Inside the Secondary Classroom (RLE Edu O)

Sara Delamont, Maurice Galton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317796336
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Focusing on pupils moving from primary to middle or secondary school, it describes and evaluates the schools' programmes to ease transfer, and includes material provided by the pupils themselves. The main body of the book is a rich and detailed account of the first months of life in new secondary schools, where the pleasures and perils of new friends, new teachers and new subjects, and a new approach to teaching are encountered. The book conveys vividly how pupils experience a new environment, and meet its dangers, rules and regulations, timetable, complex groupings and ideology.

Inside the Secondary Classroom was the first comparative ethnography of school life in Britain, carried out in six schools. It reveals surprising similarities and differences between them.The cases studied range from highly successful pupils with nine 'O' levels to others with severe social and personal problems.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction:
the ORACLE project

The ORACLE Project was funded by the Social Science Research Council (now Economic and Social Research Council) at the University of Leicester from 1975 to 1980. A series of interrelated studies was mounted, which have been published as Inside the Primary Classroom (Galton, Simon and Croll, 1980); Progress and Performance in the Primary Classroom (Galton and Simon, 1980); Research and Practice in the Primary Classroom (Simon and Willcocks, 1981); Moving from the Primary Classroom (Galton and Willcocks, 1983) and various articles which are listed in the ORACLE Bibliography in this volume. This volume differs in several ways from the four previous ORACLE books, although it also shows continuities with them. This introductory chapter discusses the contents of this book, and shows how they differ from the previous ORACLE volumes.

The main focus of the ORACLE programme was teaching and learning in primary classrooms. However because of the way the project was designed, it also gave an opportunity to study both transfer at different ages (9, 11 and 12) and to compare three different types of middle school (8–12, 9–13, 11–14). Some of the relevant material on these issues has already appeared in Galton and Willcocks (1983), and although this book can be read in isolation, the reader will find it more illuminating to read Moving from the Primary Classroom as well. The Galton and Willcocks volume dealt with the previous literature on transfer between schools, with the systematic observation data on pupils’ adaptations to the teaching styles they met in the transfer schools, with pupils’ academic performance in their new schools, and with how the data on transfer related to the findings presented in the earlier volumes in the series. In addition, the Galton and Willcocks book included some of the material gathered by means of ethnographic observation in the six transfer schools. It is this ethnographic material which forms the main subject matter of this book, where a whole volume allows the range, depth and variety of those data to be fully explored. The book is therefore, not only a further instalment in the presentation of findings from the SSRC ORACLE project, but also a contribution to the rich British literature on the ethnography of schooling. There are also stylistic differences between this volume and the others. The reader will notice that this book is more ethnographic, more sociological and more grounded in the contemporary educational literature, than the earlier volumes. These three features are associated: the transfer studies were based on ethnographic fieldwork, used more ideas from the literature of the sociology of education, and therefore were grounded in the debates current among other researchers in school ethnography. This volume looks more towards the tradition of Hargreaves (1967), Lacey (1970), Woods (1979), Ball (1981), and Turner (1983) than it does to the work of Neville Bennett (1976, 1980) and Rutter et al. (1979). However the ORACLE work differs from most of the contemporary British school ethnographies (detailed in Hammersley, 1980 and 1982) in a variety of ways.

While ethnographic studies of schools and classrooms have become more common in the last decade, most have been done by one observer in one school. (Curriculum evaluation scholars are the exception here.) Comparing the ORACLE ethnography with the ‘Mainstream’ schools studies in Britain we spent less time, and cannot claim the same depth of experience as Stephen Ball (1981), Peter Woods (1979) or Lynn Davies (1984). However, we have gained two kinds of comparative ethnographic data. We studied six schools in three cities, to find out how they socialized new entrants. We have placed three observers in each school, and every observer worked in at least two of the six schools. Sara Delamont worked throughout the whole of September 1977 in the two 9–13 schools, and in the two 12–18 schools in 1978. Maurice Galton, John Willcocks, Sarah Tann, Margaret Greig and Janice Lea worked in two or more schools for shorter periods during the Septembers, and visited ‘their’ schools later in the year. Team-based ethnographic research is rare in Britain outside the big evaluation projects, and in ORACLE we had a precious chance to engage in such research. The ORACLE transfer studies are an important venture in team ethnography, and in comparative ethnography.

In addition to being an exercise in comparative, team ethnography, the ORACLE transfer studies gathered data on five aspects of school life which are the central themes of the book. These five themes are all relatively neglected in the published work on schooling for the 9–16 age range in Britain, and this volume therefore goes some way towards redressing the balance of the research tradition. These five themes are:

1 Initial encounters between pupils and teachers.

2 Mixed ability teaching in the secondary age range.

3 The whole range of the secondary curriculum.

4 Material which challenges the familiarity of the classroom.

5 Data on the long term schooling outcomes of the target pupils.

1 Initial encounters

Much of the ethnography of schools and classrooms has been conducted on teacher-pupil relationships which were already established.

