The Changing Organization of Business Education in the High School: Teachers Respond to School and Work

ABSTRACT

This article explores the way teachers understand and shape the relationship between vocational education in the high school and a changing labor market. It takes as its focus business education, where a curriculum that has been in place since the turn of the century is coming increasingly under question because of the introduction of computer technology into the office, increasing youth unemployment, and the process of streaming in the school. The article explores the way teachers continue actively to reproduce the social relations of the workplace in their classrooms, even as they search for new curriculum ideas that will better meet the changing requirements of the labor market and the school.