"The Essential Functions of the Position: Collegiality and Productivity"--Job Analysis in Mad at School?

While I was reading the third chapter of Mad at School, I was struck by how much this idea of the "essential functions of the position" resonates with Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  After I read Wilson's chapter on Job Analysis (which I reflected on earlier), I was struck by this idea that the ADA really impacted job analysis by requiring jobs to determine "essential functions" (Wilson 227).  This created a greater need for the work of job analysis and pushed on the field in this direction.  I really think that what Price is doing in chapter 3 is job analysis--she's examining what the essential functions are of an academic job and then pushing the envelope.

This seems to be needed because while the corporate sector has gotten into practicing job analysis while advertising positions, this hasn't really infiltrated academia yet.  Yes, administrative and secretarial and janitorial etc. positions on campus often have very thorough job analysis reports, but with the more intellectual labor on campus, this seems to be absent.  What are the essential functions of being a professor?  Research, teaching, service, (and collegiality?) of course!  But wait: what do those even mean?  And what do they mean for people who are instructors and not professors?  For grad students and not instructors or professors?  For someone with mental disabilities?

Price asks,

What are the 'essential functions' (Americans with Disabilities Act) of academic employment--specifically, employment as a faculty member?  How are those functions defined, evaluated, and rewarded?  What happens to faculty with mental disabilities in this system?  And finally, how might recognition and accommodation of faculty members with mental disabilities enrich academic discourse?  What might 'universal design' come to mean if it is applied in professional kairotic spaces?  (105)

These are excellent questions.  I think that Price does a good job of showing how these essential functions of research, teaching, and service (and collegiality) are problematic, how they're rewarded (tenure), and what happens (people fall out of the system).  While she does address ways to change, I don't know if any of them feel super accessible to me.  I want change!  I do!  But I'm still not really sure how after this chapter.

Going back to the idea that I want change, this passage stood out to me:

Is it possible that fluency in kairotic space is an essential function of an academic job?  Is it true that a faculty member who is unable--perhaps occasionally, perhaps often--to make predictable, material appearances in kairotic space, or who is unable to operate smoothly in such spaces, is unqualified?  Are we ready to say that people with sever depression, or schizophrenia, or agoraphobia, cannot be professors?  I want to say no; I want to imagine an academic workplace where accommodations for mental disability are feasible, where we can bring our differences to work in ways that enrich our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. (112)

Huh.  Part of me feels like many in the field have come to believe that one of the essential functions of the professorate is a "sound mind."  But, that's obviously not the case.  How do we challenge this, though?  I mean, I'm just a grad student--I don't currently make decisions on hiring or tenure or anything really, so what can I do?

Okay, now that these feelings of helplessness are out there, here's something more uplifting: "But still more valuable to me have been those occasions on which my nondisabled allies have chosen to speak out" (133).  This reminds me of a TED lecture that I watched last night about the "bystander approach" to sexual violence prevention.  It's the idea that those who are affiliated with people who are being abused or doing the abusing can take a "leadership opportunity" to either help the person out of the abusive situation or to confront the abuser.  I have seen similar discussions in WGST about speaking out when others say things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc--that silence is consent.  I have trouble with this idea of silence as consent, because it assumes the person seeing/hearing has the power and position and ability to do the confronting, but I think it comes from a good place.  And I see this here too.  So, maybe one thing I can do is question people when they try to pathologize students, peers, professors or support my peers, students, and professors.

Overall, I think this is a really interesting chapter not only because it invokes I-O job analysis, but also because it aims to improve the working conditions of academics. The tenure clock and division of research/teaching/service doesn't work for everyone, but not everyone can choose not to get tenure or not to do research (because of needing health insurance, for example)--we need to be honest about this!  Discussions are starting in regards to what the professoriate even means: this should be one of the first things universities do.  Conduct job analysis.  Determine the essential functions.  Restructure departments to make positions more accessible.

I really think we can do this :)

Price, Margaret.  "The Essential Functions of The Position: Collegiality and Productivity."  Mad At School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.  103-140.  Print

"The Expanding Role of Workplace Training"

 I don't have time now to do my full reflection, so I'll come back to this over the weekend.  However, I do want to say that I think pieces from this could be useful for thinking about how we train writing teachers and how the training of these teachers has developed over time.

Also, the author looks at four time periods in which workplace training was expanding:

• 1900-1930, Scientific Management Era
• 1930-1960, Human Relations Era
• 1960-1990, Participative Management Era
• 1990-present, Strategic Learning Era  (281).

I think it's super interesting how each author divides the last century into movements and then explains what happened during that time.  However, almost everyone has different divisions.  Why?

----

Here's an updated reflection on this piece as of 5/9:

When examining these four time periods when workplace training was expanding, the authors ask what the training looked like, what themes dominated, and what advancements were made (281). They could the following:

• 1900-1930 focused on efficiency (no surprise) and most training was done on site or in factory schools (282) with the model being "show, tell, do, check" (283).  In addition, machines had a large role with humans assisting the machines (rather than machines assisting humans): "Machines existed to simplify and standardize work, and workers existed to supplement what machines could not do on their own" (282).  Sounds like a fun time to have a job, right? :(
• 1930-1960 focused on worker attitudes and training with professionals.   There was a "growing appreciation for the importance of worker attitudes and motivation as well as for the changing role of the supervisor and the increasing complexity of work" (285).  I think this is key--work was getting harder.  Supervisory roles were complicated.  Thus, a position just for training was developed.  While this era focused on worker attitudes, it was still about the benefit of the organization, to "bring about the greatest returns to both the worker and the organization" (286).  Job rotation was also developed as a training tool at this time (287) and assessment for training was developed (289).
• 1960-1990 was similar to the previous era in that training methods continued to be developed, but the focus was more on assessment and self-efficacy: "social cognitive theories began to emphasize the role of self-efficacy in self-regulated behavior" (291) and "I-O Psychologists became even less interested in training methods and instead focused on assessment and design functions" (292)--I see this kind of relating to Rhet/Comp in the 80s/90s when so much focus went on assessing programs and people kind of declined in talking about the work of training up new graduate students.  I wonder what the larger cultural impulse was to make this happen in both fields?
• 1990 to present issued the development of the "corporate university" (297) whereby universities became training tools for jobs.

In conclusion, the authors write:

As jobs have become more cognitively based and as accountability for work outcomes has been more diffused, responsibility for defining and executing training has been shifted from supervisors to training professionals to the workers themselves. (304).

