EDD5211 : Structure and Process of Schooling
Topic 4
Classroom Encounter: A Clash of Cultures
A.Classroom Encounter
1.Classroom interaction as clash of culture
"The teacher-pupil relationship is a form of institutionalized dominance and subordination. Teacher and pupil confront each other in the school with an original conflict of desires ...... The teacher represents the adult group, ever the enemy of the spontaneous life of groups of children. The teacher represents the formal curriculum, his interest is in imposing that curriculum upon the children in the form of tasks; pupils are much more interests in life in their own world than in the desiccated bits of adult life which teachers have to offer. The teacher represents the established social order in the school, and his interest is in maintaining that order, whereas pupils have only a negative interest in that feudal super-structure. The teacher and pupil confront each other with attitudes from which the underlying hostility can never be altogether removed. Pupils are the material in which teachers are supposed to produce results. Pupils are human beings striving to produce their own result in their own way. Each of these hostile parties stands in the way of the other; in so far as the aims of either are realized, it is at the sacrifice of the aims of the other." (Waller, 1965: 195-196)
2.Teaching as an assault of the self
“There is conflict in teaching; it is a tension-filled, chancy process. Resistance to teaching occurs among pupils who are able and anxious to learn; it occurs when teachers teach well. We can approach understanding of one source of the conflict between teacher and pupil, if we think of teaching as an attempt to change the pupil by introducing him new ideas. In this model, teaching is an assault on the self, and resistance to it can be explained as unwillingness to upset one's inner status quo. (Blanch Geer, 1971: 5)
B.Interactionist Criticism on Classroom Management :
1.Behaviorist and Taylorist Definition of Classroom Management
a."All managers are to arrange working conditions so that workers are at least minimally satisfied, through having basic personality need met, but teachers are additionally expected to manage the situation in such a way that the workers (pupil) learn to assume increasing responsibilityor carrying out, with diminishing supervision, both the work of the classroom and activities outside of school." (Johnson & Brooks, 1979, p. 28)
b.“Classroom management primarily is a problem of economy; it seeks to determine in what manner working unit of the school plant may make to return the largest dividend upon the material investment of time, energy and money."
2.The Assumption of Traditional Classroom Management
a.Scientific Management: Taylorism
b.Behaviorism
3. Critical examinations on Behaviorist Models of Classroom Management
a. Behavior modification approach
b. Assertive discipline approach
C.Underlying Assumptions of Symbolic Interactionism
1.Conceptions of self, status, career and action
2.Conception of interaction and classroom interaction
3.Conception of social reality of classroom
1. The Context
D.The Context of Classroom Interaction:
1.School and classroom context: Interactionist analysis
a.Physical context: The arrangement and organization of the physical context where interactions take place reflect the intention and definition of the situation of its “makers”. In fact, the physical context communicates powerful messages from its makers to its users.
i.Understanding the physical context of the classroom
ii.Understanding the physical context of the school
b.Subjective context: It refers to the subjective meanings participants attributed to a particular situation
i.Front regions
ii.Back regions
2.School and classroom context: A Foucaultian Analysis
a.School as Disciplinary Context
i.The art of distributions
ii.School as enclosure
iii.Principle of elementary partitioning: Partition of physical contexts in schools and classroom
iv.Codification of functional sites: definition of front region and back region
vThe art of ranking
b.The control of activity
i.Time tabling
ii.Temporal elaboration of act
iii.Correlation of the body and the gesture into the “best” condition
iv.Body-object articulation
v.Exhaustive use: time-tabling in negative sense, i.e. no idleness and waste of time; and positive sense, i.e. efficiency and quality
c.The organization of geneses:
i.Division of duration into isolated but successive segments
ii.Organization of segments according to an analytical plan of advancement, e.g. from simple to complexity, for novice to mastery, from primary, secondary to tertiary, from freshman to senior, etc.
iii.Finalization of each segment with examination
iv.-Seriation of series…
d.Composition of forces
i.Disciplined individual bodies can be configurated into body-regiments,
ii.Each disciplined bodies within a regiment must also combine to form a composite time in such a way that the maximum quantity of forces
iii.Precise system of commands to direct this composition of forces of disciplined bodies
iv.Constitution of a mechanism of maximum efficiency
2.Technique and instrument of disciplinary power in schools
a.Hierarchical observation:
i.Observation and Gaze can serve as instrument of asserting disciplinary power in the following ways:
▪ to scrutinize the induce effect of disciplinary power
▪ to put the recipients of discipline power totally visible
ii.Effective disciplinary gaze needs relays. In order to guarantee an uninterrupted network of observation a hierarchy of observation or a pyramid of gaze is required
b.Normalizing judgment
i.Disciplinary power is exercise through a micro-penalty mechanism of time, activity, behavior, speech, body, sexuality, etc.
