ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ideological constructions of the teachers and head teacher at Rockfield School. It begins with the most obvious, the official description of the school and its goals: Rockfield is different from some Schools in the Region in that it has a Nursery Unit, and is a centre for the teaching of English to minority ethnic groups. Mr. McLean had been much influenced by the Plowden Report particularly by its references to provision for inner-city schools in deprived areas, and by its recommendations about the importance of catering to each child's unique needs and stages of development. These two central strands in the Plowden Report are worth re-stating, for they will enable Mr. McLean's own educational ideology to be compared to them. The second important strand within the Plowden Report is an assertion that the child grows, or develops, according to the stages defined in the literature of developmental psychology.
