The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in Higher Education

Studies in Third Space Professionalism

Emily McIntosh, Diane Nutt, Emily McIntosh, Diane Nutt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367480011
• eBook ISBN: 9781000541434
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in Higher Education highlights the importance of developing blended professionalism as a way of future-proofing Higher Education leadership, strategy, and outcomes.

With carefully chosen international contributors, this book discusses the rationale for championing blended/integrated practitioners and uses a narrative case study approach to uncover the value, identities, and impact of these individuals who work across institutional boundaries, to promote interdisciplinarity as well as staff and student success. Divided into four key sections, this book explores:

• strategies, leadership, and theory;
• identities, boundaries, and ways of working;
• the impact of blended professionals/integrated practitioners;
• career trajectories and developing the integrated practitioner.

The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in Higher Education is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of higher education, including academic and professional staff, as well as postgraduate students in the field of Education.

SECTION 1

Strategies, leadership, and theory

DOI: 10.4324/9781003037569-2

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003037569-3

It is clear that the academy is changing, with universities striving to position themselves globally, navigating a large number of disruptive events, negotiating tensions around equality, diversity, inclusion (EDI) and the challenges and opportunities posed by the fourth industrial revolution. Writing back in 2018, Stuart argued that “more attention is needed on questions about equality and inclusion in HE, global tensions and staying relevant in the context of the fourth industrial revolution and in a post-truth, and post-elite age” (Stuart, 2018). We are now also working amidst the backdrop of a global pandemic, which has both exacerbated and intensified existing imbalances and disparities within universities and within society more broadly. As we shift towards flexible, personalised and “blended” learning and teaching, we must also consider new and existing ways of working, turning our attention to “raising deeper questions about the organising principles of academe” (Carlson, 2020). Global societal issues and concerns around climate change, social justice (especially in the wake of the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements), and the impact of universities on local communities and on the students they serve are all critical actors in this narrative.

One such organising principle is, arguably, the concept of third space working, and its place within an academy which is increasingly operating in a complex “world of webs” (Taylor, in Carlson, 2020). What, then, of third space working in a post-pandemic university? Grant, in his new book The New Power University (2021), places faith in those working in universities to discover a greater public purpose, offering a new lens within which to explore the purpose and practice of working in HE institutions, where people, values, and leadership should be placed above process money and management (McVitty, 2021). The context in which we are working is increasingly complex, with a greater need to explore the social conscience of our learners, and be mindful of the way in which they engage and the crisis of increasingly greater awareness and acknowledgement of poor mental health within the general population. For Grant, considering the role of universities within these new power structures provides a rationale for reconsidering “some of the venerated structures underpinning the modern university – such as the academic/professional divide, or the division of knowledge into disciplines – [which] would begin to dissolve, as universities sought to bridge and combine different forms of expertise” (McVitty, 2021).

This section explores the critical themes and complexities of strategy, leadership, and theory within the third space context, including contesting and debating the existence of the third space, challenging the power dynamic in the blended approach, and considering the post-pandemic university. Here we explore further the structural factors revealed by recent third space studies (for example, Smith, Holden, Yu, and Hanlon, 2021) and determine how institutional leadership and strategy can help those working in third space roles to achieve a balance between managing role ambiguity whilst providing enough space to explore agency and creativity (Whitchurch, 2015). Smith et al. (2021) argue that this balance necessitates clear alignment to institutional goals and the autonomy to build and (re)define these roles (p. 10), something which is explored in different ways in the chapters featuring here. This section also considers the differences between blended professionalism and integrated practice and explores what leadership actually looks like in the third space. The set of chapters included therefore considers the third space from a variety of strategic and leadership perspectives – establishing the importance of third space professionals to delivering university strategy, challenging definitions, creating and nurturing communities, considering power dynamics, spaces associated with power, and re-visiting the language used to define blended working and integrated practice. They do so with a nod to the disruption, challenges, and opportunities caused by the impact of Covid19, exploring how universities may take forward and harness third space working as it applies in a post-pandemic university. There is an opportunity to question the values and missions of universities, their role in creating the need for third space working in the first place, and what this might shift towards in a post-pandemic university, noting that values and goals may change significantly as we navigate a post-pandemic society. There is also merit in exploring how this is contextualised differently in international contexts. Universities are not only adapting to global issues (and crises) but also negotiating local, political, and social priorities.

This collection of chapters also critiques the notion of the third space, establishing the case for blended working and integrated practice as well as the role of unbounded working, leading on from the introductory chapter, exploring in more detail the perspectives of senior leaders and practitioners working in this important space. The section captures voices from a variety of pivotal strategic roles in higher education (HE) working across a number of institutions. The chapters highlight important trends recognised in research by Veles and Carter (2016), who argue for a greater awareness of the role of third space workers within a fluctuating, fluid, volatile, and neo-liberal international HE sector. It is arguable that this fluidity and volatile situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic, and will continue to be disrupted by power dynamics in the near future.

In the first part of Section one, which provides a rationale for leadership in strategic integrated practice, the chapters highlight some of the key features of leadership in this space. Hall (Chapter 1) includes a critical perspective on how to provide support for roles which include traditionally hidden and under-valued aspects of work and provides evidence for supporting strategic integrated practice. Hall establishes the context for the rest of the edited collection by highlighting some important considerations for moving forward to embrace blended working and integrated practice. Hall cautions against being too romantic and uncritical about third space working whilst recognising that hidden, fluid work at the edges and the cracks of universities is vulnerable during times of deep challenge and financial pressure. This is of increased importance as the sector navigates its response to the Covid19 pandemic. The chapter tackles the exclusionary practices and assumptions that have given rise to third space working and offers a perspective on how to take the power and transformational energy of third space working to enhance our universities in times of challenge.

