The spatial practices of school administrative clerks: making space for contributive justice
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Date
2012-12
Authors
Bayat, Abdullah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Education, University of the Free State
Abstract
This article discusses the work practices of the much neglected phenomenon of the work of school
administrative clerks in schools. Popular accounts of school administrative clerks portray them as
subjectified – assigned roles with limited power and discretion – as subordinate and expected to be
compliant, passive and deferent to the principal and senior teachers. Despite the vital role they play in
schools, their neglect is characterised by their invisible, largely taken-for-granted roles in a school’s
everyday functioning. This main aim of this article is to make their everyday practices and contributions
visible, to elevate them as indispensable, albeit discounted, role players in their schools, whose particular
expressions of agency contribute qualitatively to a school’s practices. Using the theoretical lens of ‘space’,
and based on in-depth semi-structured interviews in the qualitative research tradition, the article discusses
how selected school administrative clerks’ production of space exceeds their assigned spatial limitations,
i.e. they move beyond the expectations that their work contexts narrowly assign to them. They resist the
contributive injustice visited upon them and through their agency they engage in spatial practices that
counters this injustice. They carve out a productive niche for themselves at their schools through their
daily practice. This niche, I will argue, embodies practices of ‘care’, ‘sway’ and ‘surrogacy,’ understood
through a vigorous ‘production of space’. Through these unique spatial practices they reflect their agency
and their appropriation of existing spatial practices at their schools. Thus, they produce personalized
meanings for their existing practice as well as generate novel lived spatial practices.
Description
Keywords
School administrative clerks, Space, Spatial practices, Lived space, Contributive justice
Citation
Bayat, A. (2012). The spatial practices of school administrative clerks: making space for contributive justice. Perspectives in Education: Rethinking citizenship and social justice in education: Special Issue, 30(4), 64-75.