Conference paper
Embedding the workplace in the home-space: Implications for tertiary educators of COVID-19-informed work-from-home arrangements
Sociology in the West (University of Western Australia, 05/11/2021–05/11/2021)
05/11/2021
Abstract
In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote in The Human Condition that mass society had destroyed the private realm. She argued that the public sphere affirmed or denied the value of our actions, and “every activity performed in public [could] attain an excellence never matched in privacy”. Embedded in this argument is an understanding that the two realms can be understood as separate. While the public space is a site for connection and performance, the private is a sanctuary, and the two spheres are – or perhaps – clearly demarcated.
This paper summarises the preliminary findings of an auto-ethnographic study examining what happens to the division between public and private selves when a pandemic forces us to retreat inside our homes? In the context of tertiary teaching, what happens when our home-space becomes our makeshift workplace? In answering these questions, the paper offers a re-appreciation of Arendt’s thesis and examines the changing nature of the public/private divide at a time where a large portion of the world’s population has found itself sequestered indoors, isolated, and attached to mobile devices. Emphasis is placed on the lived experience of teaching scholars working in the Australian tertiary education setting. Preliminary findings suggest that some tertiary educators wished they had re-fashioned their professional boundaries in anticipation of the shift to fully online teaching and delivery.
Details
- Title
- Embedding the workplace in the home-space: Implications for tertiary educators of COVID-19-informed work-from-home arrangements
- Authors/Creators
- Samuel K Teague
- Conference
- Sociology in the West (University of Western Australia, 05/11/2021–05/11/2021)
- Identifiers
- 991005618969407891
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Murdoch University
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Conference paper
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