Precarious employment conditions affect work content in education and social work: results of work analyses.

Work content is adversely affected by precarious employment conditions, with consequences for workers and clients/customers. Three examples are taken from professions involving long-term relations between workers and clients. Adult education teachers hired on short-term contracts to teach primarily immigrant populations prepare their courses under less favorable conditions than regular teachers and their employment context foments hostility among teachers. Special education technicians are hired on a seasonal basis which interferes with their ability to coordinate and plan their efforts in collaboration with teachers. Workers in shelters for women suffering conjugal violence who were hired on a casual or on-call basis were unable to follow up with women they helped during their shifts and more rarely engaged in one-on-one counseling. Precarious work contracts can affect mental health not only through employment insecurity but also through negative effects on the ability to do one's job and take pride in one's work, as well as weakening the interpersonal relationships on which successful, productive work depends.

Understanding women's work: steps toward transformation--an introduction.

A session at the 2005 Delhi Congress on Women, Work and Health was entitled "Social movements and research on women, work and health: How can researchers and community members work together on current problems?" and described researcher-worker collaboration to gain recognition for the constraints and requirements of women's jobs. Suffering in the workplace may appear to come primarily from such visible aggressors as toxins and heavy weights, but its ultimate cause is the powerlessness, isolation, and denigration that sap workers' ability to fight back. Participatory research projects described here have promoted solidarity and encouraged the transformation of working conditions.

Is work in education child's play? Understanding risks to educators arising from work organization and design of work spaces.

The educational sector exposes its primarily female work force to numerous psychosocial risk factors. At the request of the education workers', ergonomists developed a participatory research project in order to understand the determinants of the difficulties experienced by special education technicians. These technicians work with students presenting behavioral and learning difficulties as well as developmental and mental health problems. Eighteen technicians were interviewed and the work of seven technicians and two teachers was observed. Technicians prevent and manage crisis situations and help students acquire social skills. Coordination with teachers is made difficult by the fact that most technicians work part time, part year, and many technicians' work areas and classrooms are physically distant one from another. Most technicians change schools each year and must continually reconstruct work teams. Management strategies and poorly adapted working spaces can have important repercussions on coordination among educators and on technicians' capacity to help students and prevent aggressive behavior.

Qualitative research using numbers: an approach developed in france and used to transform work in north america.

Qualitative research is often opposed to quantitative research. But numbers can play an important role in illustrating analyses in qualitative research. Their persuasive, concrete nature can help ensure the success of a workplace intervention, especially in the North American context, where numbers are treated very seriously. We describe a method of work analysis and transformation developed at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in Paris, where the meaning of the numbers used is critical. We think that the numbers used in work analysis have a different meaning from that in a "pure" quantitative study, where they are submitted to statistical procedures for hypothesis testing. Using examples from recent studies carried out in Québec and Canada in collaboration with unions or joint health and safety committees, we show that counting can be part of qualitative analysis, enrich our portrait of organizational and physical aspects of the work process, and help indicate pathways for workplace improvement.

El minuto de 120 segundos: analizar la actividad de trabajo para prevenir problemas de salud mental en educadoras de escuelas primarias / The minute of 120 seconds: to analyze the work of activity for mental health problem to prevent in primary school of educating

La encuesta Santé Quebec muestra que los educadores de escuelas en Quebec presentan un elevado nivel de angustia psicológica. Para identificar los factores que contribuyen a esta situación, se analizó la actividad de trabajo de 14 educadoras de dos escuelas primarias, siguiendo el modelo francés de análisis de la actividad de trabajo. La secuencia rápida de acciones, actividades simultáneas y múltiples, mirada en constante actividad (vigilancia y verificación) muestran pocos momentos de reposo físico y mental. La proporción de algunos con dificultades de apendizaje o comportamiento es un determinante de la actividad de la mirada y la postura. La situación parece más frecuente en los primeros niveles donde se identifica y refiere a los niños con dificultades. El entorno físico es inadecuado con temperaturas, humedad y ruido incompatibles con la concentración necesaria para estudiar y enseñar. Las educadoras utilizan estrategias para enseñar, crear un ambiente propicio y mantener la atención de los alumnos en condiciones adversas. Un promedio de 16 horas/semana, después de clases, es consagrado a la adaptación, creación de material y corrección de trabajos. Sin embargo, los medios de comunicación sugieren que las educadoras trabajan poco. El examen de las estrategias llevó a recomendaciones para mejorar las relaciones entre profesores y supervisores, lograr un reconocimiento social de la importancia y dificultades del trabajo y hacer que el ambiente físico social (proporción de niños con problemas) en las aulas sea propicio a la enseñaza(AU)

Primary school teachers in Quebec suffer psychological distress, as shown by the Quebec Health Survey. The authors applied and extended the French Model of work activity analysis to direct observation of classroom teaching) 14 women in 10 classrooms for a total of 48 hr 24 min) to identify stressful elements. The authors observed a rapid sequence of actions, eye fixations of short duration, multiple simultaneous activities, and uncomfortable temperature, humidity and noise levels, with little time for physical or mental relaxation. This adverse physical environment is not compatible with a complex cognitive activity such as teaching and learning. One of the determinants of eye fixation and posture was the number of students with behavioral and learning problems. This situation seems to be more common in the earlier grade levels, which is when the identification and referral of children with problems are more likely to occur. Educators use many strategies to teach, to create a learning environment and to maintain attention in classrooms under adverse conditions. Thus, they have to adapt, develop new materials and correct student projects, outside of school hours, for a mean of 16 hours per week. However, teachers are often portrayed by the media as people who are unwilling to work. A review of these strategies led to recommendations to improve relationships between teachers and their supervisors, to attain social recognition of the importance and difficulty underlying their work and to provide a physical environment (number of children, proportion of children with problems) in each classroom more conductive to teaching(AU)