Language and learning advisors as a valuable but under-recognised workforce in higher education: a Bourdieuian analysis of their professional development in international education

ABSTRACT

Language and learning advisors (LLAs) play a vital role in supporting the academic development of a fast-growing population of international students. This paper tackles the professional development practices for LLAs and barriers to their professional development. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, the paper addresses the mutual interactions between the work environment and LLAs’ thinking and actions regarding providing language and learning advice to international students. The analysis of 44 semi-structured interviews with LLAs from 18 institutions shows that there was a scarcity of targeted professional development opportunities for LLAs to improve their expertise directly related to international students and internationalisation of education. Financial shortage, time constraints, casualisation conditions, managerial issues, academic to professional employment re-classification for LLAs and the ongoing marginalisation of LLAs have created unfavourable contexts for LLAs’ professional development. The paper points out the critical need to create better work conditions for LLAs, to ensure more investment in creating targeted opportunities for LLAs’ professional development and to provide more resources and attention to support their enactment of agency and development of professional capacities.

KEYWORDS:

• Language and learning advisor
• field and habitus
• professional development
• international education
• international students

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the anonymous Reviewers for their very helpful comments which help us considerably improve this paper. We acknowledge with thanks the participants for the valuable contributions to this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ly Thi Tran http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6543-6559

Tran Le Huu Nghia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5741-4904

Truc Thi Thanh Le http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6054-884X

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge with thanks the funding from the Australian Research Council for this research: [Grant Number DE140101473].