Equality and Power in Schools Redistribution, Recognition and Representation

Based on a study of 12 schools over a two-year period, this book explores issues of equality and power both in the classroom and in the staffroom. Through classroom observation, interviews with pupils and staff, focus groups and questionnaires, the authors examine classroom practice, grouping and streaming, peer group relations and attitudes to power relationships both between pupils and teachers, and amongst teachers themselves. They also look particularly at the different experiences of pupils in single sex and co-educational schools.The authors' findings offer an insight into the way schools operate in terms of social class, gender, religion and ethnicity, and raise fundamental questions about the use and abuse of power in schools and how this affects the lives of pupils and staff.This book will be of interest to those studying education, sociology, gender studies and women's studies, and to policy makers and teachers in senior management roles.

Part 1 Setting the scene; Chapter 1 The equality debates; Chapter 2 The design of the study and a profile of the schools; Part 2 Issues of redistribution; Chapter 3 The Class Act; Chapter 4 The grouping process; Part 3 Issues of recognition and multivalent identities; Chapter 5 Girls’ schools; Chapter 6 Boys’ schools; Chapter 7 The complex cultures of co-educational schools; Chapter 8 The diversity deficit; Part 4 Discipline and power; Chapter 9 Regimes of power and resistance; Chapter 10 Vertical and horizontal power; Chapter 11 Inequality and the 3Rs—redistribution, recognition and representation;

Kathleen Lynch is Head of Research at the Equality Studies Centre, National University of Ireland, University College, Dublin. Anne Lodge is a Lecturer in Sociology of Education at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.