Equality and Power in Schools: Redistribution, Recognition and Representation

by Anne Lodge, Kathleen Lynch

Overview

Based on a study of 12 schools over a two-year period, this book explores issues of equality and power both in the classroom and in the staffroom. Through classroom observation, interviews with pupils and staff, focus groups and questionnaires, the authors examine classroom practice, grouping and streaming, peer group relations and attitudes to power relationships both between pupils and teachers, and amongst teachers themselves. They also look particularly at the different experiences of pupils in single sex and co-educational schools.
The authors' findings offer an insight into the way schools operate in terms of social class, gender, religion and ethnicity, and raise fundamental questions about the use and abuse of power in schools and how this affects the lives of pupils and staff.
This book will be of interest to those studying education, sociology, gender studies and women's studies, and to policy makers and teachers in senior management roles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134497034
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/23/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Kathleen Lynch is Head of Research at the Equality Studies Centre, National University of Ireland, University College, Dublin.
Anne Lodge is a Lecturer in Sociology of Education at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Setting the scene; Chapter 1 The equality debates; Chapter 2 The design of the study and a profile of the schools; Part 2 Issues of redistribution; Chapter 3 The Class Act; Chapter 4 The grouping process; Part 3 Issues of recognition and multivalent identities; Chapter 5 Girls’ schools; Chapter 6 Boys’ schools; Chapter 7 The complex cultures of co-educational schools; Chapter 8 The diversity deficit; Part 4 Discipline and power; Chapter 9 Regimes of power and resistance; Chapter 10 Vertical and horizontal power; Chapter 11 Inequality and the 3Rs—redistribution, recognition and representation;

Editorial Reviews

'Equality and power in Schools is very well written in an accessible style that successfully brings together academics', policy makers' and teachers' concerns. This is a highly original book that finely shows the scholarly strengths of politically committed writers. The authors hope that the book will not only stimulate debate about the multiple and interlocking ways in which schools operate to promote different types of inequality, of a distributive, recognition and representational kind, but that it will also encourage and promote egalitarian change. I have little doubt that it will achieve both. It deserves the widest audience both in Ireland and internationally.' - Martin Mac an Ghaill, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne

From the Publisher