Schools are complex social settings where students, teachers, administrators, and parents interact to shape a child's educational experience. Any effort to improve educational outcomes for America's children requires a dynamic understanding of the environments in which children learn. In The Social Organization of Schooling, editors Larry Hedges and Barbara Schneider assemble researchers from the fields of education, organizational theory, and sociology to provide a new framework for understanding and analyzing America's schools and the many challenges they face. The Social Organization of Schooling closely examines the varied components that make up a school's social environment. Contributors Adam Gamoran, Ramona Gunter, and Tona Williams focus on the social organization of teaching. Using intensive case studies, they show how positive professional relations among teachers contribute to greater collaboration, the dissemination of effective teaching practices, and ultimately, a better learning environment for children. Children learn more from better teachers, but those best equipped to teach often opt for professions with higher social stature, such as law or medicine. In his chapter, Robert Dreeben calls for the establishment of universal principles and practices to define good teaching, arguing that such standards are necessary to legitimize teaching as a high status profession. The Social Organization of Schooling also looks at how social norms in schools are shaped and reinforced by interactions among teachers and students. Sociologist Maureen Hallinan shows that students who are challenged intellectually and accepted socially are more likely to embrace school norms and accept responsibility for their own actions. Using classroom observations, surveys, and school records, Daniel McFarland finds that group-based classroom activities are effective tools in promoting both social and scholastic development in adolescents. The Social Organization of Schooling also addresses educational reforms and the way they affect a school's social structures. Examining how testing policies affect children's opportunities to learn, Chandra Muller and Kathryn Schiller find that policies which increased school accountability boosted student enrollment in math courses, reflecting a shift in the school culture towards higher standards. Employing a variety of analytical methods, The Social Organization of Schooling provides a sound understanding of the social mechanisms at work in our educational system. This important volume brings a fresh perspective to the many ongoing debates in education policy and is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of America's children.

In this lively and wide-ranging essay, Göran Ahrne sketches an organizational theory of society. Combining the insights of organization theory with the traditional concerns of social theory, he makes an innovative and creative contribution to both fields. Using a broad definition of organizations, the author shows that what goes on inside, outside and among organizations is central to understanding social relations. Organizations provide people with resources and motives, and they set the frames for human action. Although organizations do not form societies or systems, society is shaped and changed through interaction between organizations. Drawing on various schools of organization theory, including institutional, ecological and contingency theories, the book shows how their synthesis with social theory clarifies the nature and effects of organizational interactions.

As a leader, it's your job to extract maximum talent, energy, knowledge, and innovation from your customers and employees. But how? In The Social Organization, two of Gartner's lead analysts strongly advocate exploiting social technology. The authors share insights from their study of successes and failures at more than four hundred organizations that have used social technologies to foster—and capitalize on—customers’ and employees’ collective efforts. But the new social technology landscape isn’t about the technology. It’s about building communities, fostering new ways of collaborating, and guiding these efforts to achieve a purpose. To that end, the authors identify the core disciplines managers must master to translate community collaboration into otherwise impossible results: • Vision: defining a compelling vision of progress toward a highly collaborative organization. • Strategy: taking community collaboration from risky and random success to measurable business value. • Purpose: rallying people around a clear purpose, not just providing technology. • Launch: creating a collaborative environment and gaining adoption. • Guide: participating in and influencing communities without stifling collaboration. • Adapt: responding creatively to change in order to better support community collaboration. The Social Organization highlights the benefits and challenges of using social technology to tap the power of people, revealing what managers must do to make collaboration a source of enduring competitive advantage.

This volume addresses key issues in the sociology of education concerning how schools are organized for instruction and what processes link school organization and instruction to educa tional achievement. The content of the chapters represents a shift in focus from traditional and even recent themes in soci ology of education, including the study of school effects and of classroom processes, to a concern with the social organization of schools and its consequences for student outcomes. Rather than reviewing or evaluating existing research, the chapters present new and developing conceptualizations of the school ing process and provide theoretical models to guide future empirical work on schools. A unique feature of this book is its heavy emphasis on theory. Each chapter presents a theoretical model or argument concerning an issue of central importance in sociology of edu cation. The empirical analyses and simulations that are included are often more for illustrative purposes than for rigorous hypothesis testing, and some chapters have no data analysis at all. The major strength of the volume, therefore, lies in the new conceptualizations and reconceptualizations it provides of fundamental processes relating school organization to student learning. Theoretical work such as this is exactly what is needed in an area that has traditionally been, for the most part, empir ical and atheoretical. Another important feature of this volume is the various approaches it presents to the study of school organization.

Social organization varies greatly from school to school, and this variation fosters different, though equally valid, conceptions of teaching. In this book, the author presents problems and successes that recur in 78 diverse elementary schools.

The background to this book, first published in 1986, and its underlying concern lies with those aspects of education which relate to values. Amongst these, moral and social values are often thought of as central, and they are the title’s primary concerns. The study also deals with the value aspects and implications of the major areas of the sec

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF WORK, International Edition, takes an analytical approach to the study of work that not only identifies and discusses substantive issues but also allows students the opportunity to better develop their analysis, reasoning, and argumentative skills. The authors achieve this by combining their key areas of expertise--industrial sociology, occupations, and professions--to present a unified view of the sociology of work. Chapter topics are organized around the framework of five key themes: technology, global perspectives, class relations, gender, and race. The world of work, how it is changing, and the implications of these changes for individuals and families are thoroughly explored in this contemporary and relevant text.

In the four decades following the end of World War II, Morris Janowitz (1919-88) published major works in macrosociology, urban and political sociology, race and ethnic relations, and the study of armed forces and society. His research was deeply rooted in the traditions of philosophical pragmatism and the Chicago school of sociology, influences which led him to reject grand theories and mechanistic explanations of social life. Yet he remained confident in the capacity of sociological reason to come to grips with central aspects of the human condition. On the basis of his studies, Janowitz came to believe that the transition from early to advanced industrial society radically altered institutional organization to make democratic social control more difficult, though not impossible, to achieve. The task of his "pragmatic sociology" was to identify fundamental trends in the social organization of industrial societies, to indicate their substantive implications for social control, and to clarify realistic alternatives for institution building which would strengthen the prospects for maintaining liberal democratic regimes. In this volume, James Burk selects from Janowitz's scholarly writings to provide a comprehensive overview of his wide-ranging interests. Organized to demonstrate the common logic of inquiry and substantive unity of Janowitz's contribution to several subfields of sociology, the collection includes analyses of the concept of social control, ethnic intolerance and hostility, citizenship in Western societies, models for urban education, and the professionalization of military elites. Burk provides a richly detailed, critical account of Janowitz's intellectual development, placing his writings in historical context and showing their continuing relevance for sociological research. Useful to both students and specialists, the volume is an important source for the ideas and methods of one of sociology's leading figures.

Society, Schools, and Progress in Peru presents a descriptive analysis of the Peruvian educational system, with particular emphasis on socio-cultural changes that have transpired. The publication first elaborates on cultural and educational traditions, emergence of public schooling, and the social, economic, and political context of education. Concerns cover political organization, economic setting, educational consequences of socio-cultural stratification, social organization, race and culture, US education missions, Indian and Spanish heritage, and colonial and Republican education. The text then takes a look at educational objectives and administration, formal school programs, nonformal education, and preparation of teachers. Topics include teacher supply and demand, teacher-preparation programs, reform efforts, education in the military, education and industry, first-level educational programs, and administrative organization. The text ponders on education, revolution, and nation-building, higher education, and teacher professionalization programs. The book is a valuable source of data for historians and educators interested in the development of the educational system in Peru.