Grappling with pracademia in education: Forms, functions, and futures

This chapter begins by critically examining the origins and possibilities of the concepts of the pracademic and pracademia as both an identity marker and space of operation respectively. Drawing upon the previous scholarly work and reflections of the authors, broader themes and possibilities relating to the form, function, and future of pracademic identities and spaces are explored. Exploring the identities and spaces of pracademia through the lenses of power and agency (Friesen Journal of Professional Capital and Community 7(1):71–82, 2022) emphasises this process of exploration as sense-making and emancipatory in nature. It reveals new insights into forms, functions, and possible futures of the pracademic and pracademia.

This chapter concludes by highlighting how greater conceptualisation of pracademia and the pracademic in the field of education offers both a reflective and futures-oriented framework that can be applied to the interaction of policy, practice, and research, while also speaking to broader concerns of the role and purpose of higher education and the work of those predominantly based in higher education settings for broader society. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.