ABSTRACT
If ones uses the factory analogy, it is fair to say that there is no factory that functions in the same way as a secondary school (Rabinowitz 1977). In school the worker has to relate to anything up to six or seven bosses in any one day, moving the location of his work each time, and engage in different units of piece-work on each occasion. A school is a distinctive system in comparison with a factory or indeed any other large organisation in society. For this reason any attempt to employ systems-theory approaches characteristic of industrial psychology necessarily involves a process of adaptation. However, the authors feel that such an approach offers an alternative model for the educational psychologist working with secondary schools. The present chapter is an account of our attempts to put this into practice.
