A Model of Classroom Coping Strategies

This paper represents an attempt to construct a theoretical model with which to analyse the social context and genesis of classroom coping strategies, thereby linking macro‐ and micro‐factors. I approach this firstly through a critique of A. Hargreaves’ analysis which tends to emphasise macro‐factors and constraints on teacher action. I suggest that this analysis should be balanced and augmented by recognition of more independent and creative action in micro contexts. In the second part of the paper I develop Woods’ work on teacher survival by considering the use of the interactionist concept of ‘self and the phenomenological concept of ‘interests‐at‐hand’ as a means of defining the subjective meaning of ‘coping’, and its implication for classroom processes. I emphasise the importance of teacher biography. Finally a conceptual model which seeks to integrate many macro‐ and micro‐factors which bear on classroom coping strategies is presented.     

Researching learning outcomes: building confidence in our conclusions

The ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme is expected to produce knowledge of high social scientific quality and practical pedagogic value. It faces, in a particularly acute form, the issue of how confidence in its conclusions can be built. This article begins with some conceptual clarification of the notion of a ‘warrant’ for research findings and distinguishes between warrants in social research and warrants for educational policy and practice. It then, in the specific context of research on learning outcomes, proposes an integrated model that recognizes the importance of, and relationships among, criteria associated with research design and empirical work, theoretical coherence, relationship with other research, and user affirmation. It concludes by emphasizing the need for continuing debate about, and development of, the roles and relationships of ‘researchers’ and ‘users’.     

Towards a Sociology of Learning in Primary Schools

In this paper the aim is to highlight the absence of a sociology of learning in relation to primary education. Further, it is argued that there is considerable scope for cooperation between psychologists and sociologists in tackling this issue and one way will be explored in which this could be achieved by drawing on social constructivist psychology and symbolic interactionist sociology. In support of this suggestion, some brief illustrative material is presented, drawn from a longitudinal ethnography of a pupil cohort progressing through a primary school in the UK.     

‘An attempt to tip the scales’: music and embodied capital in an English secondary school

This article explores class, capital, and aspiration to social mobility in an ethnographic study of an English secondary school. In particular, the article considers the school’s musical instrument programme as a site for inculcating forms of capital, under the auspices of developing skills for upward social mobility. Bringing together Bourdieu’s conceptions of schooling with theories of materiality and situated learning, we contend that this school succeeds in cultivating new forms of embodied capital among students through the development of communities of musical practice. However, a tension remains between emancipatory aims of the programme and the sanctioning and championing of certain forms of dominant cultural practice. The learning environment of the instrument programme highlights the complex and conflicted impact that schooling can have on the development of cultural capital and on reproducing disadvantage and difference.     

Conceptualizing and conducting preoperative psychological assessments of cochlear implant candidates

A review of literature pertaining to psychosocial research on cochlear implantation is embedded in this formulation of how preoperative psychological assessments should be comceptualized and conducted. This article considers various purposes of such assessments, including those relevant to candidate selection, exclusion, and readiness. Particular attention is directed to the conceptualization and operational investigation of candidate readiness, which includes aspects of motivation and informed consent. Assessment in this context is framed as both a data collection and an intervention procedure. The article describes specific methodologies useful in preoperative psychological assessment, including questionnaires, interviews, and psychological tests.