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Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management
ISSN: 1360-080X (Print) 1469-9508 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjhe20
Imagining a future: changing the landscape for
third space professionals in Australian higher
education institutions
Natalia Veles & Margaret-Anne Carter
To cite this article: Natalia Veles & Margaret-Anne Carter (2016): Imagining a future: changing
the landscape for third space professionals in Australian higher education institutions, Journal
of Higher Education Policy and Management, DOI: 10.1080/1360080X.2016.1196938
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2016.1196938
Published online: 13 Jun 2016.
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Imagining a future: changing the landscape for third space
professionals in Australian higher education institutions
Natalia Veles and Margaret-Anne Carter
College of Art, Society and Education, Division of Tropical Environments and Societies, James Cook
University, Townsville, Australia
ABSTRACT
In the last decade there has been a shift in the discourses around
professional staffin higher education that has been influenced by
neoliberal agenda that focused on driving education reforms. Earlier
discussions centring around nomenclature variations have progressed
to those about creating and developing borderless professionals oper-
ating in the third space –a notional space where professional staffand
academic staffwith diverse and valuable skills work as equal profes-
sional partners on complex and multifaceted projects. This article looks
at the evolution of the debates around professional staff.Itconsiders
how the notions of professionalism and professionalisation are being
reconceptualised in the third space. Discussion progresses towards
capability building and developmental opportunities of aspiring third
space professional staffin higher education settings. Possible pathways
of engaging with and empowering professional staffin designing their
future careers and professional identities are considered. Building a
community of research practices under the auspices of the Association
for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM) and engaging postgradu-
ate students in the university third space project work are proposed as
potential areas for further research in the field of professional staff
capability building.
KEYWORDS
Capability building; higher
education; identities;
Neoliberalism; professional
staff; third space
Introduction
The recent decades of neoliberal expansion in the higher education landscape are often
characterised by the shortage of resources, mass education imperatives, the contest-
ability of the research funding and competition among education providers that has had
an impact on universities (also referred to as higher education institutions, higher
education), nationally, internationally and globally (Clark, 1998; Connell, 2013; Gray,
2015; Sharrock, 2012; Szekeres, 2004; Whitchurch, 2007). It is within this landscape that
academic and professional staffin universities face the challenges of perpetual restruc-
tures, competition for resources and continuous adjustments to their work, workloads,
work profiles and portfolios.
This article looks at how in this perpetually changing and challenging environment
for all Australian universities, the debates around professional staffcontinue to evolve.
CONTACT Natalia Veles natalia.veles@jcu.edu.au
JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY AND MANAGEMENT, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2016.1196938
© 2016 Association for Tertiary Education Management and the LH Martin Institute for Tertiary Education Leadership and Management
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The notion of professionalism and professionalisation in the context of spaces in which
professional and academic staffoperate is considered. The emergence and the develop-
ment of the third space (Whitchurch, 2008)–a collegial space where university
professional staffand academic staffwork collaboratively on complex and multifaceted
projects –is examined. The focus of this examination is on practitioners’evidence-
informed literature that continues to receive minimal attention in the field. Listening to
the viewpoints of professional staffand giving prominence to their perspectives has a
particular importance in the context of staffcapability-building pathways. The authors
propose two specific developmental pathways to move professional staffcapability-
building discussions forward.
Contemporary neoliberal university imbalance
Neoliberalism as an ideology and an economic and societal foundation theory provides
an overarching theoretical lens for discussions on changing staffidentities and roles. It
is the neoliberal notions of performativity, managerialism, massification, marketisation
and corporatisation that have the most relevance for staffas they have an impact on the
working environment in contemporary universities (Anderson, 2006; Ball, 2003,2008;
Kandiko, 2010; Schulz, 2013). The effects of neoliberalism on higher education can be
traced throughout the universities of all Western countries with similarities evident in
the way it has had an impact on Australian and the United Kingdom’s (UK) higher
education (Conway, 2000). The UK higher education system has been experiencing
transformations since the higher education reforms were introduced in the 1980s
(Collinson, 2007; Deem, 2010). Parallel to the changes in the UK higher education
sector, the Australian higher education scene was subject to radical changes that
heralded the end of a social justice agenda in the Australian Labor Party education
policy (Connell, 2013) and the 1989 Dawkins university reforms (Dobson & Conway,
2003; Goedegebuure & Schoen, 2014; Meek, 2012).
