Problems, Conflicts and School Policy: a case study of an innovative comprehensive school
Titel:
Problems, Conflicts and School Policy: a case study of an innovative comprehensive school
Auteur:
Hannan, Andrew
Verschenen in:
British journal of sociology of education
Paginering:
Jaargang 1 (1980) nr. 1 pagina's 107-109
Jaar:
1980
Inhoud:
This study focuses on the school as an organisation in a sense which has been neglected in previous work. Here the aim is to understand and explain how the school changes in terms of the conflict of ideologies amongst staff and the process of formulation of school policy. The study is set within the context of previous case studies of educational innovation as an attempt to analyse the forces behind organisational change and persistence in a school pledged by its official description to an innovative programme aiming at the ideals of 'openness'. The case study upon which this thesis is based was carried out in 1973-4, the first year that this upper school for 14-18 year olds had a fully compulsory and comprehensive intake in both fourth and fifth years. The school had previously been partly voluntary in the sense that students could opt not to join the upper school for two years but to remain in their high school for a further one year only. The effects of the raising of the school leaving age to sixteen served as a challenge to the prevailing liberal ethos of the school and the series of innovations it inspired. The data, in the form of information from interviews, questionnaires and field notes, were collected by means of a year of participant observation. This thesis gives an account of problems and conflicts experienced in this year and shows how the changes in the policy of the school can be seen as the outcome of a process of ideological conflict and political negotiation. The staff responded in a variety of ways to the challenge posed by students whom the school could not involve or control. The attempts made to change school policy can be characterised as advocating moves towards a more open school model or towards a more closed school model (see the Bernstein article 'Open schools, open society?' in Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 3). One way of representing the allegiance of staff in these conflicts is to construct a continuum with staff located according to their advocacy of more open or more closed school policy. Those who consistently championed the open ideology may then be designated 'open ideologists' and similarly their opponents may be described as 'closed ideologists'. In general, open ideologists wanted the school to move towards a more radical type of organisation on Countesthorpe lines with more student autonomy and less boundaries between staff and students. Closed ideologists were those who sought a reversion to more traditional means of regulation and attachment and who championed traditional academic virtues. They were alarmed by problems posed by students who seemed to reject the involvement on which the whole liberal philosophy of the school was based. They were generally more experienced and more committed to a specialist discipline than their opponents. The open ideologists were mostly from the integrated subjects teaching to mixed ability or less able groups and were committed to these sorts of teaching in career choice. The closed ideologists were predominantly teachers who were most committed to the teaching of their own specialist subjects or groupings. They had established career patterns in these fields and had already invested several years of work on those lines. These groups were not fully consistent in their membership. Each issue brought together different people committed to one or other of these viewpoints, but those who consistently supported one or other ideology tended to share other characteristics as indicated above. Some staff resisted involvement in the process of discussion and negotiation, but this possibility was limited in that all were 'expected' to attend at least one decision-making meeting a week after school. Senior staff who occupied posts such as Principal, Vice Principal, Lady Vice Principal, Senior Master, Senior Academic Tutor, Director of Studies, etc., were known to the other staff as 'the hierarchy' and they tended to adopt positions which can be typified as 'conservative', i.e. they resisted change towards either a more closed or a more open school. These staff had relatively small teaching loads and took major administrative responsibilities. Their conservative stance can be attributed in part to their common interest in stability for administrative purposes and for clarity of presentation of the school's policies to outside groups such as parents. It is argued in this thesis that conflicts amongst staff in the discussion of school problems were the product of oppositions between open and closed ideologies in a school combining open and closed elements in its organisation, faced by a challenge from students who rejected the values on which the school was based. The study proceeded by way of a dual focus on staff and students, with the emphasis on the former as a source of information on the school as a whole. The decision-making process was fairly open and democratic and provided the means for observing the negotiation on issues and the construction of school policy. The term 'negotiation' is not used here to imply equality in terms of power between opposing forces. The outcome of negotiation is the product of staff conflict mediated through the power differentials located in the structure of the organisation. It is argued that the process of formulation of school policy is best understood in terms of the conflicts of ideologies and interests located in the social structure of the school. These ideologies and conflicts are in turn related to political issues in the wider society. The process of formulation of school policy is inherently political and the outcome expresses the prevailing balance of power and influence. The study thus focuses on the institutional setting as one of the levels of educational reality and shows how innovations in educational policy are challenged by factors both internal and external to the school. A paper entitled 'The problem of the 'unmotivated' in an open school: a participant observation study' based on the original research was published in Chanan, G. & Delamont, S. (1975) Frontiers of Classroom Research. A 'Postscript' based on staff comments has been published along with the full thesis in GORE (Collected Original Resources in Education), Vol. 4, No. 1, 1980.
Tijdschrift beschrijving