Schools Of Recognition

Equality and Power in Schools

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.

The Search for Successful Secondary Schools

Schools of Recognition

Schools are places where various cultures and identities must be recognized, yet there has been little research into what it means to recognize another person, identity, or culture. Drawing on the writings of Charles Taylor, Martin Buber, Judith Butler, and Jessica Benjamin, Schools of Recognition provides a rich picture of how recognition is negotiated in education. Using political theory, existentialism, queer theory, and psychoanalysis, Bingham shows that recognition can be fostered not only through the books that students read, but also through the ways that they learn to engage with other human beings. Recognition depends not only on receiving acknowledgement, but also on giving acknowledgement. It depends not only on what we learn from others about ourselves, but also on what we are able to teach others about themselves.