In the UK higher education context, discussions in the literature have concentrated
on the linkages between the university future described by the exponential growth of
mass education, devolution and the moves towards improvement of efficiency and
accountability on the one hand, and the requirements for new managerial models to
support this move on the other. These new models of management are in fact the
features of the European public sector of the 1980s and its new public management
model (Kolsaker, 2014; Krücken, Blümel, & Kloke, 2013; Meek, 2012; Rhoades & Sporn,
2002) focusing primarily on organisational culture and the improvement of the orga-
nisational performance in this culture.
Parallel organisational environment changes have led to similar outcomes for the
Australian higher education sector resulting in the emergence of and a continuously
persisting imbalance of demand for the public universities’offering, and the supply of
funding to sustain this increasing demand. This imbalance accompanied the transition
from a small-scale higher education market with its primary focus on domestic students
and supported by abundant public funding, to a global-scale mixed economy tertiary
market (Sharrock, 2012). This imbalance became more critical with the expansion of
the range of the educational programmes on offer, the increasing complexities of
educational policies and regulations, burdens of compliance and imperatives of the
2N. VELES AND M.-A. CARTER
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quality frameworks. Response to this imbalance requires new models of institutional
management (Krücken et al., 2013; Rhoades & Sporn, 2002; Shattock, 2000), innovative
ways of staffcollaboration, new networks and partnerships to increase staffself-value as
well as individual and team contributions to the achievement of the universities’
strategic goals. An innovative means of collaborating among the universities’diverse
staffis a third space, the concept first introduced in the writings of Whitchurch (2008)
as a feasible response to address the new challenges within the higher education sector.
Emergence of the third space
The concept of the third space first came into prominence with studies conducted by
Whitchurch (2008) in UK higher education institutions. The genesis of its application
to higher education professionals can be attributed to professional identity and profes-
sional identity changes resulting from changes in global higher education and university
transformation. The traditional, twentieth-century notion of profession as a source of
identity was later contested in relation to academic identity, which is known to be
associated with a discipline, ‘an epistemic community with distinctive culture’(Henkel,
2010, p. 8). Another aspect of identity theory –boundaries and gatekeeping –has been
extensively discussed in identity literature (Barth, 1969; Bernstein, 2000; Jenkins, 2008),
and it is still relevant to discussions on how professional staffperceive their identity and
their roles in relation to those of academics (Krücken et al., 2013). However, boundary
maintenance discourse has been replaced consistently by the debate around the devel-
opment of unique (as opposed to defined by the academic) professional staffidentities
and the blurring of roles and portfolios of academic and professional staff(Henkel,
2010).
The third space concept is now widely acknowledged representing discussions
around higher education activities that require the joint effort of wider university
networks and diverse teams comprising professional and academic staffundertaking
project-based activities of various size and scale (Kolsaker, 2014). The concept of the
collegial third space continues to evolve in the work of researchers including
Whitchurch (2009a,2009b,2009c), Whitchurch and Gordon (2010), Middlehurst
(2010), Conway (2013), Graham (2013), Kolsaker (2014) and Gray (2015).
It is important to consider the broader conceptual context of the third space in order
to understand how it translates to the higher education environment. The notion of
third space encompasses exploration of the special relationships in social theory, as well
as the ‘impact of diversity and divergence’, multitude of philosophical studies of
dualism, such as, Said’s‘cultural geographies’, Bell’s‘state and market’,Bourdieu’s
‘high and low culture’, Routledge’s‘combination of “insider”and “outsider”voices’
and a plethora of cultural and education theory studies (Whitchurch, 2012, p. 21).
Whitchurch (2009a) redefines the historical binary relationships between university
professional staffand academic staffthat are now rapidly changing, generating a new
typology of professional identities. This typology encompasses four main types:
bounded professionals (with fixed portfolios and more prescribed roles); cross-boundary
professionals (engaged in interpretative and translation activities around the existing
boundaries and strategically using the boundaries to build and extend organisational
capacity); unbounded professionals (working on broad organisational developmental
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projects that are above and beyond the boundaries’constraints) and finally, blended
professionals (with mixed-portfolios of professional and academic activities)
(Whitchurch, 2009b,2012). Unbounded and blended professionals and portfolio-specific
academic staffare those who are able to, or are assigned to work across boundaries that
exist between administrative and academic domains. Because their activities are not
constrained by functional and organisational boundaries, they contribute to university’s
developmental, internal and external engagement agendas as they work on specific
organisational projects in collaboration with academic teams. This space in which they
operate requires convergence of talent, fusion of skills and creative tension, contribu-
tions from diverse personnel unencumbered by titles, job roles and position descrip-
tions. These staffmembers view ‘the building of communicative relationships and
networks as more significant than the observance of organisational boundaries’
(Whitchurch, 2008, p. 386). At the same time, understanding the university’s academic
climate and academic culture is paramount to understanding its core values, beliefs and
strategic intent.
