The contemporary tertiary education environment generates identity concerns
amongst learning advisors (Carter, 2010). Identity is also a concern for other education professionals who claim the tertiary education environment is unsupportive of and undermines traditional academic values (Smith, 2012; Waitere, Wright, Tremaine, Brown & Pausé, 2011) with adverse consequences (Archer, 2008; Billot, 2010). Adverse consequences include “identity schism” (Winter, 2009, p. 122), arising from a conflict between personal and organisational values, and the increasing corporatisation of identity, which serves to depoliticise education professionals’ identity (Hofmeyr, 2008). While there is little indication that learning advisors experience the same adverse consequences as do other education professionals, they still are concerned about their professional identity and work consciously to construct the identity that will help them secure their place in tertiary education (Van der Ham, Sevillano & George, 2010).
Identity, according to Briggs (2007), is a multifaceted construct comprising
“professional values (what I profess), professional location (the profession to which I belong) and professional role (my role within the institution)” (p. 471). The
performativity culture of tertiary education directly challenges this construct by expecting learning advisors to reshape their values to accommodate those which may be in conflict (Henkel, 2000) with their own and assume the role of “an implementer of policy” (Stronach, Corbin, McNamara, Stark & Warne, 2002, p. 109). As a result, advisors can become caught between the economy of performance – how they are
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measured and evaluated – and the ecology of practice – their own values, role and practice (Stronach et al., 2002).
However, learning advisors do not appear to be caught between the economy of performance and the ecology of practice to any significant extent. They manage any disconnect between the two by retaining their professional values (Fraser et al., 2010), strengthening their location by building a strong professional association (Carter, 2008) and reshaping their role and practice to accommodate organisational values (Manolo et al., 2009). There is no suggestion that advisors ignore or overtly resist changes that potentially could erode their role and core values. Instead, learning advisors appear to be both pragmatic and strategic. While primarily interested in values and a role which prioritises student learning and development, advisors understand their wider
interests can be realised by accommodating organisational values within their identity (Gera & Cartner, 2013; Morris, 2008). They are clear about the need to construct the “right kind of identity” (Blum & Ullman, 2012, p. 370) and direct much activity towards this end.
Identity is a product of history and perception (Billot, 2010). Both history and perception link the learning advisor role, and therefore identity, to the “deficit
discourse of widening participation” (Burke, 2008, p. 128) and remediation of the non- traditional student (Channock, 2011; Zeegers, 2004), and the remedial tag lingers on (Crozier, 2007). Learning advisors themselves, according to Stirling and Percy (2005), are complicit in sustaining the remedial tag because it gives them a place within tertiary education, albeit one on the margins of academic work. Advisors are urged to shed the remedial tag and secure their place (Trembath, 2007) by claiming the role of contributor to the achievement of organisational goals and priorities (Crozier, 2007). Thus, while the changing tertiary education environment has an undesirable impact on learning advisor identity, at the same time it offers new possibilities (Becher & Trowler, 2001) because identities are “forged, rehearsed and remade in local sites of practice” (Lee & Boud, 2003, p. 188). New possibilities are realised by advisors reshaping their identity, role and core values to accommodate organisational values in a strategic move
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to position themselves to best advantage while retaining their “principled and valued spaces” (Archer, 2008, p. 268).
Despite the argument about learning advisor identity in the contemporary tertiary education environment being constructed by organisational values and the
performativity culture to achieve organisational goals rather than professional ones (Billot, 2010), advisors appear to be constructing an identity for themselves which meets, at least to some extent, the requirements of both the organisation and their professional selves (Cameron, 2010). Learning advisors are grasping the opportunity and using organisational values to construct their identity and promote their role within tertiary education because they see it as a way of improving their status and security. They use the language of performativity as a tool to make their work visible and reposition their role as critical to organisational agendas (James, 2012).
Together with developing a strong identity in terms of values and role, learning advisors are actively engaged in defining, strengthening and articulating their
profession (Carter, 2008). Advisors in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada are similarly engaged in the task of defining and strengthening their profession, seeking to determine “the conceptual framings and professional and organisational practices within which the field understands itself” (Lee & McWilliam, 2008, p. 68). Webb (2001), in her plenary address to the Australian Association for Academic Language and Learningconference with the theme Changing Identities, applauds the conference focus on identity and calls for learning advisors to act strategically, promote themselves and claim their expert knowledge in order to secure their place within tertiary education. In a similar vein, Samuels (2013), writing in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, emphasises the need for the learning advising community in the United Kingdom to become more organised and increase its visibility to ensure survival. The Learning Specialists Association of Canada (2015) in its conference invitation highlights the changing nature of the profession and the importance of claiming their professional identity and place in times of shrinking budgets.
