Teaching the Class: the practical management of a cohort

Abstract

There are times and occasions in social life when one member of society controls, organises, manages a group or collection of others with regard to some specific business or project. The particular example which provides the focus for our analysis in this paper is that of a school teacher dealing with a class of pupils. The school teacher is one member of society who routinely deals with a large number of others as a group or collectivity most days. The business of Secondary schools especially is generally organised around transactions between a single teacher and 25-30 or so pupils in a class. In a Secondary school a teacher's typical day can consist of repeatedly handling a variety of collections of pupils as different classes come to him for lessons. Even when he has the 'same class' again, there is no guarantee that it will consist of exactly those pupils it did 'last time'. From one occasion to another it is likely that any number of different individual pupils may not be present. Despite this possible variable constitution of their classes, teachers routinely cope wth their collections of pupils, managing them with not too much difficulty. At least it is our impression that this is the case from mixing with, talking to and observing teachers, although it is not an impression we gain from many sociological studies, where teachers appear constantly to find the classroom situation threatening. We venture to suggest that experienced teachers may well manage their classes in such taken for granted ways that they are not consciously aware of the nature of their accomplishment. Clearly they are aware of it when 'trouble brews' or when the pupils are 'difficult', but for much of the time they are doing their teaching their awareness of the achieved nature of keeping order may fall away from their more immediate consciousness. The order is accomplished in unnoticed ways. Those unnoticed ways of maintaining order constitute part of a teacher's professional expertise; they are part of this repertoire of methodic skills for doing his job properly. They are professional resources he is required to call upon every time he takes a class. For although most teachers may routinely handle their classes in an orderly manner, that outcome does not deny the essentially achieved nature of social

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