Departments as Different Worlds: Subject Subcultures in Secondary Schools

The objective of this article is to explore the role of academic departments within contemporary comprehensive high schools. It begins with an argument for research on the organization of schools that acknowledges high schools as fundamentally different from their elementary school counterparts, and suggests that departmental specialization and differentiation are key elements in understanding that difference. A two-stage exploratory study provides evidence of the department as the site of both a distinctive subject subculture within the school and a significant administrative unit of it.