This research explores the professional identity of faculty in higher education and the relationships between these identities and the extent to which faculty are flourishing in the workplace. It develops, content validates, and tests a measure of faculty professional identity, integrating the new measure with the workplace PERMA profiler in an instrument designed to examine the relationship between professional identity and flourishing. Finally, it interrogates the utility of the new measure for development purposes at individual, group, and institutional levels of higher education.
As a pragmatic study with a mixed methods multi-phase design, the research engages qualitative and quantitative data, collected in four phases, to address its aims. A conceptual overview gleaned from the literature is first enhanced with empirical insights gathered from faculty developers in focus groups using the nominal group technique. Potential dimensions and items are developed for a measure, and these are subjected to a content validation process by experts and revised accordingly. The new measure is used, along with the workplace PERMA profiler, to collect instrument testing data from a small sample of faculty. Finally, follow-up focus group discussions with faculty developers explore the utility of the measure.
The findings demonstrate a strong relationship between higher education faculty professional identity and flourishing. The potential utility of the new measure goes beyond practice-based faculty development initiatives at individual, group, and institutional levels to encompass an innovative, adaptive, person-centred approach to development, which is both data-informed and focused on fostering flourishing identities. At institutional level, the measure might be leveraged to inform strategy with faculty developers contributing as third-space interpretational gatekeepers.