Bridges to the Future- The Contributions of Qualitative Research to the Sociology of Education Author(s)- Carolyn Riehl

American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociology of Education.

http://www.jstor.org

Bridges to the Future: The Contributions of Qualitative Research to the Sociology of Education Author(s): Carolyn Riehl Source: Sociology of Education, Vol. 74, Extra Issue: Current of Thought: Sociology of Education

at the Dawn of the 21st Century (2001), pp. 115-134Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2673257Accessed: 19-08-2015 14:36 UTC

REFERENCESLinked references are available on JSTOR for this article:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2673257?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents

You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 200.52.254.249 on Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:36:45 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2673257

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2673257?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp



Bridges to the Future: The Contributions of Qualitative

Research to the Sociology of Education

Carolyn Riehl University of North Carolina at Greensboro

This article considers how qualitative research, conducted from an interpretive perspective, has enhanced knowledge of four substantive topics in the sociology of education: educational inequality, socialization and identity formation, school organization, and educational policy. In each area, qualitative studies have generated contextualized, process-sensitive knowledge and have introduced new voices, perspectives, and themes into traditional understanding. This research may enable the sociology of education to meet four additional challenges: generating theoretically rich examinations of schools as organizations; addressing issues of culture and education; developing broader social analyses of schooling and society; and incorporating perspectives on learning as situated, sociocultural activity into the study of schools as contexts for teaching and learning. Two aspects of the qualitative research tradition pose particular dilemmas and opportunities for sociology of education. First, qualitative research brings the sociology of education closer to the worlds of policy and practice, which may mute its critical voice. Second, since the sociology of education has been informed by qualitative research conducted from interdisciplinary vantage points and by researchers who do not identify themselves as sociologists, the boundaries of the field are permeable and fluid.

ualitative research in the sociology of education has expanded greatly in recent years, as it has in

most areas of the social sciences. In this review, I consider how qualitative research, conducted from an interpretive perspective, has enhanced knowledge of substantive topics within the sociology of education as it has been pursued in the United States. I also suggest ways in which qualitative research may help lead the field in new directions.

Most social sciences claim jurisdiction over a more or less well-defined set of theoretical, empirical, and/or practical con- cerns. In some disciplines, this jurisdiction is defined as much in terms of method as of substance-for example, anthropology, which has been closely identified with ethnography, and economics, which claims mathematical modeling as its primary methodology. The sociology of education lacks tight identification with a sin- gle methodology; nonetheless, there has

Sociology of Education Extra Issue 2001: 115-134 115



116 Riehl

usually been a close relationship between the kinds of questions asked by sociologists of education, the kinds of methodological tools available, and the tools actually used (Metz 2000). In this sense, the history of the sociology of education is intertwined with the history of research methods. The current era is no exception; thus, it is not unreasonable to assume that recent developments in qualitative research may have important influences on the sociology of education.

I wrote this article from the perspective of a scholar who has engaged in both quantitative and qualitative research and who is situated both within and outside the field. Trained as a sociologist of education, my primary academic appointments have been in educational administration programs in schools of education. I am not unique in this regard; a look at the "about the contributors" section of almost any book or journal in the sociology of education reveals not only that sociologists of education are working in diverse contexts, but that persons who identify themselves primarily as anthropologists, political scientists, curriculum theorists, or members of other academic disciplines are connected to the sociology of education enough to be active contributors to the field. This loose assem- blage of persons helps to create permeable boundaries in the field, and those boundaries have become even more fluid with the increase in qualitative research. Whether this is a good thing for knowledge production in the sociology of education, for the improve- ment of education and schooling, or for the future of the subdiscipline remains to be seen; that it is happening is incontrovertible.

WHAT IS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?

Defined most broadly, qualitative research draws a large net around any research that uses methods of gathering observational, communicative (natural discourse or inter- view), or documentary (artifactual) data derived from natural settings. Qualitative researchers analyze their data in nonmathe- matical ways to understand the world on its

own terms. Such research can be, and has been, used to address the kinds of questions raised by positivist and realist epistemologies. For example, on occasion, qualitative researchers seek causal explanations for social phenomena that are valid and reliable across time and space and that hold together in log- ical systems of concepts, assumptions, and propositions (B. R Cohen 1989). Maintaining the objectivity of the researcher is especially important in this tradition, to prevent bias from creeping into the research process. Whether used inductively to generate "find- ings" that are incorporated into the formula- tion of theoretical concepts and assertions or deductively to demonstrate the validity of theoretical generalizations in local instances, qualitative research methods have produced many studies that have illustrated that "the positivist and postpositivist traditions linger like long shadows over the qualitative research project" (Denzin and Lincoln 2000:9). This is an expansive perspective on qualitative research.

A more restrictive perspective situates qualitative research within more explicitly interpretive traditions, including social interaction- ism, ethnomethodology, hermeneutics, postmodernism, feminist studies, critical theory, and cultural studies. These interpretive traditions draw from an array of methodologies that incorporate not only particular methods for the collection and analysis of empirical materials, but particular philosophical approaches to the nature of knowledge and the role of persons in the world, the nature of the research enterprise, and the role of the researcher. They veer away from the deter- minism and objectivity of positivism and its variants and are more focused on probing and interpreting cases of lived experience than on making generalizable assertions. They are also more self-conscious about the researcher's role in cocreating, observing, interpreting, and representing the natural world. There is more awareness of the "hermeneutic circle" in which the researcher seeks others' interpretations of their worlds and experiences but then overlays them, to a greater or lesser degree, with her or his own interpretations. As Geertz (1 973:9) observed, "What we call our data are really our own



Bridges to the Future 117

constructions of other people's constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to."

Although various interpretive frameworks may differ in their epistemological, ontologi- cal, and methodological premises, they share in common the core belief that interpretation of social life is valued highly and valued more than explanation and prediction. They all assert that reality is at least partly socially constructed by people who are living it. The meanings held by actors regarding their actions, whether latent or explicit, are primary. The researcher's own interpretive activity is always present, albeit bracketed and prob- lematized. Even more, there can be no fixed, universal laws in the social sciences because such generalizations are fatally unstable as human actors adjust their own interpretations of their lived experience, and thus their actions, in light of the interpretations presented by social science-a "double hermeneutic" that suggests that meaning- making human beings are not unaware of others making meaning about them (Giddens 1984).

In all forms of qualitative research that focus on developing interpretations of lived experience, the methods of data collection, analysis, and reporting are intended to help uncover and interpret meaning. Although it has remained relatively constant regarding this core purpose, interpretive qualitative research has undergone a rapid evolution in the past several decades, characterized by fer- ment over issues, such as the politics and ethics of field research; different methods for gathering empirical materials; the relative privileging of informants' own meaning structures versus the interpretations offered by researchers; power dynamics between researchers and the researched; the represen- tation of research in written and other forms; and the uses to which research is put, including its role in transformative social practice. These are powerful tensions, and they have expanded the field such that different discourse communities within qualitative research do not always recognize one another.

One key feature of qualitative research, especially in its newer and more interpretive

forms, is its interdisciplinary nature. Qualitative researchers tend not to hold themselves to a priori theoretical or analytic perspectives in seeking to understand the phenomena they study. This statement implies, for our present purposes, that not only do sociologists of education range beyond their own discipline and subdiscipline in doing interpretive research, but that scholars who do not consider themselves primarily sociologists also wander into and across the territory of sociology. As a result, it is not often easy to determine what the sociology of education is or who sociologists of education are (Metz 2000). As this broadening conver- sation develops, as the questioners and the perspectives multiply, in part through qualitative research, the sociology of education has the opportunity to be-or runs the risk of being-transformed.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

I now turn to a discussion of some ways in which qualitative research, especially that which is most self-consciously interpretive, both within and outside the sociological tradition, has influenced the sociology of education. This discussion is organized around four overlapping substantive themes: * studies of inequality and the differential

effects of schooling on students' academic achievement and their place in the social order,

* schooling and the development of persons (socialization to societal norms, values, and roles and identity formation),

* how schools function as organizations, and * policy issues in education.

