The Black Box of Schooling

Sjaak Braster is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and emeritus professor of History of Education at Utrecht University (the Netherlands).
Ian Grosvenor is Professor of Urban Educational History at the School of Education, University of Birmingham (England).
María del Mar del Pozo Andrés is Professor of History of Education at the Faculty of Documentation, University of Alcalá (Spain).

This book is about the classroom, the most important meeting place for teachers and pupils in an education building. Our knowledge, however, about what happens inside this space is limited. In many respects the classroom is still the black box of the educational system.
To open up this box, this volume brings together scholars from the disciplines of Art, Architecture, History, Pedagogy and Sociology. They present a wide variety of new perspectives, methodologies and sources for studying classrooms.
The book examines images and representations of classrooms (photographs, paintings and pictures on school walls), writings and documents inside the classroom (school exercise books, teachers' log books and observer reports), memories and personal experiences of classrooms (egodocuments from teachers and pupils, and oral history interviews), the space and design of classrooms (architecture, school murals and the transformation of space), and material objects in the classroom (school furniture, primers for reading and school wall charts). The essays are illustrated with a unique collection of more than fifty photographs of classrooms in Europe.

Exklusives Verkaufsrecht für: Gesamte Welt.

Contents: Sjaak Braster/Ian Grosvenor/María del Mar del Pozo Andrés: Opening the Black Box of Schooling. Methods, Meanings and Mysteries - Sjaak Braster: Educational Change and Dutch Classroom Photographs. A Qualitative and Quantitative analysis - Ian Grosvenor: «To Act on the Minds of Children». Paintings into Schools and English Education - Jeremy Howard: Classroom Genres. Aspects, Values and Interpretations of Painted School Interior Scenes - Ana Badanelli/Kira Mahamud: Peeking into the Classroom of Post Civil War Spain. Children's Classroom Work, Routines and Dynamics - María del Mar del Pozo Andrés/Teresa Rabazas: Classroom Cultures. Researching the Pioneer Ethnographical Research (Madrid, 1950-1970) - Susannah Wright: Inside the Black Box? Log Books from Late 19th and Early 20th Century English Elementary Schools - Antonio Viñao: Teachers' Egodocuments as a Source of Classroom History. The Case of Autobiographies, Memoirs and Diaries - Arianne Baggerman: Pandora's Box. Classrooms and Equipment in the Memory of Autobiographers - Theo Veld: Oral History and the Black Box of the Classroom. A Personal Journey - Alexander Koutamanis/Yolanda Majewski-Steijns: An Architectural View of the Classroom - Catherine Burke: «Education through Art». The School Mural as Extended Architecture - Frederik Herman/Angelo Van Gorp/Frank Simon/Marc Depaepe: The Organic Growth of the Decroly School in Brussels. From Villa to School, from Living Room to Classroom - Jacques Dane/Sarah-Jane Earle/Tijs van Ruiten: The Material Classroom.