’Loosely Coupled’ Schools: a structuralist critique

Abstract

Abstract The ascendant model of the school in the specialist administrative and organisational literature is the ‘loosely coupled’ system. There are, however, ambiguities in the way this model has been applied, whether as a research tool or as a theoretical device to mark out institutions such as hospitals, schools and prisons where the elements of functional analysis (goals, technology, structure) have no predictive interdependence. The irony that a model which derives from biological and cybernetic thinking should become a tool of demystification of orthodox functional theory is interesting in itself and perhaps points to a major conceptual weakness in its formulation and application. It is argued that ambiguities in the model can be addressed by a structuralist approach which distinguishes the surface features of looseness from the more determining patterns of the inter‐relationship between rules and rituals within either the institutional or the technical ‘core’ of school organisation.