Hugh Mehan

Understanding Inequality in Schools: The Contribution of Interpretive Studies

Research in the sociology of education reflects the distinction between “macro” and “micro” that has dominated the field of sociology more generally (see, for example, Alexander et al. 1987; R. Collins 1981a, 1981b; Giddens 1984; Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel 1981). In studies of education, the macro includes structural forces conceptualized at the societal level, including economic constraints and capitalist demands, while the micro includes individual or group actions and responses to constraints imposed on social actors. I am not content with this distinction because it perpetuates a false dichotomy, reifies social structure, and relegates social interaction to a residual status.

Making sense of ethnomethodology

A very accessible introduction to ethnomethodology: this book presents the nature and aims of ethnomethodological research in a clear and uncompromising way, faithful to the work and intentions of its practitioners.

The Study of Social Interaction in Educational Settings: Accomplishments and Unresolved Issues1

The study of face-to-face interaction in educational settings is placed in historical context. The major themes of interactional analysis – that social and cognitive structures are constructed in social interaction, human behavior is context-specific, cultural discontinuity helps explain educational inequality, and learning is a sociocultural process – are reviewed, and the contributions of these findings to theory, methodology and pedagogy are assessed. The paper concludes with a discussion of two unresolved issues: the integration of social structure and interaction in interactional analysis and the reconciliation of conflictual and consensual dimensions of learning.

The Discourse of the Illegal Immigration Debate: A Case Study in the Politics of Representation

It is the proposition of this paper that our search for enemies is turning inward now that the Cold War is over. The State, in alliance with business and other elite interests, is encouraging citizens to treat the immigrant, the poor, the unfortunate as the enemy. The discourse strategies that fabricated the immigrant as the enemy are analyzed in the debate over Californias Proposition 187, which would exclude undocumented immigrant children from public schools and health care facilities. In the unsettling climate of Californias economic uncertainty and perceived loss, powerful voices, including the State, successfully blamed the crisis on undocumented immigrants. By framing the debate in us v. them terms, presenting compelling anecdotes of illegal aliens taking jobs and abusing social services and appealing to the self-interest of disaffected citizens, proponents of Proposition 187 successfully countered universalistic appeals to the general good, a higher morality and universal human rights. In short, human rights lost in this election to self interest.

Language and Schooling.

This article examines the sociological significance of sociolinguistic research in the area of education. The goal of my examination is to demonstrate that the study of language use in naturally occurring situations (I) contributes to an understanding of the role of language in education, (2) contributes to an understanding of the role of schoolng in social stratification, and (3) contributes to sociological theory by revealing issues not otherwise available for sociological analysis. In the body of the article, sociolinguistic studies of language use in contrasting settings are reviewed, and studies which suggest that language is the medium through which stratification occurs in schools are discussed. Before reviewing selected sociolinguistic studies in educational settings, I will place this line of research in the context of social sirati cation theories and the historical period of the work.

Real and non‐real time interaction: Unraveling multiple threads of discourse∗

Recent analyses of discourse have focused on recurring sequential structures. An examination of discourse in different communication media has shown that strict sequentially is not universal. Instead, discourse in some media is structured with “multiple threads.” The significant property of the media producing this difference in discourse was identified as the temporal delay between turns. Discourse in “non‐real time” media, such as electronic message systems, contain time‐saving devices that produce multiple threads. These differences between media are discussed in light of the relative resource limitation of real time interaction and the data limitation of non‐real time interaction.

The Role of Language and the Language of Role in Institutional Decision Making.

The relationship between linguistic processes, cognitive activities, and social structures is explored by examining the decision making of committees of educators as they decide to place students into special education programs or retain them in regular classrooms. Often, different committee members enter committee meetings with different views of the students case and its disposition, e.g., classroom teachers and parents provide accounts of the students performance that compete with the view of the psychologist or district representative. Yet by the meetings end, the version of the students case provided by the psychologist or the district representative prevails.

REAL EDUCATION IN NON-REAL TIME: THE USE OF ELECTRONIC MESSAGE SYSTEMS FOR INSTRUCTION

Education in different communication media takes place with functional differences that have consequences for the course of instructional interaction. In this paper, we examine instructional interaction among people using a computer-based electronic message system, contrasting it with conventional face-to-face discussion in a college level class. Interaction via the non-real time message system contained multiple “threads of discourse,” a higher proportion of student turns to teacher turns, and other deviations from the “initiation-response-evaluation” sequences usually found in face-to-face classroom interactions. Based on the results of our contrast, we describe ways to organize instruction using electronic message systems to take advantage of new properties and to avoid shortcomings of these new instructional media.

Whole-School Detracking: A Strategy for Equity and Excellence

The Preuss School on the University of California, San Diego campus is dedicated to preparing all 700 of its students to be eligible to attend college when they graduate if they choose. Students, who must be from low-income families, are enrolled in a single college-prep track. Because students who enter the school as 6th graders may not have the academic preparation necessary to succeed in rigorous college-prep classes, the school provides a wide range of social and academic supports. Eighty percent of the students from the first graduating class of 55 attend 4-year colleges as of Fall 2004; 20% attend community colleges—with their transfer to UC campuses guaranteed in 2 years. This gives us an existence proof that detracking (i.e., presenting underserved students with a rigorous academic program, supplemented by a comprehensive system of academic and social supports) can propel students from low-income households toward college eligibility and enrollment.

Nuclear Discourse in the 1980s: The Unravelling Conventions of the Cold War

The power and importance of discourse conventions in the cold war are revealed through their breach. The Reagan Administration talked publicly about nuclear weapons as a way to win a nuclear war. This new mode of representing nuclear weapons breached the deterrence convention, i.e. the purpose of nuclear weapons is to avoid war, not fight war. Humanists fearful of nuclear destruction, moralists condemning the sinful nature of nuclear war, and peace activists demanding a freeze on the production of nuclear weapons challenged this discourse move and struggled to reset the parameters of the nuclear conversation. To repair this breach, the Reagan Administration advocated a strategic defense and considered abolishing nuclear weapons entirely. SDI countered the moral phrasings of the bishops and silenced the peace movement, but only by further undermining cold war conventions. Reagans abolitionist moves breached the convention of relying on nuclear weapons to counter the threat of Soviet expansion. In this newly opened discourse space, Gorbachev challenged the most basic convention of cold war discourse, the Soviet threat, by denying the US an enemy. It is more difficult for the US to use the Soviet Union as a rationale for its policies when the Soviet threat is removed from US strategic discourse. Our analysis suggests Gorbachev was led to an alternative security vision for the superpowers by the Wests loss of discursive control over nuclear weapons, which occurred when the Reagan Administration breached the conventions that tied cold war discourse together.