ABSTRACT
The sociological perspective on classroom control adopted in this book has been based on the sociology of work and organizations and, as we noted in the Introduction, this perspective has an inherent tendency to focus on classroom control as a feature of the teacher’s world of work in terms of teacher’s perceptions of their job. The result of this is that, while pupils’ attitudes and behaviour have been examined as a crucial part of the phenomenon – inexorably bound up with teachers’ efforts to get control–the conclusions tend to dwell on the implications of the findings for teachers more than pupils. This emphasis on teachers is justifiable to the extent that teachers are the instigators and proponents of classroom control. As we saw in Chapter 1, the evidence leaves little doubt that responsibility for classroom control is a basic feature of the work of the schoolteacher. It is embedded in society’s delegation of rights and duties to the teacher, the school organization’s allocation of responsibilities and the expectations held by both teachers and pupils about the competent teacher. But pupils can never be eliminated from the scene because it is only through interaction with pupils that it is sensible to think of successful or unsuccessful attempts to establish control. Classroom control without the class is nonsense.