 Again, I see this happening in Rhet/Comp with the teaching of English 1000.  Work outcomes and job descriptions aren't as solidified any more.  Responsibilities for training are muddled.  Who teaches these people to be teachers?  Sometimes they teach themselves, sometimes they take a class, sometimes they have a mentor.  There isn't really one way.  In many ways I think this is good--we don't want robot teachers who all do the same things. However, this can also put a lot of pressure on teachers.  How could we improve this if the general impulse for most careers is going this way?



Kraiger, Kurt, and J. Kevin Ford.  "The Expanding Role of Workplace Training: Themes and Trends Influencing Training Research and Practice." Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Eds. Laura L. Koppes, et al.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 281-310.

"A History of Job Analysis"

I thought I was going to read this chapter -- Lowman, Rodney L., John Kantor, and Robert Perloff.  "A History of I-O Psychology Educational Programs in the United States." 111-138. -- However, there really wasn't anything relevant in it.  It really was a history of almost every I-O Pyschology program, but it was based more on location and people than theories and ideologies.  So, it wasn't that relevant.

I skimmed over the chapters after this, one on formal and informal organizations, another on the military, another on employee selection, and none of these seemed that relevant either.  Then I hit "A  History of Job Analysis" by Mark Wilson, and I found some things that I think might be useful.

Wilson defines job analysis as "the process of collecting, organizing, analyzing and documenting information about work" (219).  It's largely a descriptive process and is one of the first steps when investigating most issues within I-O psychology (219).  Wilson's goal in this chapter is to provide a history of job analysis (219).  He does this by providing a history of job analysis over the century, organizing this into schools of thought, and then making conclusions about the field.  The time periods that he focuses on include:

• The industrial age, 1903-1940
• The golden era, 1841-1980
• The information age, 1981-2003

While Wilson goes over these schools of thought and conclusions, these didn't appear to be as relevant for my study.  However, I did learn a lot about key social forces that impacted job analysis in the industrial, golden, and information ages.

In the industrial age, the key events impacting job analysis included: "the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938" (224).  This gave workers the right to collective bargaining and set up rules for which jobs had working hour requirements and overtime rules (224).  This resulted in a division between labor and management which have continued to be divided (224).

In the golden era, the key events that impacted job analysis were the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1963 (Title VII) (225).  I knew this before, but Wilson goes into a bit more detail with what the implications of this were, writing "The Equal Pay act identified four compensable factors (skill, effort, responsibility, working conditions) on which jobs must be compared to determine their worth" (225).  Also, "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was interpreted to require that nearly all employment-related decisions need to be job related" (225).  Wilson also states that, "It was during this era that 'management' as a job became increasingly important and influential in work life" (227).

In the information age, the key event that impacted job analysis "was the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)" (227).  Wilson explains that "the ADA requires that employers examine their jobs to determine 'essential functions' as the basis of determining eligibility for work by disabled applicants" (227).  Wilson also explains that the call center worker typifies the era because of ht combination of technology and information economy (229).

Again, I'm finding myself most interested in the historical development of the field.  Wilson reinforced what I read in other chapters about other acts and outside forces impacting the development of the field.  What I'd like to learn more about, though, is HOW the ADA, Civil Rights Act, Equal Pay Act, etc actually impacted the field.  What changes had to be made? I'm also interested in this development of a manager.  It reminds me of Donna's book and the development of the managerial unconscious in Writing programs.  I'm seeing similar things happen here in I-O Psychology.

This idea of job analysis is also getting my interested in relation to my teaching. Hmmm. Could I have my students do job analysis research?  If so, what would be the point?  What would they get out of it?  What would it look like?


 Wilson, Mark A. "A History of Job Analysis."  Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Eds. Laura L. Koppes, et al.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 219-242. Print

"Four Persistent Themes Throughout the History of I-O Psychology in the United States, Chapter 3"--A Reflection

In this third chapter within Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Zickar and Gibby focus on four trends throughout several different stages of Industrial-Organizational psychology.  These trends include: (1) concentration on productivity and efficiency, (2) reliance on quantitative methods, (3) a focus on employee selection, and (4) the interplay between science and practice (61).  Within these four trends, I find the "concentration on productivity and efficiency" as well as "a focus on employee selection" to be the most relevant for me.  These sections really show me what it is about the early years of I-O Psychology that troubles me (which I discussed briefly in my last post).

Here are some things that stood out:

• "The industrailization of the American workforce brought about issues of job satisfaction, alienation, and supervision that had been less salient in the previous agricultural, craft-based economy" (61)--This really helps to explain why there was suddenly a need for I-O Psychology in early 1900.  It also explains the use of the word industrial in the name. Huh!
• Industrial-Organizational psychology is different in the US because the labor unions are weak and the government doesn't control jobs (63)--This is an interesting way to situate this version of I-O as a very "American" endeavor.  While I appreciate this context, I wonder about the places where Americans get a lot of their clothes: are those people supported by I-O in their home country?  My guess is no.  Hmm, this seems to beg for transnational critque.
• "Personality inventories were developed [after WWI] to identify recruits who might be prone to experience paralyzing anxiety under the threat of enemy fire (shell shock)" (64)--would this have been legal after the ADA passed?  Is this discrimination?
• "Baritz (1960) characterized I-O psychologists as 'servants of power' becuase they tended to work in opposition to organized labor" (65)--Hmmm, so maybe this isn't as liberating as I had hoped. Are they oppressing workers?
• "'The experience of workingmen has made them distrusting of "investigations," and intolerant of patronage.  However, if you can convince them of your earnestness and sincerity of purpose you may be able to get sufficient material to serve as a basis for analysis'" (qtd. 65)--this is spoken by Samuel Gompers, who was the founder and president of the American Federation of Labor.  I love this quote.  It shows a lot of the problems with qualitative and ethnography research.  What if the subject doesn't trust you?  What if your intentions aren't for the benefit of the subject?
• "Early labor leaders were clearly intrigued with (and wary of) the possibilities inherent in industrial psychology" (65)--Yes, this basically describes me.  I'm interested but worried too.  I don't want to be part of this if it's further exploiting workers and solidifying the divide between management and laborers.
• "Management turned to applied psychologists because traditional methods of dealing with employees who agitated for labor unions were made illegal" (65)--Oh my god.  Well, although this is sad, it's interesting.  It further shows how outside political forces really aided in the development of this field.
• "Worker well being topics were often studied only in relation to other constructs of interest to management" (66)--Yes, this is one of my fears. You can study worker satisfaction for the aim of improving worker experiences, but you can also do it to increase production and brainwashing.  Again, like I realized with the last article: I'm so glad I wasn't born in the 1920s!
•  "Recent research activity has suggested that I-O psychologists are more willing to embrace topics that are of direct importance to worker well-being and less related to efficiency and productivity" (67)--Yay!  This is what I was hoping.  So good. In current times, the study is more on worker well being and experience, with issues like work-family conflict and occupational health being emphasized.  This seems to be a turn in the right direction :)
• "In Europe, topics such as occupational health and stress are relatively more important compared with the United States" (72)--This is interesting!  I wonder if in Europe they're more likely to do research on mindfulness and meditation as a way of reducing stress for workers.  If so, I should look at their research!
• "Psychologists in the 21st century must cope with globalization and technology changes" (76)--Yes, I agree, but I'm not sure what the authors mean by this.  Do they mean that we must examine inequalities, for example in working conditions for American workers as compared to workers in Bangladesh?  If American citizens are consuming goods from factories like the one in Bangladesh that collapsed, is it also within the purview of I-O to deal with human rights violations and poor working conditions in this location? This is a question for Rebecca Dingo :)

