The quality of classroom relationships is commonly regarded as being very important. Good classroom relationships facilitate learning, provide both teachers and children with a sense of self fulfilment, and, in addition, underpin the positive, purposefully disciplined working atmosphere which all teachers aim to create. In addition, good relationships reflect certain values and help to define a type of moral order for the classroom. In so doing, they model codes and principles of interaction, which have wider and longer-term significance and thus contribute to the social, ethical and moral education of children.
Representing the first report of a unique ethnographic study of individual pupils from the ages of four to eleven, the first book is a vivid and accessible introduction to an interpretive approach to classroom relationships. Drawing on case studies of individual children during their first three years of schooling it explores the ways in which an individual’s identity and approach to learning is greatly influenced by social factors such as family life, friendships with other children and relationships with teachers.
Pollard, A. (1985) The Social World of the Primary School, London: Cassell. (Reading 6.3)
For an understanding of how relationships in school influence children’s learning potential, see:
Pollard, A. with Filer, A. (1996) The Social World of Children’s Learning, London: Cassell.
Other closely related accounts can be found in:
Delamont, S. (1990) Interaction in the Classroom, London: Routledge.
Woods, P. (1983) Sociology and the School: An Interactionist Viewpoint, London: Routledge.
For a strongly theorised exploration of classroom relationships and social justice, see:
Gale, T. and Densmore, K. (2000) Just Schooling: Explorations in the Cultural Politics of Teaching, Buckingham: Open University Press.
