7703
Context maps and critical incidents: a working paper
Colin Fletcher
Introduction
This working paper outlines aspects of a part of the author’s current work in an uneven form. First contest maps and critical incidents are discussed and then followed by a theory of contexts. This part is necessarily compressed and conceptual. What follows is an elaboration of one of the theoretical variables by reference to both the search for data and its relevance to adult education. Thus three purposes are developed simultaneously:
a reasoning of the means by which a context can be understood.
the relation of this understanding to the planning of adult education provision.
the place of such a project in an adult education class.
The continuous reduction of focus may be too jerkily handled for ready comprehension. The purpose is, however, to sketch out the arc of a perspective from beginning to end so that the perspective itself may be criticised.
There are at least two good reasons for mapping the context of adult education. First such maps make it possible to be honest about customers and catchment areas. Secondly the data form part of a consciousness-raising endeavour to relate education to informed participation. Put simply we need to know the locality in detail as part of the currency of exchange within some of our classes and as part of the process by which provision is either planned or evaluated. The exchange may well be improved by both neither teacher nor taught possessing knowledge as evenly or as comprehensively as they may wish. Context maps are thus part of a self-critical programme concerning who and what is taught. Context maps are related to critical incidents by a simple mechanism. Crises are often understood as a kind of instant history; things that have just happened and blown up overnight. It is not always possible to establish their historical reasons let alone guess at the possible outcome. Furthermore a crisis is difficult to anticipate without some theoretical framework. All effort is then determined by whether or not one gets to know of some event and how it is covered in the media.
A critical incident is a matter of deliberately limiting the period during which selected crises are considered and selecting the incident by reference to its theoretical importance. The later choice may well contrast With the extent and style of media coverage. So far, therefore, certain points have been established before giving either precise definition or a discussion of method:
1.Context maps are part of the understanding of the locality intrinsic in adult education; as an arm of planning provision and as part of a ‘two-way’ curriculum development. This development itself, in turn, may be geared to affecting the context as well as analysing it.
2.Critical incidents are happenings within the process of context mapping that in the first instance may fill out or question the approach adopted. Secondly critical incidents may be predicted and thus sought if they are related to the criteria of context mapping.
Context maps are, therefore, descriptive accounts of theoretical data. Whilst critical incidents are conflicts within the context that relate the theoretical variables to action and that are conflicts within or between these variables.
In no sense is this paper meant to make claims about the best possible use of limited research resources[1] or to be the most appropriate perspective from which to view adult education[2]. The plan, if such it be, is one line of approach in combining the tasks of researcher and part-time tutor. The crux of this paper is, in crude terms, a list of headings under which local life can be grouped and a consideration of events as critical incidents.
The Meaning of Context
At the risk of offending those already conversant with the term, I would like to locate it much as one might fix a planet in its universe. The term context is part of a set of terms namely author; text, context; meta-context, meta-meta-context and so on. These do not have a fixed application because it depends upon what subject is cast as author. Properly speaking the author would always be ‘the individual’ but it is not unknown for some abstract collectivity to be the basic unit of analysis as in, for example, school, town or college
In any event the author is held to have at least part of the responsibility for the text and in some cases to have authority for it. Such would be the case in the run of abstractions, father; family; neighbourhood and town. Here the context of the father would be the family. Contexts are always held to be the important collectivities between the world at large and the author in question.
The Application of Context
Unfortunately as the term context refers to mental worlds or spheres of activity it does not neatly fit with an institutional perspective unless specifically constrained to do so. When this is done the term is really little more than a reference to ‘system’. However in this paper I am concerned with the locality, the town or neighbourhood or even the catchment area. At this point the context is partly composed of institutions it is true. The notion of context, may, however, come closer to the lay perspective and ask questions with regard to 'what is significant about where we live?'. I have already argued that if this effort is to produce more than a shopping list then it must be theoretically grounded. In this way a class may come to know theory.
The Theoretical Variables of Contexts
At the further risk of confusing what may be already clear three phenomena are held to give a lead to active knowledge. They are:
1.Stratification: the degree of centralisation of power
2.Differentiation: the degree of specialisation of tasks
3.Identification: the loci and intensity of identities
In terms of better known 'sociological' concepts these phenomena refer to classes, the division of labour and cultures. They have usually been considered as aspects of the society or meta-context. With respect to the context their contents can prove both more elusive and more contentious. The problem centres on keeping the focus steadily in mind. Consequently though there are many ways of approaching power, tasks and identities they are here rendered down to a type; that is reduced to one or two kinds of variation. This part of the exercise is no more than a reduction of the phenomena in question.
