Classrooms are microcosms of society, where children must learn and adapt to various social norms and standards in order to succeed. Sociologists have focused upon the school system for this very reason, as it is our first encounter with a formally organized social structure that mimics external civilization. Through teacher-student interaction and classroom organization, children are embedded with the social messages to either aid them in their functioning in society, or hinder their success.

The actual environment of the classroom enforces many sociological standards for the students and the teacher. Classrooms usually contain multiple students and one adult teacher, and are bi-gendered and age-consistent. (Boocock, 1978) When a classroom contains students that are all approximately the same age, it offers a standard for comparison and balances students in terms of their social standing and their treatment by teachers. (Boocock, 1978) This provides one means to separate the students from all of their teachers, varying the social playing field and granting the teacher with another level of authority. (Boocock, 1978)

A classroom is just that, a room that contains rows of desks for the students and a solitary desk at the front of the room for the teacher. (Boocock, 1978) This offers another way for the teachers to remain socially distant from the group of children, allows for the monitoring of students, and provides a means of displaying and enforcing the social norms of the classroom. Normally, students are allocated a specific seat in the classroom and remain there for the entire school year, which actually serves various purposes. Sociological studies have shown that a child’s seating position within the class reflects the teacher’s expectations and attitudes of the student, and influences the actual behavioural success of the child. (Boocock, 1978) Despite the finding that the teachers do the majority of the talking within the classroom, the students that did speak were seated in a T-shaped zone consisting of the three centre desks in the front of the room and three desks back down the middle row. (Boocock, 1978) Teachers often use seating arrangements as a means of social control, placing the misbehaving children beside one who performed well. (Boocock, 1978) Students who were assigned desks in the front row were found to be more attentive and more optimistically appraised by their teachers, peers, and themselves. (Boocock, 1978)

Teachers also seat their students in accordance with their own perceptions of goodness. Seating arrangements have been found to reflect the students’ societal and achievement status, showing that teachers position students according to their own prejudices. (Boocock, 1978) One study by Harvey & Slatin (1975) discovered that race and SES of children shown in photographs influenced the teachers’ expectation of academic success, as white, high status children were pinpointed as being successful students. (Boocock, 1978) The child’s attractiveness was also correlated with the teachers’ perceptions of the child’s intelligence, popularity, future educational attainment, and the child’s parental involvement in education. (Boocock, 1978) All of these preconceptions affect how and where the teacher will position the child within the classroom.

Rist (1970) completed a study where teachers were told to seat kindergarten students in three tables in accordance with the teachers’ expectation of academic success. (Boocock, 1978) Not surprisingly, regardless of the child’s actual test scores, lower class students were all placed at the lowest perceived academic success table, farthest away from the teacher and therefore receiving the least attention and guidance. (Boocock, 1978) In addition to the differential treatment these children received, there physical position within the classroom inhibited their actual performance in school. (Boocock, 1978) Rist followed the students, and by second grade none of the students had moved up to a higher class grouping, and the children at the back of the room were labeled as “class clowns” and had difficulty reading. (Boocock, 1978) These studies very obviously show the influence that teachers’ perceptions have on the seating arrangements of the students, and the students’ seating arrangements heavily influence the quality of education they will receive. Clearly societal biases affect the success of each student within the classroom, just as those biases hinder or propel adult members of society.

Even though the classroom structure integrates societal norms into the class, the teacher holds an even more important role. Studies have shown that a teacher who is incongruent with their attitudes and teaching styles is more likely to produce violent and right-wing extremist students than one whose ideals matches their teaching style. (Bovier & Boehnke, 1999) Some teachers view their roles as pre-given; some perceive it to be more meaningful and action-based, while others don’t feel prepared for the changes in the education system. (Makhanya, 2001) A Marist would view teachers as a means to reproduce societal inequalities within the classroom, while a functionalist may see teachers as “socialization agents” that prepare students to be productive members of society. (Makhanya, 2001) Although attitudes and perceptions of teachers vary, they still hold an extremely influential position. This profession is usually comprised of women who utilize it as a compliment to household responsibilities, or males who use it as a fallback career. (Boocock, 1978) As pay increases are based on the amount of credentials or time in the field and not on productivity, this profession is usually rewarded with psychological gratification. (Boocock, 1978) The teacher is continuously involved with student interaction, and is isolated from their peers and other adults, and this leads to a lack of learning from other teachers through direct observation. (Boocock, 1978) This system also protects teachers from societal and parental evaluation. (Boocock, 1978)

