Institutional responsibility and third space professionals: a call for structural change to embrace ambiguity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi33.1209Keywords:
third space professionals, institutional responsibility, critical dialogue, ambiguityAbstract
Third space professionals have occupied ambiguous spaces in higher education hierarchies for decades. While this positioning can be fruitful and lead to creative solutions and responses for our institutions in challenging times, third space professionals, by and large, remain structurally marginalised, with limited or unclear access to rewards, recognition and career progression. These limitations can inhibit the volume of third space professionals’ voices in debates which challenge dominant understandings about traditional practices in the academy. Based on the findings from a PhD project on the identities and experiences of third space professionals in Australian higher education, I argue that resisting dominant discourses from the margins is a difficult endeavour requiring both the centre and margin to find a common language to engage in critical dialogue. With ambiguous and limited pathways for progression and recognition, third space professionals risk being unheard. Our institutions, therefore, have a responsibility to create formal (and perhaps temporary) classification-crossing opportunities for third space career progression and reward, leading to an amplification of the voices of third space professionals in critical dialogue about their positioning.
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