133
ɪ think it’s to do with how classes are
perhaps very different from where I went
to school anyway in the sense that they do
a lot of their own work. They work a lot
by
in school.
There’s
different approach to organising
than when you all sat down and all
a very
classes
did it.
It’s controlling noisy classes as we all
said on Tuesday - keeping control and organ-
ising .
It may be tempting to interpret the new situation as
requiring control
but other skills may be required in addition to shaping classes into
the semblance of order that is recalled from the students' own early
experience. Ml in an earlier extract (4.1.dv) pointed to administ-
ration, to the importance of the moderation and planning of individual
programme я of work in a mixed ability class. Frequently when such
encounters are planned, discussed and evaluated in the school group
they take on a new meaning. There is the possibility for both their
re-interpretation and representation in the work of the group.
c) Pupils
Not only do classrooms and their organisation provide opportunities
for student learning but so do the pupils themselves. In the next
extract the students’ own knowledge, their own ways of approaching
the school both represent and are constrained by social and educa-
tional perspectives whose appropriateness has to be questioned.
School A 16.11.81 P17 ji, 18 jii
RE A thing I found interesting just talking
to the children - trying to find out what
their dads did ..... a lot didn’t seem to
know what their fathers did - because they’re
so scattered themselves they don’t seem to
think
of Area
they think of