ERIC Number: ED095064
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1974-Mar
Pages: 13
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
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Social Organization and Educational Change: A Case Study.
Wolcott, Harry F.
Efforts to analyze a case study of the implementation of Program Planning Budgeting System (PPBS) materials for a pilot study in a school district are discussed from a descriptive, ethnographic approach. Antagonism, anxiety, and accusations characterize the extreme we-they split among those interviewed. Anthropology describes such a society with two major divisions as a moiety, one of two mutually exclusive divisions of a group. The educator community studied exhibits the characteristics of a moiety form of social organization in its two divisions of teachers and technocrats, and their two totems, students and reports respectively. The moiety perspective challenges the hierarchical bureaucratic model of school organization by showing a reasonable distribution of power between moieties. Educator moieties exhibit reciprocal behaviors, such that each division is dependent on the other and cannot maintain a viable educational subculture alone. The traditional subdivision of moieties into phratries and/or clans extends the scope of the analogy, explaining, for example, most teachers seem to find more in common with teachers of the same levels as themselves. Lastly, the moiety notion suggests an equilibrium model for examining educational change and for explaining the stability of the educational subculture in general. (Author/KSM)
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
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Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Oregon Univ., Eugene. Center for Educational Policy and Management.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A