The Sociology of Educational Innovation

Contemporary Sociology of the School

Tom Whiteside

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138628960
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000639728
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Innovation is a striking and polemical feature of contemporary schooling. The 1960s saw an upsurge of interest in progressive educational theories and debate and the benefits and disadvantages of their practical application, which continued after. But what was the reality behind the words? How far had teachers actually supported or adopted innov

1
Innovation - the name of the game

The unprecedented post-war expansion in formal education at all levels has been called 'the schooling explosion'. In advanced industrial countries, capitalist, socialist and communist, governments have committed themselves to universal primary and secondary schooling, a lengthening of compulsory schooling and to an enlargement of the age group who go on to higher education. While some commentators have tended to over-emphasize the 'egalitarian revolution' produced by this explosion, particularly in relation to changes in secondary and higher education, most countries have proudly boasted of reductions in illiteracy, increasing shares of the Gross National Product devoted to education, and an ever-increasing proportion of the population enrolled in primary, secondary and higher education. For example, in Britain, public expenditure as a whole rose by 82·9 per cent between 1953 and 1972 (at constant 1970 prices) while public expenditure on education rose by 242·9 per cent (Klein et al., 1974). Economists have pointed out that, apart from electronics and natural gas, higher education grew faster than any major national enterprise in the 1960s (Layard et al., 1969, p. 1).

There were strong demographic pressures for expansion in this period. The 1972 Education White Paper stated 'In the 1960s the main determinant of rising educational expenditure was the increasing number of young people using the educational system. The expansion was led by quantitative, or demographic factors; larger age groups within the span of compulsory education; rising demand for access to sixth forms and more staff to teach them' (Department of Education and Science, 1972, p. 1). Alongside this demographic pressure for expansion there was an increase in the social demand for education. As education became, and was seen to become, the avenue for better jobs, so the demand for educational qualifications grew, setting up an inflationary spiral in which the value of any given level of education was deflated by rising qualification requirements for jobs. This increased demand for education was in part due to the changed economic situation. In the immediate post-war years the economic and social dislocation made this largely a period of reconstruction. The 'full employment' and economic growth of the 1950s contributed to generally higher standards of living in what became labelled by the end of the decade 'The Affluent Society'.

The apparently secure technological foundations provided by capitalism and the promise of future mass abundance made it possible to think of a new order of society that would end 'the dark ages of poverty and want and [take] mankind forward to a future which our fathers could not have dreamed possible' (Wilson, 1964, p. 3). This view of a new social order incorporated a redefinition of the role of schooling and among some Labour Party politicians education came to be viewed as a serious alternative to nationalization in promoting a more just and efficient society (Halsey, 1968). The intellectual foundation for political programmes which emphasized education's central role in producing social equality was, in part, laid down in the writings of social scientists who proclaimed a changed role for education in advanced industrial societies. Floud and Halsey, in their introduction to the influential reader, Education, Economy and Society, saw the educational system as occupying a new and 'strategic place as a central determinant of the economic, political, social and cultural character of a society' (Halsey et al., 1961, p. 3). Educational inequalities were seen as particularly important because they became, in effect, fundamentally determinant of all social inequality.

At the same time economists were particularly popular in that they appeared to offer 'objective' assessments, indicating that at the societal level further investments in education were a favourable alternative to other uses of resources and that at the individual level investments in schooling yielded ample returns in the form of higher life-time earnings. Thus, increasing expenditure on education could be defended because education was an investment, an investment whose yield could be calculated. The prominence of economic arguments can be seen from the educational reports of the period. The 1956 White Paper on Technical Education argued that other countries were making determined efforts to train more scientific and technical manpower, and that Britain, too, must do the same, the aims being 'to strengthen the foundations of our economy, to improve the living standards of our people' (Ministry of Education, 1956, p. 4). The Robbins Report on Higher Education (1963) stated that of the four objectives essential to a properly balanced system of higher education the first was 'instruction in skills suitable to play a part in the general division of labour'. On the other side of the Atlantic there was a corresponding belief President Kennedy, in submitting a National Education Improvement Act of 1963 to Congress, said 'This nation is committed to economic growth, and recent research has shown that one of the most beneficial of all such investments is education, accounting for some 40 per cent of the nation's growth and productivity in recent years. In the new age of science and space, improved education is essential to give meaning to our initial purpose and power' (Harbison and Myers, 1964, p. 159). Thus the expansion of education which was conceived of as a necessary democratic precondition of faster economic growth could also be justified in terms of its more direct economic yield. The economic and social goals connected with education were seen as mutually supportive; more education supposedly meant both more well-trained people and greater opportunity for the under-privileged.

