Human Relations ( IF 5.658 ) Pub Date : 2021-05-19 , DOI: 10.1177/00187267211022270 Elizabeth Nixon 1 , Richard Scullion 2
The marketization of higher education entails a radical reshaping of the educational relationship as one in which the lecturer is recast as a professional service worker, implicitly or explicitly tasked with ensuring the satisfaction of fee-paying students as sovereign consumers. What does an organizational discourse of high customer satisfaction mean for the emotional experiences of lecturers on the frontline? In this article, we conduct a psychosocial analysis of academics’ experiences of interacting with students in a marketized higher education context. We illustrate how institutional imperatives readily align with lecturers’ internalised professional duty of care for students who are discursively constructed as highly anxious and vulnerable. At the same time, changing power differentials wrought by marketization heighten the likelihood of emotional responses in the relationship that are intense, spontaneous, and sometimes involuntary – and thus appear replete with unconscious meanings. Informed by Freudian psychoanalysis, we illustrate how academics enact various defence mechanisms in response to unconscious feelings of dependence, subordination, vulnerability and resentment of the student as an authority figure. We conclude that organisational imperatives to ‘corporately care’ for students have the unintended consequence of generating acute ambivalence that drastically intensifies the psychological demands on teaching staff.
中文翻译:
表达:学术劳动作为专业服务工作吗?市场化下师生关系情感的社会心理分析
高等教育的市场化需要对教育关系进行彻底的重塑,将讲师改组为专业服务工作者,暗中或明确地承担确保收费学生作为主权消费者的责任。高客户满意度的组织话语对一线讲师的情感体验意味着什么?在本文中,我们对市场化高等教育环境中学者与学生互动的经历进行了社会心理分析。我们说明了制度性要求如何容易地与讲师的内部化专业职责相一致,以照顾被话语建构为高度焦虑和脆弱的学生。同时,市场化造成的不断变化的力量差异,加剧了关系中激烈,自发甚至是非自愿的情感反应的可能性,因此似乎充满了潜意识。通过弗洛伊德式的心理分析,我们说明了学者们如何制定各种防御机制,以应对无意识的依赖,从属,脆弱和对学生作为权威人物的不满情绪。我们得出的结论是,组织对学生进行“全力关怀”的必要条件会产生意想不到的后果,即产生强烈的矛盾情绪,从而极大地加剧了对教职员工的心理需求。通过弗洛伊德式的心理分析,我们说明了学者们如何制定各种防御机制,以应对无意识的依赖,从属,脆弱和对学生作为权威人物的不满情绪。我们得出的结论是,组织对学生进行“全力关怀”的必要条件会产生意想不到的后果,即产生强烈的矛盾情绪,从而极大地加剧了对教职员工的心理需求。通过弗洛伊德式的心理分析,我们说明了学者们如何制定各种防御机制,以应对无意识的依赖,从属,脆弱和对学生作为权威人物的不满情绪。我们得出的结论是,组织对学生进行“全力关怀”的必要条件会产生意想不到的后果,即产生强烈的矛盾情绪,从而极大地加剧了对教职员工的心理需求。