Re: Boundary object
Peter Smagorinsky (psmagorinsky who-is-at ou.edu)
Tue, 28 Oct 1997 07:03:13
I only taught at this school for one year and then moved to a different
h.s. The reasons for my departure were many, including my ill-suitedness
for teaching in an open environment (at least as practiced in this school).
The school was new--it was a blue collar community that had always sent its
kids to schools in neighboring, wealthier communities where they were
second class citizens, so they decided to build their own school. So far,
so good. I don't know how the decision came about to use the open
structure--my guess is that it was not an architect's decision but a
decision made by some group of community planners. The administration and
faculty were then hired to put a philosophy into practice within a
structure presumably designed to promote the philosophy, even if many
faculty members (like me) took the job because jobs were scarce in 1977,
not because they bought the open approach. The average age of the faculty
was 24, almost everyone a year or two out of a teacher ed program, so there
was little experience or institutionalized tradition, etc. I was attracted
to this at first because it looked like a great opportuntity to reinvent
teaching and schooling without battling through encrusted seniority, but a
social hierarchy quickly established itself among the faculty, which was
largely conservative (in Lortie's sense--they were "identifiers" with
conventional schooling practices and thus perpetuated them). The
administration used the faculty's job insecurity (all untenured!) to
control them. And so an exciting, fresh opportunity went bad rather
quickly, with the school's open environment ultimately serving as a means
through which to observe and monitor teaching to make sure it stayed
conservative.
At 07:46 PM 10/27/97 +0100, you wrote:
>The scenario also makes me wonder: were there NO attempts at organizing the
>structure of groups and curriculum in a corresponding fashion? As far as I
>understand the original ideas were much more of a package covering both
>"the hard and the soft", to import some computer jargon. But as it was
>implemented here, building decisions aren't made at all in connection with
>curricular decision making etc. Not at all the same institutional levels
>etc. Was that the same in the case you described, Peter?
>
>Eva
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