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Deviant and non-deviant identities in the classroom: patrolling the boundaries of the normal social world

At the root of processes of inclusion and exclusion in society and schools seems to be a notion of ‘other’ as outsider/insider or deviant/normal and the social construction of such identities by onlookers in relation to a binary divide. In schools a fundamental process upon which the interpretations, practices and actions of teachers are founded appears to be the standpoint they adopt in their dealings with pupils and crucially their ways of seeing or construing them as ‘others’. This research explores some of the social processes apparently underlying notions of ‘normality’ and ‘deviance’ as teachers identify and operate the boundaries of the ‘normal’ social world of school and classrooms. It is based on four case studies in primary and secondary schools. The data are derived from semi-structured and unstructured interviews with teachers giving accounts of their attempts to make sense of pupils. Inclusionary and exclusionary processes seem to involve the construction of pupil identities as either sociologically ‘normal’ or ‘deviant’. Inclusivity as an educational goal or as a teacher strategy attempts the normalization of the majority of pupils. By contrast, pressures to exclude pupils from schools invite the identification of some as being fundamentally different ‘others’, marginal in status or sociologically deviant. Teachers, in effect, appear to be engaged in a societal process of patrolling the boundaries of the ‘normal’ social world and structuring the careers of children either within schools and classrooms or, in some cases, even manoeuvring them beyond their boundaries.