Debates around professional staff
There has been a gradual shift in the discourse around the higher education profes-
sional stafffrom the involved and intense discussion of the higher education workers’
titles and roles (Dobson, 2009; Szekeres, 2011) to discussions of persisting and ‘often
contentious’relationships between academic and professional staff(Graham, 2012,p.
439). Dialogue appears to be reaching maturity and sophistication and discourse is
focusing on the nature and the typology of spaces where professional and academic staff
not just co-exist, but collaboratively work on projects of tactical importance for the
universities.
These shifts in discourses reflect what Whitchurch (2012) describes as three phases
that develop within the interaction processes between individuals and the spaces they
occupy. These changes, depicted in Table 1,‘represent phases in maturation of activities
and identities’:Contestation, Reconciliation and Reconstruction (Whitchurch, 2012, pp.
26–27). They signpost the move from the default position of regulations and rules to the
testing of the new grounds for new forms of activities (Contestation); then further to the
position that the collaborations and partnership relations may exist between parties
(Reconciliation); and, finally, arriving to the space where it is possible and desirable to
foster new collaborations and relationships and where individuals are no longer defined
by the rules, regulations and positions descriptions –athird space.
As the Reconstruction phase is reached, new discussions come into play. The
previously prevailing conversations of ‘managerialism’and ‘us and them’dichotomous
relationship among the university staffare still ubiquitous (Collinson, 2007; Connell,
2013; Deem, 1998; Deem & Brehony, 2005; Gornitzka & Larsen, 2004; Sharrock, 2012;
Szekeres, 2004,2011; Whitchurch, 2006). However, these are being forced out by
debates on the constructive ways academics and professionals can join forces to work
on common projects that enable professional and academic staffworking in diverse and
mixed groups realising opportunities and achieving outcomes for all (Whitchurch,
2010). Diversification of professional and academic functions and a simultaneous
convergence between activity domains has become the reality of the higher education
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environment. These developments have created the need for re-evaluation of profes-
sional identities, perceptions of professionalism and staffself-awareness in relation to
the spaces they occupy or aim to move towards in the future.
Furthermore, a nuanced layer of the discourses about the current Reconciliation phase is
represented by the notion of borderless professionals (Middlehurst, 2010). These are the
individuals who operate in the third space and are best positioned to address contemporary
higher education imbalance of funding scarcity versus critical activities and outputs. They
offer a mix of relevant and robust skills, commercial and academic acumen, and ability to use
multiple platforms (physical, virtual and blended) to their organisation’s advantage. During
the Reconciliation phase, it is this unique space, where multi-skilled and cross-skilled profes-
sionals operate, and where the real blend of talent happens, the projects develop and are taken
to the next level of accomplishment and engagement.
This unique space has been the subject of various interpretations in the literature. It
is sometimes viewed as complementary to existing spaces where core university
Table 1. Overview of professional staffdiscourse shifts.
Evolution
stage
Key focus of the discourse around professional
staffAuthors and years of publication
Contestation Earlier debates
Nomenclature and titles –narratives of
invisibility, marginalisation, exclusion and
under appreciation
Castleman and Allen (1995); Collinson (2007);
Conway (2000); Deem (1998); Dobson (2000);
Dobson and Conway (2003); Gornitzka and
Larsen (2004); Lauwerys (2002); Szekeres
(2004); Whitchurch (2006)
Gender dimensions Bagilhole and White (2011); Burton, Cook, and
Wilson (1997); Castleman and Allen (1995);
Chesterman, Ross-Smith, and Peters (2003);
Currie, Thiele, and Harris (2002); Eveline
(2004); Gander (2010); Probert, Ewer, and
Whiting (1998); Stewart (2004); Strachan et al.
(2012)
Reconciliation Professional and academic stafftensions and
emerging partnerships
Bagilhole and White (2011); Burton et al. (1997);
Castleman and Allen (1995); Chesterman et al.
