Education Flashcards
What is the functionalist view on the role of education?
- Durkheim: believes the role of education is to provide secondary socialisation which passes on universal norms and values which helps individuals become fully functional members of society by:
- Creating social solidarity
- Teaching social norms and values
- Teaching specialist skills
- Hargreaves: believes education creates individualism and competition rather than shared norms and values
- Parsons: believes education creates meritocracy
- Davis and Moore: believe unequal rewards are necessary in order for people to be motivated to achieve more
What is the new right view on the function of education?
- The new right have a similar perspective to functionalists
- however, they believe that state schools fail to perform their role
- they agree that schools should impart shared values but are worried that the teachers might have different values to the value consensus
- Chubb and Moe said the reason private schools in the USA perform better than public schools is because the teachers are answerable to paying parents
- The NR believe that education should be based on Marketisation and Meritocracy rather than equality and fairness
- They believe that for education to be meritocratic, it needs to be competitive
What is the Marxist view on the function of education?
- Althusser believed that education (schools) were part of the ideological state apparatus whose function is to spread the ruling class ideology through the hidden and formal curriculum
- Bowles & Gintis believed that schools prepare us for working life. they ensure that the working class are used to the system of working so as to prevent them from rebelling
- Willis studied what he called “lads”, he believed that school prepares them for mundane work later in the future, school teaches them coping mechanisms
- Bourdieu believed that there are other factors affecting inequality than money: socioeconomic status = economic status + cultural status + social status
- Bernstein believed that there were different language codes. The elaborate code for school and the restricted code for lower classes
What is the feminist view on the function of education?
- Heaton and Lawson believe that schools teach patriarchal values through the hidden curriculum
- Stanworth believed that teachers had higher expectations of male students than they did female students and they encouraged more male students to pursue higher education
What are the out of school factors affecting social class differences in education?
- Material deprivation
- Cultural deprivation
Define material deprivation
Material deprivation is when there is a lack of necessary resources which leads to low educational achievement
List some studies on material deprivation
- Smith and Noble found barriers to learning for working-class pupils:
- Lack of resources
- Lack of suitable environment
- lack of good schools in area
- Wilkinson believed that the working class are more vulnerable to disorders
- Working-class pupils may have to take up employment to help with the bills
Define cultural deprivation
When the norms, values and attitudes of a class do not align with that of education
List some studies on cultural deprivation
- Sugarman: Listed some barriers working class have to educational achievement:
- Fatalism
- Collectivism
- Immediate gratification
- Douglas: parents of working class pupils lack interest in their children’s studies
- Durkheim: habitus
- Bernstein: language codes
- Feinstein found that while material deprivation has some impact on educational achievement, material deprivation has a grater impact
List the in school factors affecting social class differences in educational achievement
- Labelling
- Subcultures
- Setting and streaming
Describe some studies into in school factors affecting social class differences in educational achievement
- Rosenthal and Jacobson: conducted a study where they told teachers some students had high IQ’s while others had low IQs. those believed to have high IQs performed better
- Hargreaves: those labelled as trouble makers had a self fulfilling prophecy
- Willis: a pupils social class has more of an impact on how they behave than what their teacher thinks of them
- Ball: found that working class pupils were often placed in lower sets and streams. They also ended up acting out, teachers had higher expectation of pupils in higher sets and bands
List external factors that affect gender differences in educational achievement for girls
- Impact of feminism
- Change in the family
- Change in employment
- Change in perception
List internal factors that affect gender differences in educational achievement for girls
- Patriarchy
- Girls are more passive
- Subject choice
List external factors that affect gender differences in educational achievement for boys
- Mac an Ghaill suggests that working-class boys are experiencing a crisis of masculinity because they are socialised into seeing their future make identity and role in terms of having a job and being a breadwinner, but the
landscape has changed. - Welfare benefits has led boys to be happy to leave school without qualifications
List internal factors that affect gender differences in educational achievement for boys
- Rothermel: home educated boys do better than girls
- feminisation of education
- boys receive less support
Schools fail to confront the traditional notion of masculinity. Deviant boys were more popular with some teachers than academic boys
List external factors that affect ethnicity differences in educational achievement
- Language
- Material deprivation
- Cultural deprivation
List internal factors that affect ethnicity differences in educational achievement
- Ethnocentric curriculum
- Racism
- Labelling
- Stereotyping: Gillborn found that teachers often had high expectations of Chinese and Indian pupils while there was also the “myth of black challenge”
- Subcultures : Willis’ ‘lads’ and Mirza’s black girls(self negating prophecy)