Initial encounters between teachers and pupils have been largely neglected by classroom researchers (Delamont, 1983a). The only research in Britain has been done by Ball (1980) and Bey non (Beynon and Atkinson, 1984). ORACLE has a large body of data on initial encounters, because the research team were in the schools most intensively during the first six weeks of the school year. The material presented in chapter 3 is particularly concerned with initial encounters, and adds to our knowledge of how teachers establish themselves. This important aspect of schooling was addressed briefly in chapter 7 of Galton and Willcocks (1983), and is expanded upon and thoroughly investigated here.

2 Mixed ability teaching

The introduction of mixed ability teaching in the secondary age range has been controversial (Newbold, 1977; Ball, 1981; Davies et al., 1985). ORACLE was able to study several different grouping systems, and these data are presented. We also have material on many kinds of groups which are created in the school, from sports teams to academic classes; and groups which pupils arrange for themselves. These findings are the main subject matter of chapters 7 and 9, and these contain informative work on how complex the internal organization of contemporary secondary schooling is.

3 The whole range of the curriculum

As Delamont (1981) has argued, too much classroom research has been focused upon maths, English, science and French compared to other areas of the curriculum. Too many projects ignore all the practical subjects in the school curriculum – we have studied it ‘in the round’. Thus data are presented on such subjects as woodwork and PE, and the emphasis is placed on the totality of the pupils’ experiences, rather than just on a few academic lessons. Such insights into the full range of the curriculum are spread throughout the chapters in this volume, and go some way towards giving research attention to ‘practical’ subjects.

4 Making the familiar strange

Much classroom research suffers from a failure to make the familiar strange (Delamont, 1981). In this volume we have deliberately arranged the material in such a way as to make the classroom unfamiliar, so that the reader sees teacher-pupil interaction from a fresh perspective. The chapters therefore focus on such issues as ‘danger’, and ‘time’ rather than covering the school subject by subject, or via conventional categories. Additionally, there has been a self-conscious attempt to draw comparisons and contrasts with non-school settings. In this regard the material from the ORACLE transfer data are presented in a different manner from Galton and Willcocks (1983).

5 Schooling outcomes

The ORACLE transfer studies are also unusual among school ethnographies in that the pupils studied have been followed up over eight years. In 1977 and 1978 the sample pupils transferred from first to middle school or from 8–12 middle school to upper school. In 1983 the sample pupils were followed up, to discover what their secondary-school careers were like. We visited the 13–18 upper schools in Ashburton (Local Authority A) whence children from Gryll Grange and Guy Mannering had gone, and in Bridgehampton (Local Authority B) the 14–18 upper school to which our Maid Marion and Kenilworth pupils had moved. In Coalthorpe (Local Authority C) we revisited Waverly and Melin Court to see how our sample had fared. Some of these data are integrated with our findings throughout the book, but the main body of our work here forms appendix 2. The rest of this chapter outlines how we conducted the ORACLE transfer studies, deals with the way in which we have allocated pseudonyms and ensured confidentiality, introduces the three cities and their schools, and describes the structure of the book.

Managing the ORACLE ethnography

The transfer studies were conducted in six schools in three local authorities, over two successive years. In 1977 the ORACLE target pupils in Local Authority A – Ashburton – moved from their 5–9 first schools into 9–13 middle schools, and we carried out an ethnographic study of that change in two contrasting schools, one organized on primary school lines (Gryll Grange, APT) and one on secondary school lines (Guy Mannering, AST). The timetable of the ethnographic research allowed us to use the study of the 9–13 schools, in September 1977, as a pilot study for 1978, when the pupils transferred into the 11–14 and 12–18 schools in the other two local authorities (Bridgehampton and Coalthorpe). Sara Delamont and Maurice Galton were involved in both years, the others only worked in one year, but some of the lessons learnt during the 1977 transfer study were carried forward to 1978.

