Field Study on Teachers' Engagement Project on the Effects of the School as a Workplace on Teachers' Engagement--Phase One. Final Report

This collection of papers is the final product of a project designed to explore the ways in which high schools as organizations facilitate and frustrate teachers' ability to be engaged with their work. Ordinary schools were chosen as the research subjects: two in high socioeconomic (SES) settings; two in middle SES settings, and two in low SES settings. Two Catholic schools were included--one middle-class college-bound, and the other predominantly working class. The schools were considered alternately as social structures, technical systems, cultural systems, and political systems. Similarities and variations in teachers' approach to their work in the classroom were considered by looking at a triangle composed of teachers' roles and behavior, the students' roles and behavior, and the formal curriculum in use and the broader goals teachers pursued with students. Particular attention was paid to the multiple interacting differences that flow from communities and families in different social class situations into the schools. Social class was seen as having a pervasive and fundamental role in the internal lives of schools and teachers. (JD)