Intersubjective Structure and Systems of Practice in School-Community Relations

Relations between schools and the adults within their surrounding communities are often problematic in inner city, low socioeconomic status neighborhoods. This paper analyzes features of the intersubjective structure of a group of working-class residents who took over and illegally ran their secondary school in Liverpool (England) for the 1982/83 school year. The school, Croxteth Comprehensive School, was occupied as part of a community movement to protest its closure. The paper analyzes the common sense assumptions held by the community about knowledge, pedagogy, classroom authority, school certificates, and other features of schooling. It finds evidence of a structure through which residents' views mutually implicate each other, though this is not apparent to the residents themselves. This intersubjective structure consists of two forms of implication: paradigm and homology. These forms of implication are related to two different forms in which systems of routine behavior are integrated. Social integration (the coordination of routines through face-to-face interactions) is associated with paradigmatic intersubjective structures, while system integration (the relationships between routines separated in time and space) is associated with homologous intersubjective structures. The study's results expand understanding of school-community relations, and of human rationality in relationship to routine social practices. (AF)