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Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Higher education’s responsibility for balanced professionalism

Griffioen, D.M.E.

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Citation for published version (APA):Griffioen, D. M. E. (2019). Higher education’s responsibility for balanced professionalism: methodology beyondresearch. Hogeschool van Amsterdam.

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CREATING TOMORROW

INAUGURAL LECTURE

HIGHER EDUCATION’S RESPONSIBILITYFOR BALANCED PROFESSIONALISMMETHODOLOGY BEYOND RESEARCH

Dr. Didi M.E. Griffi oen

Higher Education’s Responsibility for Balanced Professionalism

Methodology beyond Research

Higher Education’s Responsibility for Balanced Professionalism

Methodology beyond Research

Inaugural lecture

Tuesday 29 October 2019

Didi Griffioen, Ph.D.

Professor of Higher Education, Research and Innovation

Cover image: M.C. Escher’s “Reptiles” © 2019. The M.C. Escher Company B.V. –

The Netherlands. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com

Graphic design: Textcetera, The Hague

ISBN: 978-94-6301-264-5

© Didi Griffioen / HvA Publicaties, Amsterdam 2019.

A PDF edition of this publication is freely downloadable from our website. www.hva.nl/

5HIGHER EDUCATION’S RESPONSIBIL ITY FOR BALANCED PROFESSIONALISM

Contents

This lecture 7

Professionalism 8Professional knowledge 9Professional identity 10Professional action 11

Becoming professional 13

Innovation of professionalism 15Professionals’ accommodation strategies 15

The responsibility of higher education 18An epistemic culture for the professions 20

Higher education as a professional field 22

The Higher Education, Research & Innovation Research Programme 2018-2023 25

Conclusion 27

Acknowledgements 28

References 29

Bio 32

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To the Rector, University Board Members, Students, Colleagues, Friends and Family,

Through this public lecture, I accept the position of university chair of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (HERI) at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). This appointment is a great honour. It affords me the opportunity to lead a chair positioned centrally in and closely connected to the strategic development of the largest higher education institute in the Netherlands. And with the creation of this chair, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences has shown the courage to make the development of higher education important enough to place a critical, empirical research group at the core of its own processes.


This lecture

My position as the chair of HERI has been given the topic of ‘methodologies’ to consider. Therefore, some consider me a methodologist: one who develops research by improving algorithms. Many who know me better assume this topic constitutes a responsibility to integrate research into what was formerly a teaching-only sector (Griffioen, 2013). Although methodologies in both senses are part of my research programme, my primary focus is on methodologies for professionalism, in which research methodologies can be of service and where research integration is essential.

Most college and university graduates do not continue their academic activities after graduation. Instead, most work as professionals in the knowledge society (WUR, 2017). Therefore, as part of higher education’s ideal role as the keeper of society’s cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986), its actual responsibility also lies in the education of highly knowledgeable professionals.

Hence, this lecture is focussed on the interaction between professionalism and the responsibilities of higher education. Firstly, I define professionalism in terms of three elements: professional knowledge, professional identity and professional action. Secondly, I provide a conceptual framework for the innovation of professionalism through a rebalancing process. Thirdly, I discuss the implications of this perspective on professionalism for the higher education sector as a professional field. Finally, I explain how my chair plans to contribute to the development of higher education as a professional field through research and development.

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Professionalism

I would like to begin with a discussion of professionalism. Particular strands of the sociology of professions have considered professionalism by debating the differences between occupations and formalised professions (Collins & Evans, 2007). However, this distinction is not at all helpful when considering professionalism and higher education. Higher education requires a concept of the professional through which educators can understand how to help students to become professionals. A more helpful perspective on professionalism is to consider it important that students, as future professionals, ‘know’, ‘do’ and possess the ability to articulate the reasons for their actions, as provided by Trede (2012). This perspective of combining knowing and doing is also provided by McLean, Abbas, and Ashwin (2019, p. 7) who state that ‘what people know [...] influences what they can become or do’. I follow this perspective by adding that the opposite is also true: What people are and know influences what they do.

I therefore define a professional as someone whose professional actions are shaped

by a professional identity and underpinned by professional knowledge.

