Disagreements and Accommodations in the Colleges (1981-1986): Material for a Sociology of the "College.".

Abstract

This article presents the balance sheet of a survey done from an anthropological perspective in twenty French colleges from 1981-1986. The study concerned the conditions that enable individuals to fashion coherent settings in schools at the macro- and microlevel. The former henceforth is referred to as school establishments or merely schools; the latter, the microlevel, is labeled "situations" and implies mainly classrooms. In the colleges, these settings had to rest, if they were to be effective, on some agreement on the definition of democratization, which at present is lacking. In its absence, a local accommodation among individuals takes the place of an arrangement based on universal principles. However, some traces of adjustment are appearing which would enable teachers to build for themselves a new identity based on a negotiation of general interest.