However, at this time the interest of social scientists was mainly in the structure of education and its relationships with wider societal structures rather than in the internal relationships, curriculum, teaching methods and personal styles of behaviour that constituted the greater part of educational study (Vaizey and Clarke, 1976). The foreword to Education, Economy and Society saw sociology making a contribution to the understanding of education in modern society by analysing important aspects of the wider social structure in which policy-makers, administrators and teachers were working. This level of approach particularly appealed as the results of public opinion polls in the 1950s convinced Labour Party politicians that the way to gain acceptance for comprehensive schools probably lay in stressing, not the egalitarian virtues of the schools, but rather the opportunities they offered to all children of getting a 'grammar school education'. Though it was recognized that change, particularly in the bodies of knowledge and belief transmitted within the educational system, would be necessary, this was seen as outside the province of the sociologist and something best left to the educationist. The consequent stress on 'efficiency' in the provision of educational opportunities was later sharply criticized for its lack of interest in the educational system and the failure to consider what political definitions of equality might mean in terms of the everyday workings of schools, particularly comprehensive schools (see, for example, Marsden, 1972).

i he feeling among many educationists at this time was that the new relationship between education and the rest of society would require major changes in the style as well as the content of education. There was a resurgence of the belief that educational institutions were failing to respond to economic and social changes within the wider society. So pervasive was the theme of innovation that some felt it essential to point out that innovation was not of necessity a good thing and hardened veterans in staffrooms across the country were suggesting that those who wished to promote their careers and make a name for themselves would be wise to be innovative even if the innovative process proved to be undesirable. As Goodlad observed, during the 1960s innovation was the name of the education game (Goodlad et al., 1974). During this period an increasingly complex apparatus, both national and international, was built up to create and disseminate new approaches to schooling.

Though there was a high level of consensus among educational opinion-makers on the need for change, during this period there was, and still continues to be, a wide variation in the scope of the changes envisaged. The alternatives proposed ranged all the way from leaving the present school virtually intact as an institution but with much revision in curriculum and instruction to replacing completely the school with new arrangements for education with or without some form of compulsory education. Following Hoyle (1972, p. 33), we can identify three broad approaches to educational innovation.

1 To modify the system

Much educational writing contains suggestions for producing modifications of the present system. In this country attempts to produce alterations while maintaining the main features of the system can be seen in the emergence of interest in curriculum development, conceived of mainly in terms of subject renewal. In a society felt to be dependent to an unprecedented extent on the results of scientific research, it is not surprising to find that science was the branch of knowledge where pressure for reform of syllabuses was strongest; the argument being that rapid developments in the knowledge areas of pure science and technology had made much of the existing curriculum clearly out of date. The Association for Science Education provided a channel for science teachers to express their dissatisfaction with syllabuses and was influential in persuading the Nuffield Foundation, a charitable trust, to initiate the first of a series of substantial curriculum development projects in December 1961. This emphasis on an updated subject-matter can be seen in the following extract describing thinking at the time of the setting up of the Schools Council, the major curriculum body in England and Wales.

