ABSTRACT
The previous chapter concentrated upon structural relationships, and how these condition which groups will be involved in educational interaction and which processes of interaction will lead to large-scale changes in education. Considered in isolation, the preceding type of analysis simply presents a static and artificial description of interdependencies, contradictions, and complementarities between different social institutions. It is static because it only deals with the elements of 'givenness' in situations concerning education, and artificial because, in reality, the relationships which have been isolated co-exist with a variety of independent factors which are equally important as influences on individual and group interaction. As Lockwood has argued, the gap between the elements of 'givenness' in situations and the individual or group action taking place within them must be bridged by a sociological appreciation of the ways in which motives are structured both normatively and factually.l In other words, to understand educational interaction means grasping how structural factors shape action situations and why in turn these are interpreted in particular ways by the people involved. To explain educational change means theorizing about these joint determinants of interaction, at their point of intersection.
