THE REALITY OF TEACHING - BRINGING DISORDER BACK INTO SOCIAL-THEORY AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

There is a strange dissonance between on the one hand the rather disor dered and unstructured everyday reality of teaching as noted in litera ture on teachers' knowledge and on the other hand the tendency among l eading social theorists, such as Bourdieu and Giddens to emphasise the ordered and structured nature of education and social life in general . Among the possible reasons for the lack of awareness of and sensitiv ity to the reality of teaching in contemporary social theory, it is su ggested that the predominant educational practice in institutions of h igher education, the culture of the lecture hall, might have condition ed social theorists to expect a higher degree of order, rationality an d predictability than is actually the case in 'real life'. Studying th e reality of teaching as an area close to real life can help social th eory to reorient itself towards a more realistic picture of modern soc ieties, taking into account a higher degree of disorder and unpredicta bility than recognised in contemporary social theory. This hypothesis may be illustrated with reference to an experiment with 'project work' at a Danish university.