CHAPTER TWO

Key Concepts and Discourses Shaping NATHEP

Kasturi Behari-Leak and Rieta Ganas

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the key discourses and concepts related to new academic induction, as these exist in the literature. In conceptualising NATHEP, a deep dive into the literature and scholarship in this field was necessary to identify extant and new constructs regarding new academics and how they transition. Discourses related to being new in the higher education (HE) space proliferate with sometimes negative effects (Mathieson et al., 2023). Until these are unpacked and challenged, they continue to influence how values, ideas and beliefs shape and inform the discursive terrain of new academic induction into HE, negatively. Staff developers themselves might carry some of these assumptions and associations into their interaction with new academics, compromising trust even before the professional relationships have begun.

Professionalising HE

The discourse of professionalising HE is ubiquitous as it is not easy to define the “profession” of HE itself. It is easier to identify professional disciplines in HE than it is to define HE as a profession in and of itself. This could be linked to the composition of a university, with faculties established with clear but traditional delineations between disciplines and cognate disciplinary fields. As an epistemic project, this is how the university understands itself. Schreiber and Lewis (2020) offer some interesting views on the benefits and drawbacks of describing an epistemic community as a profession. Among these faculties there is a host of professional disciplines, which include but are not limited to engineering, accounting, law, medical sciences and commerce. Each of these professions is regulated by their own professional bodies, who share an interesting relationship with the university through their various gatekeeping mechanisms, policy briefs, assessment regimes, etc. By being overt and connected to funding and reporting lines, disciplines get the lion’s share of attention.

The closest we come to a direct indication that HE is in fact a profession is signalled by the title “professor”, obtained when academics advance successfully through the career track to reach a stage where they are “professing” something. When this “professing” leans more towards proselytising rather than engaging in meaningful excursions into knowledge forays, it might mean that the said professor, while exemplary in research, lacks the pedagogical repertoire that brings the worlds of scholarship and teaching together. While disciplinary foci are an important part of a university’s makeup, there are tacit components and areas of work such as student success, leadership, administration, management and support staff development that also need to be professionalised (Schreiber et al., 2020). When staff join a university in academic roles and positions for example, they are obliged to embrace and enact the full ambit of academic work, albeit incrementally as they progress through their career trajectories. This includes but is not limited to teaching, research, social responsiveness, professional service and academic citizenship.

This brings us to the notion of the “academic practitioner” who is responsible for teaching as a core activity in their academic roles, in addition to a host of other activities and deliverables. Professionalising HE could then mean developing capacity in the academic teacher, as opposed to the academic researcher, who is at the coalface in the university classroom, involved in practice. If the profession of HE is to ensure that students thrive and succeed in ways similar to a medical doctor or engineer who assesses their professional contribution through their impact, professionalising HE might be seen as a necessary means to that end. With a more acute attention to quality learning in recent years, it makes sense that the quality of teaching and teachers is high on the list of change imperatives for the DHET nationally.

In recognising high student dropout and low throughput rates, the DHET signalled its focus on teaching to improve national patterns of student success. Academics’ ability to teach in ways that respond to students’ learning needs was identified as a key lever. Acknowledging that academics entering the academy bring with them a wealth of disciplinary expertise, research and lived experience, the sector and academy are slowly recognising that this is not enough. To fulfil their roles, academics need to be effective teachers too. The University Capacity Development Programme (UCDP) from which NATHEP is funded, is intended to support and to strengthen the development of university teachers within the staff development component of the programme. The DHET recognises that it is essential that, “across the career continuum from emerging academics to established professionals, there are development opportunities for university teachers and teaching support professionals, including those in teaching leadership roles” (DHET, 2018).

While many initiatives are afoot, the sector is still disparate and unequal in its resources and infrastructural arrangements. In some contexts, institutional culture might be debilitating, especially where it is authoritarian, managerialist and corporate, and where academics and students “feel marginalised, silenced or threatened by the demands for change or unable to respond to the evolving environment” (DHET, 2018). Worse still if the culture at the university is driven by a compliance ethos (Boughey & McKenna, 2021), with little or no critical thought or engagement. The overarching danger is that no matter how many initiatives are in place, and how much money is thrown at the problem, if the interventions are not critical, contextualised, responsive and change oriented, there will be a reproduction of the status quo with minimum impact on systemic issues in the sector. It must also be pointed out though that focussing on academic professional development alone is an insuffi cient and impoverished view on how to shift the success of the South African HE sector (Schreiber, et al. 2020). We need to focus on HE holistically because the whole and the parts are equally important.