Drawing on the work of the first chapter, Quinsee (Chapter 2) explores how educational leadership operates in the third space and what skills are needed to be an effective leader, transcending “traditional” academic boundaries. Here we explore further the strategic value of flexibility, especially given its relative importance to structural factors affecting the ability to work successfully in third spaces.

Using the Covid19 pandemic as a lens within which to explore her practice, Quinsee (Chapter 2) highlights the importance of value-driven leadership and explores how the pandemic has shifted the spotlight firmly onto academic practice departments (often cited in the literature as those firmly working in the third space). Quinsee draws on recent research to demonstrate an understanding of the complex role of leading educational development work in the third space and at a time of significant disruption. Such a perspective will be critical for universities who wish to reconsider and dismantle the unhelpful binary academic/professional divides and perceptions as a proposed structure for post-pandemic working.

The second part of Section one offers several examples of active third space working, and in doing so highlights some key elements of working in this way: bridging divides, working fluidly and moving in and out of professional spaces, exploring roles and responsibilities and contributions to key change agendas, as well as being at the forefront of ideas in development and grappling with the idea of structural and role ambiguity. Denney’s chapter (Chapter 4) echoes Hall’s analysis of third space working and provides an additional perspective of working in more traditional and well-established third spaces, namely those associated with educational development (complementing Quinsee’s narrative in Chapter 2), thus extending our analysis of the required flexibility and the structural factors associated with working in the third space.

The chapters here broadly consider the ever-moving and contested borderlands of the third space, highlighting the importance of providing recognition for and the re-defining of our notions of third spaces, communities, and dynamics, and what this looks like internationally. Pistilli and Gardner (Chapter 3) consider newly emerging third spaces in the US context, exploring the beginning of the newest “Professional Class” in US Higher Education and emerging models of student success in a North American context, gaining insight into the spaces in which professionals operate to support and champion student success within the sector. While their chapter focuses on the United States, many of the issues they explore are similarly developing in many other countries, and some of their discussion around political, social, and economic drivers will seem familiar to UK readers. They also present pertinent questions for future research.

Denney (Chapter 4) also considers the language used to connect and define communities in the third space, examining the processes and connections required to operate as an integrated practitioner. She explores the findings from her research with educational developers and highlights three characteristics of work in these spaces: translating; bridging; and building hubs. Other authors return to these working aspects in later chapters.

Finally in this section, Jones-Devitt (Chapter 5) considers the power of disruptive working in the third space, discussing how we can challenge the power dynamic in the blended approach. Jones-Devitt considers third space working from a theoretical and critical perspective, employing critical theory to examine the nature of “disruptive working”, applying this to the disruption caused by Covid19, drawing on the work of Lewis, who challenges perceptions of the “binary dualism” between academic and non-academic roles (2014). Perhaps Jones-Devitt leaves us at the end of this section with more questions than answers, and with the unsettled feeling that there is much work to do within HE institutions for “unbounded professionals”, but her chapter also highlights a message running through many chapters in this collection, which is the vital importance of a social justice agenda in third space work.

References

Carlson, S. (2020). How the Coronavirus Tests Higher Eds Disciplinary Fault Lines. Chronicle of Higher Education published online https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-the-coronavirus-tests-higher-eds-disciplinary-fault-lines/?cid=gen_sign_in (accessed March 2020).

Grant, J. (2021). The New Power University (London, Pearson).

Lewis, K. (2014). Constructions of Professional Identity in a Dynamic Higher Education Sector. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 18(2), 43–50.

McVitty, D. (2021). Book Review: The New Power University by Jonathan Grant. WonkHe: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/book-review-the-new-power-university-by-jonathan-grant/ (accessed April 2021).

Smith, C., Holden, M., Yu, E., & Hanlon, P. (2021). “So What Do You Do?”: Third space professionals navigating a Canadian university context. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 1–16. doi:10.1080/1360080X.2021.1884513.

Stuart, M. (2018). Re-finding and Re-defining the Community of Scholars to Enhance Leadership in Universities. WonkHE: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/re-finding-and-re-defining-the-community-of-scholars-to-enhance-leadership-in-universities/ (accessed March 2019).

Veles, N., & Carter, M. A. (2016). Imagining a Future: Changing the landscape for third space professionals in Australian higher education institutions. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 38(5), 519–533.

Whitchurch, C. (2015). The Rise of Third Space Professionals: Paradoxes and dilemmas. In U. Teichler & W.K. Cummings (Eds.), Forming, Recruiting and Managing the Academic Profession. pp. 1–32 (New York, Springer). doi:10.1007/978-973-319-16080-1_5.

1

Understanding and debating the third space

Achieving strategy

Julie Hall

DOI: 10.4324/9781003037569-4

Introduction

This chapter, written from the perspective of a University senior leader and former educational developer, will reflect upon new ways of working that have emerged during the pandemic that question whether third space working might move centre-stage, become aligned to university strategy within a wider call for activists, advocates, and boundary crossers (Murray and Glass 2008) as traditional university practices and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface and acknowledgements
• The impact of the integrated practitioner in higher education: Studies in third space professionalism: introduction and literature review
• SECTION 1: Strategies, leadership, and theory
• SECTION 2: Exploring identities, boundaries, and ways of working
• SECTION 3: Exploring the impact of blended professionals/integrated practitioners
• SECTION 4: Exploring career trajectories and developing the integrated practitioner
• Glossary of terms
• Index