Institutional practices are historically produced and as such are imbued with and reproduce power differences and advantages. Everyday experience in that sense is thoroughly political. The politics is not in the competition of experiences but already in the experience at hand, the person and perception produced. Every building, every sidewalk, institutionalizes a point of view, a point of view sedimented out of the politics of the moment of production; each use reproduces the view of the “winner” of that decision process. It’s not that the user must do so, though sanctions and rewards may encourage it. It is in the habit, the routine, and the thoughtlessness that it is reproduced. But this is not to say that it is neutral or innocent. The configuration of routines and other practices leave it inevitable and necessary. And the thoughtlessness and routine are actively protected from thought and alternatives. (Deetz, 1992, p. 128)
Despite my expectation that the Penland School of Crafts and the Mitchell County Schools would exist as two relatively separate organizational and discursive spaces, I was surprised to find that a preoccupation with professionalism emerged in both. As Meg’s performance of her artistic work became articulated to the organization of schooling at the Penland School of Crafts and the Mitchell County Schools, tensions emerged among
artistic work and discourses of professionalism.
I first began to see “the professional” emerge in the histories of Penland. Penland shifted from the Penland Potters and Weavers reviving a local craft and generating income for women with little economic opportunity in the harsh rurality of southern Appalachia to today’s nationally-reputed Penland School of Crafts, a high-craft mecca in the romantic wilderness of the southern Appalachians. This shift was described as “professionalization.” The often overlooked controversy of former Penland director Ken
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Botnik’s quick removal after securing money for the Community Collaborative Initiative occurred in the midst of Penland’s move toward the professional. I became suspicious that Botnik’s designation of this money for a community initiative enacted a vision of Penland that competed with the future-leaning professionalization that Bill Brown brought to Penland during his time there. In and around the Mitchell County Schools, “professional development” was a common and tossed-away phrase: any number of the activities that teachers do can be categorized as “professional development.” Interestingly, however, despite the ample language of “professional development,” I started to notice that teachers expressed a desire to be seen as “experts.” Two teachers explicitly named “expertise” as the desire that drove them to get Master’s degrees, while several commented that they admired Meg because she possessed an expertise in her work that they did not feel they had – or could have – in their own.
“Building expertise” is tied to the creation of a profession – both because of the developing communal standards of ethics, practices, and governance, and because the legitimization of the work that goes hand-in-hand with increasing its visibility and recognition (Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007). Expertise and professionalism are not synonymous, but professionalism is a mechanism which helps to grant expertise its authority (Fournier, 1999). Sociologist Raf Vanderstaeten (2007) argues, however, that many occupations now require specialized, expert knowledge: law, medicine, theology, and education, certainly, but also nursing and carpentry and web-design and machine- tooling – occupations that fulfill the requirement of specialist knowledge yet fall outside of the realm of typically-conceived “professions.”
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I was recently in a seminar with a former teacher; for a while, we discussed teaching and professionalization. She shared that she had often desired for teaching to be
a profession, because it would raise the status of teaching. While recognizing my position as a person who chose not to teach in K12 education, I pushed back, arguing that, as a construct for understanding the work of teaching, professionalism undermines the possibilities of what teaching is and could be. Understandably frustrated with me, she responded: “Well if teaching isn’t a profession, what is it?” I responded, simply: “It’s work.” This sense that teaching must be something else in order to have value diminishes the very work of teaching itself. Teaching, after all, is work unlike any other kind of work. psychologists, lawyers, doctors, and lawyers, all professionals, possess an autonomous expert knowledge to which we, as clients, can submit ourselves in order to solve particular problems beyond our particular reach of knowledge and expertise.
