Sociology of the School and Schooling: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Sociology of Education Association (Second, Asilomar, Pacific Grove, California, February 1-3, 1974).

Proceedings of the 1974 Second Annual Conference of the Sociology of Education Association are presented. The conference, which focused upon the sociology of the school and schooling at the elementary and secondary levels, was structured around three objectives: (1) provide sociologists of education an opportunity to review past work in their field, (2) explore current educational problems and policy, and (3) move toward an agenda for future research. The six papers presented are followed by comments from discussants. The first paper, by Charles E. Bidwell, "The Sociology of Schooling," laid the groundwork upon which subsequent speakers were able to build. Burton R. Clark, in "Adolescents and School Reform," briefed the conference participants on federal recommendations regarding the future of secondary education. William G. Spady, in "Authority and Empathy in the Classroom," presented a deductive model of teacher behavior. An alternative inductive approach was presented by Hugh Mehan in "Ethnomethodology and Education," in which he showed how a teacher is likely to interact with students in ways that help construct and sustain the teacher's definition of social reality. Elizabeth G. Cohen, in "An Experimental Approach to School Effects," focused on the problem of research methodology. The overriding conference issue revolved around the balance between "large-scale organizational" and "micro," or "person," oriented research perspectives. (Author/DB)