| LOOKING INSIDE SCHOOLS Tex ROLE OF education in American society contin ues to be debated by social scientists, educators, and parents. Some current topics of debate include whether the number of years of schooling influences a person’s subse- quent economic success, whether attending school affects intellectual processes, and whether desegregating schools reduces inequality between the races. The study reported here examines the social organization of interaction in an elementary school classroom across a school year. The struc- ture of classroom lessons and the interactional activities of teachers and students that assemble lessons as socially orga- nized events are described here, This description shows how the teaching-learning process unfolds in naturally occurring, school situations and provides the parameters for the sociali zation of students into the classroom community. A detailed examination of interaction from one classroom contrasts sharply with the prevailing approach to the study of schooling, namely, large-scale comparisons of many differ- ent schools (see, for example, Coleman et al., 1966; Sewell, Haller, and Portes, 1969; Jencks et al., 1972; Mayeske, 1973) In fact, the approach used here may seer anomalous at first. The social organization of teacher-student interaction seems to be such a “tiny” phenomenon, while there seem to be so many massive issues facing the schools: problems like schoo! desegregation, declining literacy, equality of educational ‘opportunity, and the like. Because the sociological and edu- cational relevance of a study of a single classroom may not be obvious at first, | devote the first part of this chapter to2 | Learning Lessons suggesting why it might be important to spend less time cal- culating the long-term effects of schools on pupils and, in- stead, to spend more time making careful descriptions of what takes place inside schools. After that discussion, | place the research strategy used in this study in the context of others that have been used to look inside schools. Finally, 1 explain the policies guiding the research reported here and the data collection and analysis procedures. Comparing Differences between Schools and Examining the Internal Life of Schools Correlational studies have been the predominant research strategy in the study of the school. Correlational studies adopt an input-output research design. Aspects of people's lives, their social and historical contexts, are treated as social and cognitive “factors” or variables in this design. Some fac- tors, like the social class, age, and sex of teachers, the ability of students, the attitudes of teachers, the size of classrooms, are treated as input variables. Other factors, like pupil achievement, economic opportunity, and subsequent career patterns, are treated as output variables. The research task of correlational studies is to test the strength of the relationship between the input and output variables. Educational research using the correlational model has been especially concerned with the effect of schools on stu- dents. School effects have been measured by focusing on the input factors that influence educational outcomes. Input factors (that is, independent variables) include the charac- teristics of students’ families, the characteristics of different schools, and the intellectual endowments of students when they first enter school. Output variables (that is, dependent variables) include the cognitive achievement of students, subsequent career plans, or actual occupational attainment ‘or job earnings. DO SCHOOLS MAKE A DIFFERENCE? A number of posi- tions have been adopted concerning the influence of school- ing. There has long been a liberal political and educational ideology in this country that insists that people's chances for Looking inside Schools | 3 success in life are not constrained by their genetically pro- vided endowments. Instead, the tenets of this ideology are that differences in economic attainment and scholastic achievement ate primarily the result of environmental influ- ences. The origins of this perspective may be in the British empit- ‘cists’ insistence that the mind at birth is a tabla rasa, waiting to be etched with environmentally provided information. The most extreme form of this view in modern times is Skin- ner’s behaviorism, which minimizes the influence of internal mechanisms in learning and maximizes the influence of en- vironmentally provided reinforcement. Social mobility stud- ies (Blau and Duncan, 1967; Duncan, Featherman, and Dun- can, 1972; Sewell, Haller, and Portes, 1969) that conclude that years of education influence occupational status pro- vide support for this ideology. This ideology also gave sustenance to the compulsory edu- cation movement in the last century. More recently, the development of Head Start, Follow Through, and other com- Pensatory educational programs was predicated on this be- lief. Proponents of compensatory education, at elementary, secondary, and collegiate levels, reasoned that enriching educational environments would equalize the effects of edu cation on students deprived of stimulating home conditions. Faith in this commitment has been shaken recently. One challenge comes from those who contend that schooling merely recapitulates the