Foundations of a Developmental Framework for Professional Staff in Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter is a discussion of personal and behavioral dispositions that are foundational elements for conceptualizing a framework of career development for professional staff at a US research-intensive university. Using narrative inquiry to draw meaning from the stories told by three advanced-degreed professional women staff, their experiences are analyzed using career competencies proposed by Kuijpers et al. (The Career Development Quarterly, 55(2):168–178, 2006). The analysis examines the narrators’ use of reflection on personal capacities and motives, exploration of career possibilities, orientation to plan and act, and self-presentation. In exploring to the ways in which those professional staff carry out their work, six shared attributes that shaped their career trajectories and success emerged: issue/cause-oriented effort, motivation for broad impact, adaptability to new environments, orientation to learn, deliberate professional presence, and bias for collaborative thought and action. The findings propose a framework of three developmental stages of the professional staffer: gaining insight and building commitment, growth and skills refinement, and competence and contribution. The framework is discussed against Kegan’s order of consciousness theory (1982 and 1994). The study suggests further examination of the implications of gender and ethnic identity in the careers of professional staff at universities in the United States.