Activating discourses on new academic transitions

What follows is an engagement with different discourses that guided the project. These are not mere phrases or themes imposed after a literature search. In a social realist sense, these discourses are real ideas, values, belief and attitudes that people draw on when making choices about and for new academics (Fairclough et al., 2004). In this chapter, key concepts and discourses related to new academic induction are unpacked to explicate the layered meaning in this cultural domain. After each discourse is unpacked, the question of what it means for NATHEP will be addressed. In this way, the project demonstrates how it engaged with and contextualised the discourses for its work during the deliberations and implementation of the NATHEP activities over the project life cycle. This will be illustrated through the use of this symbol:

Newness

“Newness” is a complicated concept in HE. Where “new” can infer meanings of novelty, freshness and innovation, newness at a university can also draw on meanings that denote inexperience, incompetence and lack of knowledge that leave newcomers feeling like impostors (Young, 2011). Impostor syndrome is well known by new people in HE to indicate a sense of “diminished self-worth and incompetence” as a person (Behari-Leak, 2015). This can have a debilitating effect on newcomers’ engagements with peers and management in departmental settings where they need the most support. In some spaces, “new” is conflated with inexperience to the extent that it can mean that the new academic does not fully understand how things work. This stymies newcomers’ chances to make informed decisions in groups as they are seen by others as still inexperienced. Many staff do not see novice academics as having a great deal to offer or contribute, especially because their position on the periphery suggests they need to cover more ground to make it to the centre (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Feeling like the proverbial deer in the headlights, new academics sometimes experience severe anxiety and a lack of confidence from those around them, especially students (Behari-Leak, 2015), When we draw on the discourse of “newness” in this way, we tend to misrecognise that newcomers have both “tacit knowledge” (Polanyi, 1983) as well as fresh views and ideas that come with them being a “stranger in a strange land” (Northridge, 2003). They are often experts already in many professional areas that benefit the institution, but they are not always enabled to bring their experiences to bear on HE practices in certain spaces. HE thus loses out on tapping into the potential of the very newcomers we deemed fit to “hire”.

Being new sometimes means being treated like an initiate. There is sufficient precedence for this in the social world as one just has to look at freshman classes, first year initiation rites, etc. to make the links between newcomers and the rituals they are subjected to. We have heard of many events where initiation practices are still considered a rite of passage for newcomers to a social or professional space before they are part of the “tribe”. While initiation ceremonies are now prohibited at many universities, given the grave consequences extolled on “victims”, the traditions continue in subtle ways. New academics report that their “initiation” means that they are rendered silent and invisible for the first three years, not allowed to take on new projects alone, not given space to have their voices heard in staff meetings and have to prove themselves before departments and managers trust them (Behari- Leak, 2015) especially with funded projects or other high stakes deliverables. Heads of department are hypervigilant regarding evaluations of newcomers by students, even when little support in teaching is offered or available to them.

Newness also depends on perceptions, needs and expectations that new academics have of others. A new academic to HE can be very different to an academic new to the institution. Where one finds themselves on their career trajectory can influence how one navigates newness. Being new is also linked to how new academics are perceived and perceive themselves. Early adopters have a more confident edge and present themselves more forthrightly. Those more reticent tend to wait in the wings until they are stronger (O’Meara, Lounder & Campbell, 2014).

When new academics join HE from research-rich environments or industry, they come in as experts in their own right (Sales, 2014). While they might be new to HE, they are not new to the world of work. This can lead to a clash of professional and academic worlds, especially if there is a perceived loss of status from expert to newcomer in joining a university (Boyd, 2010). This can also lead the newly appointed academic to feel all the insecurities that come with being a novice. While many universities have put in place some form of induction or orientation, research indicates that the increasing academic staff turnover that results in a revolving door syndrome, is due to a lack of institutional support for their academic roles (Watanabe & Falci, 2016). Being experts and novices at the same time can make new academics both vulnerable and robust (Tierney, 2003). Where newcomers enter from cognate fields like information technology (IT) and computer science, newness can be an advantage as those coming in are seen as having had exposure to the latest technologies and modus operandi. The protocols and traditions at universities however are very different to those in industry. Institutional innovation and cultural practices churn slowly. Newcomers have to adjust to how (slowly) things are done in the institution even while they are called on to share their expertise in different educational and professional settings that require an extremely fast pace (Levine & Moreland, 2013).

