Phenomenological Perspectives and the Sociology of the School 1

Even in the widely recognised current state of flux in sociological theory, variously conceived of as a crisis ² or as preceding a ‘paradigm shift’ ³ the recent growth of interest in the application of phenomenology to sociology has been remarkable. The works of Alfred Schutz ⁴ represent the major effort to apply the principles and methodology of philosophical phenomenology to the study of the social world. There had been other, less systematic, attempts to introduce this approach to English sociology, but it was still possible to say, in a book published in 1966, that ‘only by indirect references or by means of a single concept (Weber's Verstehn) has the phenomenological viewpoint entered American sociological theory’. ⁵