Discourse, child development theory and the contested environment of middle schools

Middle schools are a ‘contested environment’ in which numerous competing knowledge traditions, influences, ideas and innovations are at play. Exploring these various competing concepts as they appear in middle schools is the central focus of this project. The discursive field of child development theory emerges as the theoretical base for claims about the educational needs of middle school aged learners. In the educational context of middle schooling five conceptual frameworks from within the discursive field of child development theory are identified as being ‘at work.’ These are the traditional educational/developmental psychology, the early adolescence/middle school movement, the political-bureaucratic organization of schooling, the school organization and the developmentally-appropriate exemplary teaching practices conceptual frameworks. Middle schools are the ground upon which these at-times mutually supporting, at-times competing, claims and theories vie for acceptance and application.

This Thesis presents an extensive examination of ‘middle school movement’ and middle school related literature. A case study examining the establishment of middle schools in the former Etobicoke Board of Education (currently the Toronto District School Board - West Region) from 1967 to 1999 documents the manner in which the ‘ideal’ middle school has been limited in its implementation by the competing conceptual frameworks. A final chapter reflects on the work of middle school teachers who must make sense of these five conceptual frames in the everyday world of middle schools. This Thesis presents an approach, or ‘tool,’ for coming to better understand the traditions, influences, ideas and innovations which construct the contested environment of middle schools.