ABSTRACT
In chapter 1 we argued that according to the teachers in the project schools a ‘whole school’ had seven distinguishing features. First, each member of the staff group felt a strong sense of community. Second, staff shared the same educational beliefs and aims and interpreted them in similar ways in their actions. Third, they each exercised autonomy within their own classrooms, felt able to play an individual role within the school and readily called upon one another’s expertise. Fourth, the members of the group related well to one another. Fifth, they worked together. Sixth, their knowledge of the school was not limited to matters of immediate concern to themselves or their own classes but encompassed the concerns, practice and classes of their colleagues. Seventh, they valued the leadership of their headteacher. Common to many of these characteristics is the idea of collaboration. Primary teachers’ traditional emphasis upon individuality and autonomy is offset by their awareness that a school is potentially a community of adults and by their desire for mutual professional support. These teachers expected to have the freedom to meet their curricular and pedagogical responsibilities in the ways they judged right and to act in the light of circumstances in their individual classrooms. Yet they also acknowledged that the right to make individual decisions was not ‘a licence to do as one pleased’ (Teacher, Orchard). In other words, they were conscious that acting together and accepting interdependence were constraints which they had to accept if they wished to become participating members of educational communities, and that these ‘whole schools’ when they existed would, in turn, enhance and support their work as individuals.
