ABSTRACT
Teacher concerns about ‘keeping control’ and fears of ‘losing control’ in the classroom normally relate to the overt behaviour that takes place. In an authoritarian classroom the behaviour of the children will be rigidly controlled by the teacher. In the classroom children may be free to choose between one work package and another, and be encouraged to introduce their own interests into their work. The value of exploration and discovery was brought to the fore and given respectability by the Plowden Report in the 1960s. By the late 1970s, however, due largely to a changing economic climate and political debate reflected in the 1977 Green Paper (DES 1977) there was more scepticism about the value of such approaches. Learners can become teachers, and teachers become learners. Since the children have a controlling influence upon the language and the concepts with which they grapple, they therefore exert a controlling influence upon their curriculum.