Research on Educational Inequality Sociological research on educational inequality has primarily examined the ways in which social background, including social class, race-ethnicity, and gender, is linked to the distribution of educational and social opportunities and outcomes. A secondary focus has



118 Riehl

been on the distribution of opportunities in schools, particularly in terms of curriculum tracking and ability grouping. This research tradition has long been dominated by quantitative studies that have documented the influence of social structure on inequality, a core sociological concern. It has, however, been criticized for treating the school as a "black box" (Karabel and Halsey 1977) and for reducing complex educational and social processes to simple measurable variables. Qualitative research has helped to answer these criticisms by attempting to illuminate the mechanisms that produce educational inequality, particularly those that emerge over time and turn on the socially constructed meaning of events. Studies of family capital and of tracking and ability grouping are prominent examples.

Family Capital Addressing the question of how families' social advantages are transmit- ted to their children through the educational process, researchers have drawn from the theories of Bourdieu (1 977a, 1 977b) and Coleman (1988) on cultural and social capital to explore how parents and students use forms of capital to further their educational goals and how schools respond. Interpretive studies from a variety of perspectives have yielded several key insights about the nature of family capital and how it is used that had not previously been apparent.

For example, it is now clear that language skills are an important cultural resource for children, a fact long recognized abroad (e.g., Bernstein 1979) but rarely attended to in American sociology of education. Sociolinguistic studies of children's use of spo- ken and written language (e.g., Ball 1995, 1996; Cazden 1988; Heath 1983) have shown how social-class positions are reproduced through the ways in which children's language patterns are valued or devalued by schools. Parents' language skills also can be an important resource, as Brantlinger, Majd-Jabbari, and Guskin (1996) showed in their study of the rhetorical strategies used by white, middle-class mothers to form rationales for why they sought segregated and stratified schools for their children, even while they advocated a liberal set of beliefs about educational opportunity for all.

Families have other forms of capital in addition to language, including strategic knowledge of schooling, material resources, social networks, power, and time. A key finding from qualitative research is that the forms of capital available to families must be activated in ways that are valued by schools to influence children's educational experiences and outcomes. This is one of the lessons of Lareau's (1989) well-known study of how parents deploy class-linked cultural and social capital on behalf of their children's schooling. Lareau found that middle-class parents were able to use financial resources, knowledge about schooling, and interpersonal skills to customize their children's education, while working-class parents had more difficulty generating productive interactions with schools.

More recent work has further developed the conditions under which cultural capital can be activated. For example, Lareau and Horvat's (1999) study of parents, educators, and community members in a small, ethni- cally diverse town found that the white parents were more able to develop the kinds of trusting, cooperative, and deferential family- school relationships that the educators hoped for. When the black parents voiced their con- cerns about their children's treatment in school, the educators interpreted these com- munications negatively, and their distress resulted in "moments of exclusion." Social class had a mediating effect, however, because the middle-class black parents were more likely than the low-income black parents to influence their children's school experiences by intervening in ways that the schools defined as helpful, such as requesting regular meetings or monitoring their children's homework carefully.

These sociologically inclined interpretive studies emphasize disjunctures between the forms of capital valued by schools as they are typically constituted and those available to parents and students from low-income, racial-ethnic minority groups. They have been supplemented by research by anthropologists who have been critical of schools' devaluing of the resources and actions of cultural minorities, which these researchers position more positively within the cultural practices



Brid es to the Future 119

of minority groups. For example, Delgado- Gaitan (1 994) described how a Latino family used consejos, or "nurturing advice," as a means of empowerment to help their children navigate the divide between their home and school cultures. In conversations, the parents exhibited their support for their children, expressed their values about schooling, and helped their children develop successful approaches to the situations they encountered in school. They did not alter their actions to create more congruence between home and school, but instead used consejos as an effective cultural practice to assist and support their children. Valdes (1996) documented a comparable process among other immigrant Mexican families, and Delgado- Gaitan (1992) elaborated on the cultural resources available to Mexican American children in their homes.

Similarly, Moll et al. (1992) studied Latino families' "funds of knowledge," the historical- ly accumulated and culturally developed bod- ies of knowledge and skills the families had that contributed to their functioning and well-being. They found that the networks through which funds of household knowledge developed were flexible, active, and multidimensional. Exchanges of knowledge were reciprocal, creating mutual obligations and trusting relationships, and the children were active participants. Moll et al. observed that problems ensued in schools because the children's classrooms tended to be isolated from these community resources and learning practices.

In addition, qualitative research on culturally responsive teaching, especially the teaching practices of African American teachers (e.g., Foster 1995; Ladson-Billings 1992) challenges the notion that schools and teachers are invariant in their preference for certain forms of family capital. These studies have shown that when teachers explicitly honor and incorporate into the school the language styles, interaction patterns, knowledge, and other forms of cultural capital of racial-ethnic minority children, the children's learning increases.

Tracking-Ability Grouping Within-school stratification processes, generated by the dif-

ferential placement of students into ability groups and curriculum tracks, were first explored empirically in qualitative research (e.g., Hollingshead 1949), but over the past several decades, most research that has examined social differences in the allocation of individuals to curricular positions and the consequences of placement for subsequent educational opportunities and achievements has relied on quantitative methodologies. These studies have not, however, revealed just how students' status origins are translat- ed into curriculum placements. Qualitative studies have added considerably to our understanding of the processes by which individuals are allocated to curricular positions and what these positions mean for future achievements. With only a few excep- tions, they have been pursued squarely within the domain of the sociology of education.

An early line of research showed how teachers' and counselors' assessments of students, often influenced by attributes associated with social class, influence students' curriculum placements through "gatekeeping" mechanisms (e.g., Cicourel and Kitsuse 1963; Eder 1981; Erickson 1975; Rosenbaum 1976). In this vein, Oakes and Guiton (1 995) found that decisions about curricular offerings and students' assignments to tracks and courses were based, in part, on educators' assumptions about ability and motivation that linked race and social characteristics with particular expectations for students' achievement.

Qualitative studies have also shown that curriculum placement is not entirely a rational process that is designed either for meritocrat- ic sorting on the basis of students' abilities and educational needs (Parsons 1 959) or for social class reproduction (Bowles and Gintis 1976), but instead is often an imperfect response to organizational, institutional, and even personal exigencies. For example, Finley (1984) found that high school English teachers created track differentiations on the basis of their own needs and aspirations and then competed for high-status students. Through this process, both the teachers and the students became tracked. Useem (1 992) interviewed administrators in a large set of school districts and found that students' placements in middle school mathematics classes were



120 Riehl

influenced by administrators' idiosyncratic beliefs about course taking as well as by organizational factors, such as school size and class vacancies.

DeLany (1991; cf. Garet and DeLany 1988) documented how scheduling decisions in four high schools were made on the basis of resource constraints, state and local regula- tions, and limited information-processing capabilities instead of strictly on students' characteristics and curricular needs. Riehl, Pallas, and Natriello (1999) used case studies of four high schools to explore how the scheduling process was fraught with such inefficiencies and inaccuracies that students suffered from the loss of instructional time while their course placement errors were being corrected, quite apart from the effects of being in one course level versus another. Mehan, Hertweck, and Meihls (1 986) studied the process by which elementary school students were referred for special education. They found that the designation of a student as "educationally handicapped" depended heavily on organizational, fiscal, and legal constraints that were not even associated with the student. These constraints were embedded in the routine ways in which teachers made referrals, conducted diagnos- tic testing, and made committee decisions for placement. In effect, by creating a category for the "educationally handicapped," schools were required to create differences among students and to treat them differently.

