Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

Item

Title

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

Author

Diehl, David

McFarland, Daniel A.

Research Area

Social Institutions

Topic

Educational Institutions

Abstract

Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more than just the delivery of academic content. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important school outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers. Standard approaches, however; tend to treat the organizational structures of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers teach and students learn. In contrast, we present the beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex and dynamic social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations and defined at numerous levels. In this essay, we summarize existing research in order to elaborate such a view. To that end the essay is divided into four sections: major role relationships in the school; organizational levels of the school; current socio‐cultural changes shaping schools as organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.

Related Essays

Learning Across the Life Course (Sociology), Jutta Allmendinger and Marcel Helbig

Economics of Early Education (Economics), W. Steven Barnett

Shadow Education (Sociology), Soo‐yong Byun and David P. Baker

Enduring Effects of Education (Sociology), Matthew Curry and Jennie E. Brand

Social Class and Parental Investment in Children (Sociology), Anne H. Gauthier

Evaluating and Rewarding Teachers (Educ), Cassandra Hart

Educational Testing: Measuring and Remedying Achievement Gaps (Educ), Jaekyung Lee

Gender Inequality in Educational Attainment (Sociology), Anne McDaniel and Claudia Buchmann

Rationalization of Higher Education (Sociology), Tressie McMillan Cottom and Gaye Tuchman

Education in an Open Informational World (Educ), Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter

Higher Education: A Field in Ferment (Sociology), W. Richard Scott

Impact of Limited Education on Employment Prospects in Advanced Economies (Sociology), Heike Solga

Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes (Sociology), Herman G. van de Werfhorst

Identifier

etrds0283

extracted text

The Organization of Schools
and Classrooms
DAVID DIEHL and DANIEL A. McFARLAND

Abstract
Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more than just
the delivery of academic content. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important school
outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers. Standard approaches, however; tend
to treat the organizational structures of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers teach and students learn. In contrast, we present the
beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex and dynamic
social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations and defined at numerous levels. In this essay, we summarize existing research in order to elaborate such a
view. To that end the essay is divided into four sections: major role relationships in
the school; organizational levels of the school; current socio-cultural changes shaping
schools as organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.

INTRODUCTION: SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS
Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more
than just the delivery of academic content. It also entails the social coordination of students, teachers, and other staff within numerous organizational
structures and activities. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important
school outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers (Elmore, 1995).
Standard approaches, however; tend to treat the organizational structures
of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers
teach and students learn (Bidwell, 2001). In contrast, in this essay we present
the beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex
and dynamic social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations
and defined at numerous levels, and we summarize existing research in
order to elaborate such a view (Frank, 1998). To that end the essay is divided
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

into four sections: major role relationships in the school; organizational
levels of the school; current socio-cultural changes shaping schools as
organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.
MAJOR ROLE RELATIONS
One of, if not the, central functions of organizations is to coordinate and
structure the relationships and interactions of its members in pursuit of institutional goals and purposes (Stinchcombe, 1965, p. 142). In the case of primary and secondary schools, the institutional goals concern the technical
and moral socialization of youth (Bidwell, 1965). We can understand this
coordination in terms of both the formal roles of teachers and students, each
coming with its own concomitant set of expectations and obligations (Bryk
& Schneider, 2002) and the more interpersonal needs and obligations that
shape informal relations (Frank, Zhao, & Borman, 2004). In schools there are
at least three primary categories of relational types, each of which cuts across
the distinction between formal and informal relations: teacher–student relationships; student peer relationships; and teacher collegial relationships. In
examining each in the following sections we show how schools can simultaneously be understood as sites of inter-generational socialization, as student
social and cultural systems, and as workplaces for faculty members.
TEACHER–STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS
Perhaps the most important relationship in the school is that between teachers and students. However, there is a fundamental tension that runs through
student–teacher relationships that pertains to the impersonal bureaucratic
aspects of schooling and the more warm and personal relationship we
often expect to occur between the young and the adults in charge of them
(Noddings, 1992). Research has shown, for example, that students with
significant relationships with school adults tend to feel more academically
engaged (Marks, 2000), have a stronger academic orientation (Solomon,
Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000), and are more likely to enlist
teacher assistance for difficult academic work (Lee & Smith, 1993). At the
same time, evidence suggests that as teachers and students develop stronger
relationships where teachers may become less likely to academically push
students for fear of fracturing the relationship (Phillips, 1997).
STUDENT SOCIAL WORLDS
Schools are also social sites where students learn how to interact with friends,
develop and negotiate their identities, and engage with and produce cultural

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

3

activities and artifacts (Milner, 2006). At the primary school level, the focus
of research and theory has generally concentrated on how children learn
the rules and norms of schools as they transition from the personal environment of the home to the more impersonal, bureaucratic environment of
school (Corsarom & Eder, 1990). At this age students have yet to develop
the group identities which are the hallmark of early and middle adolescence
(Brown, 1986). It is in middle and high schools where research has focused on
the development of student social worlds with their own rules, norms, and
practices. Much of the work in this stream describes high schools as sites of
ongoing conflict between school and academic mores (and by extension the
adult world) and the mores of the student subculture and its status hierarchies, which stand in sharp contrast to one another (Waller, 1932).
TEACHER FACULTIES AND COMMUNITIES-OF-PRACTICE
Finally, schools are workplaces for teachers and other faculty members.
Research in this area has examined that how the informal and formal
organization of teachers’ work provides (or fails to provide) resources for
dealing with the everyday problems of teaching (Bidwell & Yasumoto,
1999). Educational research long assumed that teachers generally operate
in isolation within their own classrooms and thus largely immune from the
social influence of other teachers (Lortie, 1975). More recent work, however;
has shown how teacher thinking and practice are both shaped by their social
context (Coburn, 2001). Research in this area has grown rapidly in recent
years as policy makers and reform leaders have increasingly tied school
improvement efforts to the creation of teacher professional communities in
schools because of their associated positive academic outcomes (McLaughlin
& Talbert, 2001).
ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS
As argued previously, the social coordination and structuring of student and
teacher interactions is one of the key features of schools as organizations. At
the same time, however; fully accounting for differences in outcomes also
entails examining how interactions are variably shaped by the multilayered
nature of the organizational context. Practically speaking, this means studying the social ecology of organizational features in schools at multiple levels
and how they interrelate to select for or against particular forms of coordination. In the following section, we examine four nested organizational
levels of the school and discuss how they variably shape teacher and student
experiences and outcomes. Those levels are: the organizational environment;

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

organizational structures of selection and differentiation; organizational routines; and the interaction order.
ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT
The first organizational level of the school that we discuss is that of the organizational environment. Over the past several decades the dominant view in
organizational theory has been that the internal organization of the school
is largely buffered from, or “loosely coupled” with, its institutional environment (Weick, 1976). This work argues that because there is a lack of general
agreement about educational outcomes and shared and effective technologies, school organization is largely explained in terms of its ceremonial ability to signal legitimacy to various audiences, including parents, community
members, and policy makers rather than its technical efficiency (Meyer &
Rowan, 1977). As such, the core organizational features of schools (i.e., classroom teaching and learning) are significantly buffered from changes in the
organizational environment. As we will discuss in the next section, however;
even within this institutional stream of research there is an increasing consensus that changes in federal and state policy are recoupling structures to
content and having a more direct effect on schools and classrooms than they
did in the past (Hallett, 2010).
STRUCTURES OF SELECTION AND DIFFERENTIATION
Next we turn to the internal organization of schools, an area over which
schools can exert more control. As bureaucracies, one of the central features
of school organization is the differentiation of faculty and students along various dimensions. The school faculty is organized around a division-of-labor
that differentiates between teachers, administrators, and other support staff
like counselors and curriculum specialists. One of the most important developments in the nature of school organization over the past century has been
the continuing elaboration of this division-of-labor, with increasingly complex and numerous faculty divisions and roles (Bidwell, 2001). At the same
time, teachers are also often differentiated in a more horizontal way by the
age of the students and the disciplinary subject they teach. For students, the
track or group they are assigned to influences the kinds of pedagogy and
curriculum they are exposed to, as well as how they are treated by teachers.
One result is that tracking tends to reproduce existing differences related to
socioeconomic background and race (Oakes, 1985).

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

5

ORGANIZATIONAL ROUTINES
Routines are important because they concern the technical core of schooling
(how inputs are processed into outputs) and the process of organizing—they
are the means by which roles and relations get conferred and established,
and the process by which action is coordinated and work gets done. Routinized academic activities such as lecture, recitation, and group work are
the fundamental organizing constructs of classrooms (Doyle, 1986). Routines
also provide the foundation for student social worlds and teacher faculties
(McFarland, 2005). For students, informal peer interactions entail various
routinized communicative activities such as collaborative storytelling,
gossip, and ritual teasing (Eder, 1995). Such activities are characterized by
rapid, egalitarian, overlapping turns of talk (Goodwin, 1980) and references
to adolescent styles and non-school topics such as movies, TV, music, dating,
gossip, parties, shopping, and sports (Sieber, 1979, pp. 227–231). The work of
the school staff is also structured by institutionalized and informal routines
and activities. In most schools, teachers at least occasionally have meetings
with other teachers in their same subject or who teach the same aged
students. Professional development typically entails formalized activities
in which teachers play the role of learner. In staff run schools, there are
also formal governance structures and associated routines. Moreover, like
all bureaucratic work, teachers engage in many informal interactions and
activities in teachers’ lounges, hallways, and lunchrooms.
INTERACTIONAL ORDER
The final level we discuss is that of the interaction order, or the actual
patterns of face-to-face interaction within the organization. On this level,
researchers deal with the structure and meaning of interactions in specific
concrete social situations. This entails treating the school—classrooms, hallways, teachers’ lounges—as a social ecology that is generated and sustained
by repeating patterns of communication in ongoing interaction (McFarland,
Diehl, & Rawlings, 2011). The patterning of such interaction is tied not only
to routinized activities, but also moral imperatives that are derived from
the individual need to present social selves and maintain the interaction
process (Goffman, 1983). Interest in this organizational level includes efforts
to understand the internal logic that shapes the generation of the interaction
order, but also how it impacts student and teacher attitudes and experiences
within the school. For example, students who feel engaged with school have
higher grades (Willingham, Pollack, & Lewis, 2006), test scores (Roderick &
Engel, 2001), and lower drop-out rates (Croninger & Lee, 2001).

