https://orcid.org/0009-0007-0559-0870
When I agreed to review this book, I did not expect that my whole professional self-identity would be transformed as a result. Reader, I am, it seems, a pracademic! I had thought of myself as an ex-school and college teacher who now taught in the higher education sector. And yet, I am assured by the editors of this eclectic volume, teachers are pracademics too!
A pracademic is ‘a professional with dual identities, those of practitioner and academic,’ state the editors on the first page. But this is only a part of the story. In a volume that is saturated in imagery, pracademics are also ‘boundary spanners’, the ‘missing link’, ‘bridges’, ‘chameleons’, ‘brokers’, ‘glue’, ‘shapeshifters’ with ‘liquid identities’, the intersection in a Venn diagram. They ‘vault chasms’ with nothing more than a ‘leap of faith’, attempt to ‘recouple’ that which has been ‘decoupled’ (namely, theory and practice) and negotiate ‘Mobius strip-like’ identities while nurturing their fragile selves and feeling like impostors who have ‘landed on the moon’. The task of aligning one’s own professional knowledge with the academic knowledge ‘expected’ in universities is described as both a ‘puzzle’ and a ‘paradox’. And yet, argue the authors, pracademics, positioned as they are at the ‘nexus’ of practice, policy, and research, have a unique contribution to make.
The theme here is the gaping gap between the industry background of the practitioner, whether that be in nursing, law, business or another sector, and the world of the ‘career’ academic. To mix a few metaphors of my own, pracademics, according to nearly every contributor in the book, perform amazing acrobatic feats to bring the world of work into university courses, while negotiating new and alien university cultures that – without exception – fail to appreciate the value that they bring. In spotlighting this phenomenon, this book is not only essential reading for all pracademics, but for university leadership teams, human resources departments and academic developers too.
The book itself takes the ‘Professional Development’ in its title seriously: this volume is designed to be used. The chapters, while different in many ways, have a pleasing consistency in layout, with each abstract followed by an ‘At a Glance’ box, and a ‘Points for Reflection’ box at the end. Reflective chapters identify ‘Key themes’, while research-based chapters touch on Methodology before focusing on Findings, encouraging even the most wayward of chapter writers into creating structured arguments. The ‘At a Glance’ boxes often go beyond the abstract and list ways in which chapters will benefit the reader, while the ‘Points for Reflection’ provide gentle guidance, moving from reflexivity for individuals at the start of the book through to strategic and epistemological considerations towards the end. All this provides a reassuring sense of being ‘held’ as one works through the chapters, whether in order or by dipping in and out. Just occasionally, the Points for Reflection fall wide of the mark, reducing the chapter to its technical points and missing the parts about emotion, confidence-building, community or expectations, thus limiting the scope for reflection.
Further embodiment of the title in the design of the book itself is apparent within the content of the chapters, each of which considers aspects of theory and policy alongside personal reflections on the experiences of the authors. The very writing itself bridges those ‘liminal spaces’ that pracademics are said to occupy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Jan Gurung’s account of moving from clinical practice to research and then applying the findings to practice. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the author provides helpful critical reflections on her journey, but this is punctuated by heartfelt extracts from her research journal, where she sometimes feels painfully alone and unsupported:
I was looking for a framework to follow; an overview of the processes needed to set up a research project. I quickly realised that it was quite the opposite … To master this goal would prove to be a test of my self-efficacy and endurance. (150)
This alongside highly practical advice for those in similar situations – be bold, send emails, don’t be put off, keep knocking on doors – and even psychological exercises for dealing with the emotional fallout of negative critical reviews: ‘Notice difficult thoughts and imagine putting them on clouds or in balloons and letting them drift away’ (158). Many of the chapters also combine academic rigour with emotional intelligence and a real empathy for those out there in similar ‘liminal spaces’.
Recommendations (such as ‘finding your people’) are not limited to individual practitioners, however, and there are repeated calls for more relevant induction programmes (resulting in me revising my own institution’s induction offer for staff), more collaborations with external partners, better renumeration for pracademics (who often have to take salary cuts to work in the Academy), work sabbaticals for career academics and a change of culture for universities, who, by and large, are accused of valuing ‘rigour and research’ over relevance and employability, becoming increasingly out of touch in the process.
Despite attempts by the editors to ensure each chapter contributes something unique, some repetition is perhaps inevitable, especially in this emerging area of research. A range of subject disciplines is presented, but an even broader variety might have helped to mitigate this to some extent. Sometimes the same authors are cited in a number of chapters, while with others I felt their absence, particularly in the arena of pedagogy. There were missed opportunities to draw on Lave and Wenger’s situational learning, for example, or international comparisons, the exception to the latter being the final chapter by Abinash Panda. Most of the chapters, however, endeavour to provide knowledge that is transferable to other subject disciplines; it is recommended, therefore, that readers explore chapters that are outside their own disciplines.
Some chapters, stand out in particular. The editors’ own contribution on using ‘objects’ to facilitate reflection on the transition from practice to academia is novel and thought-provoking, while the admissions of two ‘career academics’, Catherine Wilkinson, and Samantha Wilkinson, of feeling like fakes for being ‘non-pracademics’ reminds us that impostor syndrome is not limited to those who transition to the Academy from practice. What is apparent throughout the volume is the immense contribution that pracademics make to university education and research. This is not just a tonic for those pracademic readers who are experiencing a lack of self-worth within their university, but a wake-up call for higher education institutions to establish cultures that recognise the value that pracademics bring and to create systems that build on continued industry engagement and partnership. In this way, pracademics such as myself can celebrate our diversity and the rich contributions of our professional knowledge, instead of feeling as if we must assimilate into the identity of a ‘pure’ academic in order to progress within our respective institutions.