Qualitative case studies have also shown that the meaning of a particular track or group placement is socially constructed and contextual. In Page's (1991) study of lower- track classrooms in two high schools, the meaning for students (and teachers) of being in one track or another depended heavily on the curriculum knowledge that was presented in the track. In some settings, regular classes presented "high-status" knowledge and lower-track classes were not necessarily stig- matizing, while in other settings they were. Page observed that an important aspect of curriculum differentiation was not so much how lower-track classes were different from regular classes, but how they were simultane- ously different and similar. She concluded that the lower-track classes in the middle-

class school were "caricatures" of the school's regular, college preparatory classes, whereas in the working-class school, they were "hyperbolic versions" of the school's regi- mented and disciplined regular classes. Taken together, this extensive body of qualitative research on tracking has helped to illuminate and clarify the "black box" of assignment processes in schools-ironically, by rendering them with more complexity than is possible in quantitative studies.

Research on Socialization Processes and Identity Formation Questions of the production of students' achievement are related to a second set of school "effects"-socialization and identity formation. Socialization refers to the students' acquisition of the norms, values, and roles of society, and identity formation refers to the development of a sense of self, including the self situated within broader social contexts. Early theoretical and empirical work in sociology and the sociology of education paid much attention to socialization issues, and most of the empirical work was qualitative, often embedded in studies of communities (e.g., Dreeben 1968; Hollingshead 1949; Lynd and Lynd 1929; Meyer 1970). Recent qualitative studies have extended these contributions by developing accounts of schools as mediating institutions that prepare students for life in the wider social environment of adulthood.

For example, in Growing Up American, Peshkin (1978), an educational anthropolo- gist, described how schools in the small Midwestern town he called Mansfield social- ized students to remain in the community. The localistic orientation of teachers who worked in Mansfield because they preferred small-town life, a plethora of extracurricular activities that engaged adults as well as children, and local norms for appropriate levels of academic achievement all created an ethos, consistent throughout the school and community, in which students' aspirations and accomplishments were circumscribed.

Similarly, in God's Choice, Peshkin (1986) described the socialization of students through the organization of what he came to




believe was a "benign total institution," built on the perceived truth of Christian funda- mentalism but also, like Mansfield High School, capitalizing on the resonance between the school and students' home worlds. In contrast, in Places of Memory, Peshkin (1997) described the ambivalence of students in a New Mexico pueblo village who were educated in an off-reservation boarding school, which provided appealing employ- ment and economic possibilities, but also tore the students away from their home culture. The students responded to this dilemma with persistent feelings of malaise and low achievement, which, in turn, kept them con- signed to their native communities.

Early studies of socialization adopted a largely functionalist perspective that was consistent with the accommodating structural- functionalist cast of much American social theory of the pre- and post-World War 11 eras. However, as American society became increasingly diverse, socialization processes came to be seen as less natural and benign, and their implications for the development of group and individual identity were raised. As the following descriptions indicate, interpretive research has drawn attention to conflict and contestation in control over identity and socialization and has explored how schools are implicated in these processes.

Achievement Identity and Socialization In school, students learn important lessons about what they may achieve and where they are likely to fit into the larger social structure of adult life; they develop achievement identities by fashioning interpretations of these lessons that are meaningful to them. Qualitative research has illuminated how challenging this meaning making can be for students who do not succeed in school and how much it relies both on structural constraints imposed on students and on students' own choices and actions. Willis's (1 977) study of white working-class male students in England and MacLeod's (1987) study of white and black males in America are two prominent interpretive accounts of how students develop a sense of themselves in light of their performance in school. Willis's "lads" claimed an identity that was oppositional to

the dominant middle-class achievement ideology in their school (a game that they were likely to lose), but ironically, this resistance kept them bound to their working-class origins. The two groups of youths that MacLeod studied perceived different possibilities for their future, but in doing so, both had to reckon with their mediocre academic achievement. The black "Brothers" came to believe that they could achieve in school and in later life and therefore blamed themselves for their poor performance in school. The white "Hallway Hangers" rejected the achievement ideology of their school as unfair and illegitimate and developed other sources of self-esteem, but their bravado did not pro- tect them completely from feelings of shame and failure.

Other studies have also shown how difficult it is for marginalized students like the "lads" and "Hallway Hangers" to sustain a critical consciousness about education and achievement. Fine (1991) described high school students and former students, most of whom were cultural minorities, who had attended a school where considerable effort was made to render their experiences and even their presence invisible and to silence their voices of opposition. She found that dropouts lost their critical edge and developed "immobilizing regrets" (p. 1 03) as they struggled after leav- ing school. R. B. Stevenson and Ellsworth (1993:266) also found that dropouts "reclaimed for themselves the blame for dropping out," so they could recall their school experiences positively despite their postschool failures. Consistent with these studies, O'Connor (1999) found that the high-achieving African American students in her study were articulate about the structural constraints on achievement that race, social class, and gender presented. In contrast, the low-achieving students tended to minimize the impact of these social identities; they cited hard work and desire as more important explanations for students' achievement and the lack of effort and will as explanations for poor performance.

Gender Identity and Socialization Qualitative studies have also provided insights into how schools and schooling shape the



122 Riehl

gender identities that children and youths develop. Thorne's (1993) and Lensmire's (1994) books showed how routine activities in elementary schools-recess on the play- ground and writing workshops, respectively- can reinforce gender stereotypes and gender inequalities that are imported from children's lives outside school. Peer relations have also been shown to be important at the elementary and secondary levels as students strive to be popular by behaving in gender-stereo- typed ways. Adler, Kless, and Adler (1992) found that in elementary school, boys formed their gender identity and became popular by internalizing the male ethos of physicality, autonomy, and "coolness," while girls became popular on the basis of attributes associated with social class, including the ability to pur- chase things, the quality and style of clothing, and where they lived.

At the middle school level, Eder, Evans, and Parker's (1995) study showed how adoles- cents' language-gossip, sexual harassment, insults, and teasing-is used to reproduce gender roles and occasionally to challenge them. Valli's (1986) ethnography of a high school cooperative education program indi- cated that female students acquired, and sometimes resisted, gender ideologies of the office worker as sex object and as wife and mother through such factors as the program's attention to students' personal appearance; available visual representations of office workers; students' own experiences on job placements; the use of different forms of address for male and female workers; and the teacher's emphasis on her own identity as a mother, even though she professed a strong feminist orientation. These gender-socialization patterns persist into higher education as well, where, for example, female students' attention is diverted from academic strivings to the market for romance. This is the mes- sage of Holland and Eisenhart's (1 990) Educated in Romance, which locates peer groups as the source of a culture of romance that values women more for their attractive- ness to men than for their career potential.

Racial-Ethnic Identity and Socialization Qualitative researchers have also applied close interpretive lenses to study racial identi-

ty and socialization. A number of works have delved into the actual experiences of cultural minorities, resisting tendencies to essentialize race-ethnicity and probing the actions and reactions that construct racial identity.

One line of qualitative research in this area has illuminated how schools and school learning provide (or fail to provide) a context in which students can develop a racial identity. J. Cohen (1993) showed that for some working-class African American students in an urban high school, explicit learning about their cultural histories provided crucial foundations for identity development, but this kind of learning did not take place in school. Her observation was reinforced by Epstein (1 997), who explored the sources of historical knowledge for European American and African American students and found that few of the African American students considered the information they gained from teachers in schools to be trustworthy accounts of their cultural heritage.