Figure 1 Balanced Professionalism


Professional knowledge

In conceptual terms, professionalism consists of knowledge, identity and action (Figure 1). Based on an integration of previous research (Polanyi, 2009; Schön, 1991; Winch, 2014; Young & Muller, 2014b), I define professional knowledge as consisting of four elements (see also: Griffioen, 2017):1. Declarative knowledge: To know that (something exists)2. Procedural knowledge: To know how to apply or generate declarative

knowledge, which in turn has three components:a. Knowledge of procedures for assessing, testing and acquiring new

knowledgeb. Knowledge about how declarative concepts are relatedc. Knowledge about when and how concepts are applicable in professional

action3. Embodied knowledge: To know how to do4. Evaluative knowledge: To know how to reconsider

Professionals not only need to know how to act in theory, but must also embody this action in practice. In other words, professionals need ‘embodied knowledge’. Furthermore, professionals must also be able to systematically reconsider their actions and the actions of others, including their results and context (see also: Griffioen & Wortman, 2013; Schön, 1991).

This definition of professional knowledge implies that we must position knowledge, not competencies, at the core of higher education. Although competencies’ conceptual and practical characteristics have already been considered underdefined and unhelpful (Lum, 2009; Winch, 2010) – competence essentially presumes ‘whatever it takes’ – (Lum, 2009, p. 62), they can still be found throughout higher education practice. Students certainly need to become competent, but the use of competencies in education practice often results in an unhelpful disregard for knowledge and understanding (Lum, 2009). When skills are seen as ‘practice’, they are considered essential for professional action, while ‘skill is an inadequate concept to include the complexities of practical knowledge’ (Winch, 2010, p. 58). At the same time, knowledge is often considered ‘theory’ and therefore limited to declarative knowledge, leaving out the other three professional knowledge types. Often this results in the presumption that knowledge is not necessary for action.

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Therefore, the use of competencies enlarges the experienced gap between theory and practice even when competencies presume their combination. This does not help our students become professionals in the sense of an integration of action, identity and knowledge. However, with the four types of professional knowledge presented, there is no gap: It is all knowledge, from powerful declar-ative knowledge (Young & Muller, 2014a) to embodied relevant knowledge. Knowledge carriers differ between the types of knowledge, and pedagogies may differ as well, but all four types of knowledge are equally necessary for high-level professional action. As such they all four are equally important in the higher education set up. In educating high level future professionals is nothing more practical than a good theory (McKain, 2016), but only as long as the theory accounts for four types of professional knowledge.

Professional identity

The second aspect of professionalism is professional identity. Becoming a professional has not only a rational, content side, but also a personal and emotional side, consisting of ‘excitement, passion and desire’, whose importance is often overlooked in classical learning theories (Jensen, 2007, p. 490). These theories of learning often focus on what is learned and how, while motivations are equally important to personal transformation. Why does a student want to become a nurse, an ICT specialist or a social worker? What does the student consider a good nurse, a good ICT specialist or a good social worker? What values, morals, and passions underpin the professional’s actions? Answers to these questions play an important role in who professionals are and who they aspire to become. Transforming personal answers to the ‘why’ becomes part of students’ professional identities and, therefore, part of their professionalism (see also: Nyström, 2009; Trede, 2012; Trede, Macklin, & Bridges, 2012).

Therefore, professional identity is a self-image which facilitates a sense of perso-

nal adequacy and satisfaction with the performance of the expected role based on

( implicit) morals and values.

Attitude development is often an aspect of proposed higher education curricula. Attitudes can suggest that a person’s identity matches that of what society considers normal for a professional. However, attitudes are not stand-alone aspects, but the visible components of professional identities related to values,


morals and personality. Students’ identities, not just their attitudes, must therefore be included in their transformation. Higher education must develop pedagogies that educate the entire student. This complex process presumes a substantial partnership between students and higher education. This is higher education’s role in society.

