IP 89-2 Social organization of classes and schools.
Abstract
This paper describes the importance of knowledge about the social organization of schools and classrooms for beginning teachers. The paper begins with a consideration of schools and classrooms as cultural settings and examines the beginning teacher's role within them. The remaining sections of the paper examine the interweaving of school social life with the fundamental teaching concerns of planning, instruction, and equity. This examination focuses on three images coined by educational researchers to capture key aspects of the teacher's role in school and classroom culture and their hiddenness to members of that culture. The "hidden world" of teacher thought and planning, the normative or "hidden curriculum" of schools, and the "invisible culture" of communication style related to language and ethnic identity are described. These hidden dimensions of teaching, rarely available to the pupil or novice teacher by means of observation or participation, must become the subject of critical examination and reflection if the novice teacher is to make a successful transition from "pupil" to "teacher" in the familiar culture of the classroom. The study of the social organization of schools and classrooms is therefore important to beginners in its own right and as a means to the end of becoming a thoughtful professional able to consider alternatives and possibilities as well as realities of classrooms.