The Teaching Occupation in Learning societies: A Global Ethnography of Occupational Boundary Work

1. VET & Culture Research Network 2012Shaping the futures of (vocational) education and work – commitment of VET and VET research The Teaching Occupation in Learning societies: A Global Ethnography of Occupational Boundary Work Beatrix Niemeyer, Flensburg University, Germany Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012 http://engineerswithoutfears.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/globalisation-does-it-suck.html VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

2. The teaching occupation in learning societies • Our agenda: • What is the teaching occupation in globalised lifelong learning regimes? • What happens to occupational boundaries when teaching is reordered? • What is the impact on teaching identities, capacities, work practices, cultures and politics in working life? • What are the implications of re-spatialising teaching work for globally distributed human service work? VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

3. Aims and outcomes This project investigates the teaching occupationin learning societies. It questions established associations between learning and schools. It argues that lifelong learning reforms re-order teaching across diverse learning spaces. These spaces are located in and between education institutions, workplaces, community settings, social webs and scales. These contextual shifts impact on teacher capacities, identities, supply and recruitment. They involve more work across boundaries that is oriented towards human service workrequired in global economies. Our concept of ‘educational work’names the transhistorical and cross-cultural labour that yields learning. It is formed in specific space-times, distinguished by particular terms, conditions, relationships and cultures, which define the politics and practices of work. The project uses cases to investigate the re-formation of work that yields learning, occupational boundary work and politics in working life, to see practical implications for educators and for globally distributed human service work as an occupational formation. VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

4. ‘Educational work’ … is a particular form of occupational boundary work that negotiates and enacts agreements about boundaries and contents of educational space-times Makes, orients, fixes and enacts spaces that yield learning. Helps build individual and collective capacities for social practice – for work, for living together and for using power responsibly. Secures democracy by enabling judgment, reason & care Ensures human resources necessary for transition and transformation VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

5. ‘Educational work’ … names a moral and political agenda Politische bildung The process of educating human beings so they can relate themselves to the wider world and keep this in mind when making decisions about what they do – how they make ‘we’, exercise their agency and and use power responsibly in everyday life. Care work The public ethos of reproductive labour that remakes societies by enacting care and support that enables learning in human service work Transformative work The work of educating that builds individual capacities for social practice that also become property of the collective. VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

6. Perspectives on globalisation http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2008/04/column-the-political-threats-to-globalisation/#axzz1oI2ZE9I9 ‘Touchdown’ at different scales • Travelling reforms and local spaces: The labour of localising or endogenizing global dynamics in the national space. • Denationalizing national spaces and practices: The labour of re-presenting and de-coding institutions and practices that may still seem to be national but are increasingly oriented to the needs of global economic actors. • Re-forming occupational and gender orders: The labour and politics of renegotiating educational spaces, boundaries and contents. VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

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8. The cases: • The case focuses on the re-demarcation of the territory of social and health care teachers • within the conditions of the Finnish welfare state change. • Investigates how new occupational categories create new types of educational workers in • In the Finnish VET sector. • Analyses a national policy debate aobut the indriduction of newer competencies and qualifications for social and health care ducators to explore the reproduction of a gendered • VET teacher hierarchy in the making. • The case shows how some reductions of regulation or less government concerning the ‚heart land‘ of educational work are negotiated among policy actors and VET stakeholders • and how the claims for ‚flexible recruitment‘ are re-ordering the gendered occupational • Territories, educational levels/grades and teacher collectives by re-inventing a level-specific • Teacher hierarchy. • Lea Henriksson: Flexible Teacher Recruitment in Finnish Health Care education VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