Professional action

Let us now consider professional action, the third aspect of professionalism. According to Schinkel and Noordegraaf (2011), there is no professionalism without ‘occupational behaviours and practices of workers who have jobs and possess a clear sense of what their work is about and when its effective’. Many professionals’ actions are familiarised practices based on training and experience; essentially, they are routines (Schön, 1991). Routines are important. Professional practice would be impossible if every action were new. Routine-based action, however, does not imply simplicity. Professional action by definition depends on the complexity of actual situations that contain multiple factors and require multidisciplinary approaches to which a professional can apply numerous familiarised solutions and instruments. While acting, professionals must consider the impact of their actions on their stakeholders’ values, norms and social, economic and political interests (Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2001). In addition, in routine-based actions, professionals’ actions are underpinned by professional knowledge and professional identity. As Guile (2014, p.78) explains:

Professionals need ‘[..] [T]o develop the capability to use disciplinary knowledge, in conjunction with professional experience, as a resource in a specific context to pick out the salient features of that situation or event, and to then infer what follows and how to act.’

Routine-based professional action therefore presumes the sufficient and balanced integration of a professional’s actions, knowledge and identity. What a professional knows, does and is must be sufficiently aligned with his or her ideal image of that situation and its effects (see also Jensen, 2007).

Often the actual effects of professional action deviate from what is expected. For instance, a teacher sees that a chosen pedagogical approach has produced an unexpected result in a child; a marketer sees a different commercial result in a company from what was expected based on the advice given; or a manual

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therapist reports unforeseen results in a client. These deviations require an intrinsic process for comparing professionals’ actions and effects against their balance of professional knowledge, professional actions and professional identities. This process is called metacognition (Harvey & Knight, 1996; Martinez, 2006; Schön, 1991). Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, consists of processes such as metaknowledge, critical thinking and problem-solving related to a specific action (Martinez, 2006). When metacognition related to professional action results in the perception of small, insignificant deviations in professional balance and little risk to the specific professional setting, experienced professionals can assimilate these small deviations into their personal professional balance (See Figure 2; Harvey & Knight, 1996). However, assimilation cannot be done if the effect of the professional action is experienced as too disruptive.

Figure 2 Assimilation


Becoming professional

In students’ becoming professionals, all learning results in too-large disruptions of their developing professionalism. In becoming professionals, students’ becoming requires a transformation in which professionalism becomes part of their identity; their actions must become professional actions and their knowledge must be shaped and expanded into professional knowledge. In addition, these three elements must become intrinsically balanced. Students need to become this balance. Our function as higher education is to facilitate this balance as well as this becoming (see also: Biesta, 2010).

Becoming differs from being (Scanlon, 2011). For all students, we can identify the moment when they become formally qualified for a field. As Bourdieu (1986) would say, through higher education and by receiving a degree, they have become part of our institutionalised capital. Some of us can pinpoint the moment when we decided to become professionals – for instance, by beginning our professional education. Bourdieu (1986) would say that we began to embody societies’ cultural capital through the effort of learning. However, it is unlikely that our expertise will ever be completely saturated so that we never have to learn again (Jensen, 2007). Therefore, becoming a professional is a lifelong process ‘that eschews notions of arrival and end-point achievement of expertise’ (Scanlon, 2011).

Becoming is an evolutionary, iterative and ongoing process of individual trans-

formation through personal development and integration of professional knowledge,

professional action and professional identity.

At the start of professional learning, nothing is routine. Students just beginning to become professionals cannot fully consider the potential risks or assimilate deviations in their results of action due to a lack of a professional frame of reference (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2010). Students need hands-on guidance to understand what can be considered ‘normal’ for a professional in their field before they can start to retune their professionalism. This situation yields scaffolding of their learning path by the lecturer and more guidance for professional development than the ‘lecturer-as-coach’, who seems to have become dominant in the higher education competence-oriented setting (Kirschner et al., 2010). For students to learn to become knowledgeable professionals, comprehend metacognitive processes as professionals do and learn to retune their own professionalism, students and lecturers must work closely together. Not only must students be

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able to learn their professional fields’ objectified knowledge, but also to tune into lecturers’ embodied knowledge, which cannot easily be explained, but can be shown. In sufficiently guided cooperative situations, young professionals can learn to signalise assimilation situations and understand the actual assimilation process that follows. This development requires collaboration with students, not simply teaching them, in which lecturers must act as more knowledgeable colleagues, not just as coaches.


