Classrooms and Staffrooms

The Sociology of Teachers and Teaching

Andy Hargreaves, Peter Woods

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367422820
• eBook ISBN: 9781000735567
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1984, the articles presented here explore such matters as how teachers maintain order, how they treat their pupils and how they cope with pressure; they examine the ways in which teachers relate to their colleagues, what goes on in staffrooms, how they engage in educational debate, and what their ambitions are. The contributors get to grips with what it is really like to be a teacher, to make sense of the everyday rewards and penalties, opportunities and problems.

This is the hallmark of the ethnographic method of educational inquiry. It brings to life (by close observation and/or in-depth interview) the internal workings of an institution or culture, revealing the perspectives of its members, their roles and adaptations and making explicit the routine or taken-for-granted features of institutional life.

All the papers in the volume are to one degree or another located within this methodological tradition – they all begin with what life is actually like for teachers in schools. Though they draw on a range of theoretical perspectives, from interactionism and ethnomethodology, to Marxism and the 'New Sociology of Education'; and more besides.

In this volume the editors bring together examples of some of the most important and influential pieces of work which illustrate the range of material, and which have hitherto been spread widely among different research reports, academic journals, and collections of conference papers. Classrooms and Staffrooms provides a fund of quality source materials for initial and in-service teachers.

Part One
Teachers and Classroom Management

1
The Organization of Pupil Participation

M. HAMMERSLEY

In this article Martyn Hammersley examines some ways in which teachers maintain classroom order in conventional 'chalk and talk' teaching in secondary school classrooms. He draws particular attention to the ways in which teachers organize pupil participation in class as a way of transmitting knowledge which also secures their attention to the task in hand.

The purpose of this paper is largely descriptive: to give an account of an aspect of the order that the teachers in one school seek to impose on classroom interaction.¹ Analysis of that order is essential for any satisfactory account of pupil actions. The explanation of pupil orientations in terms of 'background' or even 'subculture' is premature without detailed attention to the organisation of the school and particularly to the nature of the 'teaching' in classrooms.

Attention to teachers' classroom activities is also important for any account of schools as 'socialising' agencies seeking to mould pupils in terms of a particular version of cultural competence. It is in relation to some such notions of competence and achievement that pupils are judged by teachers to be 'bright', 'stupid' etc. Assessments of a person's intelligence are based on evaluations of his performances at particular activities and in particular circumstances. Whatever the claims of those doing the assessment, it is essential to investigate the conditions under which those who are being evaluated must act if they are to be seen as 'intelligent', and the conception of intelligence in terms of which they are being judged—the activities that are taken as crucial and the criteria of 'success' or 'intelligent attempt' that are applied. Schools are agencies assigning particular importance to certain activities and able to a considerable degree to impose a particular definition of achievement on pupils.

My focus in the present paper is the way in which the teachers in a particular school work to organise pupil participation in classrooms and the relevance of that organisation for the 'intelligence' pupils are required to show. The nature of the knowledge which the teachers present, in terms of which pupils must display their 'intelligence', is an equally important topic, but, like the overall organisation of the school, will have to be left to another paper.

The teachers set out to establish and maintain the 'proper attention' of pupils to official proceedings in the classroom.² Pupils are to watch and listen to the teacher when he is at the front talking and to 'follow' what he says. When written work is set they are to get on with it 'sensibly', 'carefully' and at a 'reasonable' speed. The teacher monitors pupil behaviour and sometimes when he detects inattention he will look up from working at his desk or interrupt his discourse in order to demand attention.

However, the establishment and maintenance of attention is only one element of the teachers' concern with 'discipline' in the classroom. They do not merely require pupils to pay attention but also to participate. Pupil participation, though, should conform to certain rules: the teacher tries to reduce classroom interaction to a twoparty format, with himself as one speaker and one or another pupil acting as the other. Furthermore, he reserves for himself the right to talk to the whole class and to produce extended utterances, often ruling pupil initiatives out of order. He is therefore faced with the problem of making pupils behave as one, subordinate, participant.

The teacher provides for pupil participation by asking questions. However, even if pupils were not to make initiatives when the teacher asked a question, problems would necessarily arise since only one slot is provided for the participation of a large number of pupils. Potentially some seventeen speakers are competing for one answer slot.

