Sanctions and power in school : Habermas' communicative and strategic action categories applied in educational research

My research gives an account of Habcrmas' communicative and strategic action categories against a background of trends in qualitative social science research. On this foundation, I attempt to build a research model useful to teachers. I argue that such research is a necessarily formative and fundamentally moral activity. The central notion is of research by teachers

into their own practices that is committed, moral in its implications, yet rigorous in its techniques and cautious in its knowledge claims.

I attempt to apply this model to the study of authority and power in the secondary school where I taught; my principal focus being on rules and sanctions, in particular the significance of corporal punishment.

The empirical work begins with an examination of the records of corporal punishment, class lists and examination results. With the numerical data, I argue that the chronological coincidence between de-streaming and an improvement in examination results together with a reduction in the frequency of corporal punishment, offers a strong pragmatic argument against streaming and rigidly authoritarian regimes in schools.

The numerical data also reveals that Bhatra Sikh boys were significantly more likely both to be in a lower form and to receive corporal punishment than those from other cultures.

Using qualitative data, I seek to understand and categorize the teachers' goals in their applications of sanctions; these are revealed as strategic actions directed not only towards the maintenance of institutional order, but also to more personal goals.

Pupils who persistently defied authority were expelled. The closing Chapter examines the moral-practical dimension of these decisions in the context of a dialectic between power and structure.

University of Southampton

Attwell, Anthony John

1991

Attwell, Anthony John

Attwell, Anthony John (1991) Sanctions and power in school : Habermas' communicative and strategic action categories applied in educational research. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

into their own practices that is committed, moral in its implications, yet rigorous in its techniques and cautious in its knowledge claims.

The numerical data also reveals that Bhatra Sikh boys were significantly more likely both to be in a lower form and to receive corporal punishment than those from other cultures.

Pupils who persistently defied authority were expelled. The closing Chapter examines the moral-practical dimension of these decisions in the context of a dialectic between power and structure.

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