ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of many of the studies dealing with the meaning or definition of major classroom situations (e.g., academic performance, disorderly behavior) to identify their particular theoretical concern with and general location in the theory of the definition of the situation. Attention is centered on the overall meaning of these situations, as established through conscious interpretations and syntheses of the relevant personal, social, physical, and temporal considerations and through the relevant preformed cognitive structures that teachers and pupils carry with them from one school day to the next. The dramaturgical, motivational, and personality approaches to the definition of the situation are chiefly concerned with explaining the situated behavior of individuals. The reality construction approach picks up where these three leave off. The reality construction approach has so far taken three forms in the ethnographic exploration of classrooms: negotiated arrangements, self‐fulfilling prophecies, and working agreements.
