VietTESOL International Convention 2026

Professional growth in higher education is often celebrated as aspiration, commitment, and academic maturity; however, it can become a demanding script that lecturers are expected to perform. This duoethnographic study examines how five lecturer-researchers in Vietnamese higher education narrate their academic growth movement. Guided by Ball’s concept of academic performativity and Positioning Theory, the study reads academic growth as institutionally organised and relationally mediated rather than as a purely individual achievement. The findings show that publication, doctoral progression, and research productivity function as visible signs of worth, narrowing what counts as a legitimate academic life. At the same time, lecturers are differently positioned within these pressures: some are drawn into research through support and recognition, while others encounter it through deficiency, delay, obligation, or moral responsibility. Passion and pressure, therefore, are not opposites. They coexist within unequal conditions shaped by mentoring, emotional safety, care responsibilities, professional timing, and institutional culture. The study argues that higher education rewards selective forms of growth while obscuring the uneven conditions under which lecturers are expected to become.