existing system of class relationships in America (Bowles and Gintes, 1976). A second challenge comes from those who emphasize the role of heredity over environment in life chances. Proponents of this position (most recently, Jensen, 1969; Herrnstein, 1971) argue that genetic factors are the most important determinants of intel- lectual growth. Like a hothouse, the enrichment of environ- ment may speed the rate of growth, but the final product of growth will not exceed genetically programmed capabilities. Yet another challenge comes from those educational re- searchers who emphasize the role of early childhood experi- ences over that of school experiences in determining life chances. Comparing long-term effects of schooling on stu-4 | Learning Lessons dents, some researchers (notably Coleman et al., 1966) have concluded that the quality of schools has little influence on a student's achievement. Instead, they say, educational and ‘economic opportunities seem to be most influenced by the early childhood experiences associated with the social back- ground of students when they enter school. The political correlates of these positions are clear, and they are similar. Each minimizes the school, albeit for differ- ent reasons. One policy inference drawn from these posi- tions is that there is no reason to spend money on schools because the quality of schooling dees not affect economic or status attainment. The geneticist position is the most ex- treme on this point. Its proponents claim that no environ- mental intervention, in or out of school, will make a signifi- cant difference in status attainment. The early childhood position is less extreme but still minimizes the role of school- ing. Its supporters recommend emphasizing early childhood experiences, net school experiences, to equalize educational and economic opportunities. The latter position, inciden- tally, is the one held by proponents of early childhood edu- cation programs, including Head Start. Finally, the radical economic position also minimizes the school while arguing in favor of economic redistribution and social reorganization as the only sure means of achieving equality. A METHODOLOGICAL IRONY Caution must be exercised, however, before we dismiss the influence of schooling, blame schools for recapitulating the class structure, or con- gratulate them for opening up opportunities for mobility There is a methodological irony in the work of researchers who are debating the influence of schools on students. Al- though schooling is a major variable in the equation that links people's backgrounds and biographies to their success in later life, the process of education has not been examined lirectly by researchers who study the influence of schooling, While schooling is recognized as an intervening process between background social context and later economic and academic attainment, the school has been treated as a “black box’ in between input and output factors. Indices of school- ing have been examined, such as the number of books in the Looking inside Schools | 5 school library, the amount of equipment in science labora~ tories, the opinions of teachers and administrators toward the school. But what actually happens inside schools, in classrooms, in educational testing situations, at recess, in lunchrooms, in teachers’ lounges, on a practical everyday basis has not been examined by the researchers who debate the influence of schools. This point can be made more clearly by referring specifi- cally to the work of Jencks and his colleagues. Jencks et al (1972) presented a finding that is essentially counterintuitive when they reported that differences in the quality of educa- tion did not lead to corresponding differences in educational outputs. Their findings ran counter to conventional wisdom: “everybody knows” that lowering student-teacher ratios, providing better books, teachers, and laboratory equipment should increase the quality of education. Why were Jencks and his associates unable to find a rela- tionship between the quality of education and educational attainment? | suggest that the answer to this question can be found in the nature of their methodology. Because Jencks and his colleagues gathered their data through large-scale surveys, they could not measure the fluence of such factors directly. As a result, critics of Jencks, people who fear the consequences of his conclusions, either try to reanalyze his data by manipulating the same indices of educational quality in different ways, or fall back on per- sonal experiences, anecdotes, or intuitions to counter his arguments, What are lacking in most discussions of the influence of schools are descriptions of the actual processes of educa- tion. If we want to know whether student-teacher ratios, classroom size, teaching styles, and all the rest actually influ: ence the quality of education, then we must be able to show how they operate in pragmatic educational situations. Like- wise, if we are to understand how so-called input factors like social class, ethnicity, or teachers’ attitudes influence educa- tional outcomes, then their influence must be shown to ‘Operate in the course of interaction among participants in actual educational environments. Discussions of the nature of schooling rely on notions like