ii.Punishments are imposed not only on infraction of rule but also on non-observance and inability to carry out expected task, in other words, penalty is not only restrictive but also prescriptive.
iii.Disciplinary punishment is corrective in nature. It usually takes the form of exercise, i.e. intensified, repeated, multiple forms of training
iv.Disciplinary penalty is built upon a polar judgement of good and evil, positive and negative, right and wrong, etc. These judgements should also be quantified into an accounting system of good and bad, merit and faults
v.Subjects under the disciplinary power can be ranked or graded in accordance with their degree of conformity or compliance to the predetermined norms
c.Examination: It is a combination of the techniques of both hierarchical observation and normalizing judgement. More specifically, it is a process of subjection of those who are supposed to be the learning subjects and a process of the objectification of those learning subjects who have been subjected. This process of subjection and objectification is operated through the following mechanism
3.School as Panopticon
2. Conceptual Tools
E.Teachers’ and Students’ Definitions of Situations
1.Definition of situation: A ‘situation’ is not simply the scene of action. For a situation has to be interpreted by actors. Meaning has tobe attributed into situations before participants know how to act. Different participants may see different interests at hand in a situation, and in turn interpret the situation and things in it differently. They may try to manipulate aspects of the situation to influence others' interpretations. And such a process of interpreting, attributing & manipulating of the meanings to a given interaction context is called the definition of the situation.
2.Teachers’ definition of classroom situation
*Stebbins, R.A. (1975) Teachers & Meaning: Definition of classroom situation. Leiden: Brill.
a.Teachers’ variations of definition of disorderly behaviour in classroom: Pupil’s behavior may be defined as deviance when:
i.it is seen as impeding the teacher’s instructing effectiveness;
ii.it is seen as impeding the student’s learning potential;
iii.it is simple violating the rules of classroom conduct;
iv.any combination of these three.
b.Interpretation of disorderly behavior variesand depends on:
i.how the teacher identifies the students concerned;
ii. how he views the students’ intentions evaluations, and plans of the action;
iii.how he defines the nature of the disorderly behavior.
c.Readiness to confront disorderly behavior also varies and depends on :
i.the time the disorderly behaviour takes place;
ii.his personal knowledge of the student concerned;
iii.his relationship with the class concerned.
3.Students’ definition of classroom situation
* Werthman, Carl (1980) “Delinquents in Schools: A test for the legitimacy of authority.” Pp. 34-43 in B.R. Cosin et al. (eds.) School and Society: A sociological reader. London: RKP.
a.Under the authority of the teachers, most of the pupils do not simply give in & be compliant. They will fight back.
b.One great advantage that pupils have in the classroom conflict is that they out number the teacher. Pupils can better their condition by acting together and a united class provides a teacher with a formidable opponent.
c.Pupils make decisions on whether to accept or reject the authority of individual teachers. They are based on the following criteria:
Pupils categorize the jurisdictional claims made by teachers according to the nature of the activities which are subject to control:
i.Control over academic activities: Pupils agree that teachers may legitimately control the academic, such as lessons, tests & attendance (physical).
ii. Control over quasi-academic activities: some activities in the classroom may be consider as gray area which is subject to negotiation, e.g. sleeping on desks, reading comic books, talking to neighbors, passing notes, gazing out of the window, chewing gum, changing seats, ......
iii.Control over non-academic activities : Pupils usually consider that race, dress, hair styles and mental capacities should lie beyond teachers legitimate official attention.
d.Some pupils are extremely sensitive to the style in which authority is exercised.
Thefrequent and consistent use of the imperative is perceived as an insult to the status and autonomy of those to whom this form of address is directed. Teachers who 'request' conformity are more likely to achieve desired results.
e.Pupils do have some intrinsic criteria to evaluate the legitimacy of the teacher authority. On exercising hisauthority teacher should be fair, consist & predictable. Itdoes not matter how high a teacher sets his disciplinary standard, what does matter is fairness and consistency ofapplication. The basic premise of it is 'We will behave properly, if you behave properly'.
F. Teachers’ Perspectives, Typifications and Career Adjustment
* Becker, Howard S. (1980) “Social-class variations in teacher pupil relationship.” Pp. 107-1143 in B.R. Cosin et al. (eds.) School and Society: A sociological reader. London: RKP.
