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Emotional labour within the personal tutor role
Angela Williams
Lecturer
Department of Nursing
School of Health Science
AIM
To identify and discuss emotional labour within
the personal tutor role
Structure
•Introduction & Background
•Organisational structure and process
•Emotional labour within the Personal Tutor role
•Implications
Introduction & background
Implications of widening access to higher education:
•Nature of students (diversity in age, gender, culture, qualifications, experience, expectations, commitments)
•Increased numbers of students
Challenge is to address the needs of large numbers of students with varying needs in a personalised way
Organisational structure and process
Significant emphasis and value is placed on the personal tutor
role within Swansea University and within the School of Health
Science
Organisational structure and process
•Consistent, branch specific personal tutoring throughout the
programme
•Personal tutor time is mandatory, structured and supportive
in purpose
•Personal tutor role incorporates group reflection with personal
tutor students following each clinical placement
Emotional Labour (Hochschild 1983)
Based on flight attendants, emotional labour described as,
“the induction or suppression of feeling in order to sustain an
outward appearance that produces in others a sense of being
cared for in a convivial safe place” (p7)
Work requiring emotional labour (Hochschild 1983)
•Face or voice contact with the public
•Requires the worker to produce an emotional response in
another e.g. gratitude
•Enables the employer through training to exercise a degree of
control of employees’ emotional activities
James (1989) emotional labour
“labour involved in dealing with other people’s feelings, a core
component of which is the regulation of emotions” (p15)
Key features of emotional labour (James 1992)
•Hard work
•Regulation and management of feeling
•Action and reaction
•Doing and being
•Demanding, skilled work
•Personal exchange
•Can be used for commercial purposes
•A pretence
•Response to common situations
•Subject to gender discussions
James (1989)
“Emotional labour is hard work and can be sorrowful and
difficult. It demands that the labourer gives personal attention
which means they must give something of themselves, not just
a formulaic response” (p18)
Emotional labour within the personal tutor role
Working with our emotions in dealing with student’s emotions:
•Dealing with student’s feelings relating to study (anger,
disappointment, grief, frustration, elation)
•Dealing with student’s problems (mental/physical illness,
isolation, abuse, bereavement, divorce, relationship problems)
Emotional labour within personal tutor role
Working with our emotions:
•Students who are ‘difficult’ to manage (demanding, lack
commitment, reluctant to take responsibility - may be ‘unpopular’)
•Relationship has potential for attachment and emotional
involvement (Menzies 1960)
•Personal tutors can experience a range of feelings such as care,
concern, protection, responsibility, empathy and frustration
•These feelings have to be managed
Implications of emotional labour
Smith (1992) highlighted the importance of:
• supportive environment
• effective leadership
• role modelling and
• valuing of emotion work
as crucial for student nurses to care for patients.
Support for personal tutors
Needs to be recognised and supported through formal and
informal organisational mechanisms (e.g. clinical supervision,
mentorship)
Research
Research is crucial to illuminate the facets of emotional labour
specifically within the personal tutor role
References
Hoschild A.R (1983) The managed heart: commercialisation of human feeling, Berkeley, University of California Press
James N. (1992) Care = organisation + physical labour + emotional labour, Sociology of health and illness, 14 (4) 489-509
James N. (1989) Emotional labour: skill and work in the social regulation of feelings, Sociological Review, 37, 15-42
Smith P. (1992) The Emotional Labour of Nursing, London, Macmillan
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