Expertise, authority, knowledge, and power are all tied up in professionalism (Foucault, 1984). Expertise, authority, knowledge, and power become even more linked and occluded as professionalism becomes a metaphor for all kinds of desirable communicative, subjective, and material ways of conducting oneself at work in relationship to society. Performance scholar Peggy Phelan (1993) describes metaphors, when used to place a dominant meaning on a less-dominant body (or in our case, way of working), as hierarchical tools for erasing difference. By using professionalism as a metaphor for the work that we do in classrooms and studios and schools, for instance, we erase the differences and productive tensions between the old image of professionalism (to which we still cling) and the embodied and excessive realities of what it means to do the work that we do. In this chapter, I explore the various uses of professionalism in both
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the Penland School of Crafts and the Mitchell County Schools and the ways in which professionalism enables and constrains different meanings and practices of work, particularly aesthetic work.
The Professional
Many organizational scholars write about professionalism as a locus for our concerns about who we are and what we do, both at work and in society (Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007;Cheney et al., 2010; Clair et al., 2008; Eisenberg, 1995/2007; Fournier, 1999; Meisenbach, 2008). Professionalism enables and constrains people not only at work but also in relationship to larger society, by shaping the ways in which what they do
has meaning about who they are (Cheney et al., 2010; Fournier, 1999; Meisenbach, 2008). In Mitchell County, discourses and practices of professionalism not only enable and constrain people at work and in relationship to society; discourses and practices of professionalism enable a certain posturing and valuation of oft-denigrated work (teaching and art-making) while simultaneously constraining the very aesthetic possibilities of that work.
Organizational scholars George Cheney and Karen Ashcraft (2007) begin their history of work on professionalism with Emile Durkheim’s (1974) observations that a burgeoning professionalism on the cusp of the 20th century separated preindustrial societies from modern ones. Professionalism pervaded not only ways of working, but ways of relating in culture and society. Durkheim frames professionalism communally, emphasizing its role as a cultural construct rather than an individualized phenomenon (Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007). Professionalism, as a separator between preindustrial and modern society, then, comes to “stand in” for words like “legitimate” and “civilized,”
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framing ways of working that are not professional as, therefore, illegitimate and uncivilized. Though “professional” and “unprofessional” do not necessarily translate into “civilized” and “uncivilized” today, there is a certain degree of institutional bias that is mobilized through the use of these words. As critical organizational scholar Stanley Deetz (1992) writes in the opening quotation of this chapter, the mundane use of this term in the everyday lives of the organization of schooling is “thoroughly political” (p. 128) because of the inherent paradox in professionalism’s oeuvre. Cheney & Ashcraft (2007) argue that the pervasiveness of professionalism as a value has created “work sites and jobs not typically deemed professional, wherein members nonetheless strive for professional conduct and status” (p. 161).
As teaching and art organizations, neither the Penland School of Crafts nor Mitchell County Schools are innately professional. Both organizations articulate a desire to work toward some kind of qualitative, and perhaps aesthetic, ideal: Penland strives to “teach people how to live creative lives” (Penland, 2011) while Mitchell County Schools defines its mission to “collaborate with families and community partners to provide a safe, caring, and engaging learning environment that prepares graduates to become responsible citizens in a diverse, global society” (Mission, Mitchell County Schools, 2011). Although these forms of work may never be professional, there exists – both in Mitchell County and broadly, across many forms of work – a fear of doing such work
unprofessionally.
Writing about professionalism as a “software of control” (p. 292), organizational scholar Valérie Fournier (1999) asserts:
the appeal to professionalism serves to “responsibilise” [sic] autonomy by delineating the “competence” of the “professional employee” by instilling
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“professional like” norms and work ethics which govern not simply productive behavior but more fundamentally employees’ subjectivities. (p. 293)
While the professional is desirable for its status, its association with expertise, and its predictability, the professional also provides a governing mechanism through which our very ways of working are shaped and often constrained (Braverman, 1974/1989; Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007; Cheney et al., 2010; Clair et al., 2008; Eisenberg 1995/2007, 2007; Foucault, 1984; Fournier, 1999; Gini, 2000; Willis, 1977). Not only does professionalism and its promised mobility function to produce particular types of subjects (Foucault, 1984; Willis, 1977), it can also, in the case of relationships between organizations and the public, be a real harbinger of dialogue between persons from different organizations and the populations that organizations might seek to serve (Eisenberg, 1995/2007).