The concept of “newness” can thus be an enabler and a constraint in how new academics navigate their transitions and how they mediate obstacles. Where newly appointed academics are research-active with little experience of teaching in higher education, they can feel a threatened sense of wellbeing and uncertainty in developing an academic identity that balances research and teaching, in the context of unsupported demands and work overload (Mathieson et al., 2023). While being knowledgeable in their respective disciplinary fields, being new to HE and the university classroom makes it difficult for them to make contextual and conceptual shifts into their classrooms, where they must make critical decisions that sometimes have a negative impact on the social inclusion of students (Behari- Leak et al., 2019).

Key to academic induction is “identity work” regarding the many hats a new academic must wear. Professional development programmes must recognise that new university teachers more than others need to do “identity work” by “making and remaking their identities” from novice to expert to establish themselves in their new environment and culture (Trowler & Knight 2000, p.34). Identity formation usually emerges in the initial period of becoming a university teacher, when the professional typically retains an identity as a professional in a new context, for example, as an architect or physiotherapist (Boyd, 2010) expert. In the transition period, newcomers redefine their identity, for example, as “architect teacher”, in which they integrate their identity as professionals with their new career identity as academics. Professional development programmes for induction must engender an intentional and well-designed process of socialisation (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Clegg, 2008; Henkel, 2000; Trowler & Knight, 2000) into the profession of teaching and the practices and expectations of this role (Boyd, 2010; Field, 2012; Janhonen & Sarja, 2005). This challenges the “expert to novice” discourse, suggesting that there is a complementary relationship between previous practitioner and the new teacher identity, theorised as moving from fi rst order (practice setting) to secondorder practitioner (within a higher education setting) (Murray & Male, 2005). The downfall, however, in trying to engage with the university as a structural entity, is that new academics identify strong social and cultural factors that affect their sense of agency (Kahn, 2009).

Transitioning

Historically, the transitioning process of new academics into the university is sometimes not afforded the luxury of time and care as the “business” of the university does not allow for it. The aim is to get newcomers up to speed quickly. From management’s perspective, induction should be a once-off event even though management does see newcomers’ transitioning as a way to shape the attitudes and behaviour of the people they employ (Scheckle, 2014). Viewed as an organisational HR function, new academics are onboarded through orientation or welcome sessions to give them information to “hit the ground running”. Hitting the ground running is not easy when historical differences make the ground itself uneven and unstable. Like shifting sands, new contextual challenges are faced daily. Given the disparate entry points based on newcomers’ background and prior learning, there is no foolproof recipe or formula for inducting academics into a space that is contested, fraught with challenges and often complex even for established staff.

“Transitioning” can be as long or short as needed provided it is a process and not an ad hoc or arbitrary compliance exercise (Hurst, 2010). There are limited opportunities available for ongoing professional development with a processoriented approach. The time taken to transition has consequences for other aspects of newcomers’ professional life. Many HE induction programmes do not provide a much-needed intensive professional development for newly appointed lecturers (Wong, Britton & Ganser, 2005) to transition well, with new lecturers often left in isolation to work through the challenges within their own classrooms. Academia, it seems, is the only professional system that does not support its newcomers in discovering how to do what they will spend most of their time doing (Reddy et al., 2016). Not being properly inducted to their university roles can have serious consequences for the newcomer and for the ecosystem in which they work.

