Negotiating Professional Identity: Art Teachers under Incongruent Institutional Logics

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Arts and Creative Work

Abstract

We study the construction of the professional identity of a group of art teachers who work for a private tutoring company’s charity program sponsored by a foundation. Under this complicated arrangement characterized by incongruent institutional logics between market, profession and charity, how do they identify with being teachers, a core feature of their professional identity? Drawing on ethnography and semi-structured interviews, we found that at the group level, these teachers regarded themselves more as “hired hands” instead of being educators with higher education aims. When applying for this job, the teachers were inattentive to the “calling of education,” but instead viewing it as a strategic choice. Once on the job, company’s everyday practices were geared to profit maximization, which contributed to the teachers’ underdeveloped professional identity around “who we are as teachers” at the group level. Despite this, some did develop a more individualized identity of “who I am as a teacher,” primarily induced by their adolescent experience as art students which was less exposed to commercialized art training. Additionally, working for the charity program enriched their narratives and actions of what it means to be a good teacher. Our findings suggest that the dominance of market logic jeopardizes the development of professional identity, even when higher aims of work are introduced, and call for policy remedies.

Authors

• Yiwen Zeng, University of Arizona

• Enying Zheng, Peking University

• Jinjie Wang, Peking University