We never believed that ethnographers enter the field open-minded. In the 1977 study of the two 9–13 schools we had a short list of ‘foreshadowed problems’ derived from our reading of other school studies. These were of two kinds: some tentative ‘theoretical’ ideas we had derived from the literature, and some ‘common-sense’ ideas derived more from our ‘members’ knowledge’. Among the more ‘theoretical’ ideas we were interested in utilizing Basil Bernstein's (1971, 1974) ideas on classification and framing and visible and invisible pedagogies; the beginnings of labelling, and the notion of ‘coping strategies’ (Pollard, 1985). More concretely, we asked all observers to look carefully at pupils' ‘adjustments’ to the new schools, sibling comparisons, staff room discussions of pupils, bullying and the schools' responses to it, and to compare ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ in such areas as curriculum balance, pupil groupings, allocation of teachers to classes and so on. For example in Local Authority A (Ashburton) we found that allocation of children to teaching bands at Guy Mannering School (AST) was more closely related to primary school attended than ability or head's reports (see chapter 7 for more details of this finding). Once such an insight had been made, we were able to build it into the design of the second year's work into transfer. Thus by 1978 we had a fistful of ideas from the 1977 study which we could use as ‘foreshadowed problems’ or ‘sensitizing concepts’ in Local Authorities ? (Bridgehampton) and C (Coalthorpe), and so we asked the observers in Local Authorities ? and C to examine band allocation, class allocation and so forth. How far the observers took any notice of these ‘foreshadowed problems’ is, in retrospect, unclear – because of the diverse nature of the observers.

The observers used had very different academic backgrounds. Sara Delamont was the only experienced ethnographer, but all the other observers had been trained and were experienced as classroom observers with the Teacher and Pupil Records. Maurice Galton had previously done systematic observations with the Science Teacher Observation Schedule. In each town there were regular meetings among the observers to discuss their ‘findings’. No systematic attempts were made to harmonize fieldnotes or diary-taking, and the resulting documents vary enormously in length, depth, social scientific language-use and the extent to which judgments are explicitly made. While there cannot be inter-observer reliability in ethnography of the kind demanded by the Teacher and Pupil Records, we found surprising similarities in our accounts of the same classrooms. Sara Delamont had been concerned that a series of incompatible and unrelated accounts would result. However, in practice the big problem was the one mentioned by Howard Becker (1971) – observers who found the school day too familiar to be able to write much about it. Some of the observers including Maurice Galton handed over everything they wrote to the ORACLE secretaries for typing and circulation, while others handed in only an edited account. Sara Delamont had her diary typed, but not her field-notes. Once the fieldnotes were gathered all of those taken by five of the six observers were handed over to Delamont, who has analyzed them and written up the material. This was considered to be the only practical course, but also has the effect of giving a coherence and common focus to the resulting account which may be exaggerated.

The management of team research is always problematic. We are confident that the material gathered is worth reading, providing as it does an unusual perspective on schooling. The authors have written an account of researching the ORACLE transfer studies (Galton and Delamont, 1985) and interested readers can consult that paper for more details of our difficulties. Our successes can be found in this volume.

Confidentiality and pseudonyms

Throughout chapters 4 to 9 use is made of three kinds of data: interviews, observations without a schedule, and pupil essays. Each kind of data is clearly indicated. The material reproduced from the ‘fieldnotes’ taken by ourselves is given with the name of the school. All the schools, teachers, pupils and observers are unidentifiable. The observers have been left anonymous, as at least three different people worked in each school, and data collected by each of them have been used.

The presentation of a comparative ethnography of six very different schools is complicated. We have talked as far as possible of feeder schools, and transfer schools, except where this hinders clarity. As in the previous volumes, the teachers are generally referred to as female and the pupils as male except where specific examples are quoted.

The schools, teachers and pupils are all disguised. All the schools at the centre of our analysis (middle and upper schools) have names from novels, while the lower schools in all three local authorities have names of cricket grounds used in the 1979 Prudential World Cup. Where pupils moved on to an upper school (in Local Authorities A and B) these have names from Jane Austen novels. Pseudonyms also replace the initials used for the schools in Galton and Willcocks (1983). Those schools in Galton and Willcocks called ‘PT (for primary type) are here given names from the novels of Thomas Love Peacock: Gryll Grange (9–13), Maid Marion (11–14) and Melin Court (12–18), but they are referred to in the earlier chapters as ‘Gryll Grange 9–13 APT’ to enable the reader to become familiar with the name, age-range, and type of school. Those schools called ‘ST’ (for secondary type) are here called after novels by Sir Walter Scott: Guy Mannering (9–13), Kenilworth (11–14), and Waverly (12–18), and have the AST, BST, CST added for the first few chapters.

The teachers referred to only by initials in that volume are also given pseudonyms here, in the belief it hel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Tables and figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: the ORACLE project
• 2 Ready, steady, panic? Preparation for transfer in the ORACLE schools
• 3 First days in the new school
• 4 Danger! Schooling in progress: physical and social dangers in the new schools
• 5 The Luton Airport Syndrome: movement and immobility in the new schools
• 6 Speed merchants and slow coaches: time in the new schools
• 7 What group are you in? Formal grouping arrangements in the new schools
• 8 One big family? The home and the school
• 9 Help from my friends? The staffroom and the peer groups
• 10 Conclusions
• Appendix 1 Lists of participants
• Appendix 2 Follow-up data
• Bibliography of publications from the ORACLE project
• Bibliography of works cited in the text
• Index of authors
• Index of participants
• Index of subjects