research Group (HETS)
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2
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Online
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Higher Education Third Space Research Group (HETS)
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Online
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