Thanks very much Ken for reminding us of the danger of over-generalizations...
Actually, I can see that different people mean different things when they
say high/low SES... My own supervisor always asks me to be careful with
the use of these terms. :-) Well, anyway, I use the term mainly to refer
to the availability or lack of resources, e.g., those things Michael
mentioned: holes in the wall, lack of book shelves,
crowded classrooms, lack of facilities, long working hours, etc.
As for the PRACTICES of teachers and school staff, I'm all for the
position that individual teachers and principals do make a difference for
their students!!! My own data bear evidence to this. Howver, I must
also hurry to say that they do so with lots of personal sacrifice, and
under lots of organizational pressure and constraints. I would say that
things like SES can be treated as rough indicators of constraints or
resources (in terms of structural / societal organization), while teachers
/school staff's practices as how people do what they need to do under
constraints and in different contexts with different kinds of resources.
I think there will not be any simple one-to-one relationship between
structure and practice (as mentioned in Ellice's message and mine earlier
on educational reform...)
What I'm interested in is how we can work both ways: to remove those
structural constraints that make teachers find their work difficult, and
afford resources to them to help them do their work; and also how to work with
teachers on reflecting on their own practices...
Thanks very much to all of you who have shared your thoughts, to Peter,
Gordon, Jay, Judy, Michael,... and many others who have written... and
also to all of you who read how we negotiate our meaning in this less
than perfect but still very wonderfuedium... :-)
Happy holidays!!!
Angel
P.S. Thanks Ken for drawing my attention to the book :-)
On Thu, 21 Dec 1995, KEN GOODMAN wrote:
> Angel and others- be careful not to over generalize about low SES and high
> SES schools. There highly effective schools and teachers of the former and
> some very bas examples of the latter. Lots of bad curriculum and teaching is
> covered up in high SES schools by the advantages of the pupils. See Mike
> Rose's book Possible Lives for some magnificient examples of successful
> teachers in low SES situations.
> Ken Goodman
>
>