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Record W3024956785 · doi:10.18806/tesl.v36i2.1312

Precarious Work of English Language Teaching in Canada

2019· article· en· W3024956785 on OpenAlexvenueaboutno aff
Sherry Breshears

Bibliographic record

VenueTESL Canada Journal · 2019
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicEducation Systems and Policy
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsPrecarityImmigrationSociologyPrecarious workJob insecurityWork (physics)English languageLiteracyPedagogyHumanitiesGender studiesPolitical sciencePsychologyMathematics educationArt

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This article draws from the concept of precarious employment to better understand the working conditions of teachers of adult English as an additional language (EAL) learners in Canada. I examine previously published research on the employment situations of this group of educators, drawing from data that have been gathered using interviews and surveys with teachers of adult English language and literacy learners over the past two decades. The findings of the review suggest that precarious employment in the form of part-time and temporary work, low wages, unpaid work hours, and multiple job holding is pervasive in this sector and that such conditions have persisted for decades. I propose that approaches developed in labour studies can assist in generating a better understanding of the ways that work insecurity affects these teachers’ lives and pedagogical practices and suggest directions for further research into the intersections of working conditions and quality of education in this field. In particular, I suggest that precarious employment is produced by language and immigration policy frameworks and funding models and is linked to teacher and student identities. The article concludes by considering ways in which stakeholders can challenge employment insecurity and its associated precarity. Cet article fait appel au concept de la précarité de l’emploi pour mieux faire comprendre les conditions de travail des professeurs d’anglais langue additionnelle (EAL) pour adultes au Canada. J’y jette un regard sur les recherches déjà publiées sur la situation de ce groupe d’éducatrices et d’éducateurs en matière d’emploi en m’appuyant sur des données obtenues dans le cadre d’entrevues et de sondages réalisés au cours des deux dernières décennies auprès de professeurs d’anglais langue seconde pour adultes et d’étudiantes et étudiants en alphabétisation. Les conclusions de cet examen indiquent que la précarité de l’emploi, qu’elle se décline sous forme de travail à temps partiel ou temporaire, de faibles salaires, d’heures de travail non rémunérées ou de cumul d’emplois, est omniprésente dans ce secteur, et que ce sont là des conditions qui persistent depuis des décennies. Je mets en avant que les approches développées dans le domaine des relations de travail peuvent nous aider à mieux comprendre les façons dont une telle insécurité d’emploi affecte la vie et les pratiques pédagogiques de ces enseignantes et enseignants, et ce, en suggérant des orientations pour des recherches plus poussées sur les points de rencontre entre les conditions de travail et la qualité de l’enseignement dans ce domaine. Je suggère en particulier que la précarité de l’emploi est le résultat des cadres de politique et des modes de financement en matière de langue et d’immigration et qu’elle est liée aux identités des enseignants et des étudiants. L’article se termine sur un examen des façons dont les intervenants peuvent remettre en cause l’insécurité d’emploi et la précarité qui lui est associée.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.004
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: Qualitative
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.058
Threshold uncertainty score0.422

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.004
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.003
Science and technology studies0.0140.006
Scholarly communication0.0050.001
Open science0.0010.003
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.008
GPT teacher head0.273
Teacher spread0.265 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designQualitative
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations31
Published2019
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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Same venueTESL Canada JournalSame topicEducation Systems and PolicyFrench-language works237,207