In this, as in many other countries, there has been a growing consciousness of the need to reappraise syllabuses and curricula, Until comparatively recently changes in the school curriculum have taken place only through the slow spread of ideas among teachers (helped by the efforts of H.M. Inspectors) or through the work of committees set up for some specific purpose, The rate of change did not keep pace with the needs of the times or provide a speedy response to developments in particular branches of knowledge or to changes in the general view about the aims of education. (Department of Education and Science, 1966, p. 1)

Alongside this concern for a revised subject-matter there grew a new emphasis on how children learn, the virtues of activity, discovery and inquiry methods with a stress on new ways of breaking down and organizing subject-matter. In this development one major influence was Bruner (1966) who linked the academic interest in updated curriculum content with the more pedagogical interest in teaching and learning, arguing that reform of curriculum content and changes in learning and teaching procedures must go hand in hand. In the main these changes could be accommodated with the existing framework of the school.

2 To transform the system

For some educationists changes solely in curriculum and teaching and learning styles were not radical enough. Many critics were concerned to bring about a more far-reaching transformation in the school system. Many who argued for radical change in the school system utilized the vocabulary associated with the vision of a new social order, relating their proposals for changes in school systems to changes that had occurred or were likely to occur in society. They argued from a functionalist standpoint that the rate of societal change was such that schools would not be able to resist the pressures for change generated and, therefore, change was inevitable. Thus Gass, as Director of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of OECD, writes in the preface to a series of case studies on educational innovation that 'it is not feasible to expect a standstill in the school while at the same time accepting a rapid process of economic, technological and cultural change in the wider community' (Gass, 1973, p. 3). The promoters thus attempt to justify large-scale changes in educational institutions in terms of bringing them into line with the rest of society, rather than in terms of educational institutions as active agents of change in the society.

The view of the future that was most prevalent was a similar one to that of Halsey et al, (1961), one that presumed that advanced industrial societies were moving from a production of goods economy based on physical labour to a distribution of services economy based on mental abilities. Bell (1974), for example, wrote of the growth of a new 'intelligentsia' - professionals working in the 'non-profit' sector including educators, medical health specialists, social scientists, mental health workers - and predicted a substantial increase in the non-profit human services during the 1970s and the 1980s. Frequently incorporated into such views were beliefs that non-manual jobs would replace manual jobs with a subsequent increase in worker satisfaction; that automation would reduce the number of unskilled and semi-skilled manual jobs to insignificance; and that we were entering an age of mass leisure. These beliefs have now been vigorously challenged. While there has been a decline in the proportion of unskilled jobs, it is realized that most jobs remain, and are likely to remain, dull and boring. The unvaried routine of work, the simplicity of most tasks and the constant supervision characteristic of hierarchical settings are likely to continue to deny to the majority of workers a sense of competence and a feeling of responsibility. The white-collar jobs are often routine, the 'leisure revolution' has not occurred and, where increased time has become available, many workers have 'moonlighted', i.e. sought second jobs (Grubb and Lazerson, 1975).

Recognition of some of these inconsistencies has led other innovators to develop within the same framework more sophisticated rationales for changing educational institutions. This is exemplified in a document sent to the parents of Countesthorpe College, an innovative upper secondary school in Leicestershire. This school was seen by its first Warden, McMullen, as attempting to minimize what he saw as the growing conflict in secondary schools between teachers and taught and between teachers and the head. Upon opening, the school was proudly thought of as different from other educational institutions and was thought, by some, to provide the model for the new type of comprehensive school. Its significant innovations fitted into a set of projected trends in secondary education - towards a freer curriculum, wider participation in the running of schools, the abandonment of old rituals and the move to new styles of teacher-pupil relationships. In a document, sent prior to the opening of the school, explaining its purposes and why it would be different from more traditional educational institutions, the Warden stressed the increasing rapidity of social change and the inappropriateness of a traditional education because of changes in the world between 1975 and 2025. This was the period during which the present generation of schoolchildren would live their adult lives.