I really enjoyed this article.  The authors were willing to get critical of early I-O and pointed out many of the ways that workers were marginalized and dehumanized.  Again, I also liked the historical perspective.  I learned a lot!  I think that what I might want to pursue from this article is the connection between I-O psychology and labor leaders, organized labor, and unions.  Do they work together better now?  Are they still kind of opposed?  Does I-O psychology still largely represent those in power, rather than those without?  Again, I'll probably come back to this after reading more from this book!



Zickar, Michael J. and Robert E Gibby.  "Four persistent Themes Throughout the History of I-O Psychology in the United States."  Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Eds. Laura L. Koppes, et al.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 61-80. Print

"Industrial and Organizational Psychology: An Evolving Science and Practice"--Response

 In this first chapter to Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Koppes and Pickren provide an overview of the book and then present an overview of the development of I-O Psychology.  They set out different time periods: (1) the early years, 1885-1930, (2) 1930-1960, (3) 1960-1970, (4) 1980s and beyond. Section one is the most developed, with discussions of "who was studying work?", "what questions or problems were investigated?",  and "how did psychologists study work and apply psychology to business problems?"  The authors present many tables which offer the table of contents of several books from 1910-1940, as a way of illustrating how the field has changed.

Several key ideas stand out:

• Adam Smith and Karl Marz are seen as philosophers who set up the framework for I-O Psychology (6)--this seems interesting to me, considering that they represent such different ideologies.  Perhaps this makes sense, though, with Smith representing the managers and companies and Marx representing the workers?
• I-O Psych in the 1920s focused on "employer-employee relations (selection and maintenance), and psychology of the consumer" (18)--this seems to really be about maximizing profit for the benefit of the owner or manager.  What about the well being of the worker?
• "During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the appearance of capitalism and an emphasis on efficiency forced companies to determine how to hire the most qualified employees" (19)--Yep, again, it's focused on the production and producer, not on the worker.  Stupid capitalism.
• One of the tables lists the chapter titles for a book called Increasing Human Efficiency in Business (1911): imitation, competition, loyalty, concentration, wages, pleasure, relaxation (21)--I'm interested the relaxation part. Is that like mindfulness?  Was this suggested in 1911?  I'm less interested in competition.  Blarg, capitalism.
• "In sum, when industrial psychology was established, the objective of the discipline was to improve the achievement of organizational goals (i.e. productivity and efficiency) with an emphasis on individual differences" (26)--I'm so glad I don't live in the 1910s or 1920s.  This sounds really terrible.  I hope things change!

 

• "An emphasis on employee welfare during the Depression led to the development of personal counseling as a popular organizational intervention for helping employees solve problems" (26)--Yay!  Here's a move in the right direction: caring for employee welfare.  Maybe they're not just a cog in the machine any more?
• More focus on motivation, emotions, and attitudes (28)--Interesting!  This is quite the shift!

 

• Title VII (Civil Rights Act of 1964) is passed, and employees cannot discriminate "in employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" (29)--Oooh, I like this perspective.  It's neat to see how these wider political changes altered the field.
• "An emphasis was placed on how the organization could best serve the individual.  Organizations evolved from highly bureaucratic authoritarian structures to open systems, using such methods as total quality management, teamwork, and employee participation" (29)--I wonder if this is how the Marx comes in.  I can really see the Smith in the 1920s, the early years, but this all seems to be a bit more collaborative.  It's not communist, but it's also not just straight capitalism.  Hmmm.

 

• "In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) emphasized the importance of identifying essential job functions and physical requirements and redesigning jobs to accommodate employees. The ADA is considered to be one of the most significant pieces of legislation to influence the work of I-O psychologists since the CRA of 1964" (29)--This is really interesting too.  I'd like to know more about how the ADA changed the way that I-O functioned.  I imagine that it pushed further this idea from the 1960s and 1970s that the focus should be on "how the organization could best serve the individual."

I found this chapter extremely interesting.  I learned a lot about the development of I-O Psychology, and I was able to see, through history, some of the issues that I've had with the field.  (Like that it's too capitalistic and managerial, without caring much for the worker).  Perhaps my previous knowledge of the field was a bit outdated.  I wonder what the more current stuff is doing. I know from my other readings that researchers are looking at marginalized workers and how to better understand and accommodate them--I can definitely see how the CRA and ADA created a space for that kind of study.

I'm also seeing a shift from purely capitalistic ideology and company efficiency in the 1920s to a focus on motivation, emotions, and how to serve individual workers in the 1960s onward.  Title VII and the ADA made a big impact on the field as well.  I wonder what other larger structures impacted the field.  What about WWI and WWII?

Also, now I'm wondering more about this idea of "identifying essential job functions and physical requirements and redesigning jobs to accommodate employees"--have we done this for teaching English 1000?  What are the job functions?  What physical (and mental) requirements are there?  How can this job be more accommodating?  How might we be harming (or deterring) grad students with disabilities by not conducting this analysis and making the job more accommodating?

I want to come back to some of these questions, but I also want to keep going in this edited collection to get more of an overview.  So, I'm going to keep digging into this book with intentions of pursuing some of these threads later.  Or, maybe I'll get lucky and the next selection will address them!


Koppes, Laura L. and Wade Pickren.  "Industrial and Organizational Psychology: An Evolving Science and Practice." Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Eds. Laura L. Koppes, et al.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 3-36. Print

Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology

I just picked up a few books from the library on I-O Psychology, and I'm going to get started reading them soon.  One of the books is the following:

Laura L. Koppes, et al.  Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

The book is an edited collection which goes over a few themes: the beginning; historical overviews; educational, organizational, and military influence; early topics; later topics; reflections and future.

