ABSTRACT
Role problems are closely connected with problems of status. 1 Many teachers today are in difficulties not because they occupy statuses which are too low, but which are too high. During the nineteen-sixties two processes have brought rapid and unexpected status improvement for many people engaged in education: one is the swift expansion of the education service particularly at its highest levels; the other is the upgrading of many institutions – secondary modern to high or comprehensive schools, colleges of advanced technology to universities, technical or teacher-training colleges to institutions engaged in degree-level work. Some academic subjects have also expanded with remarkable rapidity and have also improved their status. In consequence large numbers of teachers find themselves, often to their astonishment, and even to their dismay, in positions to which they had never aspired. Their problem is to validate their occupation of statuses for which they have no recognized title or qualification. 2
