Why Teachers Might Matter

Publication Summary

Following on from consideration of the possible impact of school intakes and structures on pupil aspiration and future educational participation, this chapter focuses more on social interactions within schools. Issues of equity arise in the way pupils interact with teachers and other pupils. We look at pupils’ experiences of school in terms of their enjoyment of learning and behaviour, and consider their preparation for roles as active citizens. We present existing evidence from the literature, and from a large mixed dataset generated by our own previous research, as described in Chapter 3. Of course, the structure and intakes of schools as discussed in Chapter 3 are probably linked to the experiences of pupils in those schools as described here. So the evidence in this chapter differs largely in emphasis rather than substance from the kind of evidence in the last chapter.