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Teachers' Work is a highly readable, penetrating and often amusing account of the reality of teachers working lives, as relevant to the profession and its future as it was when first published in 1985. Based on the classic Australian study of the schools and homes of the wealthy and powerful and of ordinary wage-earners described in
Making the Difference,
Teachers' Work draws on extended interviews with teachers in elite private schools and mainstream government high schools and with the students and parents who attend and patronise them. As well as providing an absorbing account of the life and work of teachers through vivid portraits of people, classrooms and staffrooms,
Teachers' Work illuminates the interaction between personal relationships in the classroom and the social structures of gender and class. In generating new ways of thinking about the character and origins of inequality in education, this book gives teachers themselves cause for reflection, offers student-teachers a picture of the real world of teaching, and provides parents with an insight into daily life behind the classroom door. At a time when the power of 'effective teaching' is being widely recognised and national debate focuses on the condition and prospcts of the teaching profession,
Teachers' Work is as insightful and rewarding as ever.
List of contents
Introduction
PART ONE: TEACHERS' LIVES
1 Sheila Goffman and Margaret Blackall
2 Terry Petersen
3 Angus Barr
4 Rosa Marshall
5 Jack Ryan
PART TWO: TEACHERS' WORK
6 The labour process and division of labour
7 The curriculum
8 Relationships with kids
9 The school as a workplace
PART THREE: TEACHERS' WORLDS
10 Being a teacher
11 Teachers' outlooks
12 Teachers' politics and teachers' power
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
R. W. Connell is Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University and one of Australia's leading social theorists. This book is an outcome of a research project (described in the earlier book,
Making the Difference undertaken with D. J. Ashenden, S. Kessler and G. W. Dowsett).
Summary
Teachers' Work is a highly readable and often amusing account of the reality of teachers' working lives that will give teachers themselves cause for reflection, give students a picture of the real world of teaching, and allow parents an insight into how things look from the other side of the school wall.
