The Organizational Context of Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Sociologists have a predilection for the collective. We are centrally concerned with social facts, characteristics of collectivities that give shape and motivation to individual action. Sociological research on schooling shares this interest in the collective. School resources, composition, climate, leadership, and governance, all collective attributes of schools, are often looked to as sources of influence on the outcomes of schooling for individual students.Yet the study of school organization is marked more by failure than by success. It is especially significant that the most important contribution by sociologists to research on schooling-the famous Coleman Report of 1966-is also the most spectacular failure to connect the collective with the individual in an educational setting. Variation in school conditions was largely unrelated to differences in student outcomes, as school-level effects were dwarfed by the powerful influence of the home environment for student learning. Though policymakers drew implications from the positive impact on learning of the proportion of White students in a school, the effect of racial composition was small compared to the great importance of individual family background factors. This pattern of results, emphasizing the individual over

School Culture and School Effectiveness: The Mediating Effect of Teachers’ Job Satisfaction

“…Thus, it may be that school culture affects school effectiveness not just directly, but additionally via the influence of teachers' job satisfaction. In addition, through teaching practices, school organizational culture can also have an effect on student outcomes (Gamoran, Secada & Marrett, 2000;Stearns, Banerjee, Mickelson & Moller, 2014). In spite of the fact that a more positive school culture could directly influence school effectiveness, the actual teachers in that school may have different opinions of the school's culture.…”

“…In fact, school's culture cannot affect school outcomes directly. The influence need go through teachers' practice (Gamoran et al, 2000;Stearns et al, 2014). Teachers play a substantial part in generating, transforming and diffusing school culture.…”

Web-based Autonomous Learning in the Chinese EFL Setting

“…In the former scenario the learners play a passive role and in the latter scenario the learners play an active role in the learning process. The emphasis thus turns away from the instructor and the content, and towards the learner (Gamoran, Secada, & Marrett, 2000). This dramatic change of role implies that facilitators need to display a totally different set of skills than teachers (Brownstein 2001).…”

Large‐scale interventions in science education for diverse student groups in varied educational settings

“…On the other hand, school-wide implementation results in the inclusion of some teachers who are open to adopting more reform-oriented practices and other teachers who are less open to change. Gamoran et al (2003) warn that teachers who are less open to change may resist, or even work directly against, programmatic changes that are supported by other teachers in their school, thereby revealing organizational divides within the school. Unless interventions have collective teacher buy-in, it is unlikely that they are scaled up within the system (Blumenfeld, Fishman, Krajcik, Marx, & Soloway, 2000).…”