Accepted Type
Oral
Code
OA2-2-4
Was this work accepted for CCME 2020?
yes
Category
General Call (Workshop, Oral Presentation, Poster Presentation)
Type
Oral
Sub Type
Education Research
Will the presenter be a:
Graduate Student
Affiliation
Considered for Poster
yes
Title
Representations of Administrative Staff and Faculty over 50 Years of Reports from the Dean
Length of Presentation
Background/Purpose
Language and representation matter. For a century, the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto has produced an annual report from the Dean, discussing issues, showcasing successes and acknowledging community members. Reports traced the faculty through war, depression and the introduction of socialized medicine. Included in those narratives are the people who work within as staff members and teachers, researchers, and leaders.
Methods
This study forms the beginning of my doctoral research employing Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore how administrative staff have been and continue to be represented across three departments in the Faculty. Fifty years of digitalized Reports from the Dean (1920s-70s) form the archive and were reviewed, coded in NVivo12, and analyzed.
Results
Staff and Faculty have been written about differently and this changes over time. Staff representations are minimal with specifically-named staff mentioned rarely. This is juxtaposed by the heavy focus on named Faculty members. Staff are constructed in various ways, often using aspects of their personalities (e.g. "cheerful"). In contrast, faculty are more often constructed by accomplishments. Female faculty members are described using language much closer to descriptions of the largely feminized staff cohort (e.g. "delightful") indicating that this is gendered.
Conclusion
Discourses employed in the Reports create a number of 'truth statements' - Staff can be recognized but rarely named, cheerful but not accomplished. Female faculty can be delightful. These statements hint at possible discourses that govern what can be said or not said of staff and faculty and provide a glimpse of the differential power ascribed to these groups. Further phases of this research will further explore the discourses that govern this differential power and explore discourses that continue to regulate the work of and power relations between administrative staff and faculty in health professions education.
Keyword 1
faculty
Keyword 2
power
Keyword 3
administrative staff
Level of Training
General
Abstract Themes
Faculty Development
Additional Theme (First choice)
Professionalism
Additional Theme (Second Choice)
Leadership
Additional Theme (Third Choice)
Authors
Presenter
Morag Paton
Term 1
Yes
Term 2
Yes
Term 3
Yes
Term 4
Yes
Term 5
Yes