(2003); Conway (2012); Currie et al. (2002);
Gander (2010); Krücken et al. (2013); Probert
et al. (1998); Szekeres (2004); Strachan et al.
(2012)
Recent and recently emerging themes
Reconstruction Professional staffidentities’fragmentation and
identities’reconstruction; ‘identity stretch’;
first professional stafftypology
Graham (2010,2012,2013); Gray (2015); Kolsaker
(2014); Middlehurst (2010); Whitchurch (2007,
2008,2009a,2009c,2009b); Whitchurch and
Gordon (2009,2010); Whitchurch, Skinner, and
Lauwerys (2009); Whitchurch (2012)
Professional staffas a group (despite the evident
lack of its homogeneity)
Conway (2000,2013); Dobson and Conway
(2003); Middlehurst (2010); Sebalj et al. (2012);
Strachan et al. (2012); Szekeres (2004,2011);
Whitchurch (2006,2007); Whitchurch (2012)
Professional staffgrowth, development,
acquisition of firmer legitimacies, maturity,
professionalisation and higher sophistication
in the career choices
Conway (2000,2013); Dobson and Conway,
(2003); Middlehurst (2010); Szekeres (2004,
2011); Sebalj et al. (2012); Strachan et al.
(2012); Whitchurch (2006,2007); Whitchurch
(2012)
Third space professionals, typology and
positioning of the third space
Conway (2013); Graham (2013); Kolsaker (2014);
Middlehurst (2010); Whitchurch (2007,2009a,
2009c,2012)
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activities of teaching and research occur. Likewise, it has the potential to create bridges
between existing spaces and/or creating completely new and distinct spaces
(Whitchurch, 2012). This space may also be situated above the well-traversed terrains
where hybrid professionals develop and demonstrate their blended and highly sought-
after capabilities (Middlehurst, 2010). In certain contexts, the space may further enable
or strengthen operations across key ‘strategic management agendas’and two out of four
‘priority zones’:‘creative engagement’and ‘sustainable enterprise’(Sharrock, 2012, pp.
325–327).
These examples illustrate the complex interplay and the spaces in which individuals
operate. It thus becomes clearer that the traditionally held view that the professional
staff’s only legitimate purpose is to support and enhance the core functions of teaching
and research (Duncan, 2014), may need to be reviewed in the context of third spaces.
Borderless professionals operating in the third space not only support other commu-
nities’and other organisational agendas, but rather confidently and equally contribute
alongside academic staffin creating and adding value to the organisational capital.
Within these discourses the main focus of consideration is based on the merits of
assigning titles, specific job roles and job descriptions to professional staff(see Table 1).
One school of thought has been to defending the distinct roles, portfolios and profiles of
professional staffas a means of providing a foundation for the nomenclature ladder and
for the defined nomenclature hierarchy. Writers aligned with this school of thinking
acknowledge that there are potential dangers with blurring the boundaries between
professional and academic staff, while advocating that these blended spaces could be
appropriate for the ‘new professionals’(Dobson & Conway, 2003; Sebalj, Holbrook, &
Bourke, 2012). An alternative school of thinking advocates for flexibility around job
identification, career building and self-managed career portfolios of professional staff
(Middlehurst, 2010; Whitchurch, 2009a,2012). The proponents of this school outline a
number of benefits of the flexible approach to staffcareers and portfolios, including
having a career frame as opposed to a career ladder. Unlike the career ladder that
presupposes only an ascending move for staff, the career frame allows staffto develop
lateral networks and move along the lateral trajectories throughout their careers
acquiring multitude of valuable skills and capabilities on the way and thus strengthen-
ing their skills portfolio. Thus they become hybrid professionals operating with aca-
demic staffin these new collegial spaces.
These two distinct approaches are continually evolving. For many, there has been an
evolution of thinking around the professional staffjob roles and their position in the
university structure. Initially concerns existed surrounding the blurring of the bound-
aries separating the job roles, as there was strong support for distinct status and roles
when staffworked in partnerships or worked within their own portfolios (Conway,
2000; Dobson & Conway, 2003). This view was later replaced by a higher degree of
acceptance and support for the emerging open structures based on the relationship
building and on enabling professional and academic staffcollaborations while working
on the broader university projects (Conway, 2013).
