Session Information
23 SES 08 C, Theorizing Globally Distributed Educational Work
Symposium
Contribution
The term ‘governess’ conjures images of Victorian women in bustles rather than outback Australia. Yet ‘governess’ is listed in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations as a specialisation of Nanny under the Child Carers category. Using the historical and cultural gulf between Victorian Britain and contemporary outback Australia, this paper examines historical shifts in the occupational category, which provides a chronoscope for viewing cultural and economic shifts in notions of labour, work and education which have occurred over the last century. I use the concept of ‘educational work’ to consider boundaries between where teaching takes place and the spaces in which learning occurs. The ‘governess’ occupies a potentially disruptive place in this economy. She—the role is always already gendered—lives and works in a domestic space, blurring boundaries between work and home, public and private. The role has a pedagogical frame: ‘caring for children’ or tutoring them through ‘school of the air’. So what is the educational work that is being done here? Where is it done? How is it conceived? What light does this gap between regulatory frames for formalised teaching territories and informal spaces for learning shed on broader critiques of lifelong learning?
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