While some qualitative studies have documented the lack of attention to cultural identity in schools, others have explored the ways in which schools can impose problematic cultural identities on students. For example, S. J. Lee (1996) studied four Asian American student groups in a high school: Korean-identified, Asian-identified (a pan-Asian group), New Waver (primarily refugees from working- class and poor families), and Asian American- identified students. Each group had a distinctive self-definition and different experiences in the school. Lee concluded that the "model minority" stereotype that is frequently imposed on all students of Asian descent, regardless of their subgroup identities, is harmful for several reasons. It directs people's behavior in ways that can be discriminatory, is used to suppress potentially justifiable claims of inequality among Asian students, and eras- es the experiences of those Asian students who cannot or do not achieve high levels of academic success.

Interpretive researchers have begun to use a language-constitutive perspective to examine the institutional contexts within which students' racial-ethnic identities are formed. Lopez (1 999) studied four different discourses in the lives of three migrant boys: those of




student, classmate, family member, and friend. Using the notion of discourse as an "identity kit" of talk and behavior that signals one's membership in a particular discourse community, Lopez found within each discourse community a persistent ignorance and devaluing of the other discourses. It was not surprising that the boys encountered many problems trying to negotiate among these competing discourses, with clear consequences for their sense of self and their educational trajectories.

Finally, interpretive studies have also shown the interaction between racial-ethnic identity and achievement identity, particularly racial and ethnic minority students' motives and behaviors regarding their academic performance. Fordham (1 996) found that the actions of African American students that are typically interpreted as evidence of laziness or a lack of intelligence could be viewed as political acts of resistance grounded in the mainte- nance of a black identity that avoids the white "other." This more sophisticated account of identity construction extends the well-known "burden of acting white" argument she developed with Ogbu (Fordham and Ogbu 1986). Fordham (1993) also explored the links between gender, racial-ethnic identity, and achievement, noting that some black females were the most successful students at "Capital High," but also the least visible, because they were "passing" for someone they were not by mimicking the dominant cultural image of the white American female and ultimately the white male.

Research on How Schools Work Interest in features of the school as a social organization was evident when the sociology of education emerged as a distinct subdiscipline, and research activity in this area has continued to thrive. In this overview, I focus on the contributions of qualitative research to just two aspects of this work: the organization and character of teaching and authority relations in schools.

The Organization and Character of Teaching Waller's (1932) early treatise described schools as work contexts for teach-

ers and discussed how their characteristics as occupational settings sometimes were at odds with the educational purposes of schooling. Thirty years later, Bidwell (1 965) presented an influential analysis of the school as a formal organization and reintroduced many of Waller's ideas, including the troubled relationship between the organization of teaching as work and the intrinsic nature of teaching and learning. Recently, research in this domain has examined the ways in which schools are shifting from being organized around routine, bureaucratized forms of teaching to teaching as a complex and colle- gial task.

Qualitative research has illuminated the organizational conditions that facilitate teaching as a professional activity, specifically exploring structures, processes, and norms that help to constitute schools as professional communities for teachers and identifying the barriers that can restrict professional community (e.g., Little 1982; Louis et al.1995; McLaughlin, Talbert, and Bascia 1990; Westheimer 1998). For example, Little (1982) described how shared norms of collegiality and experimentation in schools encouraged teachers to take risks and learn to teach differently. In a follow-up study, Little (1990) showed that genuine collegiality was unlikely to occur in schools unless teachers were able to pursue interdependent teaching roles and tasks. Louis and her associates (1995) drew on case studies of schools to describe the social and human resources (such as trust and respect and facilitative leadership) and the structural conditions (like adequate commu- nication structures, physical proximity, and school autonomy) that support teachers' professionalism. In contrast, Siskin and Little's (1995) collection of studies of high school subject departments explored the barriers to professionalism imposed by departments functioning as separate communities that foster fragmented versions of learning through balkanization and the exercise of power.

In the midst of this attention to the organizational conditions of teaching, there has also been an increase in interpretive research on the nature of teaching and the meanings it holds for teachers themselves, a topic to which researchers have been relatively slow to



124 Riehl

turn (Van Galen and Eaker 1995). Analytic perspectives on the moral dimensions of teaching helped to initiate this enterprise (e.g., Noddings 1992), but ethnographies of teaching have constituted the bulk of this line of inquiry. Interpretive qualitative research has been particularly valuable in demonstrat- ing how teachers' social origins and personal commitments shape their orientations toward teaching and their experiences as teachers. One example is Casey's (1 993) narrative study of teaching. Casey drew on the hermeneutic theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to develop group biographies of three sets of teachers she interviewed: religious Catholic women (nuns), Jewish women, and African American women. She found that each group of women shared a dominant discourse about teaching. The nuns expressed an "existential discourse" in which themes of freedom and responsibility, laced with a strong religious perspective, grounded their teaching for social change. The Jewish women articulated a "pragmatic discourse" about the need for activists to be ingenious and adaptive, and the African American women used a "signify- ing discourse," reflecting their awareness of double consciousness, or the "oblique inter- section of black and white meanings within black narrative" (p. 11 2). For Casey, these narratives represented three distinctive strategies for enacting the role of teacher.

Lubeck (1985) also explored the influences of teachers' cultural backgrounds on their teaching by comparing the child-rearing strategies of two sets of women: black women teachers at a working-class Head Start center and white women teachers in a middle-class preschool. Lubeck observed patterns of teaching that were consistent with the teachers' cultural backgrounds and personal circum- stances. On the one hand, the Head Start teachers, who all lived in extended family situations, worked closely together and reinforced the collective values of the African American culture. On the other hand, the white teachers, who all lived in nuclear families, tended to work alone with the children and to encour- age in them the values of individualism and self-expression. Lubeck concluded that a distinct form of cultural transmission was operat- ing through both sets of teachers.

A third example of interpretive research on the nature of teaching is Weiler's (1 988) study, which explored how women teachers and administrators in two urban secondary schools attempted to enact their commitments to feminism (in principle, if not always in name) and critical pedagogy. Weiler observed that these teachers and administrators entered teaching through circuitous routes that were laced with gendered expectations and structural limitations on their life choices, as well as opportunities to develop a critical social consciousness. They sought to teach and administer in ways that challenged dominant ideologies and institutional forces in their schools. This work was not always easy because the women encountered resistance when their values conflicted with the cultural values of students and their families, those of other teachers, or those of the broader institutional structures of schooling. Weiler concluded that studying feminist teachers brings into high relief the complexities of gender, racial, and class dynamics in schools; shows how schools mirror the tensions of the wider society; and demonstrates the fragile but enduring possibility of promoting transformative education in state-sponsored institutions.

These interpretive studies of how teachers construct careers and identities are of interest sociologically because they have potential implications for the social organization of teaching. They provide a bridge between curriculum theorists and teacher educators who are concerned with teaching itself and sociologists who investigate the organization of teaching. Ideally, the organizational context of teaching should reflect a deep understanding and appreciation of what teaching can and should be, especially in the minds of its practitioners.

Order and Authority in Schools Another fundamental issue regarding how schools work as organizations is the problem of order and authority. Sociologically minded theorists and researchers have largely ignored behavioral and managerial approaches to discipline and control and have instead tried to understand the deeper sources of order and authority in schooling. Some have focused on the




essentially coercive nature of the school, following Goffman's (1961) explication of a "total institution." Others have developed a structural perspective on the problem of order. For example, D. L. Stevenson's (1 991) study of a first- grade class in a low-income community found that deviant students were a //collective resource" in the classroom because they enabled the teacher to articulate, through words as well as rewards and sanctions, expected behaviors and desired performance. Hence, deviant students helped clarify the boundaries of acceptable behavior for all the students.

