SOCIAL SCIENCE THEORIES ON TEACHERS,

TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS

Jeanne H. Ballantine and Joan Z. Spade

Schoolteacher (Lortie, 1975). Learning to Labor (Willis, 1977). Keeping Track

(Oakes, 1985). The Shopping Mall High School (Powell, Farrar & Cohen, 1985).
Savage Inequalities (Kozol, 1991). Reinventing Education (Gerstner, Semerad
& Doyle, 1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Constructing
School Success (Mehan, 1996). Who Chooses, Who Loses? (Fuller & Elmore,
1996). The Great School Debate (Good & Braden, 2000).

These are but a few examples of the plethora of books that analyze the crisis in
education and classrooms and propose measures to fix problems in our education
systems across the years. Each new era – political administration, economic trend,
global crisis – brings new suggestions for changes in education processes. To under-
stand how education systems work – or don’t work – social scientists develop theo-
ries providing logical explanations to better understand educational systems. These
theories inform research on education and provide valuable insights into classroom
interactions and methods of teaching students. Some theories have limited value, but
others stand the test of time and have relevance beyond the immediate circumstances
that generated them.
However, the link between social science theory and schools is complicated. A
major problem is that educational systems are often governed by political or ideo-
logical agendas of those in power at the time, and not on long-term planning or policy
based on available theories and research. Part of this problem also lies with social sci-
ence researchers who may not make findings based on social science theory readily
accessible to policy makers. As with the books listed above, social science theories
fall in and out of favor as the tides of educational reform change. Theories rarely
drive educational reforms, rather they often carry on and support particular waves of
educational reforms. As such, these social science theories shape and provide sup-
port for the context within which teachers teach, including the way we think about
and carry out the responsibilities of teaching, the structure of the curriculum, how
schools operate, and links to the students and communities that schools serve.

81
L.J. Saha, A.G. Dworkin (eds.), International Handbook of Research
on Teachers and Teaching, 81–101.
© Springer Science + Business Media LLC 2009
82 Ballantine and Spade

This paper examines some major theoretical approaches researchers use to develop
questions and organize their research. The purpose of this discussion is to outline
some of the leading social science theoretical approaches to understanding educa-
tional systems: teachers and classroom dynamics, what works, what doesn’t work,
and what to do about it. The discussion is divided by levels of analysis: explana-
tions of individual teachers and students’ success and failure; classroom and school
problems and attempts to resolve them; and national and global efforts to “fix”
educational systems. The discussion begins with micro-level explanations and moves
to macro-level theoretical perspectives.

Why Can’t Johnny Read?*: Micro-level Theories

of Education
Efforts to understand “why Johnny can’t read” often fall at the micro-level of social
science analysis and focus on interactions and experiences in the classroom between
the teachers, students and others, including peers and administrators. Interaction
theorists assume that individuals socially construct their lives based on the envi-
ronments in which they find themselves and focus their attention on the interper-
sonal interactions that result. With origins in the field of social psychology, symbolic
interaction theories link individuals with their immediate social contexts, groups and
society. As such, the classroom becomes the context for studying the interpersonal
and social construction of teaching.

Symbolic Interaction Theory

“Symbols,” defined as the concepts or ideas that we use to frame our interactions
from words to gestures, affect children’s sense of self and shape social hierarchies,
including their relationships with teachers. Children are active in creating distinc-
tions between one another and are therefore agents in creating the social reality in
which they live. Teachers create these distinctions in various ways. For example, no
matter what teachers call their reading groups, students quickly learn whether they
are “good” or “bad” readers. Children’s relationship to the classroom and learning is
also shaped by their relationships to peers. Popularity, an especially powerful issue in
middle-school years, is mostly a function of being visible and having everyone know
who you are. The “popular” student, regardless of what year in school, has a more
powerful position in teacher/student interactions.
Considerable inequality occurs in the symbols students bring with them to school.
Children from families who cannot afford to purchase the desired clothing or other
status symbols or even essentials for school, such as paper, are likely to be treated
differently (Lareau & Horvat, 1999). In essence, these children become the “losers.”
Those who “win” and have access to symbolic resources, including language pat-
terns and social experiences, are highly visible and given special privileges in the

* (Flesch, 1955)