Education Flashcards
Education
A major agent of socialization and a formal institution that instills much of the knowledge that is needed to function as productive adults in society.
Functional literacy
Reading, writing, and arithmetic (three Rs)
Formal education
Learning of academic facts and concepts through a formal curriculum.
Informal eduction
Learning about cultural values, norms, and expected behaviours by participating in a society (occurs through formal education system and at home).
Cultural Transmission
The way people come to learn the values, beliefs, and social norms of their culture (both informal and formal education include cultural transmission).
Functionalist perspective on education
- Education instills cultural values and norms that maintain moral order and promote stability by training members to obey the law, respect one another, and work productively
- Manifest functions (formally assessed and documented), skills and knowledge development, historical and cultural transmission, social development, social control (respect authority figures and follow rules)
Manifest functions of education
Socialization, transmission of culture, social control, social placement, cultural innovation (part of functionalist perspective)
Latent functions of education
Courtship, social networks, working in groups, creation of generation gap, political and social integration (part of functionalist perspective)
Conflict Theory’s perspective on education
- Education system reproduces existing social order and poses disadvantages for particular groups
- Social reproduction of class: because of hidden school costs, the school experience can be quite different for children of diff social classes/ethnicities
- Cost of higher ed and more subtle cultural cues make access to education unequal
Cultural capital
- Pierre Bourdieu
- accumulation of cultural knowledge that helps one navigate a culture
- cultural capital alters the experiences and opportunities available to students from different social classes (parallel to economic capital)
- upper/middle classes have more of it than the lower classes
- education system maintains a system where dominant culture’s values are rewarded
Pedagogic violence
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Pedagogy - a set of knowledge about how to teach
- Pedagogic violence = educational violence (symbolic violence committed by education as a system)
Ex. Kid with single parent feels like their family is wrong because the photo in the textbook only shows a family with two parents (feeling of inferiority is internalized by this group, and feeling of superiority is internalized by privileged group)
Hidden curriculum
- part of critical perspective
- process by which a subtle agenda of norms, values, and expectations that fall outside the formal curriculum is learned inadvertently through participation in the school system
Streaming/student selection
- part of critical perspective
- a process by which students are placed intro specific programs and levels of curriculum based on perceived levels of achievement
Credentialism
- part of critical perspective
- reliance on increasingly higher educational qualifications as necessary minimal requirements for employment
Critical Pedagogy (banking model of education vs anti-oppressive pedagogy/critical pedagogy)
- Banking model - education functions as an instrument used to facilitate integration of younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity
- Critical pedagogy - practice of freedom by which people deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of the world
Feminist Pedagogies
teaching about feminism (content) + feminist teaching (forms, methods) + feminist reflections on teaching (research)
Feminist pedagogy aims and principles
Aims: equality, caring, resistance, deconstruction
Principles: relationship amid the teacher and the student, empowerment, constructing a community, privilege of voice, respect for diverse personal experiences among all students, challenging typical learning ideals
Interactionist perspective on education
- Study of how teachers perceive students, act and react in relation to the meanings they ascribe to their students’ behaviour, and in turn how the students interpret their instructors, curriculum, and behaviour of fellow students
- Teacher is authority figure who can label student behaviour as appropriate or inappropriate
- Self-fulfilling prophecy - an originally false belief that becomes true simply because it is perceived as such
Constructionist perspective on education
- Foucault - education as contruction of docile bodies
- children become gendered, raced, classed subjects through education
- docile bodies are shaped into instruments of conformity and the perpetuation of privilege
Organic education
- Aboriginal peoples
- tailored to practical needs of communities and families, took place in communities/natural environment
- no formal teachers, individual community members were responsible for ensuring that every child learned key knowledge, skills, traditions, and values
Residential schools
- total institutions with aim to assimilate children into dominant economic/cultural system
- kids couldn’t speak in their own languages or see their families, and were subjected to harsh discipline
Private vs public schools
Private - operated by private individuals or corporations, parents pay annual tuition
Public - funded through provincial and local governments
Universal access
- People’s equal ability to participate in an education system. On a world level, access might be more difficult for certain groups based on gender, race, class, and disabilities.
- In Canada, this is supported by provincial governments covering the cost of free public education
Home-schooling
The education of children at home, usually by their parents
Baby boom
- 1947-1967 - birth rates briefly exploded and declined just as quickly afterward
- caused growth of formal mass education
The effect of the Cold War on education
- contest between ussr and us to achieve political, economic, and military superiority
- demands for more research scientists and qualified specialists for government and industry
Massification
Mass increase in postsecondary enrollment, in contrast to the smaller numbers that once constituted an elite group (formal education now also correlates highly with employability)
Credentialism
- Over time, qualifying for specific jobs requires ever more certificates and degrees
- Education is not only a source of wealth, but a product of wealth
Grade inflation
- Correspondence between letter grades and the achievements they reflect has been changing (in a downward direction)
- What used to be a C now earns a B or A
- Result of commodification of education
Commodification of education
Many students come to university with the orientation of consumers who expect to receive good grades in exchange for paying tuition