Still other theorists and researchers have explored order and authority in terms of the value orientations of schools as communities, in which relational norms and patterns help to maintain cohesion and order. These ideas were developed conceptually by Bryk and Driscoll (1988) and by V. E. Lee, Bryk, and Smith (1993). In this vein, Zane (1994) studied four Philadelphia high schools that were involved in restructuring and found that their "fetish" about discipline receded into the background as the schools became more rela- tionally oriented and more democratic. The nature of discipline shifted from the control of individual students to a focus on the life of students' minds and on better relations. The faculty observed a decrease in disciplinary problems as a result of the students' higher self-esteem, better relationships between students and teachers, and students taking own- ership of controlling things themselves.

The most prominent and enduring approach to the study of authority and order in schools, however, examines the embedded nature of control ideologies and mechanisms in schools, particularly the connections between behavioral control and the control of students' learning. This approach charac- terizes McNeil's (1988) influential study of social studies teaching in four high schools. McNeil found that the teachers maintained orderly classrooms partly through their control over the knowledge to which the students had access. By using "defensive teaching" strategies, such as omission, simplifica- tion, and fragmentation, the teachers pre- served their authority and kept the students in line. She discovered that when the school

principals placed a premium on behavioral control, the teachers were more likely to try to control their students by controlling knowledge. In contrast, when the principals minimized their concern for strict behavioral control of the students, the teachers were free to create lively classroom environments with open access to knowledge for the students.

McNeil's study expanded on connections between learning and behavioral control that were first articulated by Metz (1 978) in her ethnography of two recently desegregated junior high schools. Metz, like McNeil, found that students' behavior was heavily influenced by the attitudes and practices of faculty members regarding the goals of both academic learning and order. Her analytic framework reflects a complex perspective on the divergent organizational imperatives (especially technology and structure) that relate to the pursuit of learning goals and control goals in schools. Resisting oversimplification, Metz nevertheless concluded that in the school where the teachers adopted a more consis- tently "incorporative" teaching style, maintaining more control over the curriculum in a subject-centered approach, the students were compliant but uncommitted learners, and their behavior, both in the classrooms and in the general school environment, was similarly compliant. In contrast, in the school where teacher factions openly disagreed about the use of an incorporative teaching style versus a learner-centered, "developmental" style, the students' behavior in the classrooms and corridors was more unruly, but the students were more actively engaged. The teachers report- ed to Metz that the principals were crucial to the character of the schools. In the former school, the principal sought order and safety, using a "benign but firm" hand with the students and even co-opting the teachers' potential for mischief by creating committees and assigning work that would divert the teachers' creative energies. In the latter school, the principal responded to the teachers' divergent views by delegating decisions and permitting more autonomy throughout the school.

These connections between learning and authority are also evident in Oyler's (1996) ethnography of a first-grade classroom in



126 Riehl

Chicago. Oyler argued that positive authority relations in the classroom, in this instance power-sharing social relationships, were essential for supporting and facilitating a constructivist approach to literacy.

Research on Educational Policy The sociology of education has made important contributions to educational policy since at least the publication of the Coleman report (Coleman et al. 1966). Much of this work has been instrumental, using a technical rational- ity to examine whether and how various policy initiatives and educational practices can enable schools to achieve particular ends. The key contributions of interpretive qualitative research, however, lie in examining how the targets of educational policies actually experience these policies, who actually benefits from various policies, and how policies serve-or fail to serve-multiple institutional or social ends.

Educational policies are crafted globally and enacted locally. Interpretive research has been extremely helpful in producing descriptions of local contexts that can hinder or sub- vert the implementation of policies. For example, Lareau and Shumar's (1 996) ethnographic study of children from different racial-ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds illustrated that educational policies regarding parent-school relationships may not support reform unless they take into account differential social resources and unequal power relationships among parents from different backgrounds. Similarly, Wells and Oakes's (1 996) study of detracking reform showed how elite parents could use a variety of strategies to pressure schools to reinstitute curricular differentiation. This is important evidence that class-linked micropolitical maneuvering can undermine both top-down and bottom-up systemic reform initiatives. The capacity of interpretive research to examine micropolitics also helps to illuminate the interests of various actors who participate in educational policy initiatives. For example, Mickelson's (2000) case study of the involvement of businesses in school reform in Charlotte, North Carolina, illustrated how the actions of some individuals within particular structures of corporate-

school partnership were able to advance corporate self-interests, while other actors were able to resist corporate incursions into education and advance broader public policy goals.

Other qualitative studies have examined how policy actors function in interaction with a system, not just other individuals. For example, Wells's (2000) comparison of charter schools in England and the United States examined the impact of context, specifically the absence or presence of neoliberal political traditions, on the formation of educational policy. In this study, as well as in an earlier study (Wells et al. 1 999), Wells interpreted the actions of actors according to the beliefs they held and observed how their beliefs influenced the development of macropolicy structures, which, in turn, influenced local educational agencies.

Wells's studies and those of other qualitative researchers have demonstrated the importance of the discursive formation of educational policy. That is, they have illustrated how the development and implementation of policy is dependent on language- embedded constructions of meaning that influence understanding and action. This body of work has linked individual policy makers' beliefs and actions, through discursive framings of meaning, with the constitution of wider institutional norms and structures. For example, Rhoades (1987) used interviews and analyses of documents to examine how educational beliefs and convic- tions and the structural conditions that con- vert them into group ideologies framed reformers' efforts to overhaul secondary education in Britain. Similarly, Davies's (1 999) study of the discourse processes framing multicultural and religious goals in Canadian educational policy documented how shifts in frames of meaning made policy change possible.

EMERGING THEMES

These brief descriptions illustrate the rich scope of interpretive qualitative research in the sociology of education. In this section, I discuss several areas in which further work may be needed.




First, recent qualitative research on how schools work has thus far not drawn from a vigorous body of theoretical and empirical work outside education that reflects interpretive approaches to organizational studies from feminist, critical, postmodern, and other emerging perspectives. This research includes studies of language use and critical discourse analysis in organizations, critical studies of organizational culture, studies of the relationship between social movements and organizations, studies of power and knowledge in organizations, and studies of the gendered nature of organizations (e.g., Alvesson and Deetz 1996; Czarniawska 1997; Ferguson 1984; D. Grant, Keenoy, and Oswick 1998; Hearn 1989; Martin 1992; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996). All these topics could profitably be explored with regard to school organizations.

In the past, sociological investigations of schools as organizations drew on (and contributed to) seminal work in organizational theory. These connections are less evident today, perhaps because sociologists of education are abandoning the metaphor of the school as an organization in favor of the metaphor of the school as a community and are simply not interested in the formal organizational characteristics and dynamics of schools. It may also be less evident because sociological studies of schools as organizations have drifted away from theoretically rich portraits of school organization and toward technical-rational studies of organizational effectiveness that can inform policy and practice. In any case, the sociology of education risks falling behind in the conceptual sophisti- cation and analytic reach of its treatment of the organizational nature of schooling.

Second, sociologists of education have not yet fully addressed the topic of culture. Traditionally, the domains of sociology and anthropology have claimed social structure and culture, respectively, as proper objects of study. But structure and culture have been conceptually intertwined at least since Durkheim (1893/1984, 1897/1952)) and Weber (1904-05/1958) grappled with them and more recently since symbolic interaction- ists and other constructivist theorists have emphasized both the cultural meanings that

hold social structures together and the cultural values and beliefs that color individuals' constructions of social reality. Thus, it is increasingly difficult for sociologists to consider structure apart from culture. Moreover, the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, along with British sociology of education and American curriculum studies, has invigorated the definition and study of culture by treating it not as an attribute of a society or a feature of one's social background, but as a lively site for the production of meaning as both a com- modity and lived experience (Weis 1995; Young 1971).

