Shifting Professional Identities and Perspectives: Negotiating Learning Transitions from the Field of Public Health

Research on the intersection of adult learning, transitions and identity has largely focused on unidirectional changes such as moving from higher education to the workplace. Recently there has been a call to move beyond such linear conceptions and to acknowledge that learning transitions are more complex requiring nuanced studies of their multidirectional and multilevel characteristics as individuals in late modernity engage in transformations nested within broader social changes and flux. This paper outlines a current qualitative longitudinal study focusing on the learning transitions of a group of practitioners from clinical backgrounds as they undertake a professional doctorate in population health. The study draws on the concepts of vertical and horizontal transitions to trace shifting understandings of the practitioners as they seek to negotiate their professional identities and practices through time and space into becoming senior public health professionals. Their subjective responses are explored as positioned within individual life histories and larger narratives of transformation in the field of public health and higher education.