In reviewing Whitchurch’s(2012) book on reconstructing identities in higher educa-
tion, Conway refers to the third space operations and the third space professionals in
contemporary higher education. She states that by placing the focus on the relationships
as opposed to structures we will be able to build the future university the way we want it
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to be rather that the way that is imposed on us (Conway, 2013). In other words, using
Bernstein’s concepts of educational knowledge transmission and boundaries between
the knowledge transmission (Bernstein, 1971), the previously maintained state of
control and strong boundaries are being replaced by the third space professionals’
redefining traditional structures, notions of management, professionalism and leader-
ship and with the ‘focus more on development, facilitation and collaboration than on
control’(Whitchurch, 2012, p. 143). These paradigm shifts in the writers’thinking
demonstrate the complexity of the professional identities’phenomena that continue
evolving with the changes in the university communities.
It is important to note that the researchers’works listed in Table 1 cover a wide
range and richness of topics pertinent to the neoliberal higher education context. Only
the elements that reflect the professional staffdeliberations’evolution are summarised.
As evidenced from the evolving mindsets, professional staffare no longer being
defined by their roles, accountabilities and position descriptions, but rather by complex
and reconstructed identities, their relationships with other university communities and
by their own perceptions of what it means to be professional in the contemporary
higher education environment.
Changes in perceptions of professionalism and professionalisation
Whitchurch (2008) has implied that the future belongs to the third space professionals
who create their own identities, reformulate their roles according to the needs of the
project and in collaboration with academic and other professional colleagues, acquire
the skills that they may be currently lacking to bring maximum benefit to the project
and extend their own professionalism through workplace collaboration and workplace
real life learning. Sharing this viewpoint, the authors of this article imagine that while
this a possible future pathway for many professional staff, it may not be appealing for
all. Many will continue working within predefined portfolios within the boundaries of
their roles on specific administrative tasks, however their numbers may decrease with
time.
If the imagined future is the one where the third space dominates university scene,
then the questions to consider are, what will it take to enable and empower professional
staffto work effectively and efficiently in this third space? Furthermore, what types of
higher education professionals will be in demand? What blend of traditional and
unique skills and capabilities will they need to acquire and how will these capabilities
transpire in the future (Middlehurst, 2010)?
The Australian single university case study conducted by Graham (2013) supports
the argument that in a contemporary higher education environment with the prolifera-
tion of new technologies more professional stafffind themselves working in the third
space and shifting between professional and academic roles (Graham, 2013). In recon-
structing the notion of professionalism and professionalisation in the higher education
landscape, Kolsaker (2014) uses four key constructs to measure professional staffand
academics’responses to professionalisation: knowledge, expertise, autonomy and asso-
ciation with a professional group. These constructs are fairly consistent with those
proposed as ‘embryonic definition of professionalism of administrative staff’(Gornitzka
& Larsen, 2004, p. 462) discussed by Gornitzka and Larsen (2004), Blümel (2008, May)
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and subsequently commented on by Szekeres (2011), Graham (2012) and Krücken,
Blümel and Kloke (2013). The following key elements may constitute professionalism
for professional staffdespite a clear lack of the homogeneity among them:
●organisational knowledge as a common and systematic cognitive and problem-
solving base;
●previous relevant experience and expertise evidenced through the acquisition of
formal qualifications or completing training programmes and/or academic path-
ways to obtain qualifications;
●professional networks and professional associations to perpetuate expertise and
knowledge exchange, professional standards’development and creation of uni-
versity professional shared identity;
●formalised status and decision-making autonomy of the roles professional staff
fulfil.
In line with the argument that the professional stafflacks homogeneity (Dobson &
Conway, 2003), earlier commentary in the literature (Middlehurst, 2010; Szekeres, 2011;
Whitchurch, 2008) has pointed out that professionalism may be reconceptualised as a
community of professionals, rather than the membership of any particular professional
body, or possessing particular credentials to be used as an entry to the profession of the
education worker. Szekeres (2011), however, advocates for both: setting up the com-
munities of professionals as well as credentialing professional staffthrough higher
education qualifications in order to increase their legitimacy and credibility and to
enable them to contribute equally to the projects they work together with academic
staff. One could conclude that this may be a very reasonable solution considering that
the third space is a space of high achieving and highly skilled individuals who see
themselves as equal partners, possessing strong understanding of the higher education
environment.