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES AFFECTING SCHOOL
ORGANIZATION
These core issues remain central to understanding schools as organizations,
but major cultural, social, and political changes over the past several decades
have the potential to profoundly reshape them. In the following section, we
discuss three such areas. While being driven in different ways, all three of
these trends are grounded in a similar belief that the current bureaucratic
form of the school is not adequate for accomplishing desired goals and needs
to somehow be altered.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND RECOUPLING
The dominant perspective, as mentioned earlier, has been to conceptualize
schools as loosely coupled systems in which the technical core of classroom
teaching and learning is buffered from changes in the school’s policy environment. Recently, however; state and federal policymakers have been taking more direct control over what happens in schools by increasingly taking
bureaucratic control over curriculum and teaching.
This trend has been most evident in the standards and accountability
movements, which have become staples in the policy environment of American schools (Irons & Harris, 2006). While curricular content has traditionally
been decided by individual teachers and students, the standards movement
is an effort by policymakers to dictate a common set of academic content
that all students are expected to learn (Porter, McMaken, Hwang, & Yang,
2011). Increasingly, this project also entails the use of standardized tests
in order measure students’ knowledge and to hold teachers and schools
“accountable” for how well they do (Mintrop & Sunderman, 2009). Many
educational scholars have argued that, by more closely dictating what
should be taught in the classroom, and how its uptake should be measured,
that the view of schools as loosely coupled has increasingly become outdated
(Diamond, 2012).
How exactly the growth of standards and testing regimes impacts school
organization, however; remains unclear. This is because these largely
top-down state and federally mandated reforms do not specify how they
should be implemented at the local level. For this reason, local conditions
in terms of existing organizational arrangements, political coalitions, and
school history and culture, differentially shape the nature of implementation.
In response, research has increasingly focused on how environmental factors
make their way through the school doors and into the classroom. This essay
suggests that pressures from standards and testing regimes prompt teachers
to marginalize subjects not being assessed, to allocate resources based on

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

7

students’ likelihood of passing tests, and to focus increased amounts of
classroom time on the content being tested.
CHOICE, CHARTERS, AND COMPETITION
While the growth of standards and testing has served to strengthen the federal and state control over schools in bureaucratic and regulatory terms, there
has been a simultaneous effort to weaken bureaucratic control by opening
up schools to the market-based forces. Such efforts can be seen as reflective
of a long-term shift of explaining unequal school outcomes not in terms of
structural inequalities faced by students outside of school, but rather by deficiencies and inefficiencies in school organization (Sunderman, 2012). From
this perspective it is the market, rather than government, that is viewed as
the solution to the organizational problems of schools.
The idea that market forces will compel improvements in the organizational forms of schools is reflected in two related efforts to increase school
choice: voucher programs and charter schools (Chubb & Moe, 1990). In both
cases the underlying assumption of proponents is that by increasing competition among schools, organizational forms that foster student will learning
will thrive will those do not will fail. Evidence so far, however; is mixed and
inconclusive (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2009). Research
in this area is beginning to turn not only to the effectiveness of different organizational forms, but also the social processes related to their emergence and
legitimacy (King, Clemens, & Fry, 2011).
At the same time, the relationship with the market has been changing
even for traditional public schools. First, schools have increasingly turned
to private contractors to outsource functions such as food services, security,
transportation, after-school programs, and tutoring (Burch, 2006). Second,
philanthropic giving to schools has become influenced by market logics
in which funding is increasingly tied to meeting funder-defined metrics
and evaluations (Scott, 2009). This has meant a fundamental shift in the
traditional relationship between philanthropies and schools, one that has
led to more direct control over the core functions of the school through
increased accountability, not unlike the discussion of standards and testing
earlier.
TECHNOLOGY
At least since Thomas Edison told a newspaper reporter that the motion
picture would make books in schools obsolete (Smith, 1913) people have
predicted that technological innovations would revolutionize the organization of the school. That feeling is perhaps stronger today than ever, but the

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

organizational inertia of the school is strong and does not seem in danger
of being altered anytime soon. There are two reasons that role of technology
in school organization is so frequently discussed today. First, the world of
work is becoming more technologically sophisticated and schools must prepare students to be able to work within such a world. For this reason, there
are many calls for schools to more systematically train students in the use of
technology, and especially students who may not have opportunities to learn
at home (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010).
The second way that technology is implicated in the discussion of schools is
the belief that innovations have the potential to revolutions the organization
of schools in positive ways (Pitler, Hubbel, & Kuhn, 2012). This may entail
the use of technological devices like tablets to individually tailored lessons
(Tatar, Roschelle, Vahey, & Penuel, 2003) or, more radically, “flipping” the
classroom such that technology allows students’ first access to new information to happen outside the school (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). It remains to be
seen what, if any, effect new technologies will have on school organization
but historians have documented a long history of claims about technology
revolutionizing school when in fact the general tendency has actually been
for technology to be absorbed by the institution rather than transforming it
(Cuban, 2003).
Moreover, it is not just that technology has the potential to impact organizational features of schools, those same organizational features shape how technology is adopted and implemented. Warschauer, Knobel, and Stone (2004),
for example, found that due to less stable teaching and support staff, low-SES
neighborhood schools were less likely to adopt and implement new technologies in the classroom. Beyond this, Warschauer and colleagues found that
teachers in low-SES schools also had to deal with a more complex “instructional environment” because they taught more English language learners
and at-risk students, students who generally had fewer computer experiences. In addition, they felt greater pressure in terms of test scores and policy
mandates (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010). One result of such differences
in organizational environment is that teachers of low-SES students tend to
use technology for basic, remedial tasks whereas teachers of high-SES students use those same technologies for more active and constructivist purposes (Becker, 2000).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS: PROCESSES AND INTEGRATING LEVELS
The social, cultural, and technological changes described earlier challenge
some of our longstanding conceptualizations of schools as organizations
(Rowan, 2006). Moreover, the study of organizations is itself undergoing a
turn to focus more on dynamics and processes (Scott, 2004). In response to

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

9

both these real world and theoretical shifts we see the future of organizational analysis of schools as taking a more processual view of schools, one
that pays significantly more attention to cross-level mechanisms. We argue
below for a view of schools not as organizational “containers” within which
teaching and learning occurs, but rather dynamic networks of interaction
that constitute ongoing organizing processes (Leander, Phillips, & Taylor,
2010). We discuss possible ways to study such dynamic processes across
each of the organizational levels discussed earlier.
First, we can add to existing studies of the relationship between the school
and its environment by taking up Nelson and Winter’s conceptualization
of routines as the DNA of organizations (1982). From this perspective, we
can see the selection, use, and discarding of classroom academic activities
and other organizational routines as a major source of change in schools. At
the global level, changes in activities and routines may come through policy changes or educational movements (Rury, 2009). At the local level, they
may come through political or economic struggles or in response to changes
in student or teacher compositions (Bidwell, 2001). Even more importantly,
though, such a perspective allows us to focus not only on intentional reform
efforts, which currently dominate organizational studies of schools, but also
more evolutionary processes through which school structures and routines
are selected or discarded on a wide scale without the need for the kind of
explicit coordination that marks reform efforts.
The next step in a dynamic cross-level analysis would be to study how the
adoption or alteration of activities shapes, and is shaped by, patterns of interaction. Traditionally, the study of school change has been undertaken either
through large-scale surveys of implementation or through case studies of
particular sites (Desimone, 2002). In short supply, then, are systematic comparative studies of the interrelation of activity structures and interactional
patterns (Diehl & McFarland, 2012). There are numerous methods that can
be used for such research, including discourse (Little, 2003), activity system
(Roth & Lee, 2007), and network analysis (Penuel et al., 2010). Moreover as
alluded to earlier, such research approaches are necessary if we are to understand how broad changes in accountability, choice and technology actually
influence processes of teaching and learning in the everyday lives of schools.
Along these same lines, we also need to better understand how such
changes in interactional processes interrelate with what is perhaps the
central purpose of schools—the transmission of knowledge. Little organizational work has examined the relationship between forms of instruction
and their content. This is key because skillful students must simultaneously
engage with the interactional form of academic activities as well as the
cognitive structure and the content being taught. The goal in such work
would be better to understand how the social organization of interaction

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in classrooms and schools interrelates with the cognitive organization of
academic content. That is, learning in schools is both an issue of collective
social coordination and individual cognitive modification, yet little work
studies their intersection.
Finally, we need to pay more attention to the broad socializing effects of
schools (Bidwell, 2001). While existing work focuses on how students are
socialized into the impersonal and bureaucratic structures of the school
(including students’ developing understanding of the nature of authority
and how to conduct oneself as a client in a formal organization) there
is little research examining how variation in school organization shapes
students’ behavior and experience in other settings. That is, we need to
better understand how the socialization processes of schools transfers to
nonschool situations. There are several possible mechanisms that need to be
investigated: One is that, school socialization provides students with a sense
of legitimacy of cultural products and symbols (Dreeben, 1968). A second
is that, school socialization shapes a general conception of knowledge as
well as a particular relationship to scientific knowledge (Driver et al., 1994).
A third is that, schools socialize students into the use of different hands-on
techniques or intellectual habits (Keating, 1996). Whatever the mechanisms
may be, there is much to be gained from a deeper understanding of how the
organizational features of schools variably aid in socializing students into
the moral and technical vision of their given communities and societies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This essay was made possible by support from NSF award # 0624134.
REFERENCES
Becker, H. J. (2000). Who’s wired and who’s not: Children’s access to and use of
computer technology. Future of Children, 10(2), 44–75.
Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Before you flip, consider this. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(2),
25.
Bidwell, C. (1965). The School as a Formal Organization. In J. March (Ed.), Handbook
of Organizations (pp. 972–1022). Chicago: Rand McNally.
Bidwell, C. E. (2001). Analyzing schools as organizations: Long-term permanence
and short-term change. Sociology of Education, 74 Extra Issue: Current of Thought:
Sociology of Education at the Dawn of the 21st Century, 100–114.
Bidwell, C., & Yasumoto, J. (1999). The collegial focus: Teaching fields, collegial relationships, and instructional practice in american high schools. Sociology of Education, 72(4), 234–256.
Brown, B. B. (1986). The importance of peer group (“Crowd”) affiliation in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 9(1), 73–96.