Critical incidents are not in addition to the theory of contexts but in fact the successful and unsuccessful attempts to transform them. Of course there is a conditional element to this theorising. The social sciences do not work with or within a vacuum. The very pertinence of the three variables is dependent upon the implicit meta-context. Clearly a number of assumptions have been made about the English circumstance and these should now be made explicit:
1. Identification is but one aspect of an embedded and encrusted history - of the assumption that is of time-honoured loyalties, lore and loves of many kinds.
2. Differentiation is but an aspect of a mixed industrial, agricultural and service economy.
3. Stratification, too, has its roots in pre and post capitalistic relations. It also has within it the tensions that some call the checks and balances of representative democracy and a variable rate and range of State ownership.
These domain assumptions could obviously be elaborated, as could the reasoning behind the variables and perhaps such work should have been undertaken here. Nevertheless, it would seem that the use of the theory could be as valuable at this stage - as valuable, that is, as piling term upon term and reference upon reference.
Differentiation: An Example
Moser and Scott’s study of 'British Towns' offers a point of departure[3]. For them 'the choice of variables was dictated largely by the data available for local government authority areas' (p 97). Consequently they described economic character in terms of:
1. Occupied population as per cent of total resident population aged 15 or over, 1951.
2. Women as per cent of the total occupied population, 1951
3. Per cent of population working in the area, in
a) manufacture, agriculture and mining
b) all service industries
c) retail trades
d) insurance, banking and finance
e) professional services
4. Job ratio (the occupied population as a percentage of the resident population) 1951.
5. Commuter ratio (the number of persons either living in the area, but working outside it or working in the area but living outside it, per 100 occupied resident population) 1951.
6. Per capita retail sales.
Obviously these indications have greater value for comparing contexts than they do as a means of mapping a single context. The first two variables do not distinguish between full-time and part-time work, day work and the many kinds of shift work. Clearly, that is, a class cannot meet regularly on the same day and time without paid educational leave and periodic attendance (and payment arrangements) for shift workers. Also clear are the differences that shift-work creates socially for family and neighbourhood life.
Further there is insufficient detail in the types of work. The spread of ownership in the private sphere from multi-national, through combine to family firm has direct consequences for the treatment of work people. For context purposes, too, agriculture would be treated separately from mining and manufacture and types of manufacture established. Post second world war developments have largely been in the luxury consumer, chemicals, plastics and packaging industries. So, too, there has been the changing fortune of miners, process and craft workers. Pre second world war industry still tends to be labour intensive, competitive and the stronghold of piecework.
In some respects the refinements in classification may have to be ad-hoc. There are often industrial and infra-structure characteristics of special interest in a particular context. The retail trades, for example, can also be separated into family, combine and national chain. So too ‘real’ maps can be drawn to show the distribution of multiple and small shops that would show in turn the ‘decline’ of areas and the centralisation that has been common to small towns. The proportion employed in service industries has recently become a cause for concern and yet the character of a context is often held to be derived from the declining and small ‘productive’ sector. This ‘fact’ is all the more important when the productive sector itself has a recent history of closure, mergers and take-overs. At this point case-studies of roads, companies or types of industry could be the best way of relating the context to work people’s experience. So, too, would a visit to the office of full-time officials. Ron Weiner’s 'The Economic Base of Leeds'[4] makes explicit use of the County Structure Plan and other reviews as has Ken Coates in his 'Ashfield: What’s going wrong?'[5] By this stage Companies' annual reports may be sought. Requests may even be made to Companies House to establish who owns what. Needless to say libraries and their voluminous archives hold yet more pieces of the jigsaw.
The specialisation of task that is being examined is therefore that of the industry in relation to its effect on those who live and work in the context. Some attention may be paid towards estimating the 'muscle' of the employer in terms of capital investment, plant and size of site. These features may well be related to the problems experienced by trade unionists in securing rates or recognition. They also relate to the commitment made to the context by the employer.
