Interpretative TheoriesInterpretative Theories

BASIC IDEAS

The social world is a world made up of purposeful actors who acquire, share, and interpret a set of meanings, rules, and norms that make social interaction possible.

In the school, children acquire a sense of society’s way of life by learning its traditions, history, and its norms of cooperation and public service.

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Basic Assumptions Present in Both Basic Assumptions Present in Both Functionalist and Conflict Theory Functionalist and Conflict Theory Perspectives (Modernist Values)Perspectives (Modernist Values)

• There is a universally true description of social reality based on objective evidence

• There are standards that can be used for judging whether an explanation is verifiable or not -- the standard is to be found in substantiating theories, laws, and hypotheses provided by the natural sciences

• There is only one view which is scientific -- the other views are ideological and politically motivated

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Interpretation Theories: Characteristic Interpretation Theories: Characteristic ElementsElements

• Rejects the basic assumption – found in both functionalist and conflict theories – that the natural sciences (as commonly understood) provide an appropriate model for understanding social life.

• No global political argument about the role of schools in society.

• Local rather than global orientation.• Research focuses on interpretations, not on some

universal, political salient theory of explanation or single true description of social reality.

• Qualitative-interpretivist-constructivist research

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The Social GameThe Social Game• Regularity: whether two events are the same depends not

only upon the events themselves but also upon the rules that a particular community (be it social or scientific) uses to identify sameness or difference (for example, saying words, doing gestures, etc.)

• Universality: the primary task of social research is not to uncover universal laws of regularities that can be applied to any culture. It is rather to uncover the specific framework that defines the rules and meanings of cultural life for a specific social group.

• Society: Social behavior is role and rule following behavior that requires human agency, interpretation, understanding, and monitoring (it is not some kind of social engineering). Socialization is learning how to be able to interpret and take part in the “games” people and society “play.” The ability to interpret what is going on is a key skill.

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The act of interpretingThe act of interpreting

• The activity of interpretation occurs when there is some kind of ambiguity or some event that needs explication (e.g., a poem).

• People need to interpret what is going on in the activities of social life so they can participate in activities in ways meaningful to themselves and to others:– they need to know the point of an activity– they need to know how to be a recognized participant

in the activity– they need to know what constitutes engaging in the

activity

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Interpretive scholarship in educationInterpretive scholarship in education• Interpretation involves a reading of some kind of “human text.” It is like a

hypothesis, a sophisticated guess that things will turn out a certain way, if tested against the facts of the social “text.” As more of the social “text” is “read,” the interpretation becomes more, or less, “validated” (during this reading one should remain within the social “text”).

• Two forms of scholarship in education:– looking at the intentions and reasons of individuals in classroom

contexts– looking at the shared system of meanings found within a school

• Ethnographic research in education: educational researchers should avoid imposing their own theories on those who are the object of their studies – we should try to understand the various meanings and rules of the game.– classroom is a place where status and meaning are always negotiated –

success and failure are the results of the politics of everyday classroom; – the proper unit of analysis for what people do together is what people do

together – social rules that structure individual behavior in a particular group setting;

– a student may be competent in a whole range of activities except the ones that the school defines as significant – we must explore the meaning which a behavior has for the actor

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Interpretive TheoriesInterpretive Theories

• Jackson: in order to appreciate the significance of trivial classroom events consider the following three facts:– frequency of occurrence of events (time spent in school)– standardization of the school environment (odors, furniture,

rituals, etc.)– mandatory attendance (compare with prisons, mental hospitals,

etc.)• Characteristics of school life (key words)

– CROWDS -----> playing the game of patience (see p. 18)– PRAISE -----> playing the game of involvement in the school

tasks which includes the development psychological buffers that help to cope with the wear and tear of classroom life (see p. 27)

– POWER -----> playing the game of power in a way that favors the individual student (see pp. 32-33)

*See Chapter 1, Life in the Classrooms, by Philip Jackson (University of Chicago Press)

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School and SocietySchool and Society

• Socialization is not a passive process of imprinting and habituation, like the acquisition of habits, attitudes, beliefs of the older members.

• Well socialized members of a group need not share all the attitudes and beliefs of other members of their group, they may be behavioral variations

• The members of a group share a structure of intelligibility that enables communication and inter-subjective understanding to take place. This structure provides a foundation for shared commitments to be expressed

• Schools develop in students a shared social structure of intelligibility.