There are 18 articles, but a few look more relevant to me than others, such as:

• Koppes, LAura L. and Wade Pickren.  "Industrial and Organizational Psychology: An Evolving Science and Practice" 3-37.
• Zickar, Michael J. and Robert E Gibby.  "Four persistent Themes Throughout the History of I-O Psychology in the United States."  61-80.
• Lowman, Rodney L., John Kantor, and Robert Perloff.  "A History of I-O Psychology Educational Programs in the United States." 111-138.
• Kraiger, Kurt, and J. Kevin Ford.  "The Expanding Role of Workplace Training: Themes and Trends Influencing Training Research and Practice." 218-310.
• Latham, Gary P. and Marie-Helene Budworth.  "The Study of Work Motivation in the 10th Century." 353-382.
• Day, David V. and Stephen J. Zaccaro,  "Leadership: A Critical Historical Analysis of the Influence of Leader Traits." 383-406.

I'm starting to realize through these titles that I can probably learn more from I-O about Writing Program Administration, training new teachers, motivating teachers and grad students, leading a program, etc. than I can about contingent labor.  However, I think that learning more about how to be an effective leader and motivator can lead into fair labor practices.  I'm going to keep look at applications as I read.

"The Complexity of Marginalized Identities: The Social Construction of Identities, Multiple Identities, and the Experiuence of Exclusion"--Reflection

Winny Shen and Soner Dumani agree with Ruggs et al and build on their article to address three issues that should be considered when conducting research on marginalized people: the social construction of identities, the intersection of multiple identities, and the experience of exclusion.

By the social construction of identities, the authors mean that identity is malleable, socially constructed, and changes over time.  For example, someone might have a diagnosis of autism but choose not to identify as disabled.  Or, definitions of disability may change over time, like how homosexuality used to be in the DSM but is not any more.  Researchers need to take this into consideration when studying identities: these identities aren't stable, and people choose them for themselves (85).

By intersections of multiple identities, the authors mean that people experience their lives with many identity categories, and these can create really varying experiences.  The authors point out that people who exist in multiple categories can experience these intersections differently, and we need to be sensitive to this (86).  Does one category dominate?  Does the individual compartmentalize these different identities?  Do the identity categories merge?  We need to ask this.

Finally, by the experiences of exclusion, the authors mean that certain marginalized groups are more likely to be excluded, and this exclusion can look like social undermining, bullying, keeping others out of the loop, harassment, ostracism, formal discrimination, and interpersonal mistreatment (86). The authors argue that researchers need to examine how exclusion is constructed and what this does to relationships over time.

Most of this is familiar to me, from my time in feminist theory courses.  And, it's a nice reminder. It's also encouraging for me to see people discussing this in I-O.  There seems to be a very subtle-feminist lens in these articles.  I like it :)

Shen, Winny, and Soner Dumani.  "The Complexity of Marginalized Identities: The Social Construction of Identities, Multiple Identities, and the Experiuence of Exclusion."  Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 84-87.

"Maybe Too Little But Not Too Late: Four Challenges for Employment Discrimination Research in I-O"--Reflection

Derous, Ryan, and Buijsroggee critique Ruggs' article in four ways.  A lot of this critique is over my head because it's really theoretical and focused on I-O research methods. I'm certainly not the intended audience.  Here's what I was able to get from the article, though:

--Rather than studying marginalization, researchers should try to theorize discrimination and how it happens.

--Rather than looking at separate identity categories in research (like an article on Latina women and another on overweight homosexual men, etc), these authors suggest that research should look at intersectionality and double jeopardy.  The authors write:

Everyone, including members from the marginalized groups highlighted by Ruggs et al., belongs to multiple social categories (e.g., being a female and ethnic minority group member), and certainly some subgroups of minorities might be more vulnerable to prejudice than others. (76)

 I'm glad to see that the authors brought up intersectionality, because I've been thinking of that the whole time: what's the point of discussing the experiences of those in one identity category when all of us embody and live within many of these categories?  We need to examine the overlaps too.

And, like the authors said, since the overlaps are expansive, it might be more useful to look at the structures of discrimination and marginalization.  More change might happen there.

Derous, Eva, Ann Marie Ryan, and Alexander Buijsrogge. "Maybe Too Little But Not Too Late: Four Challenges for Employment Discrimination Research in I-O."  Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 75-80.

"It's Not Us, It's You: Why Isn't Research on Minority Workers Appearing in Our 'Top-Tier' Journals?"--A Reflection

This next response to Ruggs' article, by Diaz and Bergman, addresses a few issues in the main article. 

First, they argue that research is being conducted about minority populations, but it's not being published in the 7 journals the articles looked at.  They provide a list of other, second-tier journals where this research is being published.  And the authors issue a call to editors of journals to accept this research, even though it doesn't always have top-tier quality samples or theories.

Second, they argue that there's a problem with conflating minority status and marginalization.  They argue that there are some situations where minorities are not marginalized.  However, they don't make the point that there are some situations where marginalization happens not because of these identity categories.  I would have liked to see this.

From this article, I was reminded of many of the things I've discussed in my WGST courses about feminist research being pushed to the margins and not published in top-tier journals.  It's all so political.

I do think these authors are right that we can't just assume that research on minority workers isn't being done because it's not in journals.  Perhaps there is a lot of this research but the journals aren't accepting it.  If that's the case, then this is all really an argument for journal editors.  Hmmm.  I wonder if this journal will publish more on minority workers, rather than just publishing a meta-critique of the lack of publications :)

Diaz, Ismael and Mindy E Bergman. "It's Not Us, It's You: Why Isn't Research on Minority Workers Appearing in Our 'Top-Tier' Journals?"  Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 70-75.

New Schedule for ENGL 8040

Set:

April 11:  Psychology Guest Speaker: Jesse Wrench Auditorium, 3:30-5:00pm. Tim Trull, Interpersonal Sensitivity in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Begin reading Richard Davidson, The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them (2012).  On Amazon here.  Request through Mobius here.

April 18: Finish reading Richard Davidson.

April 25: Kirk Warren Brown talk--more information and location coming.


Still in the works:

May 2:  Read Margaret Price, Mad At School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life (2012).  On Amazon here.  Request on Mobius here.

Francisco J. Varela, Evan T Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (1992).  On Amazon here.  Request on Mobius here. Or here is a better link actually.

May 9:  Read (more) Margaret Price Mad At School

"Research on the Discrimination of Marginalized Employees: Fishing in Other Ponts"--Response

[I'm a bit tired of the fishing metaphor.  Argh.]

Nadler et al's article uses the same model of research presented by Ruggs et al., but the journals reviewed are from the field of social psychology.  The authors hypothesized that research on workplace discrimination might also be happening in this field, so they set out to find the top 7 journals and conducted a review of the last 20 years of research (66).