From the point of view of the teachers, the classroom encounter as an interaction system, focused on and co-ordinated from the front, can just as easily disintegrate as a result of 'non-participation' by pupils as it can by escalating inattention. The teachers seek a solution to this problem by insisting that they select answerers, either directly or indirectly. Direct selection involves tagging a question with a name or 'One of you four', 'You', combined with pointing, etc.

• (a) T: First of all let's, have a, little bit of revision on what we've done so far since Christmas. Our friend Leach can tell us what we need, to make iron?
  P: Iron?
  T: Yes iron
  P: Sir is it carbon sir?
  P: Sir Sir
  (
  T: Dear me, tell us
  Richardson in a clear voice
  (
  Sir
  P: Sir y'use iron ore sir an' put it in a blast furnace y'need coke, iron-coke
  P: Limestone
  P: Limestone .and iron ore sir
  T: Good, in what kind of furnace Short?
  P: Blast
  P: Ehr blast furnace
  T: In a blast furnace. Good. What type of temperature do we need?
  (H)

More frequently teachers enforce indirect selection: the teacher asks a question, calls for 'hands up' or waits for hands to go up automatically, and then appoints an answerer by naming, pointing, nodding, loking, or whatever, from among those with raised hands.

• (b) T: If you listened carefully to that story yesterday you'll have noticed that two things in the story created terror, anybody remember what they were?
  P: Sir
  T: Don't sir just put your hand up.
  Campbell?
  P: Head-headless horse, headless horses pulling a wagon sir ( Headless horses pulling a carriage yes that's one very good
  (
  Sir
  ((Pause, then the teacher appoints))
  P: The castle
• T: The castle, I don't think so may 'ave done but may alright we'll accept the castle
  P: (Laughing) sir
  P: ((appointed)) When he saw the knight
  T: When he saw the knight yes but there was something before then
  (
  P: Sir
  T: I think there was the headless horseman which is something that he saw
  P: Sir
  P: Sir
  (
  P: Sir
  P: ((appointed)) When he heard that laughing sound
  T: Yes the noise, the laughter (W)

Selection of answerers is backed up with demands that pupils 'don't "sir"', 'don't shout out', speak 'one at a time', etc. As with the maintenance of 'attention', the preservation of 'one speaker at a time' is a continuous concern, the teacher issuing demands for 'disciplined' participation when he judges things to be getting out of hand. At times, however, the teachers seem to worsen the problem of 'over-particicaption' by refusing to ask those with their hands up, clamouring to answer:

• (c) T: What, in what way Crick in what way was the river a bit of a problem to them a problem or a
  (
  P: (Washing)
  T: nuisance
  (
  P: Sir
  P: Sir
  P: Sir
  P: Sir
  P: Sir
  P: Sir
  (
  T: It had its good things but it also
  (
  P: Sir
  (
  P: Sir
  T: had its bad side
  P: Sir ( )
  (
  P: sir
  (
  P: Sir
  (
  T: Just a minute hands down
  Pn: Augh::
  T: Look at this side of the class what's the matter with them
  Pn: Sir Sir
  T: Numbskulls c'mon
  Pn: Sir Sir
  T: Wha-what-where d'you think a river can be a nuisance?
  P: Yes sir
  P: Sir
• T: If you lived in a village an' there was a river running right past it, in what way would the river be a nuisance
  P: Sir Sir
  T: a problem?
  Pn: Sir Sir
  T: Now look, I can see you, I don't need to have a silly chorus, y'sound like a lot of little sparrows bumbling away in the hedgebottom
  Pn: ((Mimics of sparrows))
  T: It's somebody over this side I'd like to hear from. What way could a river be said to be a nuisance yes? (D)

On such occasions the teacher is attempting to maximise the attention of all members of the class by demonstrating the potential built into directly selective questions for the embarrassment of pupils who have not been 'following' the lesson. The problems of participation control that this kind of action causes point to a conflict of purpose facing the teacher: the more successful he is in generating pupil motivation to attend and participate, the greater may be his problems in controlling participation. However, this is not just a problem for teachers but one which also faces pupils. Pupils' 'failure' to conform fully to the participation rules is not to be explained in terms of their perversity or on the grounds that they are operating on the basis of values opposite to those of the school. If these explanations were correct, it could be expected that there would be a refusal to answer questions rather than the clamour that generally occurs.³ The teachers demand participation and differentiate pupils on the basis of the 'quality' of that participation, yet the form which official participation must take is highly restricted and there are only limited opportunities, given the number of pupils in a class.⁴ It is not surprising, therefore, that considerable unofficial participation occurs.⁵