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

11

Bryk, A. S., & Schneider, B. L. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement.
Chicago, IL: Russell Sage Foundation Publications.
Burch, P. (2006). The new educational privatization: Educational contracting and
high stakes accountability. Teachers College Record, 108(12), 2582–2610.
Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2009). Multiple choice: Charter school performance in 16 states. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution.
Coburn, C. E. (2001). Collective sensemaking about reading: How teachers mediate
reading policy in their professional communities. Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis, 23(2), 145–170.
Corsarom, W. A., & Eder, D. (1990). Children’s peer cultures. Annual Review of Sociology, 16, 197–220.
Croninger, R. G., & Lee, V. E. (2001). Social capital and dropping out of high schools:
Benefits to at-risk students of teachers’ support and guidance. Teachers College
Record, 103(4), 548–581.
Cuban, L. (2003). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Desimone, L. (2002). How can comprehensive school reform models be successfully
implemented? Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 433–479.
Diamond, J. B. (2012). Accountability policy, school organization, and classroom
practice: Partial recoupling and educational opportunity. Education and Urban Society, 44(2), 151–182.
Diehl, D., & McFarland, D. A. (2012). Classroom ordering and the situational imperatives of routine and ritual. Sociology of Education, 85(4), 326–349.
Doyle, W. (1986). Classroom organization and management (Chapter 14). In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan.
Dreeben, R. (1968). On what is learned in school. Reading, MA: Addison & Wesley.
Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Scott, P., & Mortimer, E. (1994). Constructing Scientific
Knowledge in the Classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5–12.
Eder, D. (1995). School talk: Gender and adolescent culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Elmore, R. F. (1995). Teaching, learning, and school organization: Principles of practice and the regularities of schooling. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31(3),
355–374.
Frank, K. A. (1998). Quantitative methods for studying social context in multilevels and through interpersonal relations. Review of Research in Education, 23,
71–216.
Frank, K. A., Zhao, Y., & Borman, K. (2004). Social capital and the diffusion of innovations within organizations: The case of computer technology in schools. Sociology
of Education, 77(2), 148–171.
Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17.
Goodwin, M. (1980). He-said-she-said: Formal cultural procedures for the construction of a gossip dispute activity. American Ethnologist, 7, 674–695.

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Hallett, T. (2010). The myth incarnate: Recoupling processes, turmoil, and inhabited institutions in an urban elementary school. American Sociological Review, 75(1),
52–74.
Irons, E. J., & Harris, S. (2006). The challenge of no child left behind: Understanding the
issues of excellence, accountability and choice. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman &
Littlefield Education.
Keating, D. P. (1996). Habits of mind for a learning society: Educating for human
development. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Handbook of education and human
development: New models of learning, teaching, and schooling (pp. 461–481). Oxford,
England: Blackwell.
King, B. G., Clemens, E. S., & Fry, M. (2011). Identity realization and organizational
forms: Differentiation and consolidation of identities among Arizona’s charter
schools. Organization Science, 22(3), 554–572.
Leander, K. M., Phillips, N. C., & Taylor, K. H. (2010). The changing social maps of
learning: Mapping new mobilities. Review of Research in Education, 34, 329–394.
Lee, V. E., & Smith, J. B. (1993). Social support and achievement for young adolescents in Chicago: The role of school academic press. American Educational Research
Journal, 36(4), 907–945.
Little, J. (2003). Inside teacher community: Representations of classroom practice.
Teachers College Record, 105(6), 913–945.
Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Marks, H. M. (2000). Student engagement in instructional activity: Patterns in the
elementary, middle, and high school years. American Education Research Journal,
37(1), 153–184.
McFarland, D. A. (2005). Why work when you can play? Dynamics of formal and
informal organization in classrooms. In L. Hedges & B. Schneider (Eds.), The social
organization of schooling (pp. 147–174). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
McFarland, D. A., Diehl, D., & Rawlings, C. (2011). Methodological transactionalism and the sociology of education. In M. Hallinan (Ed.), Frontiers in sociology of
education (pp. 87–109). New York, NY: Springer.
McLaughlin, M. W., & Talbert, J. E. (2001). Professional communities and the work of high
school teaching. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure
as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363.
Milner, M., Jr., (2006). Freaks, geeks and cool kids. New York, NY: Routledge.
Mintrop, H., & Sunderman, G. L. (2009). Predictable failure of federal sanctionsdriven accountability for school improvement—and why we may retain it anyway. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 353–364.
Nelson, R. R., & Winters, S. G. (1982). An evolutionary theory of economic change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York, NY: Teachers College
Press.
Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

13

Penuel, W. R., Riel, M., Joshi, A., Pearlman, L., Kim, C. M., & Frank, K. A. (2010). The
alignment of the informal and formal organizational supports for reform: Implications for improving teaching in schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(1),
57–95.
Phillips, M. E. (1997). What makes schools effective? A comparison of the relationships of communitarian climate and academic climate to mathematics achievement and attendance during middle school. American Educational Research Journal,
34(4), 633–662.
Pitler, H., Hubbel, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction
that works. Denver, CO: ASCD.
Porter, A., McMaken, J., Hwang, J., & Yang, R. (2011). Common core standards: The
new U.S. intended curriculum. Educational Researcher, 40(3), 103–116.
Roderick, M., & Engel, M. (2001). The grasshopper and the ant: Motivational
responses of low-achieving students to high-stakes testing. Educational Evaluation
and Policy Analysis, 23(3), 197–227.
Roth, W.-M., & Lee, Y.-J. (2007). ‘Vygotsky’s Neglected Legacy’: Cultural- historical
activity theory. Review of Educational Research, 77(2), 186–232.
Rowan, B. (2006). The new institutionalism and the study of educational organizations: Changing ideas for changing times. In H.-D. Meyer & B. Rowan (Eds.), The
New Institutionalism in Education (pp. 15–32). Albany, NY: State University Press
of New York.
Rury, J. L. (2009). Education and social change: Contours in the history of American schooling. New York, NY: Routledge.
Scott, J. (2009). The politics of venture philanthropy in charter school policy and
advocacy. Educational Policy, 23(1), 106–136.
Scott, W. R. (2004). Reflections on a half-century of organizational sociology. Annual
Review of Sociology, 30, 1–21.
Sieber, R. T. (1979). Classmates as workmates: Informal peer activity in the elementary school. Anthropology and Education, 10(4), 207–235.
Smith, FJ. (1913, 9 July). The evolution of the motion picture: VI – looking into the
future with Thomas A. Edison. The New York Dramatic Mirror, Page 24, Column 3,
New York.
Solomon, D., Battistich, V., Watson, M., Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. (2000). A six district
study of educational change: Direct and mediated effects of the child development
project. Social Psychology of Education, 4(1), 3–51.
Stinchcombe, A. L. (1965). Organizations and social structure. In J. G. March (Ed.),
Handbook of organizations (pp. 142–193). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
Sunderman, G. L. (2012). Evidence of the impact of school reform on systems governance and educational bureaucracies in the United States. Review of Research in
Education, 34, 226–253.
Tatar, D., Roschelle, J., Vahey, P., & Penuel, W. R. (2003). Handhelds go to school:
Lessons learned. IEEE Computer, 36(9), 30–37.
Waller, W. (1932). The sociology of teaching. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 179–225.
Warschauer, M., Knobel, M., & Stone, L. (2004). Technology and equity in schooling:
Deconstructing the digital divide. Educational Policy, 18(4), 562–588.
Weick, K. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1–19.
Willingham, W. W., Pollack, J. M., & Lewis, C. (2006). Grades and test scores:
Accounting for observed differences. Journal of Educational Measurement, 39(1),
1–37.

DAVID DIEHL SHORT BIOGRAPHY
David Diehl is an assistant professor of Human and Organizational Development in the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. In
his work, he examines how organizational structures and practices shape
interactional networks and reforms which attempt to alter the structures and
meanings of social relationships as a means for organizational improvement.
DANIEL A. McFARLAND SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Daniel A. McFarland is an associate professor of education at Stanford University, specializing in social dynamics. He teaches graduate-level courses in
social networks, social theory, organizations, and knowledge creation. He is
currently engaged in several projects concerning the co-evolution of social
networks and cultural systems. He is also an associate professor of Sociology
and Organizational Behavior (by courtesy).
RELATED ESSAYS
Learning Across the Life Course (Sociology), Jutta Allmendinger and Marcel
Helbig
Economics of Early Education (Economics), W. Steven Barnett
Shadow Education (Sociology), Soo-yong Byun and David P. Baker
Enduring Effects of Education (Sociology), Matthew Curry and Jennie E.
Brand
Social Class and Parental Investment in Children (Sociology), Anne H.
Gauthier
Evaluating and Rewarding Teachers (Educ), Cassandra Hart
Educational Testing: Measuring and Remedying Achievement Gaps (Educ),
Jaekyung Lee
Gender Inequality in Educational Attainment (Sociology), Anne McDaniel
and Claudia Buchmann

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

15

Rationalization of Higher Education (Sociology), Tressie McMillan Cottom
and Gaye Tuchman
Education in an Open Informational World (Educ), Marlene Scardamalia
and Carl Bereiter
Higher Education: A Field in Ferment (Sociology), W. Richard Scott
Impact of Limited Education on Employment Prospects in Advanced
Economies (Sociology), Heike Solga
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
(Sociology), Herman G. van de Werfhorst



The Organization of Schools
and Classrooms
DAVID DIEHL and DANIEL A. McFARLAND

Abstract
Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more than just
the delivery of academic content. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important school
outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers. Standard approaches, however; tend
to treat the organizational structures of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers teach and students learn. In contrast, we present the
beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex and dynamic
social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations and defined at numerous levels. In this essay, we summarize existing research in order to elaborate such a
view. To that end the essay is divided into four sections: major role relationships in
the school; organizational levels of the school; current socio-cultural changes shaping
schools as organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.

INTRODUCTION: SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS
Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more
than just the delivery of academic content. It also entails the social coordination of students, teachers, and other staff within numerous organizational
structures and activities. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important
school outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers (Elmore, 1995).
Standard approaches, however; tend to treat the organizational structures
of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers
teach and students learn (Bidwell, 2001). In contrast, in this essay we present
the beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex
and dynamic social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations
and defined at numerous levels, and we summarize existing research in
order to elaborate such a view (Frank, 1998). To that end the essay is divided
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

into four sections: major role relationships in the school; organizational
levels of the school; current socio-cultural changes shaping schools as
organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.
MAJOR ROLE RELATIONS
One of, if not the, central functions of organizations is to coordinate and
structure the relationships and interactions of its members in pursuit of institutional goals and purposes (Stinchcombe, 1965, p. 142). In the case of primary and secondary schools, the institutional goals concern the technical
and moral socialization of youth (Bidwell, 1965). We can understand this
coordination in terms of both the formal roles of teachers and students, each
coming with its own concomitant set of expectations and obligations (Bryk
& Schneider, 2002) and the more interpersonal needs and obligations that
shape informal relations (Frank, Zhao, & Borman, 2004). In schools there are
at least three primary categories of relational types, each of which cuts across
the distinction between formal and informal relations: teacher–student relationships; student peer relationships; and teacher collegial relationships. In
examining each in the following sections we show how schools can simultaneously be understood as sites of inter-generational socialization, as student
social and cultural systems, and as workplaces for faculty members.
TEACHER–STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS
Perhaps the most important relationship in the school is that between teachers and students. However, there is a fundamental tension that runs through
student–teacher relationships that pertains to the impersonal bureaucratic
aspects of schooling and the more warm and personal relationship we
often expect to occur between the young and the adults in charge of them
(Noddings, 1992). Research has shown, for example, that students with
significant relationships with school adults tend to feel more academically
engaged (Marks, 2000), have a stronger academic orientation (Solomon,
Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000), and are more likely to enlist
teacher assistance for difficult academic work (Lee & Smith, 1993). At the
same time, evidence suggests that as teachers and students develop stronger
relationships where teachers may become less likely to academically push
students for fear of fracturing the relationship (Phillips, 1997).
STUDENT SOCIAL WORLDS
Schools are also social sites where students learn how to interact with friends,
develop and negotiate their identities, and engage with and produce cultural

