University professors’ identities: between the instituted and the desire

Abstract

This document shares the experience of reflecting about oneself as a university professor, relationships with others and the workplace, so as to visualize how teaching practice and professional identity are determined. This exercise poses a dual challenge. On one hand, university teachers reveal their own image regarding their ideas, feelings, wishes and aspirations about their professional practice; on the other, they reflect on the dynamics that prevails at the university. From this standpoint, the question Who am I as a university professor?” emerged. A group of nine full-time professors who teach at a public University in the South-Southwest region of Mexico answered this question. They narrate how they ventured into teaching and what their teaching practice at the university has led to. Their narratives describe a strong bond and tension between the teacher as a person and the hegemonic teacher-identity. The latter leads to teachers having captive lives in institutions that prescribe what each one must do, even when that means to undergo over and over dispossessions, vexations, and adaptations. Nevertheless, university teachers have learned to establish alliances to fulfill what the figures in power demand, to show indifference towards others, because they do not matter enough in order to guarantee the common welfare.