Rhythm-based Analysis As A Different Way Of Viewing Work Life In A School
Author(s):
Jacob Clausen (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
32. Organizational Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

32 SES 14, Methodology of Organizational Education Research

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-25
15:30-17:00
Room:
K3.18
Chair:
Susanne Maria Weber

Contribution

This abstract is about rhythms and how professionals struggle to balance two categories of rhythms in a public school. The teachers at this school clearly expressed that they had a common denominator in regards to their work life, being that they did not have enough time to do their work. Their understanding of time were always audible and they were very verbal about their frustrations in relation to time (pressure).  The full article is about rhythms in a specific public school as a way to gather a new perspective on work life.

Leaders and managers of the welfare professionals can hopefully gain a new perspective and understanding of the daily grind they know so well by reading this article. It may lead to a new inspiring dialogue between leaders of public schools and partly the professionals they employ and partly the management of the schools situated in the municipalities.

The empirical findings is based on a large variety of observations in class rooms, staff room, break time and the general work life of the teachers and pedagogues present at this public school in the vicinity of Copenhagen. It is no coincidence that a rhythm-based analysis is chosen when time and tempo of the welfare professionals is to be examined. By looking at that fact from a rhythm-based perspective it brings a much more clear overview on how to dissect organizational behavior because there is two kinds of rhythms which theoretically is supported by Lefebvre (2004) such as mechanical and organic rhythms. In this article I will examine how two different categories of rhythms and their related temporalities at the same time both distract and condition each other and how it affects perception of time.

Rosa (2013) states that the society is controlled by a strict time-regime which certainly fits as a context-setter for these empirical findings. Add in that the welfare professionals in schools were subjected to a new policy (law 409, 2013) were leaders in schools now decided teacher’s working time. Temporality is controlled by different objects of time such as calendars and clocks (Birth, 2012) and in this case for example the school’s clock and the teacher’s weekly schedule. Even though we are fully aware that one hour for instance is the same no matter the context or the emotion (Adam, p.38), it is a fact by ratification of law 409 (2013) that the teachers are obligated to stay longer at their workplace and is scheduled with more lessons. That has influenced the rhythms in a certain way which became evident the first day I walked through the door.

Method

First of I made an observation study where I shadowed different teachers and furthermore were situated in the staff room and at the playground during breaktimes. I had an open approach to my observation study and had the understanding that I wanted to discover how staff at a public school defined and perceived logics of time. I quickly discovered that rhythms could be an interesting way of approaching the empirical findings. I was a the school for a duration of three weeks in total in a span of three quarters of a year. Secondly I interviewed five teachers were i used my findings in the observation study to design some of the questions because I had by then tuned in my view points in the observation study. The interview was executed in the end of my stay at the school. Overall I used a sequential mixed design which made the most sense.

Expected Outcomes

The article will lean on the empirical findings which showed two main perspectives. First of the findings showed a lot of visible and planned rhythms such as the length of a lesson, staff meetings, the divide of the school day, the breaks etc. Secondly, at the same time, the findings also showed a massive amount of rhythms which did not have a given steady inherent temporality in advance like the planned rhythms have. The unplanned rhythms are defined by instability in their temporality and examples of that could be solving conflicts, sparring with colleagues, preparation of the lessons, helping out pupils after lessons, ‘coffee talks’ in the staff room etc. Lefebvre (2004, p.9) uses different pairs of categories or concepts to underline his thoughts on rhythm analysis such as cyclical and linear, mechanical and organic and continuous and discontinuous which also could be applied to this article. Those different categories of rhythms compliment each other and if you were to focus mainly on mechanical rhythms your study would be too simplistic. In an organizational perspective those unplanned rhythms becomes distractions for the planned rhythms because of their instability in their temporality. There is simply not enough room, space and time for them. So the essential point to be made is that the planned and unplanned rhythms have a duality which means they at the same time are a distraction and condition for each other. The duality can also be explained by looking at it like tracks running in parallel lines in a work life but often they are at a crash course intersecting one and another. The last part is interesting because that is where something is at stake and the two inherent temporalities battle one another and have importance for the understanding of time.

References

Adam, B. (2004) Time. Cambridge: Polity Press Ltd. Birth, K.K. (2012). Objects of Time. How things shape temporality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Law 409 (2013) Found 20th of January 2017 at: https://www.retsinformation.dk/forms/r0710.aspx?id=146561#Bil3 Lefebvre, H. (2004) Rhythmanalysis. Space, Time and Everyday Life. London: Continuum. Rosa, H. (2013) Alienation and Acceleration: Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.

Author Information

Jacob Clausen (presenting / submitting)
UCC, Denmark
Copenhagen V

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