This rich understanding of culture and of the cultural implications of diverse issues in education warrants further attention from sociologists of education. To be sure, various scholars (e.g., Apple 1979; Giroux 1992; McLaren 2000) have sought to make connections between education and larger cultural issues. Studies of "cultural products" in education, such as curriculum standards, text- books, and standardized tests, have filled in some of the empty spaces in our understanding of how schooling serves broader cultural purposes (Anyon 1981, 1994; Apple 1985). But in the United States, this work tends to be pursued either within curriculum studies or on the boundaries of the sociology of education.

Third, the sociology of education could profitably focus more on broad social analyses of schooling and society. Apart from occa- sional forays into neo-Marxism and historical- comparative analyses of education within larger systems, mainstream researchers in the sociology of education in the United States have not engaged much in efforts to link studies of schooling with broader social, political, and economic issues, including the connections between education and the social implications of capitalism or modernity. Their hesitancy to do so may be due, in part, to the atheoretical nature of much work in the sociology of education. Not only are the core processes of schooling not subjected to rigor- ous conceptual and theoretical development, but they are not connected to social theories of wider scope (Apple and Weis 1987). Another reason for the hesitancy of sociologists of education to engage in such efforts



128 Riehl

may be that they are uncomfortable with the modes of interpretive analysis that character- ize much contemporary social analysis, in which the emphasis is on meaningful, contextualized, historical interpretations, rather than on cumulative, generalizable theories.

This hesitancy is costly, since it limits the range of factors that can be used to explain educational phenomena. Disconnected from its wider social context, education risks a pre- carious vulnerability and can be blamed for all sorts of social ills (Purpel and Shapiro 1995). However, this work is proceeding in one strand of the sociology of education, which focuses on urban schooling. For example, Anyon's (1997) study of education in Newark, New Jersey, grounded a close look at "Marcy School" in a larger historical account of the school's and city's political and economic context. Mirel (1 993) did much the same for education in Detroit, and G. Grant's (1988) "sociologically informed history" of an urban high school in an anonymous city showed the complex interplay among demographic changes in the school's student population, broad cultural shifts that infiltrated the school, and the school's ability to maintain a healthy ethos for both teachers and students. For these researchers, the solution to urban educational problems must involve addressing the larger problems that urban centers face, including severe poverty, municipal overburden, economic investment, and community development, not just improving the schools.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, research in the sociology of education has yet to connect with the work in cognitive psychology and related disciplines that views learning as a situated, sociocultural activity. Drawing on the theories of Vygotsky (1978), who described cognitive, communicative, and social dimensions of learning, a growing cadre of researchers have been developing, on the basis of interpretive investigations, accounts of how learning takes place in activity settings and communities of practice (e.g., Rogoff and Lave 1984; Wenger 1998). These settings and communities incorporate important features that make learning possible, including meaningful tasks, the presence of persons who can assist with learning, and

shared repertoires of activity that novices can learn (Tharp and Gallimore 1 988).

Understanding and designing optimal settings and community contexts for learning is perhaps the greatest challenge facing cognitive psychology and education today. Sociologists ought to be interested in this work, given its focus on the sociocultural factors of such settings and its implications for the organization of teaching and learning in schools. But sociologists of education do not yet share a conceptual language with those who study situated learning and communities of practice.

CONCLUSION

Several conclusions can be drawn from this review of qualitative research in, and related to, the sociology of education. First, qualitative research continues to generate rich, contextualized, process-sensitive understandings of phenomena that have sociological import. Interpretive research offers a different author- itative voice that reflects the meanings of local actors and actions over the more remote and disinterested perspective of positivism's "universal subject." The more that qualitative researchers are attuned to the experiences of diverse acto'rs in diverse contexts in education, the more this research will result in a productive enrichment of the traditionally dominant voices and themes of the sociology of education.

Second, in each of the substantive domains noted in this review, qualitative research continues to draw the sociology of education closer to the realms of educational policy and practice. This trend has positive benefits for the practical utility of the field's scholarship, but it may run the risk of muting sociology's critical edge and unique vantage point (Bidwell, 1999). As many observers of the subdiscipline's history have pointed out (e.g., Dreeben 1994; Lagemann 2000; Trent, Braddock, and Henderson 1985), an important and enduring tension is whether the field should pursue the development of scientific knowledge about schooling within a broad sociological perspective ("the sociology of education") or the development of knowl-




edge, including normative and abstract theory and applications, that responds more directly to the problems of educational practice ("educational sociology"). The liveliness and utility of the sociology of education depends on how it positions itself regarding these alternatives.

Finally, it should be clear from this review that qualitative research that is situated squarely within a sociological framework is enlivened by the encounter with studies conducted from more distant, but related perspectives and disciplines. Pursuing interdisci- plinarity carries risks by weakening the "self- correcting context of a disciplinary community" (Page 2000, p. 105). However, numerous scholars (e.g., Apple 1995; Bourdieu 1990; Noblit and Pink 1995) have noted the close connections that sociology persistently has with other domains of inquiry. In writing about the "chaos of disciplines," Abbott (2001:6) claimed that sociology is "irremedi- ably interstitial" and, moreover, that all academic disciplines are rejuvenated by borrowing ideas from one another. If his claim is correct, then perhaps the sociology of education directly pursues its own well-being by drawing from the research efforts of other disciplines and subdisciplines to expand its own questions, perspectives, and research methodologies.

It is inconceivable to imagine how the sociology of education would have developed in the past quarter century without qualitative studies. It is just as inconceivable to imagine the future of the sociology of education without more, new, and different kinds of qualitative research. From where will they emerge? If the sociology of education continues, through its qualitative research traditions, to explore the territories it shares with other domains that address questions of education and social life, it could become an indispens- able focal point for the study of education in the new century. As Calhoun (1 995:65) noted:

The first of the sociologist's tasks-and perhaps the most important and problematic-is the constitution of the object of study. . .. There is always room for variation in approaches to constitution of objects of study, for trade-offs between more local detail and

wider comparison, for example, or for empha- sizing different aspects of social life- struc- ture, action, culture, power, function, etc. The point is to see the process as basic and never ending, and to subject it to our continuing critical attention, rather than to imagine that it is somehow settled once and for all, or merely a matter of operational definition.

If past evidence is any indication, the future of the sociology of education will be won, at least in part, by the efforts of qualitative researchers to define their own new objects of study.

REFERENCES

Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Adler, Patricia A., Steven J. Kless, and Peter Adler. 1992. "Socialization to Gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Boys and Girls." Sociology of Education 65:1 69-87.

Alvesson, Mats, and Stanley Deetz. 1996. "Critical Theory and Postmodernism Approaches to Organizational Studies." Pp. 191-21 7 in Handbook of Organization Studies, edited by Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, and Walter R. Nord. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Anyon, Jean. 1981. "Social Class and School Knowledge." Curriculum Inquiry 11:1-42. 1994. "Teacher Development and Reform in an Inner City School." Teachers College Record 96:14-31. 1997. Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform. New York: Teachers College Press.