The authors found that some research was being published in these journals, but the numbers were lower than the I-O journals.  There were 14 articles on race, 7 on LGBT, 2 on age and weight, 1 on disability, and none on religion or marital status (67).

The authors concluded that "it is important to look beyond I-O journals when studying workplace discrimination against marginalized groups and to consider conducting more research on under researched marginalized groups" (69).  The authors also suggested using more specific search terms like "Catholic" or "Asian" or "Hispanic," thinking that this might bring forward more results (69).

For me, this response is helpful in providing me with another sphere of psychology that I could consider: social psychology.  Perhaps I can look more into this once I have a better grasp of I-O Psych!

Nadler, Joel T. et al. "Research on the Discrimination of Marginalized Employees: Fishing in Other Ponds." Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 66-70. Web.

"Yes, We're Fishing--In Rough Waters for Hard-to-Find Fish"--Response

Thompson et al.'s response to "Gone Fishing" provides many reasons for why those in I-O haven't been studying the marginalized groups that Ruggs et al. discussed. These reasons include difficulty finding these people to study them, difficulties meeting sample size requirements, issues of power and further marginalization, problems with getting qualitative studies published, etc.  Really, the authors seem to be providing excuses for the lack of research that Ruggs et al. discovered.

I find some problems with this response, though.  For example, the authors state "it is estimated that a mere 4% to 17% of the workforce is lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" (61).  Also, "only about one in five workers in the United States is disabled" (61).  Umm, hello: 1 in 5 is actually A LOT!  Many businesses have hundreds if not thousands of workers--there are plenty of people that can be interviewed if people take the time to look.

I do agree with some of Thompson et al's assertions, though, specifically their observation that issues of power come into play in this research (62).  They also observe that we have to be aware of burn out if many people start studying these marginalized populations (64).  This reminds me of how in the academy, in an effort to look more diverse, departments will ask the one faculty member of color or one woman to serve on a lot of committees--this is actually a problem because of burn out.  I appreciate that the authors bring this up.

Also, the authors suggest that it's best to study these populations through qualitative research.  However, there can then be an issue with masking participant identities (62-63).  And there can also be an issue with finding a publisher.  The authors write, "Qualitative studies are in a sense a 'marginalized group' and less likely to be published in top journals" (63).  While I think it's kind of disrespectful to use marginalized group in this way considering the theme of the issue, I do think it's useful to acknowledge that an effective research strategy will be less likely to be published.

So, does this suggest a call to the editors, like the Ruggs article?

Again, a very interesting piece--I'm glad to see a critique of the original article to help me think about the issue in a more complex way.

Thompson, Rebecca et al. "Yes, We're Fishing--In Rough Waters for Hard-To-Find Fish." Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 61-65. Web.

"Gone Fishing: I-O Psychologists' Missed Opportunities to Understand Marginalized Employees' Experiences with Discrimination"--response

This literature-review style article is actually surprisingly interesting!  Ruggs et al focus on 7 different groupings of people (or identity categories) that have been largely ignored in Industrial-Organizational Psychology research.  These categories include:

• Racial minorities
• LGBT individuals
• older workers
• workers with disabilities
• those who are overweight
• religious minorities
• and those who face marital discrimination (39-40).

In discussing these populations, the authors separate the article into 7 body sections, each section focusing on one category.  Within that category the authors address "the importance of the problem," "Reviews of Relevant Research in Focal Journals," and "Recommendations."

In the literature review, the authors found 19 articles on racial minorities, 10 on LGBT and Disability, 9 on Age, 8 on Weight, 1 on Religion, and none on Marital Status.  And this was in 7 major journals over the last 20 years.

Because much of their goal seems to have been to point out the lack of research, the authors issue a call to action:

It has been almost 50 years since the CRA passed, and we firmly believe that I-O Psychologists have missed a great opportunity.  Instead of being on the front line serving as scientists and allies for those who are marginalized and treated poorly, we have let these individuals take a backseat while we have gone fishing.  Where have SIOP members been in studying protected groups and groups that need protection?  It is really time to act. We must start looking at underresearched protected groups, but we must also look at groups that do not have legal protection to understand limitations they have in accessing the workplace and optimally thriving in it. We urge the I-O psychology community, editors included, and those who benefit from our research, to get on board, take action, and attend to these marginalized groups so that we can lead and not follow in the pursuit of guaranteeing workplace rights for all. (57)

 I really appreciated the political leanings of this article, and thorough discussion of challenges faced by those in these categories.  For example, the authors point out that people who are heavy and those who are LGBT are often discriminated against for similar reasons: others feel that these are choices that can be changed by the individual.  Recognizing this can help I-O Psychologists develop ways to address the needs of these people.  Also, the authors point out that there are laws that prohibit discrimination due to race and gender and disability and religion, but these kinds of laws do not exist for those who are LGBT, heavy, or married.  Thus, the author's call goes beyond just the field of I-O Psych and enters into a political discussion about discrimination and rights.

One thing I would have liked to see, though, is more intersectional discussion.  There were hints that these categories could be overlapping, but this was not discussed in depth.  Thus, this article could prompt people to think that individuals fit into one of these categories cleanly, rather than likely fitting into many categories at the same time.

Overall, reading this article helped me see that there is definitely something in I-O Psych that can be carried over into discussions of labor in the academy.  The authors start out the article with this statement:

One of the main goals of industrial-organizational (I-O) Psychology is to ensure an equitable and fair workplace for all.  (39)

This is what I want too.  So, I think it's time to keep hunting and find some concrete things that I can potentially carry over.  If our goals are the same, hopefully I-O Psych can provide me with some new frameworks, ideas, or methods.


Ruggs, Erica N. et al.  "Gone Fishing: I-O Psychologists' Missed Opportunities to Understand Marginalized Employees' Experiences with Discrimination."  Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 39-60. Web.

"Introduction: From the Editor" by Kevin R. Murphy--response

I just read the 2 page "Introduction: From the Editor" that starts out Industrial and Organizational Psychology Vol 6, and I learned some interesting things:

• Kevin R. Murphy is a new editor (1)
• He wants the journal to challenge "the field to think about new issues or new approaches to familiar issues" (1)
• He thinks that science and practice goes hand and hand, and he encourages those who submit to consider this (1)
• The journal is organized each issue with 2 focal articles and then shorter responses to the articles (1)
• In this issue, the second focal article is about marginalized employees with 12 responses following (2)

Perhaps it's the historian wanna-be in me, but I find this front material to the journal very interesting.  It looks like Murphy is trying to be really political in his choice of articles and responses, and he wants to push the boundaries of the field rather than only reinforce them.  Maybe all journal editors say this, but t he presence of 13 articles about identity politics and marginalization can't be common in most journals--I'd say that Murphy appears to really be succeeding in his goal.