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

3

activities and artifacts (Milner, 2006). At the primary school level, the focus
of research and theory has generally concentrated on how children learn
the rules and norms of schools as they transition from the personal environment of the home to the more impersonal, bureaucratic environment of
school (Corsarom & Eder, 1990). At this age students have yet to develop
the group identities which are the hallmark of early and middle adolescence
(Brown, 1986). It is in middle and high schools where research has focused on
the development of student social worlds with their own rules, norms, and
practices. Much of the work in this stream describes high schools as sites of
ongoing conflict between school and academic mores (and by extension the
adult world) and the mores of the student subculture and its status hierarchies, which stand in sharp contrast to one another (Waller, 1932).
TEACHER FACULTIES AND COMMUNITIES-OF-PRACTICE
Finally, schools are workplaces for teachers and other faculty members.
Research in this area has examined that how the informal and formal
organization of teachers’ work provides (or fails to provide) resources for
dealing with the everyday problems of teaching (Bidwell & Yasumoto,
1999). Educational research long assumed that teachers generally operate
in isolation within their own classrooms and thus largely immune from the
social influence of other teachers (Lortie, 1975). More recent work, however;
has shown how teacher thinking and practice are both shaped by their social
context (Coburn, 2001). Research in this area has grown rapidly in recent
years as policy makers and reform leaders have increasingly tied school
improvement efforts to the creation of teacher professional communities in
schools because of their associated positive academic outcomes (McLaughlin
& Talbert, 2001).
ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS
As argued previously, the social coordination and structuring of student and
teacher interactions is one of the key features of schools as organizations. At
the same time, however; fully accounting for differences in outcomes also
entails examining how interactions are variably shaped by the multilayered
nature of the organizational context. Practically speaking, this means studying the social ecology of organizational features in schools at multiple levels
and how they interrelate to select for or against particular forms of coordination. In the following section, we examine four nested organizational
levels of the school and discuss how they variably shape teacher and student
experiences and outcomes. Those levels are: the organizational environment;

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

organizational structures of selection and differentiation; organizational routines; and the interaction order.
ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT
The first organizational level of the school that we discuss is that of the organizational environment. Over the past several decades the dominant view in
organizational theory has been that the internal organization of the school
is largely buffered from, or “loosely coupled” with, its institutional environment (Weick, 1976). This work argues that because there is a lack of general
agreement about educational outcomes and shared and effective technologies, school organization is largely explained in terms of its ceremonial ability to signal legitimacy to various audiences, including parents, community
members, and policy makers rather than its technical efficiency (Meyer &
Rowan, 1977). As such, the core organizational features of schools (i.e., classroom teaching and learning) are significantly buffered from changes in the
organizational environment. As we will discuss in the next section, however;
even within this institutional stream of research there is an increasing consensus that changes in federal and state policy are recoupling structures to
content and having a more direct effect on schools and classrooms than they
did in the past (Hallett, 2010).
STRUCTURES OF SELECTION AND DIFFERENTIATION
Next we turn to the internal organization of schools, an area over which
schools can exert more control. As bureaucracies, one of the central features
of school organization is the differentiation of faculty and students along various dimensions. The school faculty is organized around a division-of-labor
that differentiates between teachers, administrators, and other support staff
like counselors and curriculum specialists. One of the most important developments in the nature of school organization over the past century has been
the continuing elaboration of this division-of-labor, with increasingly complex and numerous faculty divisions and roles (Bidwell, 2001). At the same
time, teachers are also often differentiated in a more horizontal way by the
age of the students and the disciplinary subject they teach. For students, the
track or group they are assigned to influences the kinds of pedagogy and
curriculum they are exposed to, as well as how they are treated by teachers.
One result is that tracking tends to reproduce existing differences related to
socioeconomic background and race (Oakes, 1985).

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

5

ORGANIZATIONAL ROUTINES
Routines are important because they concern the technical core of schooling
(how inputs are processed into outputs) and the process of organizing—they
are the means by which roles and relations get conferred and established,
and the process by which action is coordinated and work gets done. Routinized academic activities such as lecture, recitation, and group work are
the fundamental organizing constructs of classrooms (Doyle, 1986). Routines
also provide the foundation for student social worlds and teacher faculties
(McFarland, 2005). For students, informal peer interactions entail various
routinized communicative activities such as collaborative storytelling,
gossip, and ritual teasing (Eder, 1995). Such activities are characterized by
rapid, egalitarian, overlapping turns of talk (Goodwin, 1980) and references
to adolescent styles and non-school topics such as movies, TV, music, dating,
gossip, parties, shopping, and sports (Sieber, 1979, pp. 227–231). The work of
the school staff is also structured by institutionalized and informal routines
and activities. In most schools, teachers at least occasionally have meetings
with other teachers in their same subject or who teach the same aged
students. Professional development typically entails formalized activities
in which teachers play the role of learner. In staff run schools, there are
also formal governance structures and associated routines. Moreover, like
all bureaucratic work, teachers engage in many informal interactions and
activities in teachers’ lounges, hallways, and lunchrooms.
INTERACTIONAL ORDER
The final level we discuss is that of the interaction order, or the actual
patterns of face-to-face interaction within the organization. On this level,
researchers deal with the structure and meaning of interactions in specific
concrete social situations. This entails treating the school—classrooms, hallways, teachers’ lounges—as a social ecology that is generated and sustained
by repeating patterns of communication in ongoing interaction (McFarland,
Diehl, & Rawlings, 2011). The patterning of such interaction is tied not only
to routinized activities, but also moral imperatives that are derived from
the individual need to present social selves and maintain the interaction
process (Goffman, 1983). Interest in this organizational level includes efforts
to understand the internal logic that shapes the generation of the interaction
order, but also how it impacts student and teacher attitudes and experiences
within the school. For example, students who feel engaged with school have
higher grades (Willingham, Pollack, & Lewis, 2006), test scores (Roderick &
Engel, 2001), and lower drop-out rates (Croninger & Lee, 2001).

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES AFFECTING SCHOOL
ORGANIZATION
These core issues remain central to understanding schools as organizations,
but major cultural, social, and political changes over the past several decades
have the potential to profoundly reshape them. In the following section, we
discuss three such areas. While being driven in different ways, all three of
these trends are grounded in a similar belief that the current bureaucratic
form of the school is not adequate for accomplishing desired goals and needs
to somehow be altered.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND RECOUPLING
The dominant perspective, as mentioned earlier, has been to conceptualize
schools as loosely coupled systems in which the technical core of classroom
teaching and learning is buffered from changes in the school’s policy environment. Recently, however; state and federal policymakers have been taking more direct control over what happens in schools by increasingly taking
bureaucratic control over curriculum and teaching.
This trend has been most evident in the standards and accountability
movements, which have become staples in the policy environment of American schools (Irons & Harris, 2006). While curricular content has traditionally
been decided by individual teachers and students, the standards movement
is an effort by policymakers to dictate a common set of academic content
that all students are expected to learn (Porter, McMaken, Hwang, & Yang,
2011). Increasingly, this project also entails the use of standardized tests
in order measure students’ knowledge and to hold teachers and schools
“accountable” for how well they do (Mintrop & Sunderman, 2009). Many
educational scholars have argued that, by more closely dictating what
should be taught in the classroom, and how its uptake should be measured,
that the view of schools as loosely coupled has increasingly become outdated
(Diamond, 2012).
How exactly the growth of standards and testing regimes impacts school
organization, however; remains unclear. This is because these largely
top-down state and federally mandated reforms do not specify how they
should be implemented at the local level. For this reason, local conditions
in terms of existing organizational arrangements, political coalitions, and
school history and culture, differentially shape the nature of implementation.
In response, research has increasingly focused on how environmental factors
make their way through the school doors and into the classroom. This essay
suggests that pressures from standards and testing regimes prompt teachers
to marginalize subjects not being assessed, to allocate resources based on

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

7

students’ likelihood of passing tests, and to focus increased amounts of
classroom time on the content being tested.
CHOICE, CHARTERS, AND COMPETITION
While the growth of standards and testing has served to strengthen the federal and state control over schools in bureaucratic and regulatory terms, there
has been a simultaneous effort to weaken bureaucratic control by opening
up schools to the market-based forces. Such efforts can be seen as reflective
of a long-term shift of explaining unequal school outcomes not in terms of
structural inequalities faced by students outside of school, but rather by deficiencies and inefficiencies in school organization (Sunderman, 2012). From
this perspective it is the market, rather than government, that is viewed as
the solution to the organizational problems of schools.
The idea that market forces will compel improvements in the organizational forms of schools is reflected in two related efforts to increase school
choice: voucher programs and charter schools (Chubb & Moe, 1990). In both
cases the underlying assumption of proponents is that by increasing competition among schools, organizational forms that foster student will learning
will thrive will those do not will fail. Evidence so far, however; is mixed and
inconclusive (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2009). Research
in this area is beginning to turn not only to the effectiveness of different organizational forms, but also the social processes related to their emergence and
legitimacy (King, Clemens, & Fry, 2011).
At the same time, the relationship with the market has been changing
even for traditional public schools. First, schools have increasingly turned
to private contractors to outsource functions such as food services, security,
transportation, after-school programs, and tutoring (Burch, 2006). Second,
philanthropic giving to schools has become influenced by market logics
in which funding is increasingly tied to meeting funder-defined metrics
and evaluations (Scott, 2009). This has meant a fundamental shift in the
traditional relationship between philanthropies and schools, one that has
led to more direct control over the core functions of the school through
increased accountability, not unlike the discussion of standards and testing
earlier.
TECHNOLOGY
At least since Thomas Edison told a newspaper reporter that the motion
picture would make books in schools obsolete (Smith, 1913) people have
predicted that technological innovations would revolutionize the organization of the school. That feeling is perhaps stronger today than ever, but the

