The Social Context Of The School Rle Edu L

In their appearance, schools often seem to be physically separated from their surroundings, cut off from the neighbouring houses and streets by high walls, by playgrounds or playing fields. Within the school, another world seems to exist, with a life of its own – its own routine, dress, rules and customs – which appears to have little relationship to the day-to-day life of the society outside. Yet despite these signs of separateness, we are becoming increasingly aware that a school’s surroundings, the local society in which it is set and whose children it educates, play an important part in determining what actually goes on in the classrooms and the playgrounds. This book looks at some of the factors in the local context of the schools and describes and analyses some of the often complex ways in which the schools interact with them.

The role of language is central in education – but there is much debate about the exact relation between children’s language and their educational success. The author provides a clear guide to the basic issues in the debates over language deficit, standard English and classroom language, and in this edition he shows how work in sociolinguistics can give a better understanding of the place of language in education and society.

This is an introduction to interactionist work in education during the 1970s and 80s. The interactionist viewpoint concentrates on how people construct meanings in the ebb and flow of everyday life – what they think and do, how they react to one another – and has in recent years established itself as one of the leading approaches in education. It has generated illuminating research studies which, by being firmly based in the real world of teaching and dealing with the fine-grained details of school life, have helped to break down the barriers between teacher and researcher. This volume presents the results of this valuable work, within a coherent theoretical framework, by focusing on the major interactionist concepts of situation, perspectives, cultures, strategies, negotiation and careers. By bringing them together in this way, the author demonstrates their collective potential for the deeper understanding of school life and the possibilities for sociological theory. His book therefore offers both a summary of and a reflection on achievement in the area of interactionism as it relates to schools.

This book reviews the educational experience of the 1960s and 1970s and to suggest ways of approaching major contemporary themes such as equality, accountability and standards. The author underlines a nineteenth and twentieth-century sociological tradition in analysing education and covers a range of educational themes including aspects of schooling and higher education, education as social policy, knowledge as power, and teaching and adolescence. He draws on the social history of many of the processes, concepts and debates. Parts of the book derive from research into the history and contemporary forms of these problems in the USA. The volume therefore illuminates important contemporary issues in education and society by using historical, sociological and comparative insights.

The subject matter of this book – what happens in schools, the effects of curriculum change, the reasons why some children are successful and others are not – explains just why the sociology of education is one of the most important areas to achieve political importance. There are five sections to the book covering: Educational Achievement; Educational Provision; The Organization of the School; Roles in the School and Values and Learning. The editor discusses the implications of the material presented (much of which was available for the first time when this book was originally published).