ABSTRACT
Macro–Micro Approaches have been subject to considerable criticism. Perhaps the most significant criticism has been that macro approaches often regard human beings as little more than products of socialisation. Human creativity seems to be ignored, human freedom nonexistent. David Hargreaves's very influential and excellently written book Interpersonal Relations and Education, provides an example of the micro approach. Hargreaves develops his ideas further by noting that people give meaning to objects in the world. Society, says Hargreaves, is a complex structure of inter-related positions such as child, parent, teacher, doctor and so on. Hargreaves's exposition of the symbolic interactionist approach highlights the complexity of the interaction process, and the amount of knowledge that is needed by the sociologists to understand it. Having looked at the teachers' definitions of the situation, Hargreaves turns his attention to the pupils. Pupils have a complex attitude to school which is little understood and is difficult for teachers to recognise.