Despite the constrictions placed upon the teacher through the way the system is set up, their role is largely based on student interaction. Socialization messages are put across most directly through interaction in the classroom. (Brint, Conteras, & Matthews, 2001) Studies have shown that most of the social messages students receive in the classroom are about orderliness. (Brint, Conteras, & Matthews, 2001) These messages were mainly centered on keeping the students quiet, redirecting their attention, and making sure they didn’t answer question out of turn. (Brint, Conteras, & Matthews, 2001) While these messages ensure a controlled class, they also prepare the students for adult life outside of school where these social norms are essential for success. The next most frequent messages that students receive in the classroom had to do with work effort, where the teacher would remind the class to stay on task and work faster. (Brint, Conteras, & Matthews, 2001) These findings are indicative of the theory that schools are the first performance-based bureaucracies that children encounter, and that these bureaucracies have “fundamental interests in order and effort”. (Brint, Conteras, & Matthews, 2001)

Teaching itself has been defined as “a series of interactions between someone in the role of teacher and someone in the role of learner, with the explicit goal of changing the teacher’s cognitive or affective states.” (Boocock, 1978) This definition suggests that teaching heavily relies upon established roles, and these roles are cemented by interaction between the teacher and the student. It has been found that teachers’ and students’ perceptions of themselves, the classroom, and each other heavily factor into the whole affiliation. (Boocock, 1978) These interactions are dependant upon imbalances in the teacher-student relationship, such as degree of volunteerism, where the teachers are hired and the students are required to attend. (Boocock, 1978) Other asymmetries include degree of activity versus passivity, where students are the passive recipients of the activity of the teacher; and power or authority, where teachers are deemed the more powerful through their age, training, and control of school resources. (Boocock, 1978) All of these imbalances create the learning environment of the classroom, and guide the students into one of their first encounters with societal authority.

Even though the teachers possess the authoritative role, students also learn how to manipulate these imbalances to their favour. Because the teacher’s role is so dependant on student inferiority, their role is vulnerable to such attempts to sway power. One tool that students use to thwart teacher authority is lack of attention. (Boocock, 1978) The level of boredom and inattention are markedly higher for students within the classroom than any other places the students utilize at school, and it has been found that students pay attention less than half of the time they are in the classroom. (Boocock, 1978)

One of the most influential tools that students use in reaction to a teacher’s authority is unacceptable behavior. Rates of classroom violence have been steadily increasing since the 1960s, and chaos within the classroom has been reported by both students and teachers as a major problem. (Boocock, 1978) Sociologists have studied not only the students’ use of misbehaviour, but also the teacher’s definition of what inappropriate behaviour is. (Boocock, 1978) Just as a teacher’s biases influence the seating arrangements within the classroom, they also influence the teacher’s perception of “good” and “bad” conduct. Depending on what definitions the teacher possesses regarding unwanted behaviour, the level of order in the classroom can be disastrous or maintainable.

Negotiation also plays a large role in the interaction between students and teachers. The teacher must often make negotiations with students, releasing them from certain rules in order for them to behave accordingly during instruction time. (Boocock, 1978) In high school classrooms, Wegmann found five locales of disciplinary concern where a concurrence must be negotiated, including physical location of the students, control of who is to speak, students’ promptness and attendance, handling of wisecracks, and general classroom authority. (Boocock, 1978) Wegmann also utilized Goffman’s model of interaction rituals, and found that classrooms are essentially “backstage” areas as they are not normally visible to others, and because students are younger, their behaviour is not taken as seriously as an adult’s. (Boocock, 1978) Due to this differential in treatment, students were found to take less of an interest in helping the teacher save “face”. (Boocock, 1978) Due to all of these variables, Wegmann concluded that teaching is “an uncertain, precarious enterprise which must be continually negotiated.” (Boocock, 1978)

Even though this profession seems so unstable, certain methods have been discovered that aid in the maintenance of classroom order. Some of these include communicating to students what is expected of them and halting any behaviour to the contrary immediately, attending to many meddlesome actions without focusing on just one, assuring that activities flow continuously, and keeping students occupied with the material. (Boocock, 1978) The tools teachers use to stop misbehaviour are also key in maintaining order. These tools have been found to vary depending on the setting, such as the age of the students, and students reactions to these tools rely upon the student’s attitude toward learning and toward the teacher. (Boocock, 1978) All of these variables within the teacher’s ability to maintain authority also point to the finding that teaching is heavily dependant upon student interaction.

