Should we trust the university casual academic? A narrative inquiry case study

Abstract

This study explores how trust is established by a casual academic working at a Malaysian public university. Narrative data was collected through a series of semi-structured interviews with a case participant, Dinah. The data was analyzed in light of priori themes derived from existing literature about casual academics at the university. The analysis illustrated two themes of how trust is established. First, trust is established through the entrepreneurial self, seen through the recognition of one’s pedagogical knowledge and classroom experience. Second, trust is established through a combination of compliance and non-compliance. The former refers to meeting the expectations of the institution, while the latter refers to the casual academic’s personal rationalization of what is deemed best for the students. Based on these findings, trust for the casual academic was found to be a multidimensional construct that was not necessarily bound to performative metrics, unlike their full-time counterparts. Furthermore, due to grey areas in oversight, there may be more opportunities for casual academics to teach on the basis of morality.