Status Obeisance and Pupil Control Ideology Available to Purchase

Schools are viewed as a special type of organization in which neither the organization nor its clients can exercise choice in the organization‐client relationship. That pupil control should he identified as central to organizational life in schools seemed reasonable. Status obeisance was theoretically related to a typology of pupil control ideology which ranges from “custodialism” at one extreme to “humanism” at the other: Teachers' status obeisance was hypothesized to be positively related to custodialism in pupil control ideology. This prediction along with two hypotheses from an earlier study were tested by multiple regression analysis. The principal hypothesis received strong support. The results of the study combined with those of previous investigations suggest that psychological variables may be important determinants of educators' orientations toward pupil control. Several directions for further inquiry on pupil control are presented.