Innovation of professionalism

As said, a great deal of professional action is routine-based, but some is not. The metacognitive processes related to some professional actions result in a feeling that something is less than optimal (Schön, 1991; Silver, 2013). Professionals with well-developed metacognitive abilities can find themselves in situations in which the results of their professional actions are too distant from their ideal expected outcomes. Due to these outcomes, they feel their professionalism is not balanced anymore. It is not always directly clear what is off. What the professional senses is a feeling of inadequacy of action (‘I am not sure that I am able to do what is needed’), inadequacy of knowledge (‘I am not sure that I know enough’), disconnection from the expected professional identity (‘This is not the professional I want to be’) or all three. Such feelings of inadequacy, however, can also have positive connotations; it should be possible to know more, do better or become a better professional. In these situations, professionals are incapable of or unwilling to assimilate the results into their professionalism. These situations are not ‘business-as-usual’, so professionals must actively retune their professionalism by reinventing themselves and therefore become again.

However, the desire to transform is not enough. This desire must be accompanied by learned accommodation strategies that actually lead to professional transformation (Bramming, 2007; Harvey & Knight, 1996). Such strategies result in a transformation of action, knowledge, identity or all three and therefore result in a new balance among the three. They therefore need to lead to a new professionalism. Hence, professionals require strategies with which to not only reconsider their knowledge, identities and actions, but also rebalance these three transformed aspects of professionalism. As a whole, this process is here labelled ‘accommodation of professionalism’ and is the means through which the professional creates a new, temporary, professional self.

Professionals’ accommodation strategies

The essence of any professional accommodation strategy is a way of working that results in an iterative rebalancing of the three elements of professionalism: professional knowledge, professional identity and professional action. Because a professional accommodation strategy includes all three elements in addition to professionalism, it extends beyond notions of research (Andriessen, 2014) and reflection (Fook & Gardner, 2007; Silver, 2013). Such a strategy extends beyond

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research because research strategies focus on adding knowledge and sometimes action, often leaving out notions of identity. A professional accommodation strategy needs to reach beyond reflection because reflection strategies often do not include adding new empirical knowledge. Additionally, in higher education practice reflection is often positioned at the end of an complex assignment which implies that the reflection does not result in changed identities or actions either.

The professionals’ need to be able to accommodate professionalism results in a responsibility for scholarship that resonates with the responsibilities for scholarship Boyer’s model of scholarship (1990) as described for academics. Through a model of four kinds of scholarship – discovery, integration, application and teaching – Boyer showed that academics have more knowledge-related responsibilities than the discovery of new – often declarative – knowledge. The responsibility for professional renewal presented here also includes professional action and professional identity in addition to the renewal of knowledge as such (Figure 3). When we apply Boyers’ line of reasoning to rebalancing professionalism, relevant notions of scholarship for professionals emerge: to derive information from theory and professional practice; to integrate the knowledge selected; to create new practices (application); to implement these into daily routines and to share newly created routines, including their underlying knowledge and values, with society. If professionals possess the scholarship related to these activities, they can use this as an iterative line of action to balance their results against the three aspects of professionalism by applying metacognition in a stepwise fashion. Integrated these provide the scholarship needed for a professional accommodation strategy.

Figure 3 Accommodation

This perspective of scholarship is essentially different from the innovation strategies higher education educators teach their students. For the most part, students learn to conduct research as a means of conveying that knowledge to an


outside party in the professional field. Whilst students learn to derive knowledge from theory by studying the literature and learn to derive knowledge from practice through empirical methods, they are seldom told that the findings can pertain to their own professionalism. Conversations in their learning are usually strongly focussed on the quality of the research methods applied. Despite the relevance of methodology, the questions ‘What do you believe’ and ‘When do you know enough?’ are often overshadowed by conversations about methodological rules of thumb that are derived from basic research methods. This is not the fault of the lecturers, and certainly not of their students. Instead, this problem results from a collective misguided focus on the methodological soundness of research even though this soundness can only be evaluated against the intended professional aim for which the information was derived. Implementing notions of methodological soundness will not help educators facilitate the innovation of professional practice through higher education as long as these procedures remain unconnected to additional strategies for rebalancing students’ professionalism. Encouraging students to learn to think about what they need to know, when they know enough and how their new knowledge relates to their professional action and their professional identity does help. Only when students have learned to ask the right questions, can research methods – sometimes – point to the right answers. The methodological complexity of uniting knowledge, action and identity in our students’ professional becoming is lacking in the debate on research and higher education. The here presented model for scholarship of professionalism can aid this debate. Through this model, educators can focus on teaching students how to become professionals who can generate and apply new knowledge as part of a professionalism rebalancing process. This is not an easy endeavour, but we need to collectively assume this responsibility as higher education sector.

