EfSD versus EE in Australia: An Analysis of Positions Vacant Advertisements
Dr Joy Hardy
Centre for Research in International Education and Sustainability
School of Education
University of New England
Armidale, NSW, 2351
Australia
Tel.+61 2 6773 2520
Fax.+61 2 6773 2445
Paper submitted to 10th UNESCO-APEID International Conference, Learning Together for Tomorrow: Education for Sustainable Development, 6-8 December, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
EfSD versus EE in Australia: An Analysis of Positions Vacant Advertisements
ABSTRACT
This paper details a pilot study that examined the discursive construction of Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education in Australia through online positions vacant advertisements. The study involved content analysis and critical discourse analysis of advertisements registered with online Australian recruitment agencies. The content analysis revealed significant differences between the terms and conditions of positions designated as Education for Sustainable Development compared with Environmental Education. Further, systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis were used to explicate the power relationships into which prospective employees were being positioned. The findings indicate that Environmental Education positions in the sample are often precarious, poorly paid and disempowering. Whereas, positions in Education for Sustainable Development are more secure, more highly paid, empowering and, in many cases, offer career advancement. This paper will provide an overview of the content analysis findings and demonstrate the use of critical discourse analysis in the explication of the power relationships inscribed in Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education recruitment advertisements. In summary, this paper suggests that a disturbing stratification is occurring between Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development in Australian employment sectors.
EfSD versus EE in Australia: An Analysis of Positions Vacant Advertisements
INTRODUCTION
Positions vacant advertisements provide a rich data source for analysing the representations of dominant discourses, preferred versions of employee identity and social practices in employment sectors (Hardy & Connolly, in press). This paper details a pilot study that explored the research potential that positions vacant advertisements avail in Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development. Specifically, the study examined the discursive construction of Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education in Australia through online positions vacant advertisements. Content analysis (Crowl, 1993), systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994, 1985, 2004) and critical discourse analysis (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2004; Fairclough, 1989, 1992a, 1995; Janks, 1997, 1992) were used to critically analyse recruitment advertisements. The content analysis revealed significant differences between the tenure and remuneration of positions designated as Education for Sustainable Development compared with Environmental Education. Further, systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis were used to explicate the power relationships into which prospective employees were being positioned. The findings indicate that Environmental Education positions in the sample are often precarious, poorly paid and disempowering. Whereas, positions in Education for Sustainable Development are more secure, more highly paid, empowering and, in many cases, offer career advancement. This paper will provide an overview of the content analysis findings and demonstrate the use of critical discourse analysis in the explication of the power relationships inscribed in Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education advertisements.
DATA COLLECTION AND CLASSIFICATION
Recruitment advertisements for positions vacant in Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development were collected from major online Australian recruitment agencies (Seek, Career One and Byron Employment) and environmental websites (COOEE Ads and EcoShout) from February to August 2006. Eighty-three recruitment advertisements, together with associated role descriptions and selection criteria, were collected and analysed. Some recruitment advertisements for positions in New Zealand were posted with Australian recruitment agencies. These advertisements were included in the data collection, however, their inclusion in data analysis varied according to the particular question being investigated. For example, the advertisements for positions in New Zealand were included in an analysis of the discursive construction of Environmental Education and environmental educators in Australia because they contributed to the constellation of representations that inform Australian readers’ understandings of the field. The inclusion of the New Zealand positions in that instance can be theoretically justified by Appadurai’s (1994) model of globalisation (see Hardy & Connolly, in press). However, the purpose of this paper is to examine the representation of Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development practicein Australia through positions vacant advertisements. Therefore, the NZ advertisement will not be included in this analysis, which reduces the data set to 71 advertisements. It is also important to note that most of the advertisements (97%) were for positions outside the formal education sector. Therefore, care should be taken not to extrapolate the findings to the formal education sector.
Of the 71 recruitment advertisements, eleven advertisements were for positions designated as Education for Sustainable Development in the data classification. The classification was based on the title of the position, name of the organization and elements specified in the job description. This resulted in the designation of the following diverse positions as Education for Sustainable Development: Coordinator - Waste and Environment Services (Melbourne City Council), Communications Officer (Department of Sustainability and Environment), Education Advisor – Sustainable Consumption (Consumer Affairs Victoria), Curriculum Officer (Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training), Senior Project Officer – Communications (Department of Environment and Conservation: Sustainability Programs Division), Manager – Community Engagement and Education (Department of Sustainability and Environment), Education Officer – Strategic Planning (Department of Sustainability and Environment), Residential Energy Liaison Officer (Manly Council), Project Manager (Swinburne University, National Centre for Sustainability), Project Manager - Werribee Plains Waterwatch (Melbourne Water), and Manager – Clearwater (Melbourne Water). The classification of these positions as Education for Sustainable Development was not straightforward. Given the shared histories of and synergies between Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development (McKeown & Hopkins, 2003; McKeown & Hopkins, 2005; Monroe & Fien, 2004), discourses from both fields were present in many advertisements. The juxtaposition of Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development was exemplified in an advertisement for a Curriculum Officer in the field of Environmental Education for Sustainability. Therefore, the classification of particular positions in the study can be contested. Nevertheless, it is not the intention of this paper to enter into a fine-grained analysis of the theoretical distinctions between Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development in order to validate the categorisation of various positions within the data set. The focus, instead, is on material distinctions that are emerging in employment sectors.
