어느 한 지방 전문대 체육계열 교수의 역할 혼란과 생존 전략에 관한 문화기술지 = An Ethnographic Study on Role Confusion and Survival Strategies of a Physical Education Professor at a Korean Vocational College

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This ethnographic study investigates how a professor in the physical education department at a vocational college in South Korea carries out their professional duties and constructs their role identity and survival strategies in response to the rapidly evolving environment of vocational higher education. Using a cultural ethnographic approach, the study was conducted over three months, from May to July 2025, through in-depth interviews and participant observation. The findings reveal that the participant’s daily tasks involve a multilayered structure of teaching, research, administrative work, and external collaboration, positioning the professor as a hybrid laborer operating across the blurred boundary between educator and institutional operator. Notably, responsibilities such as student recruitment, employment support, project execution (e.g., RISE program), and performance-based administrative reporting have shifted the professor’s role from a traditional academic focus to that of a key actor in institutional survival. These practices are not simply routine tasks but constitute culturally embedded responses to structural demands, involving ongoing negotiations around autonomy, professional meaning, and identity. The study illustrates how these conditions result in role overload, emotional labor, and professional identity fragmentation—phenomena explained through the lens of role overload theory and the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model. Through a thick description of the lived experience of one vocational college professor, this study provides a nuanced understanding of how faculty in vocational higher education navigate structural pressures, while also offering a cultural framework for critically examining identity transformation in precarious educational contexts.