In order for a non-professional activity or kind of work to become “professional,” it must become established through some kind of group recognition; the recognition is often economic. Multiple gendered, raced, socioeconomic and political factors influence the development of a profession (Cheney et al., 2010; Fournier, 1999; Gini, 2000; Vanderstaeten, 2007). Writing specifically about the professionalization of education, sociologist of education Raf Vanderstaeten (2007) illustrates that the elevation of teaching to semi-professional status depended on the organization of teacher training at the university level. This separation of teaching from mothering and caring and home- work is the critique of the organization and scholarship of teaching that Madeleine Grumet (1988) offers in her book Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching. Teaching, so long as it was associated with the feminine work of the home and the economic paltry of domestic work, is inherently non-professional work.
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Vanderstaeten (2007) argues that the professionalization of teaching impacted education in schools, certainly, but also education in the home and family. As teaching became professionally organized into “educational organizations,” the expectations of family’s roles in teaching and learning became more and more auxiliary. In the organization of schooling, the organization itself is frequentlycharacterized as progressive, associated with constant “innovations,” “reforms,” and “updates” in response to a changing world and changing needs. As the organization is characterized as “progressive,” the people involved - students, parents, and teachers - are categorized as conservative, and the reason for reforms’ failures (Vanderstaeten, 2007). Further, even in an age of so-called accountability in classrooms, teachers who excel in the classroom must leave the classroom in order to advance professionally (Grumet, 1988; Taubman, 2009). Because professional advancement is typically rendered hierarchically, teachers’ professional careers in classrooms are, in essence, limited to a point in their professional development when they “professionalize” themselves out of the classroom - unless they reject the hierarchical associations of professionalism or live in a place, like Mitchell County, where teaching is already among the higher-esteemed professions in the area.
Even in Mitchell County, national discourses and images of professional teachers and artists pervade what it means to teach locally. That teaching is a relatively denigrated “profession” is relatively widespread assumption, but there is an interesting aspect to Penland’s placement within the art world that likely spurs its relationship to “the professional,” too. Craft scholar Howard Risatti (2007), media scholars Jack Bratich and Heidi Bush (2011), and sociologist Richard Sennett (2008) all note that craft occupies a “lower” status than art in a hierarchical ladder of aesthetic work and sensibilities. Though
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a recent interest in craft and craft performance has emerged (Adamson, 2010; Levine, 2009), craftwork still occupies a peripheral status in the art-world precisely because it
engages with the world too much. Risatti’s (2007) landmark book A Theory of Craft is among the first and boldest attempts to wrest contemporary craft theory from its subservience to art theory. Likewise, students who may someday work in modern, industrial craft are often hidden on the peripheries of schools that cater to so-called serious, college-bound students (Crawford, 2009; Kincheloe, 1999). Vocational education has largely fallen out of favor (and funding) in public schools (Kincheloe, 1999). Perhaps vocational education betrays the schools’ dreams of professionalism. These histories, assumptions, and practices are mobilized in the everyday use of “professional” in and around both Penland and the Mitchell County Schools.
Penland’s Professional Peripheries
Stacey Lane, the Community Collaborative Director, describes the legacy of Lucy Morgan as “open to ideas and full of life and so forth.” I asked Stacey about the legacy of Lucy Morgan’s Penland, because the Community Collaborative Initiative’s work has always struck me as more parallel to her Penland than Bill Brown’s Penland. Stacey responded: “It’s fuzzy to me what her [Lucy Morgan’s] interaction was with the community, as far as schools and things, during her time, but she did seem very open. Like, ‘Everyone’s welcome, come on up,’ kind of thing.”