I think this issue could end up relating to my larger project on contingent labor because there's also a similar ignorance of identity politics in this discussion.  When I'm at conferences, I hear discussion of contingent laborers as marginalized.  However, this is a job, not an identity position.  What about those who are in this marginalized job and inhabit a marginalized identity category?  It seems to me like we don't talk about this enough.  Eileen Schell does in her book from the 1990s, but now there seems to be a whitewashing of discussions of contingent laborers.

Perhaps the perspectives on race, sexuality, age, disability, weight, religion, and marital status can help me think more complexly about issues of contingent labor?  I won't know until I keep reading!  Now, on to the focal article for this issue: "Gone Fishing: I-O Psychologists' Missed Opportunities to Understand Marginalized Employees' Experiences with Discrimination."

Murphy, Kevin. "Introduction: From the Editor." Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 1-2. Web.

Industrial and Organizational Psychology Journal--Vol 6, Iss 1

Well, I just got some disappointing news: Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the journal that I wanted to look into, isn't available online and isn't available in our databases at Mizzou.  Fortunately. on the I/A website, they do post PDFs of the most recent journal issue for free, so I will be able to look at something.  However, I won't be able to look at as much as I wanted to.

I was able to access Volume 6, Issue 1 of the journal.  One of the focal articles for this issue is about marginalized employees and experiences with discrimination.  There are then 3-4 page commentaries paired with this focal article that discuss race, sexuality, age, religion, and intersectionality.  Huh, this looks like it might be interesting.

I'm going to spend the next little bit downloading all these articles so that they won't disappear from access when the new issue comes out, and then I'll read and write about them in the coming week!  Maybe these will help me find something from I/O that can be used to discuss contingent faculty and marginalization.

Here's a link to the journal issue, if you're curious: Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

CCCC and Writing as Psychological Intervention

At CCCC this year, I kept an ear out for psychology-related projects.  I didn't see many, but one stuck out to me.  At the Feminist Workshop on Wednesday, Eileen Schell talked about a project she's working on related to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.  The project she discussed was Women's Lives in the Profession.  With the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, Schell is collective narratives about women's experiences in Rhet/Comp.

When discussing this project, she also brought up a community-based writing project dealing with Veterans (but I don't have many notes on this).

Schell connected these projects by stating that they're both about using writing as a way of healing or processing.  By writing, the Veterans have a chance to think through what they experienced and put that to words.  By telling their stories, women in the profession can deal with emotional trauma.

This doesn't really relate to my exploratory project this semester, but I thought it was interesting, and it's making me look forward to our Third Topos: Writing with/as Psychological Intervention.  And, I figured that if I get feedback saying that my I/O Psychology and Rhet/Comp labor might not work, I could pursue something more in this direction.

Choices, choices.

Exploratory Proposal

This semester, I'd like to begin my exploratory project by puzzling through the following question: What is Industrial and Organizational Psychology  and what might it have to offer Rhetoric and Composition and labor studies in Higher Education?  I hope to at some point get to this question: What from Industrial and Organizational Psychology could be brought into Rhetoric and Composition programs to help resolve some of the conflicts and issues that have arisen due to labor practices?  Might I/O Psychology offer us a solution or part of a solution?

I think a good place to start is by getting to know the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology better.  I've found a journal put out by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  I might begin there with my researching, looking at titles of articles from the last few years and reading things that sound relevant and interesting.

There's also a book in our library called Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Research and Practice by Paul E Spector (2006).  And there's another one called Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology by Laura Koppes (2007). It looks like this is a reader which includes some selections about the history of the field as well as persistent themes.

I think this is a good place to start with a journal and two books to work from.  Do you have any further suggestions for me in terms of how to narrow or expand or frame my question or what to look at?

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

I'm starting with the Industrial and Organizational Psychology wikipedia page.  It has quite a few links to other articles and books at the bottom of the page, so I think I'll use this as a starting place for a basic overview of this field.

So, here are some notes:

• This is also called work psychology;
• "scientific study of employees, workplaces, and organizations";
• focuses on "improving the workplace" and "performance, satisfaction, and well-being of its people"
• a form of applied psychology along with clinical, consumer, educational, environmental, etc.;
• deals with job performance, recruitment, admissions, testing, performance appraisal, motivation, ethics, etc.;
• field developed during WWI;
• use "surveys, experiments, quasi-experiments, and observational studies";
• also rely on "human judgments, historical databases, objective measures of work performance, and questionnaires and surveys";
• research is quantitative and qualitative;
• qualitative methods include "focus groups, interviews, case studies";
• and also enthnography! and participant observation!;
• "job satisfaction reflects an employee's overall assessment of their job, particularly their emotions, behaviors, and attitudes about their work experience.  It is one of the most heavily researched topics in industrial-organizational psychology with several thousand published studies"'

Sources to pursue next?:

• Guion (1965)
• Blum and Naylor (1968)
• Building Better Organizations

What intrigues me? 

I'm interested in the variety of research methods that this field utilizes.  It is encouraging to see something that is considered "science" include ethnography and qualitative methods like case studies and interviews.  It's not that I think these methods are better, but they're more attainable for someone like me who has never taken a stats class.  (Like Eric, I feel like I need to take more research methods courses).

Parts of this remind me of Dorothy Smith's Institutional Ethnography.  This might be something worth revisiting.

I'm also interested in the focus on workers and how to improve their experiences with work. 

My fear is that this is ''hyper-managerial'' and might result in some of the problematic working conditions (like jobs at Walmart) since managers might know how to motivate workers and keep them on task, somehow also resulting in the workers overlooking their low wages.  I suppose that most systems intended for good can be used for bad, though.  Sigh.

Anyway, I think I'm going to continue pursuing this.  Onward and forward!  What is industrial and organizational psychology all about, and what might it have to offer to Rhet/Comp and contingent labor studies?

Industrial/Organizational Psychology

....NOT institutional psychology.

Remember this Jes, okay?  Thanks!

Topic Proposal?

The couple-weeks-in doubts are starting to over come me.  Initially I was really excited about connections between institutional psychology and Rhet/Comp/Labor studies, but now that I look at the syllabus, I can see that there's not going to be much about this.

So, now I'm wondering if I should go with something else that relates more to our readings and the lectures we're listening to.

