Intervention Method for Clinical Sociology of the School(<Special Issue> The Construction of New Research Methodologies in Educational Studies)

Clinical Sociology of the School is supposed to come from John Dewey's The School and Society, published in 1899. In 1896, Dewey founded the Laboratory School at The University of Chicago in order to research the development of children and to pursue a new curriculum that aimed to reform the old traditional methods, suggesting a teaching paradigm to address the changing community. As Dewey's work suggested, Clinical Sociology of the School is practice-oriented, aimed at addressing the various problems surrounding school education in a dynamic society. This notion forged a new relationship between teachers as clients and sociologists as advisers. Viewing the relationship as such, Clinical Sociology of the School may be classified into three types, ranging from low level of clinical relationship to high level as follows: (I) Low level of relationship: Sociologists are simply researchers using statistics or large scale surveys to research school educational problems such as social pathology which was once popular. (II) Middle level of relationship: Sociologists commit to long-term studies of a school organization. They observe classes and interview teachers. Using qualitative data they investigate school educational problems in the context of the school organization including the organizational culture of that school. (III) High level of relationship: Sociologists with teachers as clients commit to problem-solving tasks at the school via intervention. This level is the most important level for Clinical Sociology of the School. So the studies by intervention should be promoted much more in the future in order to affect better and more comprehensive results. Intervention method is introduced to practical research on problems of not only school crisis such as violence, child abuse, drug and so on, but school reform of teacher-student relationships, curricula, organizational culture and so on. This method consists of collaboration with researchers, teachers and other school staff members. In order to reflect this collaboration and to examine ethics of research, intervention method for clinical sociology of the school is classified into five stages as follows: (A) Clarifying the problems of school education from various view points and establishing the research theme. (B) Assessing the conditions of the school which is faced with problems and planning the intervention research. (C) Consulting and supporting teachers and staff members of the school to solve the problems and revise the plan of the intervention research. (D) Examining organizational culture of the school through promoting the intervention research and developing a new culture of school organization. (E) Evaluating all stages of the intervention research, planning the next research project, and generalizing information gleaned from the research results to solve the problems of other schools.