Advancing the argument of redefining professionalism, Middlehurst’s(2010) study
discusses the interprofessional practice and broader notions of ‘interdisciplinarity’and
‘interprofessionalism’–the phenomena that have given rise to, and are now congenital
to, the earlier introduced concept of the borderless professional. The technological,
epistemological, social and organisational complexities and neoliberal imperatives of
the modern higher education arena create the need for professional staffto look at how
they can reconfigure the traditional boundaries. It is quite possible that there will be a
need to completely remove the boundaries around the current roles, professions and
even the organisational, geographical and sectoral boundaries.
In the global environment in which 14 universities in Australia have offshore
campuses, the third space is no longer restricted to bricks-and-mortar university
campuses. Projects are increasingly conducted by professionals and academics working
in virtual environments. Within this context, intercultural dimension and competency
building becomes even more important, with universities expanding their international
presence and operations overseas (Gray, 2015). Consequently, there will be an increas-
ing need for creating, supporting and mentoring culturally competent borderless profes-
sionals who, when working on collegial projects will continue to shape the future of
international higher education.
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Practical solutions and further research direction
Professional staffcapabilities in working in the environment of continuous boundary-
shifting can be achieved in numerous ways. Middlehurst (2010) advocates a combina-
tion of traditional and contemporary ways including skills assessment and recognition
of prior learning to provide transitional pathways to further development; accredited
vocational and higher education qualifications; attendance of staffand professional
associations’conferences and participation in the networking sessions; secondment
within the organisation and shadowing of or mentoring by staffin other roles. These
are primarily driven by the organisations’leadership teams based on budget availability
and are usually aligned with organisational staffdevelopment strategy.
Preparing to operate in the third space presents a number of challenges for indivi-
duals, as the new ways of working may challenge current professional practices and
perceptions. Projects that staffwill work on may not yet exist or have no distinct clear-
cut parameters. Staffaspiring to work on such projects may not know in advance what
skills they may be lacking or what qualifications will be required. Such new modus
operandi require reconfiguration of traditional professional development routes.
Middlehurst (2010) maintains that this will entail designing and engaging in crossing
the boundaries to seek the most relevant, appropriate and customised developmental
opportunity to prepare professional stafffor these challenges.
Such cross-boundary developmental opportunities may involve a combination of
group and individual learning blended with reflective practices; on-the-project learning;
connecting with industry partners to gain insights into contemporary work environ-
ment and operational practices, and engaging in continuous feedback loop to improve
performance. The crucial feature of these new practices is that they will be driven
primarily by professional staffseeking to re-design their roles and their professional
identities while challenging the status quo and creating new operational excellences.
Such practices have the potential to enable professional staffto build their capabilities as
they work collaboratively in the third space with academics.
The professional membership-based organisations operating in global neoliberal
higher education spaces have ties with one another and with their member commu-
nities. Organisations such as the Australian Association for Tertiary Education
Management (ATEM) and its counterparts in the UK (Association of University
Administrators (AUA)) and in Canada (Canadian Association of University Business
Officers (CAUBO)) provide opportunities to connect professionals around their roles,
practice domains and learning needs. These associations’services include support,
development and advancement of exemplary professional standards and practices.
ATEM currently facilitates communities of practice inclusive of traditional profes-
sional areas of student services and examinations administration. They organise con-
ferences and provide professional networking opportunities. In partnership with LH
Martin Institute, ATEM provides Australian, New Zealand and other countries’uni-
versity professionals with a higher education developmental programme (Emerging
Leadership and Managers Program, or eLamp) that may or may not lead to credentials
being acquired. This programme provides a strong foundation for professional staff
(Brown & Davis, 2015). Emergence of programmes such as eLamp, as well as a recently
launched stimulus paper on Developing and Sustaining Shared Leadership in Higher
JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY AND MANAGEMENT 9
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Education (Bolden, Jones, Davis, & Gentle, 2015) are signs of the importance profes-
sional organisations are placing on the capability building of professional staff.
Third space professionals need to develop a diverse range of skills, particularly in the
area of research. Having a strong research capacity is important for these professionals
as it raises their professionalism, credibility, expertise and effectiveness when working
in these collaborative spaces with academics. There are two possible ways to develop
this capability: (1) setting up a community of research practice; (2) engaging postgrad-
uate students in work on third space research projects.