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

organizational inertia of the school is strong and does not seem in danger
of being altered anytime soon. There are two reasons that role of technology
in school organization is so frequently discussed today. First, the world of
work is becoming more technologically sophisticated and schools must prepare students to be able to work within such a world. For this reason, there
are many calls for schools to more systematically train students in the use of
technology, and especially students who may not have opportunities to learn
at home (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010).
The second way that technology is implicated in the discussion of schools is
the belief that innovations have the potential to revolutions the organization
of schools in positive ways (Pitler, Hubbel, & Kuhn, 2012). This may entail
the use of technological devices like tablets to individually tailored lessons
(Tatar, Roschelle, Vahey, & Penuel, 2003) or, more radically, “flipping” the
classroom such that technology allows students’ first access to new information to happen outside the school (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). It remains to be
seen what, if any, effect new technologies will have on school organization
but historians have documented a long history of claims about technology
revolutionizing school when in fact the general tendency has actually been
for technology to be absorbed by the institution rather than transforming it
(Cuban, 2003).
Moreover, it is not just that technology has the potential to impact organizational features of schools, those same organizational features shape how technology is adopted and implemented. Warschauer, Knobel, and Stone (2004),
for example, found that due to less stable teaching and support staff, low-SES
neighborhood schools were less likely to adopt and implement new technologies in the classroom. Beyond this, Warschauer and colleagues found that
teachers in low-SES schools also had to deal with a more complex “instructional environment” because they taught more English language learners
and at-risk students, students who generally had fewer computer experiences. In addition, they felt greater pressure in terms of test scores and policy
mandates (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010). One result of such differences
in organizational environment is that teachers of low-SES students tend to
use technology for basic, remedial tasks whereas teachers of high-SES students use those same technologies for more active and constructivist purposes (Becker, 2000).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS: PROCESSES AND INTEGRATING LEVELS
The social, cultural, and technological changes described earlier challenge
some of our longstanding conceptualizations of schools as organizations
(Rowan, 2006). Moreover, the study of organizations is itself undergoing a
turn to focus more on dynamics and processes (Scott, 2004). In response to

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

9

both these real world and theoretical shifts we see the future of organizational analysis of schools as taking a more processual view of schools, one
that pays significantly more attention to cross-level mechanisms. We argue
below for a view of schools not as organizational “containers” within which
teaching and learning occurs, but rather dynamic networks of interaction
that constitute ongoing organizing processes (Leander, Phillips, & Taylor,
2010). We discuss possible ways to study such dynamic processes across
each of the organizational levels discussed earlier.
First, we can add to existing studies of the relationship between the school
and its environment by taking up Nelson and Winter’s conceptualization
of routines as the DNA of organizations (1982). From this perspective, we
can see the selection, use, and discarding of classroom academic activities
and other organizational routines as a major source of change in schools. At
the global level, changes in activities and routines may come through policy changes or educational movements (Rury, 2009). At the local level, they
may come through political or economic struggles or in response to changes
in student or teacher compositions (Bidwell, 2001). Even more importantly,
though, such a perspective allows us to focus not only on intentional reform
efforts, which currently dominate organizational studies of schools, but also
more evolutionary processes through which school structures and routines
are selected or discarded on a wide scale without the need for the kind of
explicit coordination that marks reform efforts.
The next step in a dynamic cross-level analysis would be to study how the
adoption or alteration of activities shapes, and is shaped by, patterns of interaction. Traditionally, the study of school change has been undertaken either
through large-scale surveys of implementation or through case studies of
particular sites (Desimone, 2002). In short supply, then, are systematic comparative studies of the interrelation of activity structures and interactional
patterns (Diehl & McFarland, 2012). There are numerous methods that can
be used for such research, including discourse (Little, 2003), activity system
(Roth & Lee, 2007), and network analysis (Penuel et al., 2010). Moreover as
alluded to earlier, such research approaches are necessary if we are to understand how broad changes in accountability, choice and technology actually
influence processes of teaching and learning in the everyday lives of schools.
Along these same lines, we also need to better understand how such
changes in interactional processes interrelate with what is perhaps the
central purpose of schools—the transmission of knowledge. Little organizational work has examined the relationship between forms of instruction
and their content. This is key because skillful students must simultaneously
engage with the interactional form of academic activities as well as the
cognitive structure and the content being taught. The goal in such work
would be better to understand how the social organization of interaction

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in classrooms and schools interrelates with the cognitive organization of
academic content. That is, learning in schools is both an issue of collective
social coordination and individual cognitive modification, yet little work
studies their intersection.
Finally, we need to pay more attention to the broad socializing effects of
schools (Bidwell, 2001). While existing work focuses on how students are
socialized into the impersonal and bureaucratic structures of the school
(including students’ developing understanding of the nature of authority
and how to conduct oneself as a client in a formal organization) there
is little research examining how variation in school organization shapes
students’ behavior and experience in other settings. That is, we need to
better understand how the socialization processes of schools transfers to
nonschool situations. There are several possible mechanisms that need to be
investigated: One is that, school socialization provides students with a sense
of legitimacy of cultural products and symbols (Dreeben, 1968). A second
is that, school socialization shapes a general conception of knowledge as
well as a particular relationship to scientific knowledge (Driver et al., 1994).
A third is that, schools socialize students into the use of different hands-on
techniques or intellectual habits (Keating, 1996). Whatever the mechanisms
may be, there is much to be gained from a deeper understanding of how the
organizational features of schools variably aid in socializing students into
the moral and technical vision of their given communities and societies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This essay was made possible by support from NSF award # 0624134.
REFERENCES
Becker, H. J. (2000). Who’s wired and who’s not: Children’s access to and use of
computer technology. Future of Children, 10(2), 44–75.
Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Before you flip, consider this. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(2),
25.
Bidwell, C. (1965). The School as a Formal Organization. In J. March (Ed.), Handbook
of Organizations (pp. 972–1022). Chicago: Rand McNally.
Bidwell, C. E. (2001). Analyzing schools as organizations: Long-term permanence
and short-term change. Sociology of Education, 74 Extra Issue: Current of Thought:
Sociology of Education at the Dawn of the 21st Century, 100–114.
Bidwell, C., & Yasumoto, J. (1999). The collegial focus: Teaching fields, collegial relationships, and instructional practice in american high schools. Sociology of Education, 72(4), 234–256.
Brown, B. B. (1986). The importance of peer group (“Crowd”) affiliation in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 9(1), 73–96.

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

11

Bryk, A. S., & Schneider, B. L. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement.
Chicago, IL: Russell Sage Foundation Publications.
Burch, P. (2006). The new educational privatization: Educational contracting and
high stakes accountability. Teachers College Record, 108(12), 2582–2610.
Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2009). Multiple choice: Charter school performance in 16 states. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution.
Coburn, C. E. (2001). Collective sensemaking about reading: How teachers mediate
reading policy in their professional communities. Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis, 23(2), 145–170.
Corsarom, W. A., & Eder, D. (1990). Children’s peer cultures. Annual Review of Sociology, 16, 197–220.
Croninger, R. G., & Lee, V. E. (2001). Social capital and dropping out of high schools:
Benefits to at-risk students of teachers’ support and guidance. Teachers College
Record, 103(4), 548–581.
Cuban, L. (2003). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Desimone, L. (2002). How can comprehensive school reform models be successfully
implemented? Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 433–479.
Diamond, J. B. (2012). Accountability policy, school organization, and classroom
practice: Partial recoupling and educational opportunity. Education and Urban Society, 44(2), 151–182.
Diehl, D., & McFarland, D. A. (2012). Classroom ordering and the situational imperatives of routine and ritual. Sociology of Education, 85(4), 326–349.
Doyle, W. (1986). Classroom organization and management (Chapter 14). In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan.
Dreeben, R. (1968). On what is learned in school. Reading, MA: Addison & Wesley.
Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Scott, P., & Mortimer, E. (1994). Constructing Scientific
Knowledge in the Classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5–12.
Eder, D. (1995). School talk: Gender and adolescent culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Elmore, R. F. (1995). Teaching, learning, and school organization: Principles of practice and the regularities of schooling. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31(3),
355–374.
Frank, K. A. (1998). Quantitative methods for studying social context in multilevels and through interpersonal relations. Review of Research in Education, 23,
71–216.
Frank, K. A., Zhao, Y., & Borman, K. (2004). Social capital and the diffusion of innovations within organizations: The case of computer technology in schools. Sociology
of Education, 77(2), 148–171.
Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17.
Goodwin, M. (1980). He-said-she-said: Formal cultural procedures for the construction of a gossip dispute activity. American Ethnologist, 7, 674–695.

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Hallett, T. (2010). The myth incarnate: Recoupling processes, turmoil, and inhabited institutions in an urban elementary school. American Sociological Review, 75(1),
52–74.
Irons, E. J., & Harris, S. (2006). The challenge of no child left behind: Understanding the
issues of excellence, accountability and choice. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman &
Littlefield Education.
Keating, D. P. (1996). Habits of mind for a learning society: Educating for human
development. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Handbook of education and human
development: New models of learning, teaching, and schooling (pp. 461–481). Oxford,
England: Blackwell.
King, B. G., Clemens, E. S., & Fry, M. (2011). Identity realization and organizational
forms: Differentiation and consolidation of identities among Arizona’s charter
schools. Organization Science, 22(3), 554–572.
Leander, K. M., Phillips, N. C., & Taylor, K. H. (2010). The changing social maps of
learning: Mapping new mobilities. Review of Research in Education, 34, 329–394.
Lee, V. E., & Smith, J. B. (1993). Social support and achievement for young adolescents in Chicago: The role of school academic press. American Educational Research
Journal, 36(4), 907–945.
Little, J. (2003). Inside teacher community: Representations of classroom practice.
Teachers College Record, 105(6), 913–945.
Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Marks, H. M. (2000). Student engagement in instructional activity: Patterns in the
elementary, middle, and high school years. American Education Research Journal,
37(1), 153–184.
McFarland, D. A. (2005). Why work when you can play? Dynamics of formal and
informal organization in classrooms. In L. Hedges & B. Schneider (Eds.), The social
organization of schooling (pp. 147–174). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
McFarland, D. A., Diehl, D., & Rawlings, C. (2011). Methodological transactionalism and the sociology of education. In M. Hallinan (Ed.), Frontiers in sociology of
education (pp. 87–109). New York, NY: Springer.
McLaughlin, M. W., & Talbert, J. E. (2001). Professional communities and the work of high
school teaching. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure
as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363.
Milner, M., Jr., (2006). Freaks, geeks and cool kids. New York, NY: Routledge.
Mintrop, H., & Sunderman, G. L. (2009). Predictable failure of federal sanctionsdriven accountability for school improvement—and why we may retain it anyway. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 353–364.
Nelson, R. R., & Winters, S. G. (1982). An evolutionary theory of economic change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York, NY: Teachers College
Press.
Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