The picture presented of the future society was a familiar one: immense changes in technology rendering particular skills out of date, increased job switching, increased geographical mobility and increased leisure time. The implications of this view of the future for schooling were clearly brought out:

the individual who will achieve satisfaction over this coming half century must have a clear sense of his own identity and ability, must have developed intellectual and emotional strategies that make for adaptation to change. Emotional satisfaction must come entirely from his relationships with the small groups he lives, plays and works with, but these may change over his lifetime and may involve others from differing social and racial backgrounds. He is unlikely to develop an absolute ethos that will serve him for the fifty years of his adult life; he will need to decide on ethical guide lines at any given moment, but he must also be prepared to re-examine them in the light of changing social structures and organization in the face of shorter working hours and less exacting or stimulating work, he will have to develop a full life outside his working hours, one that allows him intellectual, emotional and physical actions that bring satisfaction (McMullen, 1968, p. 65).

This rationale appears still to be accepted by Watts, the new Warden of the College (Watts, 1973a; Watts, 1977, p. 28).

3 To abolish the system

During the late 1960s and the early 1970s another group of critics put forward a view of the schools which saw them not merely as reflections of society but as curbing thinking to the point of being anti-intellectual, condemning children to years of inhumane incarceration and failing to challenge or stimulate. The titles of their books, Deschooling Society, Compulsory Miseducation, How Children Fail and Death at an Early Age, proclaim the nature of their criticism. The suggestions for remedying the assumed conditions range from schools in which children are set free to no schools at all. For Illich (1971) and Reimer (1971), for example, it is an undeniable human right that all those who want to learn should have access to available resources for learning at any time in their lives. This would be achieved by the provision of various 'networks', including direct access to resources for learning such as museums and libraries, the establishment of 'skill exchanges' and other devices which would bring together both learners and those who possess the skills they wish to acquire.

Innovation and the expert

In this chapter, so far, we have explored the scope and extent of change envisaged by supporters of different types of educational innovation. Clearly implicit in such views are different conceptions of the relationship between education and society as well as different views of the degree of change required within the present society. Whereas those involved in the development of curriculum innovation have had only limited objectives in these areas, those attempting to transform the school system have more clearly developed and broader objectives in these areas. Education is seen as playing a key part in bringing about a new type of social order, reminiscent of Karl Mannheim's views on the role of education in reconstructing the social order along the lines of a 'Third Way' leading out of liberal-capitalist waste and inefficiency and away from the 'satanic efficiency of brutal dictators' (Remmling, 1975). Critics of Mannheim have pointed out how in his work there is an uneasy relationship between 'planning for democracy' and 'democratic planning' and the same tension appears in the writings of many of the proponents of radical change in education. As we have seen, they have frequently presented their accounts of innovation in terms either of the changes needed in schooling to bring it into line with a changing society or the changes needed to allow its students to cope with a future society. The non-evaluative technological tone of these accounts has meant that even questions about the ends of education are seen as removed from the sphere of politics, soluble by 'science' and hence the domain of the technical expert. For example, during the 1960s and 1970s, the science of futurology has played an important part in legitimating the claims made by innovators. A futurologist is a person who, by extrapolating from present trends and identifying the likely consequences of policies before they have been translated into action, claims to be able to give a detailed picture of a possible future, or preferably of alternative futures which are dependent on decisions taken on critical issues. Reliance on such accounts has meant that the question of who plans the goals of education has been obscured by the promoters of innovation who have presented it as a value-neutral activity which was seen to be inevitable.

Such a view of innovation clearly de-emphasizes its social and political character - the fact that innovations are still means by which some people organize and control the lives of other people and their children according to their conceptions as to what is preferable. It disguises the reality that some people helped to plan the changes, that some people benefited from them while others did not, and that some consequences were intended while others were not. To take but one exampl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Editor's introduction
• 1 Innovation - the name of the game
• 2 The counter-attack on innovation
• 3 The extent and the nature of the change
• 4 The prospect of planned social change
• 5 Case studies of change
• 6 Innovation and the community
• 7 Students and innovation
• 8 Conclusion
• References and name index
• Subject index