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Identity is grounded in a defined occupational community (Henkel, 2011). A defined occupational community articulates the values and goals central to a collective identity and supplies the concepts and language through which learning advisors can
communicate their individual identity (Taylor, 1992). The need to define their
distinctive occupational work (Evetts, 2009) and articulate their profession has been a perennial concern for learning advisors. Advisors in New Zealand, along with those in Australia and the United Kingdom, ask, “Who are we?” (Trembath, 2007, p. 64), “What is the profession?” (Webb, 2001, p. 2), “How do we best define our identity?” (Carter & Bartlett-Trafford, 2008, p. 62) and “Where are we going?”(Zeegers, 2004, p. 25).
Answering these questions is seen as critical work in the continuing conversation about professional identity in order to promote and safeguard learning advisor interests (ATLAANZ, 2012) and maintain student-centred professional values (Fraser et al., 2010).
The process of defining and articulating their profession can be traced in learning advisor literature from the formation of ATLAANZ in 2000 (ATLAANZ, n.d.) to the present through three activity streams: building a theoretical base for the field of practice, defining a distinctive body of knowledge and formally articulating
professional practice. The desired outcome from these activity streams clearly aligns with some of the accepted characteristics of a profession; namely, practice based on theoretical knowledge, a code of conduct and a reputable professional association (Whitty, 2008).
Developing “theories and concepts” (Webb, 2001, p. 13) and a “philosophical framework” (Holland & Silverster, 2012, p. 16) for professional practice, long
recognised as a critical task, has been a recurrent theme in learning advising literature since Manolo (2007) called for more work to be done in identifying and describing the theoretical basis of professional practice. Developing a theoretical base for professional practice is deemed critical for two main reasons. Firstly, theories provide powerful explanations of the complexity of professional practice, and secondly, the lack of a theoretical base for practice threatens its survival (Stevenson & Kokkinn, 2007).
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Australian advisors also have been concerned with developing a theoretical base to help ensure their survival in tertiary education (Garner, Chanock & Clerehan, 1995; Taylor, Ballard, Beasley, Bock, Clanchy & Nightingale, 1998). While progress on developing a theoretical base for professional practice in New Zealand is slower than in Australia and less substantial, there is a growing body of New Zealand literature dating from 2010 proposing models and theories to underpin practice and
documenting their use (Carter, 2010; Mitchell, 2013; Pang, 2012; Roberts & Reid, 2014; Silva, 2013; Sturm, 2010).
In tandem with developing a theoretical base for practice, learning advisors are
focused on building a body of knowledge for it through research. A distinctive body of knowledge gives the learning advising profession a coherent discipline (Mitchell, 2007), enables it to claim a particular identity (Velautham & Picard, 2009), and articulates its purpose, practice and contribution to those inside and outside the profession. Learning advisors increasingly are engaged in researching and
documenting their practice (Cameron & Catt, 2013; Hobbs & Doffs, 2013; Protheroe, 2009) in order to build a distinctive body of knowledge to assist them in claiming their place in today’s tertiary education environment and negotiating it for tomorrow’s (Stirling & Percy, 2005).
Alongside developing a body of knowledge and repertoire of theoretical perspectives for their work, learning advisors are occupied with articulating their philosophy and practice more explicitly. Since Webb (2001) first noted “there is so much that is assumed” (p. 12), the ever-changing tertiary education environment has confronted advisor assumptions on many levels. As discussed earlier in this section, learning advisors are challenged to articulate the purpose of their role, its goals and values, the nature of practice and its scholarly base, and to prove value beyond student
satisfaction with it. Advisors’ response to the challenge has been to map and categorise their philosophy and practice (Fraser et al., 2010).
The mapping and categorising of professional practice, while a response to
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advising profession (Lee & McWilliam, 2008). The work of mapping and categorising began in 2003 with the development of a draft document describing some of the principles and practices of learning advising work (Cameron, Fraser, Looser & Thorns, 2005). Further discussions at national conferences and other fora over the intervening years to 2012, in conjunction with the findings of a 2008 survey about the learning advising role (Cameron & Catt, 2009), resulted in a professional practice document being formally adopted by ATLAANZ at its 2012 Annual General Meeting. The introduction to the professional practice document states:
This document clearly articulates the professional practice of tertiary learning advisors in Aotearoa New Zealand. We hope that the document will benefit ATLAANZ members by explaining our profession to ‘outsiders’ and, in so doing, safeguarding and promoting our status within our organisations and the tertiary sector as a whole. … Arguably the greatest potential benefit of this professional practice document, though, is its role in helping tertiary learning advisors in Aotearoa New Zealand develop a clear sense of identity and belonging. (ATLAANZ, 2012, p. 1)
The professional practice document, in suggesting that explaining the learning advisor role will help safeguard and promote the status of the role, is a clear statement of the continued vulnerability professionals feel and the ongoing work they must do to secure their place in tertiary education.