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The responsibility of higher education

This task is even more daunting when we consider that a proper, theoretically sound, accommodation strategy for professionalism has not yet been developed. I believe it is the responsibility of higher education, especially of academics in particular disciplines or professional fields, to theorise the foundations of such a strategy. Let me explain why.

To begin, I will now refer to these strategies as assimilation methodologies, which they are: methodologies to generate and use knowledge in balanced professionalism. From the 19th century onwards higher education assumed responsibility for systematic knowledge-related methodologies in line with its new scientific focus (Griffioen, 2013). Through its methodological way of working, higher education promises to provide society with powerful, declarative knowledge that can be considered true (Nowotny, 2016; Rupp, 1997). Additionally, higher education provides the renewal of the methods needed for this way of working in the wider society. Based on this responsibility, higher education has become the keeper of society’s powerful knowledge. In Bourdieu’s (1986) sense of the word, higher education is the keeper of objectified cultural capital.

Higher education also plays a central role in Bourdieu’s two other forms of cultural capital. It provides embodied capital through education at the highest level, which delivers competent professionals to society. In addition, higher education provides institutionalised cultural capital by providing the judges who grant formal qualifications to society’s citizens (see also: Pels, 2009).

Although it has become normal for higher education to play a central role in society’s cultural capital, its role in objectified capital (systematised knowledge) and in providing the related methodologies is mostly limited to declarative knowledge, as it only functions as a keeper of scientific (or academic) knowledge. However, professional knowledge encompasses four knowledge types, of which declarative knowledge is only one. With the methodological role of higher education limited to only one of the four elements of professional knowledge it has not yet taken on the full role of society’s professional knowledge keeper. This is surprising when we consider the importance of professional knowledge for our quality of live, the number of higher education alumni working in professional fields, their relevance for society, as well as the struggle for higher education’s own relevance to society (European University Association, 2019). Additionally, with its current role as provider of scientific methodologies, it is only normal that


higher education takes on the responsibility to provide methodologies for the rebalancing of professionalism as well. Only then higher education becomes the keeper of knowledge society’s needs. And higher educations’ impact on society would increase enormously.

Figure 4 Knowledge responsibilities related to professional fields

Higher education’s responsibility for professionalisms’ methodologies makes their development an academic duty, similar to the design of scientific methodologies. Let us now consider what this implies for the different types of scholarship for professionals.

As mentioned earlier, professionals working in the professional field (‘practitioners’) are responsible for renewing their professional balance through an iterative accommodation procedure that includes signalling, gathering information, integrating, creating, implementing and sharing a newly created sense of professionalism (Bottom half of Figure 4). If higher education is so ciety’s professional knowledge keeper, professionals working in higher education (‘academics’) have additional responsibilities (Top half of Figure 4). Academics provide systematised and novel underpinnings for professionalism through

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systematisation, discovery and theorisation. To systematise implies integrating insights into professional knowledge and action drawn from theory and practice. To discover implies finding new insights based on empirical research. To theorise implies generating concepts and theories based on information drawn from theory and practice. Like practitioners, academics signalise imbalance and share new insights. The academics’ scholarly responsibilities described here resonate strongly with Boyer’s (1990) model even though it is explicitly extended to professionalism. Hence, insights provided by academics must include knowledge-related methodologies for the accommodation of professional imbalance.