DATA ANALYSIS & DISCUSSION
Content analysis (Crowl, 1993), systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994, 1985, 2004) and critical discourse analysis (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2004; Fairclough, 1989, 1992a, 1995; Janks, 1997, 1992) were used to critically analyse recruitment advertisements. Smith and Hope (1992, p. 86) succinctly capture the nature and purpose of content analysis: “The main aim of content analysis is to identify the presence or absence of patterns or recurring themes in one or more pieces of textual or pictographic material. Content analysis then is a sorting and categorizing process”. Content analysis was used across the data set to systematically gather information on the discursive construction of the preferred subject position in terms of the personal self (desired personal attributes), the professional self (desired qualifications and experiences), the environmental self (demonstrated commitment to environmental/sustainability values and lifestyles) and the global self (knowledge of, commitment to and/or involvement with international approaches to environmental/sustainability issues) (see Hardy & Connolly, in press). Content analysis was also used to compare the terms and conditions of positions in Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education.
Content Analysis of Terms and Conditions
Content analysis revealed significant differences in the tenure and remuneration of positions designated as Education for Sustainable Development compared to Environmental Education. In relation to tenure, all the advertisements for Education for Sustainable Development offered full-time positions, whereas Environmental Education positions were available in casual, part-time and full-time modes. The determination of the percentages of Environmental Education positions offered in these modes is problematic, however, given that some advertisements for casual work indicated that multiple positions were available, but did not specify the number required. If the advertisements that did not specify the number of casual positions available are limited to one vacancy, then 60% of the Environmental Education positions were full-time, 15% were part-time and 25% casual. However, the percentage of casual positions may be much higher, reducing the percentages of part-time and full-time positions accordingly.
The calculation that at least 25% of the Environmental Education positions in the sample were casual is necessarily an underestimate given that some advertisements that specified that multiple positions were available, but did not specify how many positions were available. Therefore, the casualisation of environmental education in the sample may exceed the national average of 27.9% (ACTU, 2004). This is cause for concern on at least two grounds. Firstly, casual work is precarious; casual workers in Australia do not receive entitlements such as paid sick leave, annual leave or carer’s leave and, typically, casual workers are under-unionised. The second cause for concern arises from the gendered nature of casual work in Australia: 24% of all male workers and 32% of all women workers are casual (ACTU, 2004). Given that all Education for Sustainable Development positions were full-time and at least 25% of the Environmental Education positions were casual, further research is needed to investigate whether Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education are stratified by gender.
In relation to remuneration, the average salary in Education for Sustainable Development is $70,468.50 per annum, whereas the average annual full-time and pro rata annualised part-time salary is $53,181.97 in Environmental Education. To contextualise these data, at the time of writing the average full-time and pro rata annualised part-time salary of $53,181.97 is slightly less than the annual salary of a four-year trained teacher who is in his/her fourth year of teaching in New South Wales[1] ($54,983). The eleven positions that were designated as Education for Sustainable Development were managerial/executive positions. There was evidence in the data set that Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education positions were offered in the same organization. Therefore, further research is needed to investigate whether Education for Sustainable Development and Environmental Education are stratified by power structures within organizations.
Finally, in relation to the remuneration for casual work, hourly rates were from $16.70/hr. It is not possible to contextualise this figure with a base-rate for casual work in Australia: different awards cover different employment sectors. But, given that with most advertisements for casual positions specified that evening, week-end and public holiday work was required, it is reasonable to compare the hourly rate with awards that require work outside ‘normal business hours’, such the award pay rates for restaurant employees[2]. Following this schedule, the casual pay rate for restaurant employees on Sunday is up to $31.69/hr, which demonstrates that casual work in Environmental Education positions in the study were poorly paid.
Critical Discourse Analysis
In addition to content analysis, critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 1992a, 1992b, 1995; Janks, 1997) that drew on the tools and concepts of systemic functional linguistics (Goatley, 2000; Halliday, 1978, 1994, 1985, 2004; Janks, 1997) was applied to the advertisements in order to draw into relief the power relations into which prospective employees were being inscribed. This section includes brief discussions of the notions of ‘critical discourse analysis’ and aspects of systemic functional linguistics, before illustrating the application of critical discourse analysis to two advertisements from the data set, one for a position in Education for Sustainable Development (Figure 1) and the other in Environmental Education (Figure 2).
