‘Take off your Mask’: Professional identities and professional development of part-time instructors.

Questions of identity have been mostly related to war and internal clashes among different sects and parties during a major part of Lebanon’s contemporary history. People were often killed and tortured because of their presumed identities. For more peaceful and educational purposes, this study investigates the professional identities of part-time instructors at one Lebanese HE institution. Three key related questions are addressed. A major question has to do with investigating the professional identities of these instructors, another question deals with what it means to be a part-time instructor and a third with the professional development practices of these part-timers. The two latter objectives have a high impact in crafting the first. A case study was carried out at the American Oriental University (AOU) were 26 part-timers and three full-timers (ex-part-timers) were interviewed. To triangulate the data, four of the participants were asked to participate in diary writing. In addition, document checking was carried out. The part-timers were chosen to represent the wider population of part-timers at the University. Thus, they were chosen to illustrate particular factors characterising part-timers, such as gender, seniority, educational standing, number of work sites and type of part-time choice. Thematic and discourse analysis were used to analyse the data and investigate the different models of those part-timers’ professional identities. Analysis revealed that each part-timer’s professional identity is unique and exists on a continuum ranging from highly democratic to highly managerial. The former is characterised by being democratic, collaborative and based on trust, while the latter is individualistic, competitive and externally-regulated (Day and Sachs, 2004). The neo-liberal forces prevailing in the current educational arena, however, rendered these identities more inclined towards the managerial end (Apple, 2003). Each identity was rendered unique on the continuum not only because of multiplicity of forces impacting it, but rather because of the different sources and intensities of these forces, and thus their unorthodox effects.