A Comparative Study of the Relation Between Different Models of Pedagogic Practice and Constructs of Deviance

Abstract

This study attempts to show how different school contexts generate different criteria of social competence and develop measures of these differences. The basic hypothesis relates features of the school pedagogic orientations to perceptions of deviance. It is, therefore, a study of the relation between socio‐institutional structures and individual thinking. In a sense it considers the role of the local school culture in the construction of the perceptions of individual actors.

Schools in England and Denmark were matched in terms of their structural and interactional features and communicative practices using a coding procedure developed from a theory of cultural transmission. Teachers’ and pupils’ perceptions of school behaviour were compared within and between forms of pedagogic practice and within and between countries. The study used approaches to describing schools and eliciting constructs of school behaviour through non‐directive interview techniques developed in initial pilot studies. The basic hypothesis relates features of the school pedagogic orientations across countries to perceptions of school behaviour. The data were suggestive of differences beyond national boundaries: categories of perceptions were differentially associated with pedagogic practices.