Exploring agency in marginalised occupations: School administrative clerks’ deployment of “participatory capital” in establishing practice-based agency

Aslam Fataar,Abdullah Bayat

doi:10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18

Abstract

Popular conceptions of school administrative clerks and school secretaries imply that they have little agency because they are deemed as subordinate support staff. However, the literature across a range of fields suggests that these subordinates exercise agency. We set out in this article to explore the workings of subordinate agency. The article suggests that it is through their involvement and interaction in the socio-cultural context of the school that school administrative clerks, are able to expand the range of their agency and thereby reposition themselves at school. We employ the analytical construct ‘participatory capital’ to analyse how these clerks establish their agency and renegotiate their roles and places in the school. Based on a qualitative research study, we interviewed and observed three purposively selected administrative clerks in three primary schools in Cape Town. This article argues that, while the occupational identity of administrative clerks remains one of subordination within the bureaucratic discourse and their places of work, the selected school administrative clerks were able to extend the scope of their agency through their participatory capital.

Highlights

They occupy subordinate positions, school administrative clerks have been described as crucial to the functioning of public schools (Casanova, 1991)
We showed that school administrative clerks’ purposeful interaction in the sociocultural contexts of the school facilitated their accumulation of participatory capital, which they deployed in augmenting their agency and sculpting a unique professional identity for themselves
Their participatory capital enabled them to enact professional practices that went beyond the subordinate and support status of their occupational identity, to the extent that their principals, teachers and local district officials acknowledged them as valued professionals

Summary

Introduction

They occupy subordinate positions, school administrative clerks have been described as crucial to the functioning of public schools (Casanova, 1991). Interaction within the particular sociocultural context of a school enables a participant such as an administrative clerk to learn the discourses that circulate in that school and the subject positions that are made available through these discourses, as well as to understand the broader contextual issues facing that school (such as its financial position and student throughput) and to cultivate relationships with other participants (such as teachers, the principal and the students) (Edwards, 2011; Lave & Wenger, 1991) What this framework emphasises is that the accumulation of resources, positions and knowledge is crucial to understanding how participatory capital is cultivated and agency executed. We start the data-based sections of the article with a discussion on how the selected school administrative clerks go about building and enhancing their participatory capital

Building participatory capital

Deploying participatory capital in their school management team meetings

Discussion

Conclusion