ABSTRACT
England has long been celebrated for the degree of “licensed autonomy” that it has given to its classroom teachers, described by Grace (1987) as “a distinctive feature of British democracy and schooling.” This was particularly true during the “golden age” of the 1950s and 1960s, when the legacy of postwar economic recovery and prosperity meant that schools continued to be regarded as “low risk industries” (Deal, 1985) and teachers were allowed considerable scope to manage their own affairs within an expanding education system. Although, as Hoyle (1974) points out, this freedom was exercised primarily within the confines of individual classrooms, rather than upon wider questions of whole school policy and practice, nevertheless the virtual absence of prescription or monitoring of either curriculum content or pedagogy left control of key decisions about teaching and learning firmly in the hands of teachers. Interestingly, this tradition of “professional autonomy” was associated not with a flowering of individual teaching approaches but with a convergence of certain classroom management styles, perhaps as a reflection of common responses to the exigencies of managing groups of 30 learners while having to convey knowledge and maintain order and busyness (Doyle, 1983; Cuban, 1991).
