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Academic Identity in Higher Education

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Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions

General Definition

Traditionally associated with academic freedom, academic identity is today defined as lying at the crossroad of individual life course experiences and higher education specific contexts, and thus as an increasingly plural identity.

Synonyms

Academic freedom; Academic professional development, socialization, education; Academic roles

Defining Academic Identity

Definitions of academic identity in higher education are limited with a relative paucity of research in this area (Clarke et al. 2014). Those definitions that do exist tend to explore concepts related to professional identity in general rather than exploring academic identity in higher education. For example, Sachs (2001: 153) states that professional identity refers to “a set of externally ascribed attributes that are used to differentiate one group from another… It provides a shared set of attributes, values and so on so that enable the differentiation of one group from another.” In a review of the...

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Correspondence to Jonathan Drennan .

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Drennan, J., Clarke, M., Hyde, A., Politis, Y. (2017). Academic Identity in Higher Education. In: Shin, J., Teixeira, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_300-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_300-1

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