ABSTRACT
The school and the classroom are particular contexts with particular features which will have an impact on and meaning for pupils and teachers. Minuchin and Shapiro (1983), in a pioneering paper, show how the school context is likely to change with the stage of education. They distinguish three broad stages which are organized differently and in which different aspects of social behaviour are expressed. They argue that the youngest children (in pre-schools) will have little concept of the school as an organized society, and interactions are predominantly with one or two female teachers and small groups of peers. Pre-school children behave in ways still very close to the family context and there will be an emphasis on establishing viable social behaviours (though elsewhere in this book we will see that even young children have a surprising degree of social competence with peers and knowledge of social status and friendship relations). At primary or elementary school, the classroom is still the main context and is now experienced as a social unit, with social expression and learning more complex. By the middle years of childhood, children are likely to have their feet equally in two worlds – teachers still give leadership and authority, but the peer group now functions as a social group independent of adults. As Minuchin and Shapiro say: ‘The peer group is the social frontier in the classroom.’ By high school or secondary school the social field becomes the school as a whole rather than a particular classoom, and the adolescent student comes into contact with a variety of teachers (male and female) and peers.