The specialisation of tasks, though, has more implications for employees than have yet been referred to. First the specialisation may be the way of representing the levels of managerial, supervisory, clerical and operative 'responsibility'. Characteristically these specialities are divided along sexist lines. In old established industries sexual divisions usually follow those of better pay and relaxed supervision. Directly, too, the specialisation of tasks leads to ‘career’ ceilings and cul-de-sacs. Most importantly in relation to adult education there is under employment of ability; non-union membership and the self-employed. The link between specialisation and unemployment has yet to be established.
It is unlikely, therefore, that a brief survey can be avoided. At some stage it will be realised that no data source exists for the ‘levels’ of employment, in relation to men and women, part-time and shift work.
Even the relationship between the type of work and the type of induct may not be wholly clear. This is certainly likely to be the case if the focus is narrowed to that of the physical conditions and hazards of work.
No hard and fast rules have been laid down for ‘measuring’ differentiation for each context mapping exercise will alter the emphases given. The point, more generally, is to get a firm grip on the present because critical incidents create the need to see 'the present as history'[6] and so to take an active part in its making.
Critical Incidents
A critical incident is more than a growth or contraction in any one of the variables. It is a sharp, sudden movement that may be said to threaten the very fabric as far as those dependent upon the context are concerned. Thus the opening or closure of a works may be the most dramatic incident, whilst a change in the machinery or workstudy plans may be less widely felt.
At this point there is more to fieldwork than newspaper cuttings. Gossip is put in its rightful place as a finger, if not an arm, of government. The class is to be sensitised to gossip rather than to suppress it whilst learning.
'Government by rumour' informs peoples’ attitudes and activities so that they accept things when they do finally happen. An obvious example of government by rumour is the designation of a clearance area. In the first instance local people discourage each other from making a home there. Then improvement grants are refused on the buildings which effectively asserts that they have less than 15 years of guaranteed life. Finally a programme or plan is produced which shows the developments that are intended. The truth is that only when the plan is actually produced does anybody really know what is going on. Nevertheless, a great deal of local administration is handled by the effective use of rumour. Propaganda reduces extent of real resistance when the actual plan is published.
Thus arguing the need for a big new factory is confirming the rumour about a big old one. Resistance is weakened to the circumstances in which both occur. So, too, the manner in which the argument is handled shows the selection of facts felt to be acceptable in the context. A critical incident is therefore also the subject of sceptical scrutiny. Such scepticism leads, of course, to indicators of the most appropriate form and point of intervention. In most cases existing local groups will be strengthened. In some cases new local groups will be called for. And at this point the class and tutor may leave the classroom.
Frankly, though, most classes will return to the classroom after fieldwork and prepare their own counter-propaganda based upon the facts that have presented themselves in the context. In this way 'authority' is forced to take a second look at the proposals or lack of them. So too divisions may be brought between planners and within classes as to the right channels for resources. Maps, after all, concern property relations as well as terrain; just as critical incidents concern beliefs about the future as well as the facts of the present.
A Brief Example
It would seem preferable to bring this perspective to some conclusion by reference, albeit slight, to 'real data'. In February 1977 a postal survey of Sutton-in-Ashfield’s 137 employers produced an 82% response late after two reminders. At the same time trade union officials were visited at their offices.
Approximately one quarter of the work force worked shifts totalling 2,455 men and 128 women. Part-time work was 12% of the total and almost wholly women’s work. The following table compares the full time workers by types of job and the numbers of men and women expressed as percentages.
February 1977 Survey: Men and Women’s Full Time Positions with Sutton-in-Ashfield’s Employers.
% of men / % of women / % / of totalMen / Women
Manager / 6.65 / 0.87 / 4.48 / 0.29
Supervisor / 7.87 / 4.04 / 5.30 / 1.35
Clerk / 5.54 / 14.08 / 3.73 / 4.70
Operator / 79.93 / 81.02 / 53.79 / 27.04
Totals / 6,746 / 3,345
Thus the division along sex lines would seem universal, women supervise part-time and full-time women workers; men manage apart from personnel, and four-fifths of either the men and women workers are
operators. If this were to be translated into the most representative class composition then half would be
male shop-floor workers and a quarter female shop-floor workers. In a class of 20, for example, workers would account for 15 members with 1 female clerk, 1 male clerk, two male supervisors and 1 male manager. Meanwhile the shift work figures would suggest that about a quarter of the courses would have to be in-plant or day-release or meet at different times to be equally accessible to the shift working population. Daytime-classes would be the only alternative for the 12% on the ‘twilight’ shift.