13

Penuel, W. R., Riel, M., Joshi, A., Pearlman, L., Kim, C. M., & Frank, K. A. (2010). The
alignment of the informal and formal organizational supports for reform: Implications for improving teaching in schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(1),
57–95.
Phillips, M. E. (1997). What makes schools effective? A comparison of the relationships of communitarian climate and academic climate to mathematics achievement and attendance during middle school. American Educational Research Journal,
34(4), 633–662.
Pitler, H., Hubbel, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction
that works. Denver, CO: ASCD.
Porter, A., McMaken, J., Hwang, J., & Yang, R. (2011). Common core standards: The
new U.S. intended curriculum. Educational Researcher, 40(3), 103–116.
Roderick, M., & Engel, M. (2001). The grasshopper and the ant: Motivational
responses of low-achieving students to high-stakes testing. Educational Evaluation
and Policy Analysis, 23(3), 197–227.
Roth, W.-M., & Lee, Y.-J. (2007). ‘Vygotsky’s Neglected Legacy’: Cultural- historical
activity theory. Review of Educational Research, 77(2), 186–232.
Rowan, B. (2006). The new institutionalism and the study of educational organizations: Changing ideas for changing times. In H.-D. Meyer & B. Rowan (Eds.), The
New Institutionalism in Education (pp. 15–32). Albany, NY: State University Press
of New York.
Rury, J. L. (2009). Education and social change: Contours in the history of American schooling. New York, NY: Routledge.
Scott, J. (2009). The politics of venture philanthropy in charter school policy and
advocacy. Educational Policy, 23(1), 106–136.
Scott, W. R. (2004). Reflections on a half-century of organizational sociology. Annual
Review of Sociology, 30, 1–21.
Sieber, R. T. (1979). Classmates as workmates: Informal peer activity in the elementary school. Anthropology and Education, 10(4), 207–235.
Smith, FJ. (1913, 9 July). The evolution of the motion picture: VI – looking into the
future with Thomas A. Edison. The New York Dramatic Mirror, Page 24, Column 3,
New York.
Solomon, D., Battistich, V., Watson, M., Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. (2000). A six district
study of educational change: Direct and mediated effects of the child development
project. Social Psychology of Education, 4(1), 3–51.
Stinchcombe, A. L. (1965). Organizations and social structure. In J. G. March (Ed.),
Handbook of organizations (pp. 142–193). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
Sunderman, G. L. (2012). Evidence of the impact of school reform on systems governance and educational bureaucracies in the United States. Review of Research in
Education, 34, 226–253.
Tatar, D., Roschelle, J., Vahey, P., & Penuel, W. R. (2003). Handhelds go to school:
Lessons learned. IEEE Computer, 36(9), 30–37.
Waller, W. (1932). The sociology of teaching. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 179–225.
Warschauer, M., Knobel, M., & Stone, L. (2004). Technology and equity in schooling:
Deconstructing the digital divide. Educational Policy, 18(4), 562–588.
Weick, K. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1–19.
Willingham, W. W., Pollack, J. M., & Lewis, C. (2006). Grades and test scores:
Accounting for observed differences. Journal of Educational Measurement, 39(1),
1–37.

DAVID DIEHL SHORT BIOGRAPHY
David Diehl is an assistant professor of Human and Organizational Development in the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. In
his work, he examines how organizational structures and practices shape
interactional networks and reforms which attempt to alter the structures and
meanings of social relationships as a means for organizational improvement.
DANIEL A. McFARLAND SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Daniel A. McFarland is an associate professor of education at Stanford University, specializing in social dynamics. He teaches graduate-level courses in
social networks, social theory, organizations, and knowledge creation. He is
currently engaged in several projects concerning the co-evolution of social
networks and cultural systems. He is also an associate professor of Sociology
and Organizational Behavior (by courtesy).
RELATED ESSAYS
Learning Across the Life Course (Sociology), Jutta Allmendinger and Marcel
Helbig
Economics of Early Education (Economics), W. Steven Barnett
Shadow Education (Sociology), Soo-yong Byun and David P. Baker
Enduring Effects of Education (Sociology), Matthew Curry and Jennie E.
Brand
Social Class and Parental Investment in Children (Sociology), Anne H.
Gauthier
Evaluating and Rewarding Teachers (Educ), Cassandra Hart
Educational Testing: Measuring and Remedying Achievement Gaps (Educ),
Jaekyung Lee
Gender Inequality in Educational Attainment (Sociology), Anne McDaniel
and Claudia Buchmann

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

15

Rationalization of Higher Education (Sociology), Tressie McMillan Cottom
and Gaye Tuchman
Education in an Open Informational World (Educ), Marlene Scardamalia
and Carl Bereiter
Higher Education: A Field in Ferment (Sociology), W. Richard Scott
Impact of Limited Education on Employment Prospects in Advanced
Economies (Sociology), Heike Solga
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
(Sociology), Herman G. van de Werfhorst


The Organization of Schools
and Classrooms
DAVID DIEHL and DANIEL A. McFARLAND

Abstract
Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more than just
the delivery of academic content. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important school
outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers. Standard approaches, however; tend
to treat the organizational structures of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers teach and students learn. In contrast, we present the
beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex and dynamic
social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations and defined at numerous levels. In this essay, we summarize existing research in order to elaborate such a
view. To that end the essay is divided into four sections: major role relationships in
the school; organizational levels of the school; current socio-cultural changes shaping
schools as organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.

INTRODUCTION: SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS
Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more
than just the delivery of academic content. It also entails the social coordination of students, teachers, and other staff within numerous organizational
structures and activities. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important
school outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers (Elmore, 1995).
Standard approaches, however; tend to treat the organizational structures
of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers
teach and students learn (Bidwell, 2001). In contrast, in this essay we present
the beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex
and dynamic social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations
and defined at numerous levels, and we summarize existing research in
order to elaborate such a view (Frank, 1998). To that end the essay is divided
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

into four sections: major role relationships in the school; organizational
levels of the school; current socio-cultural changes shaping schools as
organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.
MAJOR ROLE RELATIONS
One of, if not the, central functions of organizations is to coordinate and
structure the relationships and interactions of its members in pursuit of institutional goals and purposes (Stinchcombe, 1965, p. 142). In the case of primary and secondary schools, the institutional goals concern the technical
and moral socialization of youth (Bidwell, 1965). We can understand this
coordination in terms of both the formal roles of teachers and students, each
coming with its own concomitant set of expectations and obligations (Bryk
& Schneider, 2002) and the more interpersonal needs and obligations that
shape informal relations (Frank, Zhao, & Borman, 2004). In schools there are
at least three primary categories of relational types, each of which cuts across
the distinction between formal and informal relations: teacher–student relationships; student peer relationships; and teacher collegial relationships. In
examining each in the following sections we show how schools can simultaneously be understood as sites of inter-generational socialization, as student
social and cultural systems, and as workplaces for faculty members.
TEACHER–STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS
Perhaps the most important relationship in the school is that between teachers and students. However, there is a fundamental tension that runs through
student–teacher relationships that pertains to the impersonal bureaucratic
aspects of schooling and the more warm and personal relationship we
often expect to occur between the young and the adults in charge of them
(Noddings, 1992). Research has shown, for example, that students with
significant relationships with school adults tend to feel more academically
engaged (Marks, 2000), have a stronger academic orientation (Solomon,
Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000), and are more likely to enlist
teacher assistance for difficult academic work (Lee & Smith, 1993). At the
same time, evidence suggests that as teachers and students develop stronger
relationships where teachers may become less likely to academically push
students for fear of fracturing the relationship (Phillips, 1997).
STUDENT SOCIAL WORLDS
Schools are also social sites where students learn how to interact with friends,
develop and negotiate their identities, and engage with and produce cultural

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

3

activities and artifacts (Milner, 2006). At the primary school level, the focus
of research and theory has generally concentrated on how children learn
the rules and norms of schools as they transition from the personal environment of the home to the more impersonal, bureaucratic environment of
school (Corsarom & Eder, 1990). At this age students have yet to develop
the group identities which are the hallmark of early and middle adolescence
(Brown, 1986). It is in middle and high schools where research has focused on
the development of student social worlds with their own rules, norms, and
practices. Much of the work in this stream describes high schools as sites of
ongoing conflict between school and academic mores (and by extension the
adult world) and the mores of the student subculture and its status hierarchies, which stand in sharp contrast to one another (Waller, 1932).
TEACHER FACULTIES AND COMMUNITIES-OF-PRACTICE
Finally, schools are workplaces for teachers and other faculty members.
Research in this area has examined that how the informal and formal
organization of teachers’ work provides (or fails to provide) resources for
dealing with the everyday problems of teaching (Bidwell & Yasumoto,
1999). Educational research long assumed that teachers generally operate
in isolation within their own classrooms and thus largely immune from the
social influence of other teachers (Lortie, 1975). More recent work, however;
has shown how teacher thinking and practice are both shaped by their social
context (Coburn, 2001). Research in this area has grown rapidly in recent
years as policy makers and reform leaders have increasingly tied school
improvement efforts to the creation of teacher professional communities in
schools because of their associated positive academic outcomes (McLaughlin
& Talbert, 2001).
ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS
As argued previously, the social coordination and structuring of student and
teacher interactions is one of the key features of schools as organizations. At
the same time, however; fully accounting for differences in outcomes also
entails examining how interactions are variably shaped by the multilayered
nature of the organizational context. Practically speaking, this means studying the social ecology of organizational features in schools at multiple levels
and how they interrelate to select for or against particular forms of coordination. In the following section, we examine four nested organizational
levels of the school and discuss how they variably shape teacher and student
experiences and outcomes. Those levels are: the organizational environment;

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

organizational structures of selection and differentiation; organizational routines; and the interaction order.
ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT
The first organizational level of the school that we discuss is that of the organizational environment. Over the past several decades the dominant view in
organizational theory has been that the internal organization of the school
is largely buffered from, or “loosely coupled” with, its institutional environment (Weick, 1976). This work argues that because there is a lack of general
agreement about educational outcomes and shared and effective technologies, school organization is largely explained in terms of its ceremonial ability to signal legitimacy to various audiences, including parents, community
members, and policy makers rather than its technical efficiency (Meyer &
Rowan, 1977). As such, the core organizational features of schools (i.e., classroom teaching and learning) are significantly buffered from changes in the
organizational environment. As we will discuss in the next section, however;
even within this institutional stream of research there is an increasing consensus that changes in federal and state policy are recoupling structures to
content and having a more direct effect on schools and classrooms than they
did in the past (Hallett, 2010).
STRUCTURES OF SELECTION AND DIFFERENTIATION
Next we turn to the internal organization of schools, an area over which
schools can exert more control. As bureaucracies, one of the central features
of school organization is the differentiation of faculty and students along various dimensions. The school faculty is organized around a division-of-labor
that differentiates between teachers, administrators, and other support staff
like counselors and curriculum specialists. One of the most important developments in the nature of school organization over the past century has been
the continuing elaboration of this division-of-labor, with increasingly complex and numerous faculty divisions and roles (Bidwell, 2001). At the same
time, teachers are also often differentiated in a more horizontal way by the
age of the students and the disciplinary subject they teach. For students, the
track or group they are assigned to influences the kinds of pedagogy and
curriculum they are exposed to, as well as how they are treated by teachers.
One result is that tracking tends to reproduce existing differences related to
socioeconomic background and race (Oakes, 1985).