How the academic community draws on the discourse of transitioning places new academics in a dubious position. In the transition phase, newcomers are seen to be in a state of limbo, neither here nor there. This liminal state is not always considered an advantage or a zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1979) but seen rather as murky waters in which one swims or sinks ( Rust, 1991). To be a transitioner as a new academic is to deal with unwarranted assumptions from colleagues and line managers about one’s capacity and capability; often casting aspersions and doubt on one’s ability to do the job well (Cangelosi, Crocker & Sorrell, 2009). Again, for new academics who straddle the murkiness of being experts (in their fi elds) and novices (new in HE) simultaneously (Jansen, 2010), this might be an overwhelming task. Apart from managing their own discomfort, the HE context into which they are being inducted is complex. What makes it complex is that what it means to be an academic in South Africa in HE is complicated by the political, economic, fi nancial, social and cultural complexity in HE and society at large (HESA, 2011; Waghid, 2001; Badat, 2011).

Induction

Although sometimes used interchangeably with orientation or onboarding, induction refers to the act of combining people, process and technology to optimise the effect that newcomers have on business outcomes (Snell, 2006). An induction process is slightly different to onboarding in that it usually encompasses the very beginning of the new employee’s work life, whereas onboarding can stretch to a year and beyond. Induction can also focus more on introducing the new starter to the role and what is expected of them, while onboarding considers more of the wider organisational culture (Adams, 2023). Induction may be viewed through many lenses but it should not be inconsequential to the effects on the academic project and its relation to student success.

When we view induction through a business or corporate lens, it is easy to see how new employees can be perceived as cogs in a machine to increase efficiency, productivity and the bottom line. Where induction is seen as the initial organisational training (Klein & Weaver, 2000) with appropriate content, process, support and follow-up to improve employee retention and brand identity (Brodie et al., 2007), its value is a direct link between new employee talent and productivity (Hendricks, 2009). This neoliberal discourse focuses on efficiency by reducing employee vulnerability and staff turnover (Butler, 2008) while increasing profit making potential (Fritz & Vonderfecht, 2007), customer satisfaction, professional socialisations and a sense of belonging (Killeavy, 2006). Linked to their use in industry, human resources departments in universities approach induction as the process of getting new employees acquainted with the “business”, helping them to settle in and giving them the information required for them to become a valuable team member (Adams, 2023). By introducing new employees to the organisation, their work department and their jobs, they are inducted into the organisational culture by receiving and obtaining information, values and behavioural skills associated with their new role (Byars & Rue, 2001).

The question is whether the university is a business, programmed on a technocratic, managerialist logic, or something entirely different. If induction is seen as instrumentalist, it will place the focus on technical skills. This performative thrust leads to alienation and disengagement between the act of teaching, the person doing the teaching and the person learning. Performative processes might then be transferred to the classroom to foreground management, competencies, evaluation, tips and techniques, classroom control and discipline instead of deep engagement with knowledge and being.

When we look at induction through an efficiency lens, as discussed above, we place the onus on the individual newcomer to do what is needed to become productive in the shortest required time. This makes the induction of new academics especially complex as it locates the deficit that accompanies being a new university teacher in the incumbent, whether it is lack of knowledge about the institution, teaching, classroom practice or working with students. The perceived remedy is a dominant focus on the “doing” rather than the “being and becoming of academics in their practice, university employment and identity formation” (Ennals, Fortune, Williams & D’Cruz, 2015, p.5). Traditional, one-size-fits-all induction that focuses on the “doing” of academic practice leaves individuals unequally prepared for academic life (Billot & King, 2017). Personalised, professional scaffolding for scholarly development as part of a more supportive academic culture should be the goal of induction (Billot & King, 2017).

Induction programmes that focus on new academics in their teaching and academic roles are usually provided by the universities’ higher education development or teaching and learning centres who have the specialist knowledge and expertise to provide academic/ professional support to students and staff. Given the unequal distribution of material resources and human capacity across the HE sector, academic development (AD) units are differentially resourced, with practitioners themselves differently trained and prepared for their roles, resulting in a very wide range of competing conceptualisations of what it means to be an academic staff developer in HE today. Sometimes these understandings are not aligned with the national goals for transformation or decolonisation, and this significantly influences the way professional developers induct and support new academics in their teaching roles, especially those with no prior experience in HE teaching. How new university teachers are prepared for teaching affects their sense of self and belonging in the academy, which is in turn reflected in how they engage with students and their learning.

