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STABILITY AND CHANGE IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

Structure, Process, and Outcomes

edited by Maureen T. Hallinan, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, Adam Gamoran, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, Warren Kubitschek, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, and Tom Loveless, Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

Robert Dreeben is one of the most widely read and influential sociologists of education of the past half-century and the author of several important books, one of which (the 1968 classic On What Is Learned in School) has been republished by Percheron Press.

In this volume inspired by Dreeben’s work and career, chapters written by Dreeben’s colleagues, students, and even one of his mentors present the latest academic research on schools and schooling and examine recent and ongoing school reform policies. The contributors address schooling and socialization, school organization and effects, teaching as an occupation, and other areas of sociology of education where Dreeben’s research has had a profound impact. A concluding chapter by Dreeben discusses the field of sociology of education as a whole.

The concepts in Stability and Change in American Education demonstrate the centrality of Dreeben’s work in sociology of education and the relevance of his ideas for understanding schools, teaching, and learning in the twenty-first century. The book will serve as a valuable resource for researchers and scholars seeking to understand the processes and problems of teaching and learning. Policymakers and reformers will also find it to be an indispensable aid since it documents some of the possibilities and successes of school reform, while also showing the challenges—challenges all too often unaddressed by overly simplistic reform policies.

CONTENTS

Foreword by John W. Meyer

I. INTRODUCTION

Robert Dreeben’s Contributions to Sociology of Education
Adam Gamoran and Tom Loveless

II. SCHOOLING AND SOCIALIZATION

On What Is Learned in School: A Verstehen Approach
Aaron M. Pallas, Matthew Boulay, and Melinda Mechur Karp

The Problem of Classroom Goodwill
Charles E. Bidwell

Social Status versus Psychosocial Maturity as Predictors of School Outcomes in Japan and the United States
Alex Inkeles and P. Herbert Leiderman

III. HOW SCHOOLS WORK: ORGANIZATION AND EFFECTS

How School Governance Works: The Implementation of Integrated Reform in the Chicago Public Schools
Kenneth K. Wong

School Organization and Response to Systemic Breakdown
Maureen T. Hallinan

Tracking, Instruction, and Unequal Literacy in Secondary School English
Adam Gamoran and Sean Kelly

When Tensions Mount: Conceptualizing Classroom Situations and the Conditions of Student-Teacher Conflict
Daniel A. McFarland

IV. TEACHING AS AN OCCUPATION

The Governance of Teaching and Standards-Based Reform from the 1970s to the New Millennium
William A. Firestone

The Regulation of Teaching and Learning
Tom Loveless

V. SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION AS A FIELD OF INQUIRY

Sociology of Education: An Overview of the Field at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
Barbara Schneider

VI. CONCLUSION

Classrooms and Politics
Robert Dreeben

Author Index

Subject Index

ISBN 978-0-9719587-8-4/paperback/278 pp./illus./August 2003/$32.50