First Episodes - Pupil Careers in the Early Years of School

Originally published in 1991, First Episodes: Pupil Careers in the Early Years of School is based on a four-year longitudinal study of pupils from two different catchment areas from the first days of their entry to primary school. Using qualitative methodologies of depth interviewing and -naturalistic- observation, it attempts to examine the social construction of pupil careers in the dynamics of classroom life. Particular attention has been given to the longitudinal and continuing process in the formation of pupils over the first four years of schooling, especially in looking at the moment-by-moment processes of formulation as episode follows episode in the rapid flow of classroom life. It is suggested that teachers operate fundamental distinctions between -normal- and -abnormal- pupils and, in the ongoing processes of classroom life, a distinction between the episodic and the trans-episodic in their constructions of reality. Central to the analysis has been the notions of -