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Abstract

The thesis studies the classroom life of 15 secondary school girls. Broadly phenomenological in intent, its major objective is an analysis of classroom life as pupils saw it. After a review of other classroom research, the thesis follows a developmental pattern - three theoretical approaches within social phenomenology are introduced and observational and interview data are analysed from each perspective.

Firstly the symbolic interactionist model is developed and distinguished from other ‘group’ models of behaviour. It is distinctive because it sees man as active, interpreting and endowing his world with meaning. How men define situations is seen as the key to understanding why they act as they do. Classroom observations are analysed from this perspective and the fluidity and change in behaviour relating to changing definitions is exposed. Pupils who define the classroom situation in the same way and take each other into account when deciding how to act are called an interaction set; some of the most common (cultural) interaction sets are recorded.

The second half of the thesis is concerned with grounding this essentially external ‘second order’ concept of the interaction set in the pupils’ own conceptions of classroom life. Two different theoretical perspectives are developed to this end, both of them utilizing the study of language as their major research strategy. In the first, Schutz’ sociology of knowledge is explored and by analysing interview talk pupils’ typifications of teachers and teaching situations are documented and from this information their relevance structures are assembled. But it is also pointed out that these relevance structures cannot explain pupils’ actions in classrooms unless the observer himself engages in considerable interpretive work.

The final approach, ethnomethodology, criticised phenomenology for its ‘idealised’ approach to language, and directly tackles the problem of relating ‘talk’ and action. In this model, language is seen as indexical and as a ‘frame’ through which the subjective world is actively created by participants. Pupils are portrayed as creating meanings for themselves depending on how they assess the situation ‘this time’ (the notion of ‘situation’ includes such features as the teacher’s ‘power’ and the influence of ‘leaders’). From this final perspective, the interaction set involves those pupils who ‘for the moment’ agree to construe events in a similar way, putting aside their individual interpretations.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB1603 Secondary Education. High schools
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of Sociology & Criminology School of Policy & Global Affairs > School of Policy & Global Affairs Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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