Another way that teachers achieve order within the classroom is with the use of rewards. Student achievement on an individual basis increases with the utilization of individual reward structures, while interpersonal interaction improves when group reward structures are used. (Boocock, 1978) One type of reward structure employs behaviour modification, which can alter a student’s behaviour without addressing any underlying causes. (Boocock, 1978) Through this system, young students have been taught to read, verbal ability improved, and the conduct of aggressive, hyperactive, or autistic children modified. (Boocock, 1978) Sociologists deem reward structures as token economies, and some theorize that these economies replicate the implication of material rewards and market economy in capitalistic society. (Brint, Conteras, & Mathews, 2001) Some schools even make this relationship plain by using “Scholar Dollars” as a reward, and students are “paid” for doing well. (Brint, Conteras, & Mathews, 2001) Reward structures within the classroom are another way that schools integrate larger society into their walls by enforcing social control through material encouragement. Marxists would view this system as another means to segregate based on affluence. The students who obtain more material rewards are placed higher up on the school’s social hierarchy, sustaining external society’s financial-based order.

Teachers also maintain control in the classroom through evaluation of student performance. These evaluations cement teacher authority as well as positioning students along a classroom hierarchy. (Boocock, 1978) A student can be graded on as many as 150 tasks per school year, and after a positive evaluation, a student will approach the next task with increased confidence which in turn affects the grade they will receive on subsequent tasks. (Boocock, 1978) This cycle of increasingly positive evaluations is based upon a symbolic interactionist theory, where the student improves their performance based on feedback from the teacher. (Boocock, 1978) Another theory offers perspective into evaluation through dissonance. This theory suggests that after a teacher grades several assignments, he or she forms an opinion about the student and marks that student accordingly for the remainder of the year. (Boocock, 1978) Studies show that an essay given by a previously well-graded student gets a better mark than the exact same essay handed in by a student of lower aptitude. (Boocock, 1978) Teachers place higher expectations on well-graded students, but these students also receive more praise for their work. (Boocock, 1978) On the other hand, teachers are more likely to accept poorer work from low-expectation students, and less likely to praise them for good performances. (Boocock, 1978) Once again, teacher biases have a heavy hand in the success of students.

Not surprisingly, research indicates that grades are more closely associated to classroom compliance than to academic aptitude. (Boocock, 1978) Students of a racial minority or lower socio-economic status are more likely to obtain a distorted perception of their skills and abilities. (Boocock, 1978) Many of these skewed perceptions on behalf of the student and the teacher continue due to a lack of surveillance on the classroom. Teacher evaluation occurs rarely, and almost never by their peers. (Boocock, 1978) In one study, more than half of teachers did not know what criteria they were evaluated on, and even when they were evaluated by superiors it didn’t involve direct inspection of the teaching. (Boocock, 1978) This leads to classrooms that are subject to a teacher’s individual perceptions and definitions, which in turn molds the students’ own perceptions and achievement despite their validity.

From a teacher’s own values, to the tools utilized by students, the classroom environment is an ever-changing and complex setting, where students are set up to achieve or fail. Weber stated that a significant component of power for dominant groups was their ability to inflict their own ideals onto what is taught in the classroom, for both the mind and personality are being taught. (Karabel & Halsey, 1976) This means of social reproduction also plays a huge role in the development of classroom learning. Guided by classroom structure or teacher-student interaction, students are surrounded with societal norms, preconceptions, and a larger body of authority with which they must adapt. Just as in larger society, this adaptation or lack thereof will either boost or deter the success of each individual. Classrooms, highly affected by external civilization, are a microcosm of society where students learn not only curriculum, but more importantly how to fail or succeed in life.