Apple, Michael. 1979. Ideology and Curriculum. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1985. "The Culture and Commerce of the Textbook." Journal of Curriculum Studies 1 7:147-62. 1995. "Part IlIl Introduction: Power, Politics, and Knowledge in Education." Pp. 1 77-84 in Continuity and Contradiction: The Futures of the Sociology of Education, edited by William T. Pink and George W. Noblit. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Apple, Michael W., and Lois Weis. 1983. "Ideology and Practice in Schooling: A Political and Conceptual Introduction." Pp. 3-33 in Ideology and Practice in Schooling, edited by Michael W. Apple and Lois Weis. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Ball, Arnetha F. 1995. "Text Design Patterns in the



130 Riehl

Writing of Urban African American Students: Teaching to the Cultural Strengths of Students in Multicultural Settings." Urban Education 30:253-89. 1996. "Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students." English Journal 85: 27-36.

Bernstein, Basil. 1979. Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 3. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Bidwell, Charles E. 1965. "The School as a Formal Organization." Pp. 972-1022 in Handbook of Organizations, edited by James G. March. Chicago: Rand McNally. 1999. "Sociology and the Study of Education: Continuity, Discontinuity, and the Individualist Turn." Pp. 85-104 in Issues in Education Research: Problems and Possibilities, edited by Ellen C. Lagemann and Lee S. Shulman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977a. "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction." Pp. 487-511 in Power and Ideology in Education, edited by Jerome Karabel and A. H. Halsey. New York: Oxford University Press. 1 977b. Outline of a Theory of Practice.

Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1990. In Other Words. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books.

Brantlinger, Ellen, Massoumeh Majd-Jabbari, and Samuel L. Guskin. 1996. "Self-Interest and Liberal Educational Discourse: How Ideology Works for Middle-Class Mothers." American Educational Research Journal 33:571-97.

Bryk, Anthony S., and Mary Erina Driscoll. 1988. The School as Community: Theoretical Foundations, Contextual Influences, and Consequences for Students and Teachers. Madison: National Center on Effective Secondary Schools, University of Wisconsin.

Calhoun, Craig. 1995. Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Casey, Kathleen. 1993. I Answer with My Life: Life Histories of Women Teachers Working for Social Change. New York: Routledge.

Cazden, Courtney B. 1988. Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Cicourel, Aaron V., and John I. Kitsuse. 1963. The Educational Decision-Makers. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.

Cohen, Bernard P. 1989. Developing Sociological

Knowledge: Theory and Method. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

Cohen, Jody. 1993. "Constructing Race at an Urban High School: In Their Minds, Their Mouths, Their Hearts." Pp. 289-308 in Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States School, edited by Lois Weis and Michelle Fine. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Coleman, James S. 1988. "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital." American Journal of Sociology 94:S95S1 20.

Coleman, James S., Ernest Q. Campbell, Carol F. Hobson, James M. McPartland, Alexander M. Mood, Frederic D. Weinfeld, and Robert L. York. 1966. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.

Czarniawska, Barbara. 1 997. Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Davies, Scott. 1999. "From Moral Duty to Cultural Rights: A Case Study of Political Framing in Education." Sociology of Education 72:1-21.

DeLany, Brian. 1991. "Allocation, Choice, and Stratification within High Schools: How the Sorting Machine Copes." American Journal of Education 99:181-207.

Delgado-Gaitan, Concha. 1992. "School Matters in the Mexican-American Home: Socializing Children to Education." American Educational Research Journal 29:495-51 3. 1994. "Consejos: The Power of Cultural Narratives." Anthropology and Education Quarterly 25:298-316.

Denzin, Norman K., and Yvonna S. Lincoln. 2000. "Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research." Pp. 1-28 in Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed.), edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Dreeben, Robert. 1968. On What Is Learned in School. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 1994. "The Sociology of Education: Its Development in the United States." Pp. 7-52 in Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization (Vol.10), edited by Aaron M. Pallas. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1952. Suicide: A Study in Sociology (John A. Spaukling and George Simpson, Trans.). New York: Free Press. (Original work published 1897) 1984. The Division of Labor in Society [W. D. Hall, Trans.]. New York: Free Press. (Original work published 1893)

Eder, Donna. 1981. "Ability Grouping as a Self- Fulfilling Prophecy: A Micro-Analysis of




Teacher-Student Interaction." Sociology of Education 54:151-62.

Eder, Donna, Catherine Colleen Evans, and Stephen Parker. 1995. School Talk: Gender and Adolescent Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Epstein, Terrie L. 1997. "Sociocultural Approaches to Young People's Historical Understanding." Social Education 61:28-31.

Erickson, Frederick. 1975. "Gatekeeping and the Melting Pot: Interaction in Counseling Encounters." Harvard Educational Review 45:44-70.

Ferguson, Kathy. 1984. The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Fine, Michelle. 1991. Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban High School. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Finley, Merrilee K. 1984. "Teachers and Tracking in a Comprehensive High School." Sociology of Education 57:233-43.

Fordham, Signithia. 1993. "'Those Loud Black Girls': (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender 'Passing' in the Academy." Anthropology and Education Quarterly 24:3-32. 1996. Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fordham, Signithia, and John U. Ogbu. 1986. "Black Students' School Success: Coping with the 'Burden of "Acting White."' Urban Review 18:1 76-206.

Foster, Michele. 1995. "African American Teachers and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy." Pp. 570-81 in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks. New York: Macmillan.

Garet, Michael S., and Brian DeLany. 1988. "Students, Courses, and Stratification." Sociology of Education 61:61-77.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Giroux, Henry A. 1992. Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. New York: Routledge.

Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Chicago: Aldine.

Grant, David, Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick, eds. 1998. Discourse and Organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Grant, Gerald. 1988. The World We Created at

Hamilton High. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hearn, Jeff. Ed. 1989. The Sexuality of Organization. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Holland, Dorothy C., and Margaret Eisenhart. 1990. Educated in Romance: Women, Achievement, and College Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hollingshead, August B. 1949. Elmtown's Youth. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Karabel, Jerome, and A. H. Halsey 1977. "Introduction." Pp. 1-77 in Power and Ideology in Education, edited by Jerome Karabel and A. H. Halsey. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1992. "Reading Between the Lines and Beyond the Pages: A Culturally Relevant Approach to Literacy Teaching." Theory into Practice 31:312-20.

Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. 2000. An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lareau, Annette. 1989. Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education. New York: Falmer Press.

Lareau, Annette, and Erin McNamara Horvat. 1999. "Moments of Social Inclusion and Exclusion: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Family-School Relationships." Sociology of Education 72:37-53.

Lareau, Annette, and Wesley Shumar. 1996. "The Problem of Individualism in Family-School Policies." Sociology of Education [Extra Issue]:24-39.

Lee, Stacey J. 1996. Unraveling the "Model Minority" Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lee, Valerie E., Anthony S. Bryk, and Julia B. Smith. 1993. "The Organization of Effective Secondary Schools." Pp. 1 71-268 in Review of Research in Education (Vol. 19), edited by Linda Darling-Hammond. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Lensmire, Timothy J. 1994. When Children Write: Critical Re-Visions of the Writing Workshop. New York: Teachers College Press.

Little, Judith Warren. 1982. "Norms of Collegiality and Experimentation: Workplace Conditions of School Success." American Educational Research Journal 19:325-40. 1990. "The Persistence of Privacy: Autonomy



132 Riehl

and Initiative in Teachers' Professional Relations." Teachers College Record 91:509-36.

Lopez, Marianne Exum. 1999. When Discourses Collide: An Ethnography of Migrant Children at Home and in School. New York: Peter Lang.

Louis, Karen Seashore, Sharon D. Kruse, and Associates. 1995. Professionalism and Community: Perspectives on Reforming Urban Schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Lubeck, Sally. 1985. Sandbox Society: Early Education in Black and White America. Philadelphia: Falmer Press.

Lynd, Robert S., and Helen M. Lynd. 1929. Middletown: A Study in American Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

MacLeod, Jay. 1987. Ain't No Makin' It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Martin, Joanne. 1992. Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.

McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds. 1996. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

McLaren, Peter. 2000. "Gangsta Pedagogy and Ghettocentricity: The Hip-Hop Nation as Counterpublic Sphere." Pp. 227-69 in Challenges of Urban Education: Sociological Perspectives for the Next Century, edited by Karen A. McClafferty, Carlos A. Torres, and Theodore R. Mitchell. Albany: State University of New York Press.

McLaughlin, Milbrey W., Joan E. Talbert, and Nina Bascia, Eds. 1990. The Contexts of Teaching in Secondary Schools: Teachers' Realities. New York: Teachers College Press.

McNeil, Linda. 1988. Contradictions of Control: School Structure and School Knowledge. New York: Routledge.

Mehan, Hugh, Alma Hertweck, and J. Lee Meihls. 1986. Handicapping the Handicapped: Decision Making in Students' Careers. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Metz, Mary Haywood. 1978. Classrooms and Corridors: The Crisis of Authority in Desegregated Secondary Schools. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2000. "Sociology and Qualitative Methodologies in Educational Research." Harvard Educational Review 70:60-74.

Meyer, John W. 1970. "The Charter: Conditions of Diffuse Socialization in Schools." Pp. 564-78 in Social Processes and Social Structures, edited by W. Richard Scott. New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston.

Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin. 2000. "Corporations and Classrooms: A Critical Examination of the Business Agenda for Urban School Reform." Pp. 127-73 in Challenges of Urban Education: Sociological Perspectives for the Next Century, edited by Karen A. McClafferty, Carlos A. Torres, and Theodore R. Mitchell. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Mirel, Jeffrey. 1993. The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Moll, Luis. C., Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma Gonzalez. 1992. "Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms." Theory into Practice 31:1 32-41.

Noblit, George W., and William T. Pink. 1995. "Mapping the Alternative Paths of the Sociology of Education." Pp. 1-29 in Continuity and Contradiction: The Futures of the Sociology of Education, edited by William T. Pink and George W. Noblit. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Noddings, Nel. 1992. The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

O'Connor, Carla. 1999. "Race, Class, and Gender in America: Narratives of Opportunity among Low-Income African American Youths." Sociology of Education 72:1 37-57.

Oakes, Jeannie, and Gretchen Guiton. 1995. "Matchmaking: The Dynamics of High School Tracking Decisions." American Educational Research Journal 32:3-33.

Oyler, Celia. 1996. Making Room for Students: Sharing Teacher Authority in Room 104. New York: Teachers College Press.

Page, Reba N. 1991. Lower-Track Classrooms: A Curricular and Cultural Perspective. New York: Teachers College Press. 2000. "Future Directions in Qualitative Research." Harvard Educational Review 70:100-08.

Parsons, Talcott. 1959. "The School Class as a Social System." Harvard Educational Review 29:297-318.

Peshkin, Alan. 1978. Growing Up American: Schooling and the Survival of Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1986. God's Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1997. Places of Memory: Whiteman's Schools and Native American Communities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Purpel, David E., and Svi Shapiro. 1995. Beyond Liberation and Excellence: Reconstructing the



Brid es to the Future 133

Public Discourse on Education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

Rhoades, Gary. 1987. "Folk Norms and School Reform: English Secondary Schools." Sociology of Education 60:44-53.

Riehl, Carolyn, Aaron M. Pallas, and Gary Natriello. 1999. "Rites and Wrongs: Institutional Explanations for the Student Course Scheduling Process in Urban High Schools." American Journal of Education 107:116-54.

Rogoff, Barbara, and Jean Lave, eds. 1984. Everyday Cognition: Its Development in Social Context. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rosenbaum, James. 1976. Making Inequality. New York: Wiley Interscience.

Siskin, Leslie Santee, and Judith Warren Little, eds. 1995. The Subjects in Question: Departmental Organization and the High School. New York: Teachers College Press.

Stevenson, David Lee. 1991. "Deviant Students as a Collective Resource in Classroom Control." Sociology of Education 64:127-33.

Stevenson, Robert B., and Jeanne Ellsworth. 1993. "Dropouts and the Silencing of Critical Voices." Pp. 259-71 in Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States School, edited by Lois Weis and Michelle Fine. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Tharp, Roland G., and Ronald Gallimore. 1988. Rousing Minds to Life. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. East Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Trent, William T., Jomills H. Braddock, ll, and Ronald D. Henderson. 1985. "Sociology of Education: A Focus on Education as an Institution." Pp. 295-336 in Review of Research in Education (Vol. 12), edited by Edmund Gordon. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Useem, Elizabeth. 1992. "Getting on the Fast Track in Mathematics: School Organizational Influences on Math Track Assignment." American Journal of Education 100:325-53.

Valdes, Guadalupe. 1996. Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools: An Ethnographic Portrait. New York: Teachers College Press.

Valli, Linda. 1986. Becoming Clerical Workers. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Van Galen, Jane, and Deborah J. Eaker. 1995. "Beyond Settling for Scholarship: On Defining the Beginning and Ending Points of Postmodern Research." Pp. 11 3-32 in Continuity and Contradiction: The Futures of the Sociology of Education, edited by William T. Pink and George W. Noblit. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Vygotsky, Lev S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Waller, Willard. 1932. The Sociology of Teaching. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Talcott Parsons, Trans.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (Original work published 1904-05)

Weiler, Kathleen. 1988. Women Teaching for Change: Gender, Class and Power. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.

Weis, Lois. 1995. "Qualitative Research in Sociology of Education: Reflections on the 1970s and Beyond." Pp. 157-73 in Continuity and Contradiction: The Futures of the Sociology of Education, edited by William T. Pink and George W. Noblit. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Wells, Amy Stuart. 2000. "Where Neoliberal Ideology Meets Social Context: A Comparative Analysis of U. S. Charter Schools and England's Grant-Maintained Schools." Pp. 99-125 in Challenges of Urban Education: Sociological Perspectives for the Next Century, edited by Karen A. McClafferty, Carlos A. Torres, and Theodore R. Mitchell. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Wells, Amy Stuart, Cynthia Grutzik, Sibyll Carnochan, Julie Slayton, and Ash Vasudeva. 1999. "Underlying Policy Assumptions of Charter School Reform: The Multiple Meanings of a Movement." Teachers College Record 100:51 3-35.

Wells, Amy Stuart, and Jeannie Oakes. 1996. "Potential Pitfalls of Systemic Reform: Early Lessons from Research on Detracking." Sociology of Education [Extra Issue]:1 35-43.

Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Westheimer, Joel. 1998. Among School Teachers: Community, Autonomy, and Ideology in Teachers' Work. New York: Teachers College Press.

Willis, Paul E. 1977. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.

Young, Michael F. D. 1971. Knowledge and Control. London: Collier-Macmillan.

Zane, Nancie. 1994. "When 'Discipline Problems' Recede: Democracy and Intimacy in Urban Charters." Pp. 122-35 in Chartering Urban School Reform: Reflections on Public High Schools in the Midst of Change, edited by Michelle Fine. New York: Teachers College Press.



134 Riehl

Carolyn Riehl, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, School of Education, University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Her main areas of interest are gender and cultural diversity in education, school-community relationships, school organization, and administrative practice. She is currently investigating how school administrators working in multicultural contexts engage the public in educational policy and practice.

The author thanks Mary Haywood Metz and Anna Neumann for their helpful comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this article. Address all correspondence to Carolyn Riehl, Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, P.O. Box 26171, Greensboro, NC 27402-6171; e-mail: [email protected].



Documents

Bridges to the Future- The Contributions of Qualitative Research to the Sociology of Education Author(s)- Carolyn Riehl