“Assistant Professor with an Asterisk”: Conflicting Tensions in the Workplace Experiences and Professional Identities of University Faculty on Fixed-Term Contracts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: Drawing on identity work theory and social capital theory, this qualitative study explores how Canadian university faculty on fixed-term contracts construct their professional identities in response to the opportunities and limitations associated with their employment. Study participants generally appreciate their remuneration, relative professional autonomy, the control they have over the products of their labour, and the opportunity to teach at the postsecondary level. Positive aspects of their employment, however, were undercut by various professional limitations. These limitations include job precarity, little acknowledgment of their contributions to their fields or to their universities, limited access to research funding, and the challenge of building bonding (i.e., intra-institutional) social capital. The perceived disconnect between participants’ professional qualifications and the precarity of their employment situation further undermines their ability to cultivate positive professional identities. Participants negotiate the contradictory tensions of their employment via one or more of the following adaptive strategies: 1) pursuing research as best they can given prevailing obstacles; 2) making teaching the focal point of their professional identities; and 3) utilizing bridging social capital to create opportunities and forge connections beyond the university. Future research directions are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.023 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".