Charles E. Bidwell

University of Chicago | UC · Department of Sociology

In this chapter, 1 use examples from a current study of high schools and a selective review of the literature on social psychology and ori the sociology of education to draw out implications for a social psychology of schooling. I begin with brief descriptions of two high schools where colleagues and I have conducted fieldwork as part of a study of...

In this article, principal theoretical developments in the study of schools as orga- nizations are reviewed, particularly, neo-institutional theory and the analysis of the faculty workplace. On the basis of this review, a theoretical approach that integrates the two is proposed. In this approach, institutional constraints on schools and administrat...

The theory of workplace control in American high schools presented in this article is based on the assumption that the school workplace contains potent systems that control the everyday work attitudes and conduct of teachers. The theory posits the formation of teacher types, each comprising distinctive attitudes toward work and behavior, as the lin...

In this article, a new approach is taken to the question of the control of teachers' work. This approach is contrasted with Weberian, loose coupling, and instructional approaches. Using the high school as a grounding case, an argument is made that school workplaces may provide a variety of controls of teachers' work, embedded in the social organiza...

The essays in this volume mark a watershed in the study of urban public education in the United States. By virtue of their intellectual breadth and substantive concern for the welfare of city schools and students, these papers forecast an integration of political and organizational analysis of education in the big cities ‐connecting the structures...

Studies of "school effects" must make a clear conceptual distinction between school and schooling. School is an organization that conducts instruction; schooling is the process through which instruction occurs. Schooling, which is a structure of action by students and teachers, is conditioned by the social organization of classrooms, curricular tra...

Using data from 104 school districts in Colorado, this study examines determinants of organizational effectiveness. Five environmental conditions of these districts, three components of district structure and one of staff composition are linked in a causal model to the median reading and mathematics achievement test scores of the districts' high sc...

By recounting findings from three studies, it is shown that the ecological approach to education has the potential of promoting understanding of relationships between society, schooling, and life opportunities. The ecological approach means that one must attempt to see whether and how the organization of schools, school districts, or national syste...

Central to socialization is the growth of commitment to values and moral rules and the formation of beliefs about society as a moral order. To what extent does schooling influence these processes? In what ways? How might it influence them? Answers to these questions have been rhetorical for the most part because so little is known about the ways th...

Thesis--University of Chicago. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 253-256). Microfilm of typescript.

A framework for analyzing the effects of academic departments on student values and attitudes is described. Its two principal dimensions are variability in department goals and in department attributes. Each is discussed in some detail. The framework is operationalized and applied to data about the departments of a large university. Predictions are...

Although there is considerable empirical evidence that college-educated people have distinctive values and attitudes, existing research presents both positive and negative evidence that colleges serve as actual agents of moral socialization. To order these findings and generate research hypotheses, a typology of client-serving organizations is deve...

Following Janowitz's analysis of current military organization and procedure, a number of potential strains confronting draftee-professionals during their tour of Army duty are noted. By means of participant observation and interviews, a group of drafted professional men was studied with reference to these strains and patterns of response to them....