ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the beginnings of a more adequate model, with the explanation of teacher activity particularly in mind. It suggests that dilemmas and decisions, unlike their origins and consequences, were given to consciousness. The chapter looks at one of the few explicit presentations of a sociological model of decision-making, one which arose from the rapprochement between structural-functionalism and empirical social research in the late 1950s. It examines the moral-expedient distinction, a distinction which underlies a current dispute within the sociology of education. Any decision-making situation usually involves multiple dilemmas, since dilemmas are not normally faced one at a time, in isolation from one another. The theorising and decision-making of actors, then, are practical rather than scientific; they are tied to everyday concerns. In conclusion, it is worth indicating the other side of the idea that institutional orders exercise a relatively high degree of functional autonomy compared to that implied by Marxist and functionalist macro-theories.
