The liminality of new foundation phase teachers: Transitioning from university into the teaching profession

Enacting emotional labour in consultancy work: Playing with liminality and navigating power dynamics

“…The notion of liminality is drawn from anthropological studies of tribal rites of passage (Turner, 1969; Van Gennep, 1960). In its original form, liminality thus relates to a period of time characterised by instability and uncertainty (Petersen, 2017). It captures a transitional period when the ‘passenger’ is ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner, 1969: 359) two different roles within the tribe.…”

“…Here, the usual rules of living are ‘suspended’ (Van Gennep, 1960: 115) and actors may choose to invert or challenge existing social structures (Turner, 1974). For consultants, liminality may be characterised by a ‘struggle for voice, space and footing’ (Petersen, 2017: 2) in an established community: a time of ‘professional vulnerability’ where they are impacted by the ‘interplay of structure, identity and agency’ (Lasky, 2005: 899) and the repeated experiencing of a ‘learning-credibility tension’ (Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018: 1611) as they establish themselves in new client contexts. Kitay and Wright (2007) draw attention to the structural constraints – particularly in relation to legitimacy – surrounding consultancy work and the construction of occupational roles or identities (e.g.…”

“…The high stakes issues addressed by most consultancy projects suggest the likelihood that emotions will be felt (on both sides of the consultancy relationship) which it is inappropriate to display. At the same time, the character of consultancy as liminal work has frequently been noted (Borg and Söderlund, 2014;Czarniawska and Mazza, 2003;Sturdy, Schwarz and Spicer, 2006), with the consultant's 'struggle for voice, space and footing' (Petersen, 2017:2) emerging as a key characteristic.…”

“…The high stakes issues addressed by most consultancy projects suggest the likelihood that emotions will be felt (on both sides of the consultancy relationship) which it is inappropriate to display. At the same time, the character of consultancy as liminal work has frequently been noted (Borg and Söderlund, 2015; Czarniawska and Mazza, 2003; Sturdy et al, 2006), with the consultant’s ‘struggle for voice, space and footing’ (Petersen, 2017: 2) emerging as a key characteristic. While there seems to be little research directly concerned with the emotion work that such a contested, shifting space can be expected to entail, Fineman and Sturdy’s (1999) observations of the ‘emotionality of power’ in inter-organisational control relationships can be seen to have resonance here (p. 650).…”

"Sausage Factory, in and out": Lecturers' Experiences of Assessing in an Era of Massification in a Teacher Education Institution

“…I Lebo felt massification has caused the academy to produce half-baked professional teachers. A study by Petersen (2017) found that novice teachers in South Africa who had recently graduated felt underprepared in their teacher education programmes. The "mass production of teachers" without equipping them with sufficient pedagogical and assessment skills, makes the transition a nightmare.…”