Schoolwork: interpreting the labour process of teaching

Abstract

Abstract In 1981 we gave a paper at the International Sociology of Education Conference at Westhill, subsequently published as ‘The Educational Worker1? A Reassessment of Teachers’, which was a polemic on the subject of teacher professionalism and proletarianisation. This paper is partly a critique of ‘The Educational Worker’, following from a belated recognition of the importance of gender in analysing teachers’ work, and also makes use of more recent historical and comparative research. This paper puts the emphasis on the social construction of skill and argues for the study of ‘schoolwork’, that is for the study of the labour process of teaching.