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

5

ORGANIZATIONAL ROUTINES
Routines are important because they concern the technical core of schooling
(how inputs are processed into outputs) and the process of organizing—they
are the means by which roles and relations get conferred and established,
and the process by which action is coordinated and work gets done. Routinized academic activities such as lecture, recitation, and group work are
the fundamental organizing constructs of classrooms (Doyle, 1986). Routines
also provide the foundation for student social worlds and teacher faculties
(McFarland, 2005). For students, informal peer interactions entail various
routinized communicative activities such as collaborative storytelling,
gossip, and ritual teasing (Eder, 1995). Such activities are characterized by
rapid, egalitarian, overlapping turns of talk (Goodwin, 1980) and references
to adolescent styles and non-school topics such as movies, TV, music, dating,
gossip, parties, shopping, and sports (Sieber, 1979, pp. 227–231). The work of
the school staff is also structured by institutionalized and informal routines
and activities. In most schools, teachers at least occasionally have meetings
with other teachers in their same subject or who teach the same aged
students. Professional development typically entails formalized activities
in which teachers play the role of learner. In staff run schools, there are
also formal governance structures and associated routines. Moreover, like
all bureaucratic work, teachers engage in many informal interactions and
activities in teachers’ lounges, hallways, and lunchrooms.
INTERACTIONAL ORDER
The final level we discuss is that of the interaction order, or the actual
patterns of face-to-face interaction within the organization. On this level,
researchers deal with the structure and meaning of interactions in specific
concrete social situations. This entails treating the school—classrooms, hallways, teachers’ lounges—as a social ecology that is generated and sustained
by repeating patterns of communication in ongoing interaction (McFarland,
Diehl, & Rawlings, 2011). The patterning of such interaction is tied not only
to routinized activities, but also moral imperatives that are derived from
the individual need to present social selves and maintain the interaction
process (Goffman, 1983). Interest in this organizational level includes efforts
to understand the internal logic that shapes the generation of the interaction
order, but also how it impacts student and teacher attitudes and experiences
within the school. For example, students who feel engaged with school have
higher grades (Willingham, Pollack, & Lewis, 2006), test scores (Roderick &
Engel, 2001), and lower drop-out rates (Croninger & Lee, 2001).

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES AFFECTING SCHOOL
ORGANIZATION
These core issues remain central to understanding schools as organizations,
but major cultural, social, and political changes over the past several decades
have the potential to profoundly reshape them. In the following section, we
discuss three such areas. While being driven in different ways, all three of
these trends are grounded in a similar belief that the current bureaucratic
form of the school is not adequate for accomplishing desired goals and needs
to somehow be altered.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND RECOUPLING
The dominant perspective, as mentioned earlier, has been to conceptualize
schools as loosely coupled systems in which the technical core of classroom
teaching and learning is buffered from changes in the school’s policy environment. Recently, however; state and federal policymakers have been taking more direct control over what happens in schools by increasingly taking
bureaucratic control over curriculum and teaching.
This trend has been most evident in the standards and accountability
movements, which have become staples in the policy environment of American schools (Irons & Harris, 2006). While curricular content has traditionally
been decided by individual teachers and students, the standards movement
is an effort by policymakers to dictate a common set of academic content
that all students are expected to learn (Porter, McMaken, Hwang, & Yang,
2011). Increasingly, this project also entails the use of standardized tests
in order measure students’ knowledge and to hold teachers and schools
“accountable” for how well they do (Mintrop & Sunderman, 2009). Many
educational scholars have argued that, by more closely dictating what
should be taught in the classroom, and how its uptake should be measured,
that the view of schools as loosely coupled has increasingly become outdated
(Diamond, 2012).
How exactly the growth of standards and testing regimes impacts school
organization, however; remains unclear. This is because these largely
top-down state and federally mandated reforms do not specify how they
should be implemented at the local level. For this reason, local conditions
in terms of existing organizational arrangements, political coalitions, and
school history and culture, differentially shape the nature of implementation.
In response, research has increasingly focused on how environmental factors
make their way through the school doors and into the classroom. This essay
suggests that pressures from standards and testing regimes prompt teachers
to marginalize subjects not being assessed, to allocate resources based on

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

7

students’ likelihood of passing tests, and to focus increased amounts of
classroom time on the content being tested.
CHOICE, CHARTERS, AND COMPETITION
While the growth of standards and testing has served to strengthen the federal and state control over schools in bureaucratic and regulatory terms, there
has been a simultaneous effort to weaken bureaucratic control by opening
up schools to the market-based forces. Such efforts can be seen as reflective
of a long-term shift of explaining unequal school outcomes not in terms of
structural inequalities faced by students outside of school, but rather by deficiencies and inefficiencies in school organization (Sunderman, 2012). From
this perspective it is the market, rather than government, that is viewed as
the solution to the organizational problems of schools.
The idea that market forces will compel improvements in the organizational forms of schools is reflected in two related efforts to increase school
choice: voucher programs and charter schools (Chubb & Moe, 1990). In both
cases the underlying assumption of proponents is that by increasing competition among schools, organizational forms that foster student will learning
will thrive will those do not will fail. Evidence so far, however; is mixed and
inconclusive (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2009). Research
in this area is beginning to turn not only to the effectiveness of different organizational forms, but also the social processes related to their emergence and
legitimacy (King, Clemens, & Fry, 2011).
At the same time, the relationship with the market has been changing
even for traditional public schools. First, schools have increasingly turned
to private contractors to outsource functions such as food services, security,
transportation, after-school programs, and tutoring (Burch, 2006). Second,
philanthropic giving to schools has become influenced by market logics
in which funding is increasingly tied to meeting funder-defined metrics
and evaluations (Scott, 2009). This has meant a fundamental shift in the
traditional relationship between philanthropies and schools, one that has
led to more direct control over the core functions of the school through
increased accountability, not unlike the discussion of standards and testing
earlier.
TECHNOLOGY
At least since Thomas Edison told a newspaper reporter that the motion
picture would make books in schools obsolete (Smith, 1913) people have
predicted that technological innovations would revolutionize the organization of the school. That feeling is perhaps stronger today than ever, but the

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

organizational inertia of the school is strong and does not seem in danger
of being altered anytime soon. There are two reasons that role of technology
in school organization is so frequently discussed today. First, the world of
work is becoming more technologically sophisticated and schools must prepare students to be able to work within such a world. For this reason, there
are many calls for schools to more systematically train students in the use of
technology, and especially students who may not have opportunities to learn
at home (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010).
The second way that technology is implicated in the discussion of schools is
the belief that innovations have the potential to revolutions the organization
of schools in positive ways (Pitler, Hubbel, & Kuhn, 2012). This may entail
the use of technological devices like tablets to individually tailored lessons
(Tatar, Roschelle, Vahey, & Penuel, 2003) or, more radically, “flipping” the
classroom such that technology allows students’ first access to new information to happen outside the school (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). It remains to be
seen what, if any, effect new technologies will have on school organization
but historians have documented a long history of claims about technology
revolutionizing school when in fact the general tendency has actually been
for technology to be absorbed by the institution rather than transforming it
(Cuban, 2003).
Moreover, it is not just that technology has the potential to impact organizational features of schools, those same organizational features shape how technology is adopted and implemented. Warschauer, Knobel, and Stone (2004),
for example, found that due to less stable teaching and support staff, low-SES
neighborhood schools were less likely to adopt and implement new technologies in the classroom. Beyond this, Warschauer and colleagues found that
teachers in low-SES schools also had to deal with a more complex “instructional environment” because they taught more English language learners
and at-risk students, students who generally had fewer computer experiences. In addition, they felt greater pressure in terms of test scores and policy
mandates (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010). One result of such differences
in organizational environment is that teachers of low-SES students tend to
use technology for basic, remedial tasks whereas teachers of high-SES students use those same technologies for more active and constructivist purposes (Becker, 2000).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS: PROCESSES AND INTEGRATING LEVELS
The social, cultural, and technological changes described earlier challenge
some of our longstanding conceptualizations of schools as organizations
(Rowan, 2006). Moreover, the study of organizations is itself undergoing a
turn to focus more on dynamics and processes (Scott, 2004). In response to

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

9

both these real world and theoretical shifts we see the future of organizational analysis of schools as taking a more processual view of schools, one
that pays significantly more attention to cross-level mechanisms. We argue
below for a view of schools not as organizational “containers” within which
teaching and learning occurs, but rather dynamic networks of interaction
that constitute ongoing organizing processes (Leander, Phillips, & Taylor,
2010). We discuss possible ways to study such dynamic processes across
each of the organizational levels discussed earlier.
First, we can add to existing studies of the relationship between the school
and its environment by taking up Nelson and Winter’s conceptualization
of routines as the DNA of organizations (1982). From this perspective, we
can see the selection, use, and discarding of classroom academic activities
and other organizational routines as a major source of change in schools. At
the global level, changes in activities and routines may come through policy changes or educational movements (Rury, 2009). At the local level, they
may come through political or economic struggles or in response to changes
in student or teacher compositions (Bidwell, 2001). Even more importantly,
though, such a perspective allows us to focus not only on intentional reform
efforts, which currently dominate organizational studies of schools, but also
more evolutionary processes through which school structures and routines
are selected or discarded on a wide scale without the need for the kind of
explicit coordination that marks reform efforts.
The next step in a dynamic cross-level analysis would be to study how the
adoption or alteration of activities shapes, and is shaped by, patterns of interaction. Traditionally, the study of school change has been undertaken either
through large-scale surveys of implementation or through case studies of
particular sites (Desimone, 2002). In short supply, then, are systematic comparative studies of the interrelation of activity structures and interactional
patterns (Diehl & McFarland, 2012). There are numerous methods that can
be used for such research, including discourse (Little, 2003), activity system
(Roth & Lee, 2007), and network analysis (Penuel et al., 2010). Moreover as
alluded to earlier, such research approaches are necessary if we are to understand how broad changes in accountability, choice and technology actually
influence processes of teaching and learning in the everyday lives of schools.
Along these same lines, we also need to better understand how such
changes in interactional processes interrelate with what is perhaps the
central purpose of schools—the transmission of knowledge. Little organizational work has examined the relationship between forms of instruction
and their content. This is key because skillful students must simultaneously
engage with the interactional form of academic activities as well as the
cognitive structure and the content being taught. The goal in such work
would be better to understand how the social organization of interaction

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in classrooms and schools interrelates with the cognitive organization of
academic content. That is, learning in schools is both an issue of collective
social coordination and individual cognitive modification, yet little work
studies their intersection.
Finally, we need to pay more attention to the broad socializing effects of
schools (Bidwell, 2001). While existing work focuses on how students are
socialized into the impersonal and bureaucratic structures of the school
(including students’ developing understanding of the nature of authority
and how to conduct oneself as a client in a formal organization) there
is little research examining how variation in school organization shapes
students’ behavior and experience in other settings. That is, we need to
better understand how the socialization processes of schools transfers to
nonschool situations. There are several possible mechanisms that need to be
investigated: One is that, school socialization provides students with a sense
of legitimacy of cultural products and symbols (Dreeben, 1968). A second
is that, school socialization shapes a general conception of knowledge as
well as a particular relationship to scientific knowledge (Driver et al., 1994).
A third is that, schools socialize students into the use of different hands-on
techniques or intellectual habits (Keating, 1996). Whatever the mechanisms
may be, there is much to be gained from a deeper understanding of how the
organizational features of schools variably aid in socializing students into
the moral and technical vision of their given communities and societies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This essay was made possible by support from NSF award # 0624134.
REFERENCES
Becker, H. J. (2000). Who’s wired and who’s not: Children’s access to and use of
computer technology. Future of Children, 10(2), 44–75.
Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Before you flip, consider this. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(2),
25.
Bidwell, C. (1965). The School as a Formal Organization. In J. March (Ed.), Handbook
of Organizations (pp. 972–1022). Chicago: Rand McNally.
Bidwell, C. E. (2001). Analyzing schools as organizations: Long-term permanence
and short-term change. Sociology of Education, 74 Extra Issue: Current of Thought:
Sociology of Education at the Dawn of the 21st Century, 100–114.
Bidwell, C., & Yasumoto, J. (1999). The collegial focus: Teaching fields, collegial relationships, and instructional practice in american high schools. Sociology of Education, 72(4), 234–256.
Brown, B. B. (1986). The importance of peer group (“Crowd”) affiliation in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 9(1), 73–96.