An epistemic culture for the professions

The responsibilities of practitioners and academics related to professional fields differ, but they must be part of a single system in which notions of professionalism are shared. Such a system is also called an epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina, 1999, p. 1): ‘Epistemic cultures are cultures that create and warrant knowledge’. In other words, an epistemic culture provides the arrangements and mechanisms which in a given field make up ‘how we know what we know’. What distinguishes an epistemic (or knowledge) culture from a professional discourse in general, is that it provides rules for what knowledge can be considered true, in addition to what actions can be considered normal and what identities can be considered acceptable. Professionals are bound by professional discourse, a social feature they create and enhance together with society (Foucault, 2001). However, not all professional fields have developed epistemic cultures that supply discursive rules for proper knowledge-based professional action. Not all professional fields have procedures through which they have conversations about knowledge and the rules the field applies to knowledge (see also Knorr Cetina, 1999). Not all professional fields have collective conversations about what methods of knowledge handling related to truth, relevance and action they consider normal, therefore not yet all fields have conversations about professionalism as such.

While higher education proposes what constitutes proper knowledge-handling in science, it has currently no substantial role in creating and enhancing epistemic cultures related to professional fields, at least not outside of the traditional professional fields of medicine and law. This is surprising. Considering their impact, scientific methodologies and methodologies for professional renewal are of similar importance to society, the difference is the directness of their impact. Where methodologies for professionalism have direct impact, methodologies for


scientific renewal require additional valorisation strategies to achieve impact in society. Higher education should become a provider of professional and scientific methodologies and therefore play both the role of provider of direct and indirect knowledge in society. Through a partnership with professional fields, higher education can collaborate on the creation of epistemic professional cultures that include not only embodied cultural capital (educational programmes) and institutionalised cultural capital (degrees) as is now the situation. This partnership must also develop collective ways to generate objectified cultural capital-based methodologies that both practitioners and academics in the epistemic professional community believe bring forth the best results of truth and relevance. An active role of higher education in this collective responsibility for professionalism must begin here and now as continuation of its historical role in society.

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Higher education as a professional field

So far I have focussed on professionalism positioned in professional fields outside of higher education. However, higher education itself also is a professional field. More accurately, it is a meta-professional field in which professionals educate professionals, whether directly with a professional profile in mind or indirectly with an academic profile in mind. Hence, higher education needs its own epistemic culture and professional rebalancing methodologies. Higher education also needs a systematic body of knowledge and practice from which to draw.

Table 1 Four types of professionals

Higher education professionals can also be divided into practitioners and academics. Higher education practitioners manage and develop all levels of the higher education organisational structure (Table 1). As professionals, they must continuously seek their own education to keep learning how to provide society with high-quality professionals and epistemic cultures. Higher education academics provide the underpinnings of higher education professionalism. They are responsible for contributing to methodologies, theories and systematic knowledge about higher education. Both types of higher education professionals draw from and contribute to the field’s body of professional theory and practice. Both signal notions of balance and imbalance in higher education’s concept of professionalism, individually and collectively. In addition, both share novel insights with the higher education epistemic community in the form of publications, presentations and teaching, as with the profession-oriented professionals (Figure 5).


Figure 5 Knowledge responsibilities in higher education as a professional field

However, in the Netherlands, higher education’s epistemic culture still is quite underdeveloped. The field includes many practitioners who work as managers, educationalists or policy officers, but many members of this group are not connected to the international body of higher education knowledge, and very few publish or teach about higher education. Furthermore, Dutch higher education has virtually no academics who specialise in higher education. We rely almost entirely on the international systematic body of higher education theory and practice. There are no developed, shared Dutch methodologies for renewing professionalism in higher education, so when the Minister of Education (Ministry of Education, 2019) suggested in a recent presentation that higher education innovation is lacking in the Dutch system, I was not in the least surprised.

Together, we must change this status quo. Only if we consider higher education practitioners and academics as professionals with their own responsibilities (and limitations) related to higher education professionalism, only if we help them embody the relevant scholarship for their roles through higher education focussed educational tracks and only if we collectively create a higher education epistemic culture that provides the necessary objectified cultural capital can we provide the higher education we have promised our society. Higher education

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itself needs to become a epistemic professional culture. This is a lifelong collective process of becoming. As the chair of Higher Education, Research & Innovation, I promise to play my part in bringing higher education to the next professional and epistemic level.