1.Image of the 'Ideal' client:
The major problems of workers in the service occupation are likely to a function of their relationship to their clients or customers, those for whom or on whom the occupational service is performed. Members of such accusations typically have some image of the 'ideal' client, and it is in terms of this fiction that they fashion their conceptions of how their work ought to be performed, and their actual work techniques.
2.Discrepancy between actual and 'ideal' clients :
Workers in the service occupations tend to classify clients in terms of the way in which they vary from the image of the 'ideal' client. If the society does not prepare people to play their client roles in the manner desired by the occupation's members there will be conflicts and problems for the workers in performance of their work. One of the major factors affecting the production of suitable clients is the cultural diversity of various social class in the society.
3. Teachers' perspectives on pupils' learning problems:
a.Image of the 'ideal' client on teaching:
Teacher feels she has a better chance to success in teaching when her pupils are interest in attending and working hard in school, and are trained at home in such a way that they are bright and quick at school work. Her problems arise in teaching those groups who do not meet these specifications, for in these cases her teaching techniques, tailored to the 'perfect' student, are inadequate to cope with the reality, and she left with a feeling of having failed in performing her basic task.
b.As sub-cultural difference in society produce variationsfrom the image of the 'ideal' student, teachers tend to use class terms in describing the children with whom they work.
c.Social-class variations in teachers’ typifications of students
i.Upper-class students: Good to teach but hard to discipline
ii.Middle-class students: Easy to work with
iii.Low-class students: Hard to work with
4.Career Adjustment of Public School Teachers
a."Career" refers to the patterned series of adjustments made by the individual to the network of institutions, formal organizations and informal relationship in which the work of the occupation is performed.
b.These patterned series of adjustments can be sub-divided into:
i.Vertical aspect of career adjustment: It is the mobility through a hierarchy of ranked positions.
ii. Horizontal aspect of career adjustment: It refers to mobility among the positions available at on level of such a hierarchy. The basic reason for horizontal adjustment is to seek ideal and satisfactory working with school administration, teachers and most of all students
G. Pupils’and Teachers’ Strategies
1.Pupils’ strategies
a.Hostile Outbursts
b.Avoidance
c.Passive Resistance
2.Teachers' Strategies
a.Talking and Teaching
b.Occupational Therapy
c.Domination
d.Negotiation
e.Fraternization
f.Absence or Removal
g.Rationalization, Neutralization, and Morale-boosting
3. First Encounter in Classroom
H.Classroom Interaction Analysis in Action: Analysis of First Encounters in Classrooms
1.Teaching Practice as an Experience of “The Stranger”
* Schutz, Alfred (1980) “The Stranger.” Pp. 27-33 in in B.R. Cosin et al. (eds.) School and Society.: A sociological reader. London: RKP.
a.The stranger’s situation
b.The acculturation Process
c.Cultural pattern and system of knowledge of group life
d.Cultural estrangement of the stranger
e.Stranger’s cultural adventure
2.The Process of establishment & the significance of the initial encounter
a.The process of establishment
b.The significance of initial encounter
3.The testing-out process
a.The significance of testing out
b.Stages of the testing-out process
Stage I: The disciplinary illusion or honeymoon stage
Stage II: The "real horrible" or elementary escalation stage
Stage III: The consolidation stage
4. Confrontation & Showdown in Classroom
I.Classroom Interaction in Action: Confrontation and “Showdown in Classroom
1.The nature of classroom confrontation
a.A breakdown of routine and “establishment”
b.Violent assault on the selves of both parties concerned
c.A lose/lose situations: nobody can get out of a confrontation unhurt
2.Developmental phases of confrontation:
a.A build-up
b.A trigger event
c.The escalation-detonation staircase:
i.display of emotion and temper
ii.inflamed by the audience
iii.panic
d.Finale
3.Contexts where confrontation are most likely to take place
a.The unfamiliar
b.The unexpected
c.The gray areas between the front and back regions
4.Who is more likely to confront teachers in classroom
a.Saboteur
b.Trapped-in-role children: class buffoon
c.Victim child
d.Underachiever
e.Troubled child
5.Teacher strategy
a.Avoiding confrontation as much as possible
i.Avoiding public denigration of a child
ii.Ignoring behavior
iii.Effect of non-verbal communication
iv.Apologizing
b.Think before you leap:
i.What is at stalk: definition of situation
ii.Is it the right place and the right time
c.Leave yourself and the pupil a gracious way out
d.Avoiding physical intervention
1
W.K. Tsang
Structure & Process of Schooling