For example, the Jennifer Crocker lecture got me thinking about compassion and collaboration in the writing classroom, and it reminded me that in my master's thesis on Collaborative and Cooperative Learning, I relied on cognitive science a little bit.  Part of my argument (although quite undeveloped) was that college freshman aren't all that different cognitively from high school seniors.  So, the divide that I saw in the literature that suggested that cooperative learning was for K-12 and collaborative learning for Higher Ed was really just artificial.  So, I advocated for starting with cooperative learning in Freshman Comp and then teach students how to work collaboratively without as much supervision.  I could go in this route again, perhaps delving into psychological research more than I did for my thesis.

Or, after reading Hayes and Flower, I could do some exploring with protocol analysis.  It might be fun to figure out who's used it and when, and then try some 2013 protocol analysis research on my own.  I could even just study myself and a peer or two and see what happens...?

I could also look more into Rhet/Comp history and read articles from the 1980s.  This might even help me with my Comps.  My goal could be to understand the complexities of the cognitive turn int he 1980s and puzzle through why it fizzled out?

Bagh, I'm not sure.  I am still interested in institutional psychology, but I'm not sure where to go from here.  Maybe read the wikipedia page for it in detail and start to follow links?  Get a bigger picture of what it is and what I could do with it?

I think I might do that for my next post.  Maybe that'll clear up whether I should stick with it or move on to something else.

How do we make change? Thoughts from Psychology Today

I'm starting with Google, tinkering around to find out more about Institutional Psychology, and to see what concept or term or idea I can bring into Rhet/Comp to help me with my project of making change.  Today, I got lucky, and I came across a really interesting article by Mikhail Lyubansky.  The article is called "Creating Institutional Change: A Short Primer" and it was published in Psychology Today.

Early in the article, Lyubansky makes an observation that correlates with what I've been noticing regarding the literature about how to 'solve the Contingent Labor crisis.'  What I've seen is that the research is less about solutions and more about hashing out the problem again, and again, and again.  Lyubansky has seen this too:

 I can’t help but observe that speakers often do a tremendous job of describing, illustrating, and researching the problem, whatever that problem might be, but rarely offer anything specific in the way of either response or prevention. This is the case despite the fact that the audience is often remarkably hungry for anything prescriptive.

 So, in this article Lyubansky synthesizes literature about how to create institutional change, and he shares these observations with us.  He notes, "though institutional change focuses on institutions rather than individuals, the whole point of changing institutions is to benefit those individuals who are being unfairly treated by the system/institution."  Absolutely.  Positively.  Great observation.  Now, Lyubansky is really talking about race, culture, and community, specifically racial prejudices and segregation, but I think that these tips can be applied to researching labor structures which are often based on racial, class, and gendered divides.

Here are his suggestions:

1. Work within your sphere of influence
2. Before coming up with a 'solution' that will impact marginalized peoples, make sure you listen to marginalized voices
3. Become an ally to members of an oppressed out-group
4. Take initiative but maintain accountability
5. Find allies within your own group
6. Build relationships with power brokers

These are super basic, but good to remember, especially the parts about working where you are, interacting with the populations that you're 'developing solutions for,' finding allies, being accountable, etc.  This is a good start.  

Now I still need to find out more about institutional psychology.  This article came up when I searched "institutional psychology," and it's about changing institutions and is in a psychology publication--is this institutional psychology?

Poaching and Questions

Massumi discusses this idea of poaching concepts from the sciences and applying them to the humanities in a really interesting way.  First, as I've mentioned in another post on the class blog, he advocates for working through examples, surprising yourself, practicing inattention, being okay with stupidity, connecting concepts, being inventive and exploratory (18-19).  I'm on board with all of this.  Sounds fun, actually, which I think is part of his goal.

Then, he gets into the poaching in a more detailed way, explaining that the point isn't just to apply the results of sciences to the humanities (19).  No, the point is to take a concept and the baggage that comes with it (like its connection to other concepts) and create a new system of concepts (20).   Massumi reminds me that I can't just take a single, isolated concept from another field and apply it--it comes with baggage and connections to other concepts.  Then, Massumi writes:

The optimal situation would be to take a scientific concept and use it in such a way that it ceases to be systematically scientific but doesn't end up tamed, a metaphorical exhibit in someone else's menagerie....A concept is by nature connectble to other concepts.  A concept is defined less by its semantic content than by the regularities of connection that have been established between it and other concepts....When you uproot a concept from its network of systemic connections with other concepts, you still have its connectibility. (20)

I think I want to do this for my final project.  The concept will likely come from Institutional Psychology, and I'll bring it, along with its connections, into Rhet/Comp to find ways to improve labor conditions in our field. As Massumi writes, "The point is to borrow from science in order to make a difference in the humanities" (21).  This is really what I want to do--make a difference in the humanities!

So, here's my current draft-y question to work on this semester:

What can institutional psychology offer to help change labor conditions in the field of Rhetoric and Composition?

Yes, still broad, but it's getting somewhere!  I need to do some reading on Institutional Psychology. Does anyone have a suggestion for where to start?

Massumi and Resistance

As I've mentioned before, my interests are primarily related to labor and the desire to change what I see as a broken system.  So, issues of resistance and social change usually draw my attention.  

Massumi talks about the body and social change early on in his Introduction to Parables for the Virtual.  He writes:

If the every day was no longer a place of rupture or revolt, as it had been in glimpses at certain privileged historical junctures, it might still be a site of modest acts of 'resistance' or 'subversion' keeping alive the possibility of systemic change.  These were practices of 'reading' or 'decoding' counter to the dominant ideological scheme of things.  The body was seem to be centrally involved in the every day practices of resistance. (2)

He continues, discussing coding (which kind of seems like intersectionality to me) and asking how change is possible and where the potential has gone (2-3).

I'm not really sure where he's going with this, but it reminds me of a book that I read for a class last semester called Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women's Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina.  The book was about activist movements in Argentina and how women used their bodies to protest.  Interesting stuff.

I need to come back to the Massumi, though, because I still don't quite understand.

Exploitation or Cooperation?

In "The Range of Rhetoric," the first chapter from A Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke writes:

Here is a major reason why rhetoric, according to Aristotle, "proves opposites."  When two men collaborate in an enterprise to which they contribute different kinds of services and from which they derive different amounts and kinds of profit, who is to say, once and for all, just where "cooperation" ends and one partner's "exploitation" of the other begins?  The wavering line between the two cannot be "scientifically" identified; rival rhetoricians can draw it at different places, and their persuasiveness varies with the resources each has at his command. (Burke, 25).

I think this is really interesting in relation to Nickel and Dimed.  Ehrenreich makes a distinction between the workers and the managers, and she suggests that exploitation is really occurring even though the managers frame it as cooperation by calling the workers "partners" in the company.  I'd like to look into this more.

