Being and Becoming: Pracademia, Positionality and Praxis

Abstract

The emergence of pracademia—and of the pracademic as a category of professional identity—is contested, poorly defined, and conceptually problematic. Having spent over two decades as an educational practitioner and now situated within the academy following my doctorate, I find myself inhabiting a space of professional transition. Yet, the literature surrounding pracademia, particularly within the field of education, remains limited and inconsistent in its attempts to define and understand these liminal spaces and those who occupy them. This paper takes as its research problem the need to more clearly articulate and examine the nature of pracademia as both a conceptual and lived space. Using a reflexive, autoethnographic approach, this study draws upon my own shifting identity as a lens through which to explore the construction of the pracademic self. Employing Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, I interrogate the intersections of symbolic violence, doxa, and the distribution of capital across the social fields of practice and academia. Key findings suggest that identity within this space is fluid and contingent, shaped by the tensions and affordances of both academic and practitioner worlds. Pracademia emerges as a site of rupture and possibility, formed within the imperceptibly thin overlaps of adjacent social fields, and sustained through the lived experience of pracademics themselves. Ultimately, the paper argues that despite the tensions and contradictions inherent in the pracademic condition, pracademia serves to enrich both the academy and the field of practice. In doing so, it opens up new ways of thinking about professional identity, knowledge production, and the permeability of institutional boundaries.