Opting Out or Playing the ‘Academic Game’? Professional Identity Construction by Off-Center Academics

Esmat Babaii ( University for Teacher Education, Iran)

Volume 4, Issue 1

Abstract

Bio-data is a short genre, highly constrained in terms of length and conventional style, through which a contributor to an academic journal or a conference provides a sketch of one's major academic achievements in a third-person narrative.  To examine the possibility and the extent of professional expertise construction in this genre, 512 bio-data provided by the off-networked participants at the 4^th Asia TEFL Conference were analyzed.  The results revealed that within this restricted space and style, some off-Center academics, influenced by their awareness of Center-Periphery relations in the academia, strategically manipulated information about self and their accomplishments to increase their chance of inclusion and visibility in the field.  In short, they tended to foreground and highlight their relationship with Western academic institutions and figures, on the one hand, and background or even suppress their local experience, on the other. 

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