University of Twente Student Theses
Establishing identity and meaningfulness through identity claims - Expressions of organisational and professional identity and work meaning by teachers in higher education
Berg, Marja van den (2015) Establishing identity and meaningfulness through identity claims - Expressions of organisational and professional identity and work meaning by teachers in higher education.
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| Abstract: | In the last two decades, a lot has been changing in the profession of teaching. Today’s teacher has to be able to do much more than just simply teach, which has implications on their professional identity, organisational identity and their work meaning. This study investigates the organisational and professional identification of teachers and the meaningfulness of their work. To research this topic, nineteen interviews were conducted with teachers from a faculty of a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands. The results show that all respondents made identity claims to enhance both their organisational and professional identification and their work meaning. All identity claims included categorisations of ingroups and outgroups within both the university and broader society. Based upon these results, two models were created in which the ingroups (positive) and outgroups (negative) are presented in relation to organisational and professional identity and work meaning. From this research can be concluded that in the process of identification, disidentification is a very important aspect. Sometimes people find it easier to name groups they do not belong to than naming groups they do feel they belong to. Also, organisational and professional identification are flexible to some extent as the teachers perform several roles as teachers and within the organisation. Besides, professional identity and work meaning have some characteristics that overlap. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 05 communication studies |
| Programme: | Communication Studies MSc (60713) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/68243 |
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