Chapter 1 Mediating the Relations between People and Institutional Programs: The Work of the Education Advisors and First Nations Access Coordinators

Jake Muller

Introduction

Jake Muller

The main argument that I will present in this book is the following.




The research for this book is based on interviews undertaken in northwestern British Columbia (BC), Canada. From there I transcribed each interview. This was a long and time consuming process as anyone who has done this will acknowledge.

In this book I concentrate on the work of those community college employees who are characterized by the institution as "support" employees. All employees doing this work are members of a provincial union called the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU). The kinds of work that they do ranges from recruiting new students, to considering applications, registering students, providing various kinds of assistance to students, and making sure that these employees are able to do their work by keeping the information and computing systems of the community college running.

All the names of the people interviewed are fictitious including the name of the the community college. (The fictitious name of the community college is Sunny Forest Community College.) I am interested in describing the work that each person does for the community college or institution and not their social interactions with co-workers. Many of people that I interviewed have left the community college to find employment elsewhere or retired. Most of the senior managers have long departed.

The chapters have been organized into the following sequence.

Chapter 1 

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Acknowledgements

Jake Muller

There are a number of people in the community college that I would to thank for making this research possible. In particular, I want to thank the women and men who work as support staff and granted me interview time sometimes in very difficult circumstances due to the oppression of senior managers issuing layoff notices. Others faced a difficult time being bullied by their immediate supervisor manager. Most of the support staff have retired and their managers have departed. I also want to thank the women and men instructors who provided insights into the operations of teaching and learning at this institution. There are also a few managers who I would like to thank for giving me an interview to describe the kind of work that they do. This research would not be possible without everyone's cooperation.

I want to thank the members of CUPE 2409 who, upon my retirement from the community college, made me a life long member. Thank you.

As always, I want to thank Barbara Hammer. I am grateful for someone who has similar views that we can share.

Jake

Purpose

Jake Muller

This blog will present some of my research into post-secondary education in British Columbia (BC), Canada. The post-secondary education that I'm referring to is a community college in northwestern BC. I will be analyzing how the work in this community college was organized (around 2011 to 2013) mainly to serve those who rule others or simply the ruling relations of the province and the community college (those who manage its employees). The overall argument that I will present is that the community community is organized to produce numbers of educated graduates. The emphasis is on numbers involved in programs right through to graduating. This community college is mostly concerned with numbers in its routine workings and that is why this blog is called educating numbers.


I will reveal how the everyday work of various employees, especially those that are unionized, is organized to serve the institution's purpose of generating numbers from interested local people to becoming students and graduating. These numbers are what is significant for community college senior management and the Ministry of Advanced Education of the BC provincial government.

This research is offered as a contribution to what Dorothy Smith has referred to as institutional ethnography. Readers should consult her writings such Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People (2005) and Institutional Ethnography as Practice (2006). Her earlier work is, Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations (1999 reprinted 2004). Many of her students have also published excellent research material and these are listed in her books.

This blog will be organized similar to that of a book. There will be a table of contents that will be updated as I continue to write this. Then there will be a short acknowledgement blog, a brief introduction, which will be followed by numbered chapters. Each chapter will have numbered sections and subsections.

There may at times be various sizes of fonts and layout changes. I've given up trying to make them consistent using the limited commands on this blogging site.

Lastly, I am using this blog format to provide my research for free. That is, there is no book or journal to buy if you are interested in my writings on this topic. You are welcome to share this material. Please do not plagiarize any of my material (because all the information is copyrighted see below). I hope that you enjoy the free read.

Remember that this blog is meant to be read from the end to the current posting.

Jake Muller  Ⓒ 2018
Notes:
1. Variations in text size are due to the blogging software. I gave up trying to obtain consistency.
2. To read from the beginning you have to scroll down to the Purpose.

(FYI: This site is managed by me and I am the sole proprietor and owner of its contents. The moral rights of the author are asserted. Information on this site may be used according to a Fair Use agreement with credit and source to be given.)