ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this book the claim was advanced that a major theme which provides a unifying link between the different papers included in the collection is a concern to extend sociological analysis of the world of teachers, a concern which could be addressed, it was suggested, through the establishment of a more dynamic sociology of teachers’ work. Whatever other concerns this sociology would have to include – and we have argued that historical and structural conditions should feature prominently – there is little doubt that consideration of the interactional practices teachers undertake to accomplish what they and their co-interactants recognize as ‘teaching’ will need to be accorded a very high priority. Fortunately, during the last decade there has been a steady stream of publications in this country and in America which provide ethnographic accounts of classroom life or which present interactional analyses of the social construction of classroom relations – accounts and analyses in which various dimensions of the work of ’teaching’ have been chronicled. At first, because this particular research approach was developed as part of a movement away from what was seen by many as the dire consequences of a ‘problem-orientation’ in the discipline, work was characterized by an enthusiasm for the production of detailed descriptions of routine classroom practices and a reluctance on the part of writers to get involved in the provision of critical commentary. However, as this type of research has developed, though its advocates have not lost their basic commitment to a micro-sociological approach, the relevance such work has for pressing analytical problems of wider significance in the sociology of education has become increasingly clear. This is largely because one of the most tangible outcomes of this kind of research has been a more certain demonstration of the recognition that how educational activities like ‘teaching’ are accomplished is first and foremost a consequence of the participants’ perceptions and definitions of the situation and of the acts they perform in direct response to these understandings. Now, whilst this emphasis upon the subjective dimension of action is not to deny that the form and direction of these interpretations and interactions might be strongly influenced by ‘external’ factors embedded in the contexts in which they originate or operate, it does mean that the legitimacy of certain practices in sociological analysis of education is thrown into sharp relief.