When we view induction through a colonial lens, it could be seen as a socialising process into the organisation that acculturates, subjugates and denies one’s identity (Spivak, 2016). This can lead newcomers to inhabit dispositions incongruent with their sense of self which in turn can cause cognitive damage (Amin et al., 2016). Alienation and detachment create a deep sense of alterity (Mafeje, 1998) where fitting in and becoming like the rest is favoured over respecting the individuality and uniqueness of each newcomer and the diversity they bring. If any academic is denied their full ontological density, there is little opportunity for teaching and learning to advance and innovate in ways that expand the sector in meaningful ways. What we then have is induction on a conveyor belt of reproduction, which provides a false sense of stability to the university but an increased sense of compliance, mimicry and reductionism (Wa Bofelo, 2017) to staff and students. Countering coloniality requires induction processes to recognise newcomers as whole human beings with ontological depth: personal, social, educational, professional and spiritual who have to in turn work with epistemological depth with disciplines, curricula, and learners.

Context matters

“Global South” is not just a geographical concept. It is geopolitical, historical and developmental, all at the same time (Jacob, 2023). Many countries included in the Global South are in the northern hemisphere, such as India, China and all of those in the northern half of Africa. Australia and New Zealand, both in the southern hemisphere, are not regarded as being part of the “Global South”, which tends to describe countries with a relatively low level of economic and industrial development, typically located to the south of more industrialised nations, with lower levels of technology and resources. The Global South is not an entity that exists per se but has to be understood as something that is created, imagined, invented, maintained, and recreated by the ever-changing and never-fi xed status positions of social actors and institutions.

While the term has been critiqued for oversimplifying challenges faced by marginalised communities, it has explanatory power to account for actions of agents and social actors who consider themselves to be in subaltern(ised) positionalities of global networks of power (S pivak, 2016; M ignolo, 2007). In linking this to critical professional development practitioners (PDPs) that are contextualised, there are huge opportunities for new modes of knowledge production. This is even further enriched if context and positionality are used as levers (Manathunga , 2017) to provide causal reasoning and through that, a spectrum of agential options for professionalising HE in ways that are relevant and socially just.

If social justice is what is needed, where we hold a concern for individuals as well as the broader issues of race, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, religion, ethnicity, nationality, social class, and other divisive differences in society (G riffi ths, 2003), t hen we need social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of responsibility towards others, their society and the broader world in which we live (Adams et al., 2007). In other words, what is needed in the South African context is a “critical agency”, where one’s voluntary and purposeful actions as an educator respond to the wider historical, social and political context in the service of educating students to be thoughtful, active citizens (G iroux, 1988). Critical agency and social justice lenses are often not readily included in current induction practices or in the repertoire of academic staff development as a fi eld (de Kadt, 2019). Critical agency, in the context of education, explores how agency is linked to identity and social justice, especially in shaping pre-service teachers’ understanding of their role in addressing issues like racism and sexism by enabling teachers to recognise and challenge inequities in the classroom, thus promoting more socially just educational practices (F rancis & Le Roux, 2011). In Postma’s (2015) perspective, informed by Foucault (2000), critical agency is about resisting dominant power structures and imagining alternative ways of being. It is not just about recognising systems of control but also exercising freedom by developing new modes of thinking and acting, particularly within educational contexts.

To be critical professional developers, we need to stand outside of our histories and examine our epistemological and ontological assumptions (Bartolomé, 2004; Haggis, 2003). For staff developers and new academics to enunciate and act from a place that locates them, conceptually, culturally and epistemically in a legitimate space of belonging, means that the changes that can occur will probably be high impact, authentic and poignant. Generic ways of induction, transitioning and mediating newness are made potent if one is clear about what one is doing in relation to context.

Conclusion

This chapter focused on the main discourses that guide and influence our choices in professional development programmes and in our understanding of what professionalising HE means. In NATHEP, being acutely aware of these contested discourses, the project homed in on whether academic staff/professional developers, eager to see change, could conceptualise and reimagine an alternative theorisation and creation of critical-social induction programmes that focuses on context. We encouraged the view that induction, like other processes, needs to create conducive conditions for the uptake of critical agency by academics, new and established. In both disciplinary and departmental programmes where the structural and cultural contexts might act as catalysts that advance or dampen efforts to effect meaningful change, induction programmes for new academics need to be contextualised, legitimate, relevant, responsive and critical.