9. The cases: Sally Newman: The Educational Work of Gouvernesses on Australia‘s Remote Cattle Stations - Draws critical attention to educational workers who are located in spaces and places outside institutionalised educational sites. - Investigates work of governesses on Australia‘s remote cattle stations. These cattle stations occupy vast tracts of land in the outback, and form part of global food supply chains, supplying meat to countries around the world. - The governess occupies a unique position within the occupational and social hierarchy of the station. She lives and works in the same domestic space as the family/employer, unlike other station employees, and is valued for her success in managing the social and spatial dynamics of power both with the student/children and the employer/family. - Focuses on the negotiation of boundaries between domestid/public spaces, paid/unpaid, affective and educational labour involved in governess roles. VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

10. The cases: • Cynthia Joseph: Malaysian Migrant Educational Workers in Ausltralia • Recent research on population flows in Australia reveals a surprising pattern of feminisation • and asianisation in skilled migration programs. What motivates these women to leave their • places of origin and how do they negotiate new identities in new workplaces? • Examines the identity practices of a group of Malaysian skilled migrant women working • in the Australian education sector; • Focuses on the ways in which these migrant women draw on multiple cultural and • educational resources in the (re-)making of their identities as transnational educational • workers. • These women use essentialist definitions of binaries that are located within • boundaries (Asian/Malaysian, Australian/Western, Chinese, Muslim, Indian) in coming to • understand their transantional material realities as migrant educational workers. Yet at the • same time, their identities are located at the interplay of structure and agency. • Boundary work as a form of ‚educational work‘ which supports self-work and working • with others by mobilising resources of space/time, knowledge and sociality. VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

11. The cases: • The Australian Government has increased its intake of skilled migrants to help ease • skills shortages in cities, and in regional and remote areas. What happens to these migrants, • their spouses and fmailies? • Research on migration flows tends to focus on the visa holder or skilled migrant, with little • attention paid to accompanying spouses. • Series of collective memory workshops with a gourp of migrant women now living and • working in Shepparton as partners of skilled migrants. • ‚Transnational belonging‘ and ‚educational work‘ create a framework in which to value the • forms of labour undertaken by these women as part of the settlement process. This work • is carried out in spaces in which the women participate, and in the ones they create as they • negotiate the material and metaphorical boundaries that define their position and identities. • These boundaries include visa categories and professional registration, the ocnditions of • local labour markets, and barriers of geography. • Argues for the recognition of this educational work of belonging, or learning to participate • and become a citizen. Anita Devos: The Educational Work of Migration VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

12. The cases: Beatrix Niemeyer: Boundary Work between Education and Economy • examines the impact of European social inclusion policy on educational work in Germany; • how the Lisbon commitment for a European knowledge society and the policy of Lifelong • Learning and Social Inclusion affect the German educational system and its teaching • practices; • the boundary zone between work and education, e. g. career guidance programs • shifting the boundaries between school and work, and general and vocational education. • These changes in the established educational system of Germany are hardly noticed or • discussed in education and education research. However these system change have severely • affected the work practice of educational staff inside and outside of schools as they have • to navigate this emerging boundary zone. This space that is opening up with transition • programs also sits in-between the established boundaries of academic disciplines and • teacher training programs, as an in-between space of educational work which • is not subject to normal regulation in terms of curriculum, teacher preparation, • employment conditions. VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

13. Conclusions: • Examples tell stories about how this building of relationships/work of belonging is re-ordered and re-interpreted in the respective cultural contexts • They illustrate differing modes and differing stades of „Vergesellschaftung“/socialisation of this type of educational work and • teach lessons in terms of gender relations and concepts of space, time. VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

14. Conclusions: • Globalisation challenges educational work: • Not to be reduced to qualification - How significant are national qualification frameworks? • Need to enable participation and belonging – education as the task of building relationship and orientation • Educational boundary work : • A. work that enables to negotiate boundaries of space, time, culture, nation, occupations, etc. They affect gender relations / gender regimes, time regimes, space and territories, etc. • B. re-working the boundaries between educational professions/occupations as they have been established alongside with educational institutions of the nation state. This includes processes of flexiblisation / de-institutionalisation of established learning spaces and processes of de-professionalisation of teachers and other educational professionals VET & Culture Workshop, Wuppertal, 31. 8. 2012

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