Social norms evolve over time as society evolves and advances. The social norms for teachers are different from those of other members of society. The clusters of norms and expectations that apply to different groups of people in society are called roles. The different expectations to which teachers feel an obligation to conform are their particular social roles. Examples of such groups with assigned roles could include politicians, religious leaders, housewives, salespeople, scientists, and students as well as teachers. Each title evokes a specific set of images indicative of the appropriate role and interaction for the members of that specific group as differentiated from other members in society (Giddens, 1991, pp. 5-73).
Emile Durkheim was the major founder of modern sociology as an academic discipline. He taught sociology at the University of Bordeaux in the 1880s and 1890s. As a result of his success at Bordeaux, he was offered a professorship at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1902. The conventional view of Durkheim's principles stresses his sociological theories explaining the differentiation of society as a whole. While, in his later work, Durkheim shifted his view of how individuals, groups, and societies function, "Durkheimianism" with the emphasis on external constraints and positivistic, quantitative methods is based primarily on the work of his middle period (Alexander, 1988, pp. 2-3).
Durkheim's theory recognized the imbalance and, often, conflict between individual social needs and the requirements of a large-scale complex society. Groups are a key factor in the existence or absence of social regulations b
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