The Higher Education, Research & Innovation Research Programme 2018-2023

An important way to do so it through the HERI research programme. This programme is characterised by long-term studies aimed at achieving a better understanding of higher education practice as a foundation for providing epistemic and professional guidelines. It aims to get close to actual practices and perceptions of students and colleagues and therefore open up sides of higher education that normally stay black boxed or are taken for granted (Foucault, 2001; Knorr Cetina, 1999; Latour, Woolgar, & Salk, 1986). At the same time, HERI research stands in the international tradition of multi-disciplinary higher education research and integrates disciplinary perspectives ranging from philosophy to educational science, and from sociology to organisation studies.

The HERI group will focus on three levels of professionalism in higher education: the microlevel of student development; the mesolevel of curriculum development and the macrolevel of organisational and institutional policy development.

The programme’s microlevel focus centres around the development of balanced professionals, which are both our students as future practitioners well as our colleagues working in higher education. Although professionalism consists of professional action, knowledge and identity, it is unclear how higher education aids students to become balanced professionals with higher education degrees. This line of research builds on notions of professional identity development, will increase insights into knowledge perceptions and provides insights into the development of professionals’ problem-solving strategies over time. Through multi-method and longitudinal research, this line of research will lay the foundation for methodologies for accommodation of professionalism. In addition, it will provide insight into the characteristics of young professionals learning such methods. Last September, the ‘Knowledge, Practice and Research Project’ started with 100 AUAS students from the Creative Business, Physical Therapy, Aviation and Social Work programmes, who will be followed throughout their four years of undergraduate studies to see how the balance in their professionalism changes over time.

The mesolevel focusses on the integration of professional knowledge, action and identity into the design of higher education curricula. While it is unclear what such an accommodation methodology would consist of, it is almost as unclear what a curriculum that educates young professionals in such a methodology would

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look like. It is even more unclear how such a curriculum is collectively designed by lecturers, researchers and students. Thus, this line of research focusses on the design, characteristics and effects of integrated higher education curricula and will provide insight into the process of curriculum design and the establishment of an integrated curriculum. An example of a project part of this focus is the ‘To Create Tomorrow Together Project’ in which 15 educational programmes across AUAS receive assistance in the redesign of their curricula. This project is financed by the Ministry of Education through a Comenius Leadership Fellowship grant.

The macrolevel focusses on on the development of higher education institutions’ organisation and their epistemic cultures. As higher education professionals, both practitioners and academics, we must work together to create an epistemic culture within higher education through which we can innovate ourselves and in turn help to innovate professional fields in society. Creating an higher education epistemic culture involves critically and empirically considering our own practices. The macro perspective of the HERI research is aimed at providing this critical, empirical focus through the lens of higher education institutes as products of the synergy of research and education. This line of research will provide insights into our actual higher education practices, which can be used as input for policy and organisational debates, as well as for organisational change. An example of the macro focus is the ‘Institutional Logics Project’ in which the realisation of the synergy between research and education in six Dutch universities of applied sciences is studied. This project is financed together with Rotterdam UAS.

Furthermore, the HERI colleagues will stimulate higher education colleagues to consider themselves higher education practitioners. As a professor of higher education, I will remain an active advocate to enlarge the group of higher education academics in this country.


Conclusion

We need to start creating what we deserve in this society. Future professionals deserve to learn how to systematically recreate themselves when necessary. Therefore, as higher education professionals, we must do more than teach our students the rules of thumb about sample sizes or how to format APA citations correctly. These ‘research tricks’ are not the essence of rebalancing professionalism. They are not the essence of professional knowledge. Honestly, they are not even the essence of conducting research. Future professionals should instead learn how to handle the four types of professional knowledge and rebalance their professional actions while taking their professional identities into account. That is the foundation of professional innovation, professional becoming and lifelong learning in all fields.

Second, higher education deserves to consider itself a professional field that needs practitioners and academics who focus on higher education’s processes and its underpinnings through a body of knowledge. Higher education deserves the acknowledgement that it has, needs and develops its own professional base – and that this takes time, effort and money. In particular, Dutch higher education deserves more higher education academics who can collectively lead the creation of an epistemic culture of higher education.

