Abstract
This paper suggests that the sociological theory of emotional labour is a useful way to interpret how teaching practices in Higher Education often involve the simultaneous management of both staff and student wellbeing. This paper applies Berry and Cassidy’s Higher Education Emotional Labour model (2013) to the management of extension requests. We put forward a case study of processing a significant number of extension requests in a short space of time in a large, first year Health Sciences topic. We consider the responsibilities and risks for staff and students in this scenario, and ponder the implications for future practice and pedagogy. We argue that student and staff wellbeing must always be considered as interrelated, and that academic administrative procedures need to be developed with this mind.
Highlights
Background to topic and assessmentThe topic that forms the basis of this case study is a core first year Bachelor of Health Sciences topic offered through Flinders University, a large metropolitan university in Adelaide, South Australia
In a recent study Berry and Cassidy (2013) suggest that the levels of emotional labour encapsulated within the role of university teachers impacts on teachers’ wellbeing by increasing levels of job related stress and further, evolving into a cyclic relationship with consequences that impact on student wellbeing, reflected in “student satisfaction, student performance and student retention” (p. 33). They call this the Higher Education Emotional Labour (HEEL) model, which we argue can be applied to better understand the micro level decisions that are made by staff and students in the day-to-day administrative negotiations about learning activities
After considering the practice of extension management to be a form of emotional labour, we decided to review all the extension requests made in relation to one piece of assessment in a large, first year topic which had been run in Semester 2 (August to November) 2014, in order to consider the relationship between the process in place for extension management and the emotional wellbeing of staff and students
Summary
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild developed the concept of emotional labour in her book, entitled The Managed Heart (1983, reprinted in 2012). There is a growing acknowledgement within academic literature of the high levels of emotion work required in teaching (cf Gallant, 2013; Hargreaves, 1998; O’Connor, 2008) This reflects a similar body of evidence that has demonstrated the role of emotional labour in health professional practice (cf Smith, 2012; Theodosius, 2008; Williams, 2012). 2011; Woods, 2010), there is little that reflects on specific contexts and how procedural aspects of teaching might inherently involve emotional risks for both students and staff This Practice Report looks at the administrative task of managing assignment extension requests as a call for more research into the ways that academics are engaged in the cycle of student and staff wellbeing in their teaching practices. As Hochschild (2012) suggested, within the HE institution, our emotion work is never autonomous as “[m]any people and objects, arranged according to institutional rule and custom, together accomplish the act” (p. 49)
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