Changing Roles in a Classroom: An Attempt That Didn't Work.

In an attempt to analyze the success or failure of school reform efforts, this study looked closely at student and teacher interactions in one elementary classroom where a "democratic" approach was being implemented. The study used Victor Turner's work on rituals to analyze one episode in a third-grade classroom (one student sucked on a lollipop during the Pledge of Allegiance). Eating was treated as a metighor for the larger issue of social order. The student's eating any time he wished implied no order or discipline and hence, in terms of ritual theory, he appeared anarchic ar:d dangerous. Rituals, including formal schooling, demand attention to order and norms. The analysis concluded that this attempt to institute more egalitarian roles failed and illustrated the discouraging prospects for school reform. In this classroom, the larger traditional and hierarchical social norms of the United States overrode the teacher's attempts to bring about egalitarian social relations, a fact that cast doubt on the likely success of some types of school reform. The paper argues that an effective democratic classroom in the 1990s could be more effective if it recognized the utility of hierarchy and sought to use hierarchical relations in a positive way to instill a modified egalitarianism which fosters authentic relationships among members of the classroom, thus enhancing education. (JB) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Once 01 Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) O rhts document has been reproduced as received Irons the person or organization originating C) Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction arrow y Ponts of wew or opirons staled . n mos docu . nenl do nol necessarily reprasent official OERI position or policy "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATEIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)" CHANGING ROLES IN A CLASSROOM: AN ATTEMPT THAT DIDN'T WORK Jacque Ensign University of Virginia for presentation at American Educational Studies Association Chapel Hill, November 1994 In his recent book, The Classroom Crucible, Edward Pauly has brought the focus of school reform down into the individual classroom by asserting that "the lives and experiences of ordinary teachers and students must form the center of any serious analysis of efforts to improve our schools. " (Pauly 1991, 3). His thesis is that reform from outside the classroom is useless. School reform has failed because it has focused its remedies on fictitious generic schools rather than on individual, real-life classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to take the less discussed and examined next step by asking what is involved in the teacher-student interactions which make or break reform efforts. By unraveling and beginning to understand the dynamics of teacher-student interactions, more fruitful interactions which support reform may be possible. In this paper I will be focusing on what it means to do school and the relation between continuity and change in classroom reform. Despite the best of intentions, ! school reform is difficult. Some school reform aims at creating democratic classrooms which require less authoritarian roles from teachers and which include students as active participants in their educations. Despite all the efforts to change roles, teachers and students often end up with the same traditional roles they had originally. This study looks at one classroom trying to change to egalitarianism and how the participants construct and destruct roles within