The Organizational Structure of the School

The sociology of school organization is today fragmented by a bewildering variety of theoretical perspectives—interactionist, neo-Durkheimian, phenomenological, to name a few. Central to the development in this field over the past decade has been the rejection of the ideal-type of bureaucratic organization as formulated by Weber and the attempt to locate formal structures of the school within the strategies and motives of teachers, pupils, and administrators. The result has often been, however, a certain loss of theoretical focus and a failure to think through the contradictions of particular perspectives and to formulate their partial insights into more rigorous and embracing conclusions. The ascendant model of school structure is now that of the loosely coupled system, in which technologies are uncertain, goals unclear, and the formal structures of which tend towards anarchy. This model contrasts markedly with other dominant perspectives, notably those in the structuralist tradition (e.g. Bernstein, Foucault) that describe school organization in terms of a close theoretical relationship between pedagogy, ideology, and the apparatus of control and surveillance. This review explicates these tensions and contradictions in contemporary accounts of school structure and suggests ways in which they may be reconciled.