Chapter 2 Education

Question 1

How has gender chaged in education over the years?

Answer 1

Both sexes have improved in all levels over the years
The rate of girls improvement has been more rapid and a significant gap has opened up
Girls have over taken boys

Question 2

Where have gender patterns been slower to change?

Answer 2

Subject choice. Boys and girls opt to study more sex-based subjects

Question 3

What are the statistics for achievement differences on starting school?

Answer 3

2013 girls are ahdead of boys by between 7-17% in all 7 areas of learning.
Girls were also better at boys at concentrating.
Boys were 2 and a half times more likey to have statements of educational needs.

Question 4

What are the statistics for achievement differences in key stage 1-3?

Answer 4

Girls do consistently better especially in english where the gender gap steadily widens with age.
In science and maths the gap is much narrower but girls still do better.

Question 5

What are the statistics for achievement differences at GCSE?

Answer 5

around 10%

Question 6

What are the statistics for achievement differences at AS and A-levels?

Answer 6

Girls are much more likely to sit, pass and achieve higher grades though the gao is much narrower than GCSE.
In 2013 46.8% of girls gained As or Bs but only 42% of boys.
Even in ‘boys’ subjects like maths and physics girls are more liekly to achive a and b.

Question 7

What are the statistics for achievement differences in vocational courses?

Answer 7

A larger proportion of girls achieve distinctions in every subject including those such as engenering and construction where girls are a tiny minority of students.

Question 8

(External factors) What is the meaning of external factors?

Answer 8

Factors outside the education system, such as home and family background and wider society.

Question 9

(External factors) What do sociologists say about external factors?

Answer 9

The more rapid improvement in girls results can be best explained by changes that have occured in factors outside the school such as the impact of feminism, changes in the family, changes in womens employment, and girls changing perceptions and ambitions

Question 10

(External factors the impact of feminism) What is feminism?

Answer 10

A social movement that strives for equal rights for women in all areas of life.
Since the 1960s the feminist movement has changed the traditional stereotype of a womans role as solely that of a mother and house wife in a patriarchal nucleur family

Question 11

(External factors the impact of feminism) How far along is feminism?

Answer 11

Although feminists argue that we have not yet achieved full equality between the sexesthe feminst movement has had considerable success. Feminism had increased womens self esteem and expectations.

Question 12

(External factors the impact of feminism) Where are these changes particularly seen?

Answer 12

In media images and messages eg. Angela McRobbies 1994 study of girls magazines. In the 1940s they emphasized the importance of getting married and ‘not getting left on the shelf’ whereas now days they contain images of assertive, independant women

Question 13

(External factors changes in the family) What ahve been the majour changes in the family since the 1970s?

Answer 13

Increase in divorce rate.
Increase in cohabitation and a decrease in number of first marriages.
Increase in number of lone parent families.
Smaller families.

Question 14

(External factors changes in the family) How is this changing girls attidudes towards education?

Answer 14

Increased numbers of female-headed lone parent families may mean more women need to take on a breadwinner role. This in tern creates a new adult role model for girls - the financially independant women.
Increases divorce rate may suggest to girls that it is unwise to rely on a husband to be their provider.

Question 15

(External factors changes in womens employment) What important changes in womens employment has been happening?

Answer 15

1970 Equal Pay Act make sit illegal to pay women less than men for work of equal value
1975 Sex Discriminations Act outlaws discrimination at work
1975 the pay gap had halfed from 30% to 15%
2013 to proportion of women in employment had risen from 53% in 1971 to 67%

Question 16

(External factors girls changing ambitions)

Question 17

What is middle class and give examples?

Answer 17

Non maual occupations
doctors
teachers
managers
‘white collar’ office workers
owners of businesses

Question 18

What is working-class and give some examples?

Answer 18

Manual occupations
skilled workers such as plummers
semi-skilled workers such as lorry drivers
unskilled/routine workers such as cleaners

Question 19

Social class background has a powerful influence on what?

Answer 19

A child’s chances of success in the education system

Question 20

Whats the difference in achievement between middle and lower class children?
What happens when the children get older?