And finally, society deserves a higher education that considers itself a body of professionals who recognise professional imbalance and know how to collaborate to innovate professionalism through rebalancing. Society also deserves higher education that not only focuses on declarative knowledge, but considers itself the keeper of all types of knowledge. Moreover, society deserves higher education that is courageous enough to state what we collectively know, what methods are certain or uncertain regarding professional knowledge and is brave enough to share this responsibility with professionals in professional fields.

It is time for us to collectively start creating what we deserve as a Dutch society.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the board of AUAS, especially Prof. Dr. Jean Tillie and Prof. Dr. Huib de Jong, for providing me with the opportunities that come with my position as the chair of HERI. I have enjoyed the many conversations so far about the role of higher education in society, as well as about the possibilities that the connection between education, research and professional action can bring to AUAS. I look forward to continuing these debates the coming years.

I would also like to thank my colleagues and students at AUAS and other higher education institutes for providing me and my team access to your professionalism. Without you all, we would not have a higher education field to study or to improve.

Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues on the HERI team. Thank you for your great efforts, enthusiasm and critical stances. Together, we help to build our higher education epistemic culture.

Many thanks to my national and international colleagues of whom many have become friends. For the last 15 years, you have been my home away from home, sometimes literally when you provided me with office space to escape from Amsterdam for a while, but most of the time through your kind interactions, sharp debates at conferences and wonderful celebrations. I am so happy that many of you are present here today.

Finally, I would like to thank my family: my mum and dad, who still support me no matter what, and my brothers and in-laws, who are always there when they are needed. To Pam, Mauk, Teun and Suus, thank you for being the wonderful people you are. Just keep believing you can become whatever you would like to be. Joep, thank you for sharing this great life with me.

I have said.


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32 DIDI GRIFF IOEN

Bio

Didi Griffioen has been university-wide professor of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation (HERI), since June 2018. She focuses on more effectively linking education, research, and professional practice in higher education. Transforming Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) into a knowledge institution assumes, at the greatest degree, that the integration of education, research, and professional action is necessary to better serve professional education. At the very least, it requires effective collaboration among education, research, and professional fields. Neither collaboration nor integration happen automatically, and both require the reconsideration of what education, research, and professional conduct are exactly. Didi plays a diverse and active role in the realization of this integration.

Didi graduated from the Academy for Physical Education & Sports at AUAS (BSc, 1998) before completing degree programmes at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in Educational Sciences (drs., 2005), Philosophy (MA, 2005), and Educational Sciences (ResMSc, 2012). During her studies, she served as president of UvA’s Central Student Council and fulfilled many other active roles at the faculty and department levels.

In 2013, she obtained her doctorate from the University of Amsterdam after completing her thesis with the title ‘Research in Higher Professional Education; A Staff Perspective’. Her doctorate trajectory was part of her work as senior policy officer for research and education at AUAS. Since 2015, she is the programme leader for Research in Education and is tasked with helping operationalise and implement AUAS’s strategic plan to further connect research and education. The strategic programme is currently closely connected to the HERI research programme as well as to AUAS strategic policy developments. Her working life can be characterized by a combination of research, strategy, and development of higher education.

Didi is currently the chair of the higher education special interest group of the Netherlands Educational Research Association (VOR-HO) as well as a trustee and member of the governing council of the British Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE). She is co-editor of the Higher Education eJournal for Learning & Teaching.

Didi is the partner of Joep Fessl and the mother of Pam, Mauk, Teun, and Suus.

COVER IMAGE

M.C. Escher’s “Reptiles” © 2019

The M.C. Escher Company B.V. - The Netherlands.

All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com

Most higher education alumni work in professional fi elds, making higher education responsible for the provision of high-quality professionalism throughout society. However, higher education does not yet fulfi l its role as a provider of methodologies for the renewal of professionalism.In this lecture, Didi Griffi oen outlines the characteristics of professionalism, asserting that current methodologies for the continuous renewal of different elements of professionalism are lacking. By positioning itself as provider of these methodologies, higher education can play a more relevant role in society while also contributing to its own professional renewal and innovativeness.

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