James Reid

Redefining ‘Employability’ as something to be achieved: utilising Tronto’s conceptual framework of care to refocus the debate

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute a broader understanding of the complexity in relationships of power and responsibility in employability in higher education contexts and posits a conceptual framework for employability as a process, something to be achieved. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper arises from experience of and research into placement practices and draws upon Joan Tronto’s feminist epistemology (1993, 2012) to argue for a critical understanding of employability. Findings – There is little in the literature that discusses employability as a process involving moral and political work. The conceptual framework offers a process of five phases to provide a foundation for understanding employability that moves beyond a focus on skills and attributes. Research limitations/implications – The conceptual framework enables all employability professionals, including researchers, to think beyond skills and attributes for employment to explore the implications of the relat...

Primary Teachers, Inspection and the Silencing of the Ethic of Care

This book offers a unique and critical explication of teachers’ understanding and experience of care during a period of regulatory scrutiny and ‘notice to improve’. Written following research in a primary school in the north of England, it draws on the findings of an institutional ethnography to reveal the mediation of the teachers’ everyday work.

Reflexivity and Praxis: The Redress of “I” Poems in Revealing Standpoint

Abstract This chapter explores researcher reflexivity developed during an institutional ethnography (IE; Smith, 2005) of a primary school. It illustrates the use of a narrative method, “The Listening Guide” (Mauthner & Doucet, 2008), in particular my production of an “I” poem after being interviewed by research participants. This promotes an ethical approach to researcher reflexivity, enabling an explicit analysis of the researcher’s subjectivities in the use of ethnographic methods and a deeper understanding of privilege and power on the part of the researcher. The approach works to negate any researcher authority over the textual representations of the research participants and objectification of them. Consideration is given to the tensions between the sociological basis of IE and how this is troubled by particular approaches to narrative production. The point of reflection in institutional ethnography is not to learn about the researcher per se, but to learn about the researcher’s location in the “relations of ruling” (Smith, 2005), that is, the researcher’s standpoint. There are particular tensions for institutional ethnographers in seeking to avoid objectification of participants through both “institutional capture” and “privileged irresponsibility,” specifically; the imposition of researcher subjectivities in listening for, asking about, and producing texts. A significant concern, for example, in this research context is the researcher’s place and privilege in the education hierarchy. I argue that it is precisely because of the troubling nature of the Listening Guide and “I” poems that they can be utilized by institutional ethnographers in revealing and analyzing the co-ordination of social relations.

Standpoint: Using Bourdieu to Understand IE and the Researcher’s Relation with Knowledge Generation

Abstract In this chapter, I highlight the need to turn the institutional ethnography (IE) lens of enquiry onto IE itself, and consequently, the importance for institutional ethnographers to attend to their standpoint in taking up and activating their understanding of IE. Many, including Wise and Stanley (1990) and Walby (2007), celebrate Smith’s sociology but raise important ontological and epistemological questions about IE’s own recursive power. While IE has developed from a critique of wider sociological inquiry, it is troubled by the institutional ethnographer’s own standpont when using IE uncritically, without reflexivity of their standpoint in relation with IE and knowledge generation. IE stands in relation between the researcher and the everyday of the research participants in a local research context that is particular and plural, situated and dynamic. The chapter highlights a particular critique by Dorothy Smith of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a “blobontology,” yet considers the theoretical similarities between Smith and Bourdieu. I argue that institutional ethnographers and IE itself are not be immune from the kinds of unravelling that Smith undertakes of other approaches to sociological inquiry. Researcher standpoint, reflexivity, and their relation to knowledge generation are therefore critical aspects of approach without which there is potential to “other” and develop morally questionable representations of people that diminishes the actuality of their subjective experience.

Engaging with childhood: Student placements and the employability agenda:

Employability is an organising narrative within the global, neoliberal economic discourse, with relevance across different educational contexts. Most attention is paid to attaining the knowledge and skills relevant to gain employment and competitive advantage. This is particularly concerning in university programmes that develop professionals who work with children. Placements are a common approach to embedding employability within university curricula. This article explores student placements in primary school settings in the north of England. Analysis considers students’ engagement with their own learning and with the children who are essential to that learning, who may be marginalised as a feature of it.