During a multi-district study on part-time teaching employment, part-time teachers,
school administrators, and teachers? association officials spoke about a range of
micropolitical activities related to part-time teaching arrangements as a component of
flexible workforces and as an element of flexible workplaces. The study was conducted
in one Canadian province during a period of rapidly imposed changes, including
funding cuts, typical of the globalized school restructuring movement. We describe
administrators? strategic efforts to mobilize their biases related to part-time teaching
employment by organizing their micropolitical resources either to support that
preference or to minimize such arrangements. We discuss the strategies that part-time
teachers used in order to survive as flexible workers, and sometimes to flourish in
rather fragile versions of flexible workplaces. We conclude by noting micropolitical
themes that have application beyond the little-studied subculture of part-time teaching.
These themes offer insights about power, perceptions, values, and gender that apply
more widely to the micropolitics of school organizations. |