However, there is no need to assume that clamour to answer the teachers' questions is simply the product of successful mobilisation by the teachers. On many occasions pupils seemed to be pursuing their own rather different purposes. They seemed to be using the teacher as a quizmaster, turning teacher questions into a contest. Acclaim from other pupils appeared to be desired as much as praise from the teacher, and the aim to be not the building of an academic career but the acquisition of a reputation for smartness.⁶

To be successful in demonstrating 'intelligence' to the teacher or in the quiz, a pupil must get his answers heard and if possible accepted by the teacher as 'the right answer'. But a pupil is only one among many, a good number of whom may be equally anxious to provide the answer. It is known that the teacher very rarely asks all those offering answers and sometimes does not ask any of them. Even if the teacher does start an answer-round, there is always the danger that another pupil will come up with 'the right answer' and thus stop the round (unless the question asked for the members of a list); that someone-else will suggest the answer which the pupil is seeking to present and thus make it difficult for him to claim it as his own; or that the teacher may stop the round to reformulate or drop the question before the pupil has had chance to get his answer in.

These contingencies explain why pupils are not content merely to put their hands up and wait to be selected. Pupils use two main strategies in trying to win the competition. They may try inserting 'answers' as soon as or just before the teacher has apparently finished the question. It is important to get in first for the reasons I have mentioned and because if the answer is 'right' the teacher may, or may be forced to, accept it despite the fact that it was 'shouted out'. The insertion of answers maximises the possibility of success if tne answer turns out to be adequate. Identifying the point of question completion, however, is no easy matter since teachers often repeat, elaborate, or reformulate questions before they actually begin to select answerers. Hence pupils often find themselves talking simultaneously with each other and with the teacher, and this reduces, even if it does not eliminate, the chances of getting an answer heard and accepted.

Instead of 'shouting out' his answer, a pupil may seek explicitly to summon the teacher by the use of 'sir'. 'Sir' has the obverse advantages to answer insertion, being of short duration and immediate impact; it is easily insertible into what turns out to have been a minor pause, and requires little work at understanding. Indeed 'sir' is often inserted into what must be recognised as non-terminal pauses in teacher or official pupil talk in the hope of turning them into terminal pauses and securing the floor—a strategy which trades on both the features mentioned above. 'Sir' works, if it works, like all summonses: if the teacher replies and replies with an invitation to speak not a deferral (with 'yes' not 'hold on a minute'), the pupil is then virtually guaranteed a hearing. The aim of a summons is not just to attract attention but to gain the floor and the deferential character of 'sir' is important in this. While something like 'Hey you' would be doubly effective in attracting the teachers' attention and quieting competitors, it would be unlikely to result in the speaker being able to present his answer. This highlights the problem pupils face in answering teachers' questions. To obey the rules by not 'shouting out' or even trying to summon the teacher with 'sir', involves the danger of losing the chance of the floor to other less conforming answers. On the other hand, to be the most effective competitor opens a pupil up to charges of 'bad manners'. To the extent that pupils are quiz-motivated they will care little about being labelled 'bad mannered', but there is always the danger that the teacher may ignore or rule out an answer simply on the grounds that it was inappropriately presented or that he will not appoint an answerer who tries to summon him with 'sir'. Pupils have to make some trade-off between the two sources of possible failure on every answering occasion.

The point of the above analysis of pupil answering is to suggest that, first, there are reasons for pupil deviance built into the organisation the teachers seek to impose on classroom interaction; and secondly, that pupils' orientations are not usually simply for or against school but generally involve using or attempting to adapt its organisation to make something 'valuable', 'bearable', 'enjoyable', and/or functional for certain purposes. There are of course limitations to pupils doing this, but then there are equally limitations to teachers' power to prevent such making out.

Pupils are not wholly restricted to offering answers to teacher questions; they do make initiatives, again sometimes inserting them in gaps they hope are adequate, sometimes trying to summon the teacher. In making initiatives pu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Teachers and Classroom Management
• Part II: Teachers as Differentiators
• Part III: Teacher Cultures and Careers
• Index