Nickel and Dimed, and Industrial Psychology

I just finished reading the book Nickel and Domed: On (Not) Getting By in America, and there were some references in the book that I think might be helpful for this exploratory project.  Honestly, the whole book relates, since it's looking at low-paying labor in various states and how people get by.  However, the conclusion is where the author moves from just describing to critiquing and considering the labor system she observed.

This quote, in particular, might lead me to more sources:

"Why don't more [workers] take a stand where they are--demanding better wages and work conditions, either individually or as a group?  This is a huge question, probably the subject of many a dissertation in the field of industrial psychology, and here I can only comment on the things I observed" (Ehrenreich, 208). 

Her question here, about why those in low-wage positions don't just up and revolt, relates to some of the questions I'm asking.  So, I might look more into this field of industrial psychology.  Perhaps I could find a theory here to bring into Rhet/Comp?  Wikipedia (yes, I know this isn't the best place, but it's a start!) tells me:

"Industrial and organizational psychology (also known as I/O psychology or work psychology) is the scientific study of employees, workplaces, and organizations. Industrial and organizational psychologists contribute to an organization's success by improving the workplace and the performance, satisfaction and well-being of its people."

This sounds a lot like the kind of project I want to do for my dissertation.  I'm interested in studying adjunct writing instructors in English departments in order to improve the workplace and satisfaction for all.  AWESOME!  I might have just found a really significant lead for my project!

-----

In addition, in her conclusion, Ehrenreich discusses the kinds of emotions we experience when we recognize the labor system that sustains our comfortable ways of living.  She discusses shame, specifically, saying that "Guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame--shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others" (Ehrenreich, 220-221).

Since we started talking more about emotions, I've become more aware of discussions about emotions in the things I'm reading, and we see this example here.  Playing the believing game, yes, I agree that shame is an important emotion to feel.  Playing the doubting game, I'd also like to see us move beyond shame to some of those other emotions that insight action, like Anger (as Aristotle described).

Anyway, file this away for later: industrial psychology.  What is it?  What does it have to offer?

Also, file away:

Ehrenreich, Barbara.  Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001. Print.

Possible Questions

After all the discussion in the first three weeks of class about workload, the 40 hour week, time management,  working on projects, etc., I think that I'd like to focus my individual blogging and final project on labor issues and their intersections with Rhetoric, Composition, and the Mind.  Yes, this is still vague, but I have some more specific ideas for questions that I might consider pursuing.  Here are some of my big questions that I'd really like to understand more:

• How can psychological discourse be used to change minds about exploitative labor issues, more specifically the adjunct issue in Higher Education?

• What are some of the psychological impacts of being an adjunct in the field of Rhetoric and Composition, or in the academy at large?  How does embodying this occupational space impact the mind?

• In larger examinations of labor, what have psychologists suggested that those in low-paying, unstable employment positions do?  i.e., Are there tools for dealing with these situations that psychologists suggest, or do psychologists suggest leaving the semi-exploitative position?

• How do we understand exploitation psychologically?

• What can be done to manage workload for adjuncts?  For example, what can Writing Program Administrators do when developing a program to reduce workload and stress for adjunct instructors? Or for all instructors?

• What does psychology offer students who are learning to write in regards to managing workload and stress?  For example, what else is there other than Boice?

• Would it be possible for me to interview instructors to find out more about how they cope with their workloads?  Or, could I look at a current documentary, Con Job, and examine the narratives presented by adjunct laborers within the film to discuss how these positions impact the mind?

Yes, I have lots of questions.  I'm still just figuring out where to go with them and how to narrow.  What would you suggest pursuing this semester?  What sounds reasonable to pursue for the next 12 weeks?  What will add the most to my thinking about issues of Rhetoric, Composition, Labor, and the Mind?

Also, I want to clarify that I (mostly) understand the complexity of the term "Adjunct Laborer."  Yes, adjunct only means "a thing that is added to something else as supplementary and not the essential part," and this is a vague description.  I've also considered using the term Contingent Laborer, Part-Time Laborer, etc.  However, contingent really describes groups of workers who work on a non-permanent basis, but this isn't always the case with the kind of workers I'm thinking about--some do work permanently.  Part-Time also isn't the best word because some of the laborers I'm talking about work full time.  I prefer to use the word contingent because it suggests more of a social space than a job description--these positions are not considered as essential, but supplementary, thus being considered low in value. The reality, though, is that these positions are valuable and things could not stay the way they are without them.

I'd also appreciate some help thinking about other terms to use. Ideas?

The beginning of something new

Hello, blog world (and my class of ENGL 8040 friends)!

This is the first time I've ever used a blog to keep track of my reading, notes, prewriting, questions, annotations, etc., and I have to say that I'm looking forward to it.  Perhaps having a good chunk of the writing process in a public place will keep me more accountable when working on my semester project.  One can only hope?

To provide some context for myself (in case I forget or lose my syllabus), here are the two main things that I'll be working on through this blog:

Individual Blogging: I ask that each of you set up your own individual blog for entries particular to your own research interests and projects.  Beginning at least in week 4, but starting earlier if you wish, I'll ask you to contribute 2 entries per week in which you write for at least 15 minutes about a topic, question, or reading that interests you, that you might consider pursuing on your own.  As you decide upon your formal projects for this class, the blog will then become a place for you to take notes and do some preliminary drafting of your projects.  Be sure to tag your entries so that you'll be able to better use the blog to collate ideas for your final project.

Okay, this seems fairly straightforward to me.  Blog 2 times a week for at least 15 minutes.  Write about a topic, a question, or a reading that interests me.  Consider doing some of my own research to add to the readings for the class in relation to my project.  Take notes.  Draft.  Tag.  I can do all this.

Here's the second part, then, to consider for the future:

Final Project(s): I am asking that you submit approximately 20 pages of formal, revised writing for this class. My suggestion is that you write an exploratory paper, in which you take up a question that interests you, that springs in some way from our readings and discussions together.  An exploratory paper is one that offers a kind of narrative of your research process as you explore sources that allow you to investigate your question.  If you would prefer, you may choose to instead write a traditional seminar paper, geared toward publication in a journal, but my feeling is that when confronting a new area of inquiry, a person needs time to explore.  You'll need to specify your plans in a proposal, due by the fifth week of class (February 21).  

Okay, I think I can do this too.  20 pages of formal, revised writing.  Exploratory *yay*!  I'm a bit stumped with the proposal, but I'll figure that out later.  For now, at least I know what some of the short term and long term goals are!