Abstract
This is a study of Rushel Secondary Modem School, an Educational Priority school, set in a context which has traditionally been labelled as a disadvantaging environment. Of the 351 Rushel schoolgirls that took part in the study, one third were immigrants, 69% were socially deprived and only three had left their primary school with a recorded verbal reasoning ability that was assessed in the upper quartile of the range. The research at Rushel school was sociological and set within the framework of organizational theory. The perspective adopted involved a synthesis of approaches. Rushel school was analysed on the wider structural level of the disadvantaging environment, at the institutional level of interpersonal relationships and organizational realities, and finally as an arena in which the pupil actors were able to negotiate and redefine their identities. The methods adopted in the research were exploratory in nature. Data dredging was used to identify a document that was defined in ethnomethodological terms. Although statistical routines were used, particularly factor analysis, these quantitative techniques were grounded in participant observation. Triangulation and theoretical sampling were important aspects of the methodology. The substantive findings involved the identification of a set of career patterns within which school became meaningful to particular pupils. Teacher expectations of bad pupils was central to the first career pattern. Pupils embarking on this career line were seen as morally blameworthy and lacking in effort rather than in ability. They were hostile to school and they had negative conceptions of themselves. Career pattern two centr on the culture of the peer group world. Two types of career were available in this context - one that was pro school in orientation and one that was delinquescent. The pro school career was peopled by conventionally popular girls - however these girls had markedly worse self concepts than girls who gained their esteem in the pupil subculture that devalued school and school matters. The last career pattern centred around the traditionally disadvantaged child. This child, receiving the full support of a school system that was geared to compensatory education and positive discrimination responded by being the best adjusted pupil in school both in terms of attitudes to school and schoolwork and attitudes to herself.