Answer 20

Children from middle class families on average perform better than working-class children
The gap in achievement grows wider as children get older

Question 21

What do middle class children achieve in education?

Answer 21

Children of middle class do better at GCSE, stay longer in full-time education and take the great majority of uni places

Question 22

What is one popular explaination of class differences in educational achievement? (to do with schools)

Answer 22

Better off parents can afford to send their children to privet schools, which may provide a higher standard of education

Question 23

What is the definition of internal factors in education and give examples?

Answer 23

These are factors within schools and the education system, such as interviews between pupils and teachers and inequalities between schools

Question 24

What is the definition of external factors in educaztion and give examples?

Answer 24

These are factors outside the education system such as the influence of home and family background and wider society

Question 25

Class differences in children’s development and achievement appear when in life and give a case study?

Answer 25

very early in life
For example: a nationwide study by the Centre for Longitudal Studies 2007 found that by the age of three children from disadvantaged backgrounds are already up to one year behind those form more privileged homes and the gap widens with age

Question 26

Some sociologists claim that educational differences are the result of what?
Sociologists argue most of us begin to aquire what… that are needed for educational success?
How do we aquire these skills?

Answer 26

Result of culteral deprivation.
Acquire the basic values, attitudes and skills that are needed for educational success.
Through primary socialisation in thr family.

Question 27

What 3 things does the basic ‘cultural equipment’ include?

Answer 27

language
self-disciplin
reasoning skills

Question 28

According to cultural deprivation theorist many working class families fail to do what (to do with cultural deprivation)?
These children grow up to be what?

Answer 28

Socialise their children adequatley
These children grow up ‘culturally deprived’.

Question 29

What does it mean to be culturally deprived?

Answer 29

They lack the cultural equipment needed to do well at school and they underachieve: language, parents educations and working class subculture

Question 30

Language is an essential part of what… and the way in which parents communicate with their children effects what?

Answer 30

The process of education.
Their cognitive (interllectual) development and their ability to benefit from the process of schooling.

Question 31

Give a case study on how language effects their children?

Answer 31

Hubbs-Tait et al 2002 found that where parents use language that challenges their children to evaluate their own understanding or abilities cognitive performance improves. (eg ‘What do you think?’)

Question 32

Leon Freinstein 2008 found that which type of parents use challenging language?

Answer 32

educated parents are more likely to use language in this way

Question 33

Which parents tend to use lower language which results in what?

Answer 33

less educated parents tend to use language
This results in lower performance.

Question 34

Feinstine also found that educated parents are more likely to use what… which encourages their children to develop a sense of what?

Answer 34

Praise.
Their own competence.

Question 35

Carl Bereiter and Siegfried Engelmann 1966 claim that what… and describe lower-class families as communicating by what…?

Answer 35

The language used in lower-class families is deficient.
Communicating by gestures, single words or disjointed phrases.

Question 36

As a result of poor speech children fail to develop what?
Children grow up incapable of what?
Because of this, they are unable to take advantage of what?

Answer 36

The necessary language skills.
Abstract thinking and unable to use language to explain, decribe, enquire or compare.
The opportunities that school offers.

Question 37

These differences in speech code do what to middle-class and working class children?
This is because elaborated code is what?

Answer 37

Gives middle class an advantage at school and put working class children at a disadvantage.
This is because the elaborated code is the language used by teachers, textbooks and exams.

Question 38

Early socialisation into the elaborated code means that middle-class children are already what?
Resulting in what at school?
By contrast working class children result in what?

Answer 38

Fluent users of the code when they start school.
Meaning they feel more ‘at home’ in school and are more likely to succeed.
By contrast, working-class children are likely to feel excluded and to be less successful.

Question 39

What is the restricted code?

Answer 39

The speech code typically used by the working class.
It had limited vocab and is based on the use of short, often unfinished, grammatically simple sentences.
Speech is predictable and may involve only a single word or even just a gesture instead.
It is descriptive not analytic.

Question 40

What is the elaborated code?

Answer 40

Typically used by the middle-class.
It has a wider vocab and is based on longer, grammatically more complex sentences.
Speech is more varied and communicates abstract ideas.