ABSTRACT
Classroom control may not appear on the school curriculum but people learn a great deal about it at school. In practice, they can hardly avoid getting wise to the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of classroom control because it is one of the most fundamental and pervasive features of school life. Teachers know it, pupils know it, the public knows it. It is not surprising, then, that plenty has been written on the subject. Some of it deals with the question of what causes some pupils to pose control difficulties (the psychological disorders or cultural/family problems suffered by the pupil) and some of it gives advice to teachers on methods for achieving classroom control (how to manage the classroom or deal with pupils in a way which minimizes the prospect of control problems). Indeed the bulk of writing on classroom control falls into these categories or an amalgam of the two. What is largely missing, however, is detailed research on the actual phenomenon of classroom control dealing with:
Why classroom control is a feature of classrooms in the first place?
What resources are available to the teacher to impose control, and by what means pupils can resist?
What social, institutional and physical features of the classroom shape the struggle for control?
Exactly what significance classroom control has for teachers in terms of their careers and their perception of their work? and, very importantly,
How classroom control is recognized as existing or not existing in the classroom by participants?
