| Academic's work in Mainland China has been under enormous changes since mid-1980s due to the ongoing reforms in higher education. Academic identity proves to be a useful conceptual tool in the discussions of academic wok life. This research therefore explored junior faculties' academic identity construction process by employing the qualitative case study method in order to understand their work experiences in the context of reforms. The research focused on two cases of research-oriented university and teaching-oriented university by interviewing with 48 lecturers and newly promoted associate professors. Data was mainly collected by semi-structured interview.;Major findings of this research were as follows. Firstly, academic training during doctoral study laid out the foundations for academic competence and academic identity. Junior faculties have experienced changes from doctoral students to faculty members in universities through "learning by doing". Their academic identities were under notable changes, from the underdeveloped and researcher-centered identity during doctoral stage, to the more complicated and triple identities to include teaching, research and services, then to the unbalanced and single-faceted identity which prioritized the research identity. Secondly, junior faculties' academic autonomy was restricted in the context of performance-oriented reforms in the two cases and their triple identities were vulnerable, restricted and compromising. Thirdly, faculty departments and the subgroups within constituted the key context for academic construction at the group level. Junior faculties tended to compromise and conform in the negotiation with the tension between the desires for academic autonomy and the reliance on the group and significant others in the group. The interpersonal interactions uniquely embedded in Chinese context, namely "chaxugeju" and "guanxi", shaped the relational dimension of academic identities.;This research delineated the academic construction process of junior faculties in the context of reforms with an intention of responding to the international discussions on academic identity construction. The employment system reforms, which resembled some ideas of new manageralism, were the main sources of normative power for individual academic identity interpretation at the university and individual levels. Junior faculties presented weak identity negotiation abilities and thus tending to comply with institutional demands when struggling between autonomy and institutional demands. At the group level, the indigenous concepts of "quanzi" and "guanxi" emerged as significant factors on identity construction. Based on the interpersonal process of connections building and favors exchanges, junior faculties' interpretations and applications of "quanzi" and "guanxi" represented their major strategies to fit into the key academic circles, which also constituted an important dimension of their "becoming an academic". |