According to Ainsworth and Hardy (2004, p. 236), critical discourse analysis “involves the use of discourse analytic techniques, combined with a critical perspective, to interrogate social phenomena”. However, critical discourse analysis is not a monolithic project; many different approaches are employed to interrogate social phenomena, such as fine-grained analysis of micro-linguistic features of a text (Janks, 1997; Martin, 2004), the patterned structure of conversation (Turnbull, 2003), and the analysis of visual images (Schirato & Webb, 2004; van Leeuwen, 2005). This analysis draws on the former, i.e. it examines the micro-linguistic elements of the positions vacant advertisements to explicate how they constructed potential applicants, especially in terms of how they were being positioned within power relationships.
Any analysis of how text positions readers or listeners must acknowledge that writers or speakers necessarily hold a privileged position of power from the outset. Janks and Ivanic note that:
all other things being equal (which they never are, of course!) speakers and writers have the balance of power in their favour. … This exercise of power is not necessarily intentional: the very conventions of language, what is expected in the circumstances, often position speakers and writers into exerting power. (Janks & Ivanic, 1992, pp. 313-314)
Therefore the very act of writing a recruitment advertisement necessarily creates a power differential. Writers and speakers, however, can employ textual features to mitigate asymmetrical power relationships that disempower readers and listeners. The tools and concepts of systemic functional linguistics (Halliday & Hasan, 1985, 2004) provide explanatory and analytical frameworks to investigate the textual realization of power relationships. Specifically, ‘tenor’ is the contextual variable in systemic functional linguistics that attends the nature of the relationships among people using language. Tenor is realized through mood and modality. The former, mood, is realized through the placement of the grammatical subject to create questions, demands, declarations and exclamations. The latter, modality, which refers to the degree of probability of a proposition, can be can be realized through the use of modal auxiliaries, such as ‘must’ or ‘may’, and through the use of tense, especially simple present tense (‘is’) to construct declarative statements. The realization of tenor may also be supplemented by the use of other grammatical devices such as passivisation, which allows the grammatical subject to be deleted from a clause.
[Insert Figure 1 near here]
Figure One contains an advertisement for a position that was designated as Education for Sustainable Development. The positioning of the potential applicant in the power relationship is complex and contradictory. In the introductory headlines, the clause “Make you mark” is in imperative mood. That is, it is an order, which suggests a strong power gradient, in which the potential applicant is subordinate. However, the personalization of the reader through the use of the pronoun ‘your’ and the ideational meaning of the statement paradoxically place the locus of control with the prospective applicant, thereby constructing him/her as capable and agentive. The personal quality of capability is maintained and supplemented with responsibility in the elliptical clause ‘manage and take care of our environment’. This maintains the prospective applicant’s power and the use of the possessive pronoun, ‘our’, signals joint ownership/solidarity which reduces the power differential between the prospective employee and the employer. The following statement, “this rare opportunity can be offered to the most suitable candidate”, further reinforces the prospective applicant’s power by placing the prospective applicant in a power dynamic that allows him/her to decline the position.
However, the positioning of the prospective applicant changes abruptly when the advertisement describes the position. In the first sentence of paragraph three, the personalization of the prospective applicant is replaced by a distant tenor; the prospective applicant is referred to as “the incumbent”. The personalization is reintroduced in the second sentence, but the high modality of “you will assist” introduces a steep power gradient. The steep power gradient is maintained in the following sentence through the continued use of the high modal auxiliary, ‘will’. The prospective applicant is further disempowered through the passivisation, which renders the prospective applicant invisible and inconsequential. The erasure of the applicant is maintained in the second sentence in paragraph four: “Resident site visits, participation in special programs and community festivals will also be part of this extensive port-folio”.
The final paragraph of the advertisement, however, reconstructs the prospective applicant as powerful through the statement, “carve out your career”. The ideational meaning and the personal possessive pronoun, again, cast the prospective applicant as capable and agentive. And the final sentence, “If you feel you have many of the above qualifications and qualities – then please apply by following the prompts below”, casts the prospective applicant as discerning and the use of politeness demonstrates the writer’s attentiveness to social and power relations.
In summary, this analysis has demonstrated the complex and contradictory positioning of the prospective applicant in a power dynamic. However, the prospective applicant was empowered through the attribution of capacity and agency at both the beginning and end of the advertisement. The placement of these constructions is important. Beginnings and ends are powerful positions in a text, which intensifies the constructions made in those places.
[Insert Figure 2 near here]
Contrasts can be drawn between the power relationships inscribed in the Education for Sustainable Development advertisement (Figure 1) and those inscribed in the advertisement for the Environmental Education position (Figure 2). A salient difference lies in the omission of personalization; neither the prospective applicant nor the organisation is personalized, which makes the tenor formal and distant, creating an asymmetrical power relationship. The organization is consistently identified as ‘Waterwatch’ and the use of the pronoun ‘you’ as an exclusive or inclusive pronoun, to address a single applicant or multiple applicants respectively, is absent. In relation to the latter, there is only one acknowledgement that multiple applicants may be interested in the position. This acknowledgement occurs in the third paragraph, “Applicants will…”. The remainder of the text, however, ignores the possible array of applicants by focusing futuristically on “the successful applicant” and “the Officer”. Thus the pool of applicants in their diversity is almost completely erased and the distant tenor becomes dismissive.