Navigating my transitioning professional identity : an autoethnography of a Muslim woman

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand my trasitioning professional identity as a Muslim Woman. The focus of this qualitative study was the navigation of my transitioning professional identity as a Muslim woman. The purpose of this study was to understand and interpret my experiences as a Muslim woman during my educational journey from religious education into a secular higher educational institution and the resulting process of professional identity change, (Travellion 2018). During this journey I identified a gap, where my Islamic environment was my confort zone but not my environment for professional growth. I employed the Interpretivist paradigm as epistemological stance of my study. Theoretically, the study was framed by a conceptual framework which I designed by merging the tenets of the Possible Selves theory (Marcus & Nurius, 1986) and the Johari Window model (Chapman, 2003). I chose autoethnography as research design in which I generated data including my personal narratives, artefacts, memory work and my researcher’s journal. Co-constructors were identified and asked to verify my narratives to ensure the trustworthiness of this study. While analysing my data, I used a thematic analysis approach where I would read my data multiple times to recognise suitable themes to provide a response to my research questions. The findings of this study highlighted how my personal identity construction and all influences thereon influenced my professional identity especially from past experiences and my cultural and religious background. I had to learn to adapt and accept intrinsic and extrinsic factors for a continuously developing professional identity within various contexts