Community of research practice
It may be beneficial to set up a community of research practice. Members of this
community may be starting new research projects, completing postgraduate research
studies or engaged with their doctoral studies. This community will provide a forum for
like-minded professionals to enhance their professional capabilities, discussing research
ideas, research questions and topics, research designs and methods, ethical issues in
research in conjunction with research findings and data interpretation. Such a community
would provide the medium for inter-professional research projects that strengthen the
connections between disciplines, organisations and third space professional staffengaged
in research projects. Though it is anticipated that professional staffwill lead this space,
ATEM may auspice the establishment of this community. We envisage that the support
ATEM could provide may encompass virtual and face-to-face professional training
opportunities on methodologies and research design topics in response to members’
needs. Projects examined in this forum could result in connections being built between
professional staffand industry practitioners to provide further impetus to Australia’s
research-industry collaboration recently announced by the Australian Federal government
in its Boosting the Commercial returns from research strategy (2015).
It may be advantageous to build this community of research practice aligned with
ATEM’s existing members’network, partnership with LH Martin Institute and the
international connections with the UK and Canada professional organisations.
Activities undertaken will enable professional staffwith the necessary skills to operate
in transdisciplinary and unbounded spaces. It is assumed that this community of
research practice, although specifically designed to support and promote collaboration
and innovation of the third space professionals, does not need to be a space of
exclusivity. Professional and academic staff, staffand leaders of all levels across higher
education would be welcome to participate in discussions and research enterprises.
Mentorship from the ATEM and LH Martin academic leadership will add value to this
capability-building initiative for professional staffjoining research pathway.
Engaging postgraduate students
There has been a significant increase in enrolments in Australian doctoral programmes
in the last ten years (Berman & Pitman, 2010). The recent study conducted by Berman
and Pitman (2010) suggests there are many advantages of including research trained
and qualified professional staffin a wide range of university projects. It seems that there
could be value in attracting professional staffpursuing their doctoral studies to work in
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the third space while they are still working on their research project. As evidenced by
Middlehurst (2010), as higher education institutions move further towards market-type
organisations, the need and opportunities for organisations that nurture multi-skilled
professionals will continue to be abundant (p. 232). One could speculate that these
professionals will be highly sought after by university leadership while they are com-
pleting their studies and/or obtaining their credentials. Developing research skills and
engaging with professional networks enable professionals to progress towards their
research and study goals. Such achievements will add capital to the organisation and
in the process improve organisational culture.
These professional development pathways will need to focus on organisational
directives and priority agendas. Merging these two approaches (individual and organi-
sational) in the design of professional development pathways has a higher potential to
succeed. For a developmental programme to yield the best results, it is advisable for
individuals to take responsibility for initiating and pursuing their professional devel-
opment. It is equally important for a university’s learning and development staffand its
senior leadership to support, encourage and recognise staffwho participate in profes-
sional developmental programmes. In addition to maintaining the nexus of individual
and organisational goals, these developmental programmes will need to be constantly
customised and recalibrated with the individual and projects in mind so they remain
relevant, purposeful and demand-driven. Moreover, it would be advantageous if these
proposed professional development pathways were built around existing strengths of
the individuals, their knowledge sets and skills’capital.
Conclusion
A modern university is a complex and yet an adaptable organism. It is comprised of
diverse, intelligent and knowledgeable professionals whose challenge is to adapt to the
complexities of the global economy, neoliberal constraints and to any other political
and economic challenges that the future may bring. When confronted by these profes-
sional constraints, professional staffworking in these institutions will continue devel-
oping their skills, reconstructing their identities and designing new careers and career
pathways. Interdisciplinary staffcapability building across a number of disciplines
including higher education policy, organisational leadership and workforce planning
is a realistic direction for future research.
Community of research practice and postgraduate students’engagement in the third
space project work may become feasible solutions to challenges associated with future
university capability-building needs. Innovative ways of embedding these developmen-
tal pathways into the university learning and development strategy for professional staff
will excite, engage and challenge academic and professional staff, alongside organisa-
tional learning and development planners, senior leadership staffand postgraduate
students.
The authors envisage this article will have resonance with those professional staff
working in higher education who are in the process of reconstructing their identities
with the view of venturing into other, possibly unknown and undefined roles and
blended domains of collaborative third space projects. These professionals may be
considering how to bring their own unique experiences and skills to third space
JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY AND MANAGEMENT 11
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projects, to inspire and ignite collective creativity and advance both their own position
while providing value to the university. Furthermore, the themes discussed in this
article are pertinent to professional and academic staffwho are researching or planning
to research questions pertaining to professional staffidentities, professional and aca-
demic staffpartnerships and the reconceptualisation of professionalism in higher
education.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Natalia Veles http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6010-2653
Margaret-Anne Carter http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0145-9804
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