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

11

Bryk, A. S., & Schneider, B. L. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement.
Chicago, IL: Russell Sage Foundation Publications.
Burch, P. (2006). The new educational privatization: Educational contracting and
high stakes accountability. Teachers College Record, 108(12), 2582–2610.
Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2009). Multiple choice: Charter school performance in 16 states. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution.
Coburn, C. E. (2001). Collective sensemaking about reading: How teachers mediate
reading policy in their professional communities. Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis, 23(2), 145–170.
Corsarom, W. A., & Eder, D. (1990). Children’s peer cultures. Annual Review of Sociology, 16, 197–220.
Croninger, R. G., & Lee, V. E. (2001). Social capital and dropping out of high schools:
Benefits to at-risk students of teachers’ support and guidance. Teachers College
Record, 103(4), 548–581.
Cuban, L. (2003). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Desimone, L. (2002). How can comprehensive school reform models be successfully
implemented? Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 433–479.
Diamond, J. B. (2012). Accountability policy, school organization, and classroom
practice: Partial recoupling and educational opportunity. Education and Urban Society, 44(2), 151–182.
Diehl, D., & McFarland, D. A. (2012). Classroom ordering and the situational imperatives of routine and ritual. Sociology of Education, 85(4), 326–349.
Doyle, W. (1986). Classroom organization and management (Chapter 14). In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan.
Dreeben, R. (1968). On what is learned in school. Reading, MA: Addison & Wesley.
Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Scott, P., & Mortimer, E. (1994). Constructing Scientific
Knowledge in the Classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5–12.
Eder, D. (1995). School talk: Gender and adolescent culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Elmore, R. F. (1995). Teaching, learning, and school organization: Principles of practice and the regularities of schooling. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31(3),
355–374.
Frank, K. A. (1998). Quantitative methods for studying social context in multilevels and through interpersonal relations. Review of Research in Education, 23,
71–216.
Frank, K. A., Zhao, Y., & Borman, K. (2004). Social capital and the diffusion of innovations within organizations: The case of computer technology in schools. Sociology
of Education, 77(2), 148–171.
Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17.
Goodwin, M. (1980). He-said-she-said: Formal cultural procedures for the construction of a gossip dispute activity. American Ethnologist, 7, 674–695.

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Hallett, T. (2010). The myth incarnate: Recoupling processes, turmoil, and inhabited institutions in an urban elementary school. American Sociological Review, 75(1),
52–74.
Irons, E. J., & Harris, S. (2006). The challenge of no child left behind: Understanding the
issues of excellence, accountability and choice. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman &
Littlefield Education.
Keating, D. P. (1996). Habits of mind for a learning society: Educating for human
development. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Handbook of education and human
development: New models of learning, teaching, and schooling (pp. 461–481). Oxford,
England: Blackwell.
King, B. G., Clemens, E. S., & Fry, M. (2011). Identity realization and organizational
forms: Differentiation and consolidation of identities among Arizona’s charter
schools. Organization Science, 22(3), 554–572.
Leander, K. M., Phillips, N. C., & Taylor, K. H. (2010). The changing social maps of
learning: Mapping new mobilities. Review of Research in Education, 34, 329–394.
Lee, V. E., & Smith, J. B. (1993). Social support and achievement for young adolescents in Chicago: The role of school academic press. American Educational Research
Journal, 36(4), 907–945.
Little, J. (2003). Inside teacher community: Representations of classroom practice.
Teachers College Record, 105(6), 913–945.
Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Marks, H. M. (2000). Student engagement in instructional activity: Patterns in the
elementary, middle, and high school years. American Education Research Journal,
37(1), 153–184.
McFarland, D. A. (2005). Why work when you can play? Dynamics of formal and
informal organization in classrooms. In L. Hedges & B. Schneider (Eds.), The social
organization of schooling (pp. 147–174). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
McFarland, D. A., Diehl, D., & Rawlings, C. (2011). Methodological transactionalism and the sociology of education. In M. Hallinan (Ed.), Frontiers in sociology of
education (pp. 87–109). New York, NY: Springer.
McLaughlin, M. W., & Talbert, J. E. (2001). Professional communities and the work of high
school teaching. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure
as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363.
Milner, M., Jr., (2006). Freaks, geeks and cool kids. New York, NY: Routledge.
Mintrop, H., & Sunderman, G. L. (2009). Predictable failure of federal sanctionsdriven accountability for school improvement—and why we may retain it anyway. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 353–364.
Nelson, R. R., & Winters, S. G. (1982). An evolutionary theory of economic change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York, NY: Teachers College
Press.
Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

13

Penuel, W. R., Riel, M., Joshi, A., Pearlman, L., Kim, C. M., & Frank, K. A. (2010). The
alignment of the informal and formal organizational supports for reform: Implications for improving teaching in schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(1),
57–95.
Phillips, M. E. (1997). What makes schools effective? A comparison of the relationships of communitarian climate and academic climate to mathematics achievement and attendance during middle school. American Educational Research Journal,
34(4), 633–662.
Pitler, H., Hubbel, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction
that works. Denver, CO: ASCD.
Porter, A., McMaken, J., Hwang, J., & Yang, R. (2011). Common core standards: The
new U.S. intended curriculum. Educational Researcher, 40(3), 103–116.
Roderick, M., & Engel, M. (2001). The grasshopper and the ant: Motivational
responses of low-achieving students to high-stakes testing. Educational Evaluation
and Policy Analysis, 23(3), 197–227.
Roth, W.-M., & Lee, Y.-J. (2007). ‘Vygotsky’s Neglected Legacy’: Cultural- historical
activity theory. Review of Educational Research, 77(2), 186–232.
Rowan, B. (2006). The new institutionalism and the study of educational organizations: Changing ideas for changing times. In H.-D. Meyer & B. Rowan (Eds.), The
New Institutionalism in Education (pp. 15–32). Albany, NY: State University Press
of New York.
Rury, J. L. (2009). Education and social change: Contours in the history of American schooling. New York, NY: Routledge.
Scott, J. (2009). The politics of venture philanthropy in charter school policy and
advocacy. Educational Policy, 23(1), 106–136.
Scott, W. R. (2004). Reflections on a half-century of organizational sociology. Annual
Review of Sociology, 30, 1–21.
Sieber, R. T. (1979). Classmates as workmates: Informal peer activity in the elementary school. Anthropology and Education, 10(4), 207–235.
Smith, FJ. (1913, 9 July). The evolution of the motion picture: VI – looking into the
future with Thomas A. Edison. The New York Dramatic Mirror, Page 24, Column 3,
New York.
Solomon, D., Battistich, V., Watson, M., Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. (2000). A six district
study of educational change: Direct and mediated effects of the child development
project. Social Psychology of Education, 4(1), 3–51.
Stinchcombe, A. L. (1965). Organizations and social structure. In J. G. March (Ed.),
Handbook of organizations (pp. 142–193). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
Sunderman, G. L. (2012). Evidence of the impact of school reform on systems governance and educational bureaucracies in the United States. Review of Research in
Education, 34, 226–253.
Tatar, D., Roschelle, J., Vahey, P., & Penuel, W. R. (2003). Handhelds go to school:
Lessons learned. IEEE Computer, 36(9), 30–37.
Waller, W. (1932). The sociology of teaching. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 179–225.
Warschauer, M., Knobel, M., & Stone, L. (2004). Technology and equity in schooling:
Deconstructing the digital divide. Educational Policy, 18(4), 562–588.
Weick, K. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1–19.
Willingham, W. W., Pollack, J. M., & Lewis, C. (2006). Grades and test scores:
Accounting for observed differences. Journal of Educational Measurement, 39(1),
1–37.

DAVID DIEHL SHORT BIOGRAPHY
David Diehl is an assistant professor of Human and Organizational Development in the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. In
his work, he examines how organizational structures and practices shape
interactional networks and reforms which attempt to alter the structures and
meanings of social relationships as a means for organizational improvement.
DANIEL A. McFARLAND SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Daniel A. McFarland is an associate professor of education at Stanford University, specializing in social dynamics. He teaches graduate-level courses in
social networks, social theory, organizations, and knowledge creation. He is
currently engaged in several projects concerning the co-evolution of social
networks and cultural systems. He is also an associate professor of Sociology
and Organizational Behavior (by courtesy).
RELATED ESSAYS
Learning Across the Life Course (Sociology), Jutta Allmendinger and Marcel
Helbig
Economics of Early Education (Economics), W. Steven Barnett
Shadow Education (Sociology), Soo-yong Byun and David P. Baker
Enduring Effects of Education (Sociology), Matthew Curry and Jennie E.
Brand
Social Class and Parental Investment in Children (Sociology), Anne H.
Gauthier
Evaluating and Rewarding Teachers (Educ), Cassandra Hart
Educational Testing: Measuring and Remedying Achievement Gaps (Educ),
Jaekyung Lee
Gender Inequality in Educational Attainment (Sociology), Anne McDaniel
and Claudia Buchmann

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms

15

Rationalization of Higher Education (Sociology), Tressie McMillan Cottom
and Gaye Tuchman
Education in an Open Informational World (Educ), Marlene Scardamalia
and Carl Bereiter
Higher Education: A Field in Ferment (Sociology), W. Richard Scott
Impact of Limited Education on Employment Prospects in Advanced
Economies (Sociology), Heike Solga
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
(Sociology), Herman G. van de Werfhorst



Media

The Organization of Schools and Classrooms