ABSTRACT
Social climate or atmosphere is something which we perceive with varying degrees of discrimination and accuracy. In the paper entitled ‘Experiments in social space’, Lewin surveys several studies on the effects which different adult leadership styles have on children’s behaviour. The behaviour of children in the democratic atmosphere is basically that which most ministries of education in the west exhort their teachers to encourage. A new divide - one between educational technology and the learner - may replace the traditional one between teacher and taught. And it may help to create an autocratic social atmosphere. Of course teachers and pupils are to some degree aware of the climate in classrooms. However, different people may read it in quite different ways, as the conflict between Jonathan’s and Mrs Crowe’s perception of computer work indicates. But the computer may also obstruct any such shift, play tyrant in the classroom - and so create an autocratic social atmosphere.
