ABSTRACT
This chapter looks more closely at certain aspects of the accounting procedures of the teachers, trying to situate aspects of the vocabulary, particularly the child centred vocabulary, both in the classroom and in the wider context of staff relations. The first illustration will be taken from several discussions with Mrs Carpenter, who characterizes the school ethos as being concerned to implement radical, new and more appropriate methods of infant education. The researcher is assuming that the confusion in the account rendered by the teacher indicates that such accounts are rarely called for, they are part of the community's common sense. Whilst neo-psychiatry assists teachers to maintain discretion from parents, this may be seen as merely the latest support to teachers' endeavours to keep social distance over a long period of time. As Baron and Tropp point out the evident educational knowledge gap between teachers and parents in England has long been a factor in their discretion.
