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Behind Closed Doors: Teachers and the Role of the Teachers' Loungereviewed by Mary Metz - 2002 Title: Behind Closed Doors: Teachers and the Role of the Teachers' Lounge Author(s): Miriam Ben-Peretz and Shifra Schonmann Publisher: State University of New York Press, Albany ISBN: 0791444473 , Pages: 187, Year: 2000 Search for book at Amazon.com In Behind Closed Doors: Teachers and the Role of the
Teachers’ Lounge, Miriam Ben-Peretz and Shifra Schonmann
explore the life of the teachers’ lounge, describing it as a
crucial physical and social space at the heart of teachers’
experience of their schools. They do a great service in asking
readers to pay more attention to this backstage, informal, but
sometimes critical space.
Their strategy is a dual one. They report a multi-method study
of the life of teachers’ lounges in Israel and their impact
on teachers; this empirical research yields a mostly descriptive
account. But the book is also an extended essay on the importance
and potentialities of teachers’ lounges as a part of
teachers’ individual professional and personal lives and,
equally important, as a ground for developing their collective
practice.
The empirical study was ambitious and multifaceted. Employing
ten graduate students, the authors coordinated observations in a
wide variety of teachers’ lounges in Israeli elementary,
middle, and high schools. They then videotaped interactions in a
smaller number of... (preview truncated at 150 words.)To view the full-text for this article you must be signed-in with the appropriate membership. Please review your options below:
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- Mary Metz
University of Wisconsin--Madison E-mail Author Mary Haywood Metz is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a sociologist who does qualitative studies of teachers in their organizational contexts. She has studied authority in the classroom, school culture, the development of magnet schools in the context of district politics, and the effects of the social class of surrounding communities on high school teachers’ working lives. Recent publications include “Sociology and Qualitative Methodologies in Education,” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 60-74.]
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