School Organisation and Pupil Involvement


Book Description

First published in 1973, this book is based on research carried about by Ronald King on integral parts of school organisation, including the assembly, uniform, rewards and punishments, games and out-of-school activities, curriculum, prefectorial system and school councils, in a sample of seventy-two schools. It measures and explores the level of pupils’ involvement in the school, in terms in their evaluations and effective dispositions, in relation to pupil age, sex and social background. This book will be a valuable resource for those studying the sociology and history of education, as well as educational research and school organisation.







School Organisation (RLE Edu L)


Book Description

The internal organisation of the school touches on many areas of contemporary debate. Is there such a thing as a ‘good school’? Are large urban comprehensives necessarily impersonal? Are the charges of indiscipline, conflict and declining standards in modern schools based on a failure to understand schools as institutions? At the time this book was first published sociological analysis had neglected to consider schools as organisational entities, preferring to see them as either the sites for negotiated encounters between teachers and pupils or else as agencies of class reproduction. The author redresses this imbalance and by relating the various literatures on the school to the constitutive patterns of its internal organisation he demonstrates the need for a more intensive sociological study of this embattled institution.







The Sociology of School Organization


Book Description

First published in 1983, this volume assembles recent theory on school organization, drawing on a wide range of research, mainly on schools in contemporary Britain but with some illuminating historical and overseas comparisons. It examines elements of organization both within and outside the school, and shows how they vary with the age, sex, ethnicity and social class of pupils, as well as school size and efficiency. It argues how, with understanding, organizational patterns may be changed to respond to new objectives and how they may become more effective and responsive to human needs in schools and classrooms.




Failure-Free Education?


Book Description

David Reynolds is recognised internationally as one of the leaders of the school effectiveness and school improvement movement, and Failure Free Education? brings together for the first time many of his most influential and provocative pieces. Drawing on the author’s work from over three decades, these extracts from his seminal books, chapters, papers and articles combine to give a unique overview of how the movement developed, the problems involved in the application of the knowledge and the disciplines’ potentially glittering future now. The book also covers the issues raised by, and lessons learned from, his close involvement with English government educational policymaking from the mid 1990s to date. This book is essential reading for those who seek to understand how we can make every school a good school, and what the obstacles may be to achieving that goal.




The Study Of Primary Education


Book Description

First published in 1990. These books were compiled to help the professional development of primary school teachers, and represent wholly enlarged, updated and revised editions of the three primary source books.




Doing Sociology of Education (RLE Edu L)


Book Description

This collection of specially commissioned articles exposes the practical and personal influences on the process of doing sociology of education. All of the authors have been involved in conducting well know major research projects, and discuss here the pitfalls and problems, conflicts and compromises that went into doing their particular research. A particular feature of the book is that a wide variety of types of research in the sociology of education is covered. The range is from small-scale ethnographic case studies to large-scale postal questionnaire sample surveys and includes studies based on interviews, observation and questionnaires. There are examples of longitudinal work in case studies and in surveys. The collection also includes discussions of action research, the development and influence of theory, and the relationship between research and policy.




Teaching Without Disruption in the Primary School


Book Description

The issue of behaviour has, and always will be, a main dilemma facing schools. Encouraging positive relationships whilst preventing disruption, and motivating students to learn, raises concerns for any teacher. This fully updated second edition of Teaching without Disruption in the Primary School offers a comprehensive and constructive approach to developing effective behaviour management. Packed full of tasks, case studies, and research-based guidance, this extremely practical book reflects high quality behaviour management training and is crucially informed by empirical evidence on exactly what works in classrooms and schools. Containing two brand new chapters - one on the importance of theory in developing effective behaviour management, and the other detailing a toolkit for constructing effective classroom management plans - the book presents a model for developing: effective behaviour management at the individual pupil, classroom and whole school level professional social skills, assertiveness and coping strategies understanding of how teachers’ thinking and behaviour can unwittingly affect pupil behaviour a roadmap for establishing and maintaining authority pupils’ self-control and social competence using a cognitive-behavioural approach an appreciation of the value of adopting a research-based approach to behaviour management. Roland Chaplain has used this programme to successfully teach behaviour management techniques to thousands of PGCE trainees at the University of Cambridge, UK. Underpinned by contemporary educational, psychological and neuroscientific research, this book offers a progressively focused behaviour management model which will appeal to all teachers and teacher trainees, as well as to those who train them.




Community, Hierarchy and Open Education (RLE Edu L)


Book Description

The book describes the English school, especially the secondary school, as a hierarchical community in which the head-teacher (principal) is an autocratic ruler. After explaining how that particular organisation of the school developed historically from the market situation faced by the English public (i.e. private) schools in the developing industrial society of the nineteenth century it provides empirical evidence demonstrating that the hierarchies of knowledge, teachers and students that developed then were still in place when the book was published in 1975. They are still present today. It also looks at the challenges to the school as a hierarchical community presented by the ideologies of deschooling, progressive education and open education. Finally, it provides an explanation of why these ideologies were never put into practice in English schools despite some pioneering exemplars. Although first published over thirty-five years ago the issues examined in it raise questions that are still central to education today: Does size of school affect the commitment of teachers to the school, their colleagues and their students? How can the teaching staff be organised in a school? Do all need to work to the same ends? What is the role of leadership from the head-teacher (principal) in this? Is it possible to have a curriculum that is open without losing rigour? What should be the relationship between using local community knowledge and the educational wish to extend students’ horizons? The result is a short, nuanced, and densely argued text that demands thought and reflection from any contemporary educator.