The work of the Community Collaborative Initiative has been largely invisible at Penland. In September 2011, Penland published information about the Community Collaborative Initiative and its projects on the main website, but the work is still separate from the rest of campus. Primarily occurring at Ridgeway, isolated from Penland’s main
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campus, Meg’s teaching art work occasionally gets attention in the form of complaints about school buses and the elementary students whose occasional presence seems uncharacteristic in Penland’s very adult world. Addressing Ridgeway’s separation from the heart of campus and its goings-on, Stacey says:
But having this dedicated classroom has been amazing. And it is separate from the campus. And that’s something we talk about as a staff. I think it’s a benefit, because it’s – it’s a necessary separation, I think. It allows the students to stay focused in there, we have this nice classroom and it’s near the gallery, which is part of their time here. And they do tour the campus when they come. But it also, because of – because they’re kids – having a somewhat isolated, protected space where we can really keep track of them is good, I think. But in terms of the … it has this glorious back yard out here, too, which is amazing.
I interject with my own comments about students’ lunchtime joy as Stacey continues: Yeah. So I love its location. I would not change a thing about it. I think if we were in the middle of campus, it would be more challenging. There would be a lot of distractions from both directions. So I do love where we are, but the isolated nature of the building makes it so that a lot of people don’t even know that we happen. Also, the time of the year – because right now we’re sort of ramping down our presence in the schools, and … and they’re just ramping up over there. So that’s another reason why people aren’t necessarily aware. So we’ve really tried to expand our presence there by … we put posters in the dining halls … Adrienne was the intern for the Community Collaboratives Initiative from August – December 2010. She had just graduated with a degree in art; she is a printmaker. I asked her if it was strange to be an intern at Ridgeway rather than being an intern in, say, the printmaking studio closer to the heart of Penland’s campus. “Absolutely,” she immediately responded.
I was completely cut off from the school and the students. The only time I ever saw them was at lunch. And naturally, they’d become friends with whoever was in their classes or whoever was in their dorms, and I was alone in my house and then alone at Ridgeway. So it was hard sometimes, but not really. I found that I got closer to the people who worked for Penland because they weren’t friends
with the people who were going to school there, either. So it was completely different. Kind of alone. It’s still good; I don’t have any complaints about it at all, but it was strange.
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Elementary school students parading around campus does not uphold an image of professionalism, nor does their presence around heavy machinery and molten glass and metal make for particularly relaxed and safe classroom environments – for them or for their adult counterparts at Penland.
Adrienne observed at one point that her presence on campus as the Community Collaborative Initiative intern, the first Ridgeway intern ever on campus, brought a more everyday-type of attention to the work happening at Ridgeway. She mentioned the posters advertising the Teaching Artist Initiative’s work in The Pines, which Stacey drew attention to, but noted that her presence at lunch and with adult students and interns brought up many conversations about the work she was doing. All of the other professional studios and programs have interns and have for quite some time; her presence was part of a trend, I believe, in both stabilizing Ridgeway’s programming and also elevating its status as a more professional element of Penland’s larger programs. Adrienne was in a different organizational position than either Meg or Stacey, and her felt disconnect from the ongoing social and aesthetic life of Penland does not reflect the realities of either Meg or Stacey. Both Meg and Stacey worked at Penland as artists and in the adult art studios and residency programs prior to the development of Teaching Artist Initiative. Both long-time Penland residents, both Meg and Stacey are interwoven into the aesthetic and social fabric that makes up professional Penland. Though their current work with the Teaching Artist Initiative may be positioned on the peripheries of Penland’s professional artist work, both Meg and Stacey are well-regarded members of the community of professional artists that make up Penland.
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Many times, however, Meg described herself wryly as “an institutional problem.” Meg’s work is an institutional problem; Penland has no full-time or permanent faculty – when teachers come into Penland’s professional studios to teach, they teach their intensives and receive a salary for the time period spent teaching. Meg, however, is paid an hourly wage – an indicator that her work needs to be delineated into a certain number