Research Methods

Question 1

What is the Functionalist perspective on education?

Answer 1

Durkheim and Parsons - 4 main functions of education

• Passing on society’s culture and building social solidarity
• Providing a bridge between the particularistic values and ascribed status of the family and the universalistic values and achieved status of contemporary advanced societies
• Developing human capital, a trained and qualified labour force
• Selecting and allocating people for roles in a meritocratic society, and legitimizing social inequality

Question 2

What is social solidarity?

Answer 2

The integration of people into society through shared values, a common culture, shared understandings and social ties that bring them together and build social cohesion.

Question 3

What is Human capital?

Answer 3

Refers to the knowledge and skills possessed by a workforce that increase that workforce’s value and usefulness to employers. Schultz (1971)

Question 4

What is the New Right perspective on education?

Answer 4

Not concerned with promoting equality, but training the workforce
New Right theorists such as Chubb and Moe (1990, 1992) argue there should be a free market in education.

Question 5

What is marketization?

Answer 5

The process whereby services, like education or health, that were previously controlled and run by the state, have government or local council control reduced or removed altogether, and become subject to the free market forces of supply and demand, based on competition and consumer choice.

Question 6

What is the Marxist perspective on education?

Answer 6

Marxists see education primarily as a means of social control. They emphasize the way the education system reproduces existing social class inequalities.

Question 7

What does Althusser argue about education?

Answer 7

(1971) saw the main role of education in a capitalist society as the reproduction of an efficient and obedient labour force, involving two aspects;
- the reproduction of the necessary technical skills
- the reproduction of ruling class ideology (the dominant beliefs and values) and the socialization of workers into accepting this dominant ideology (false consciousness)

Question 8

What is false consciousness?

Answer 8

A failure by members of a social class to recognize their real interests.

Question 9

What does Bordieu argue about education?

Answer 9

(1977) regards a key role of the education system in capitalist societies as legitimizing (justifying) class inequalities and reproducing the class structure. Argues each social class possesses its own cultural framework or set of ideas, which he calls a habitus. Suggests success in the education system is based on the possession of cultural capital and of access to the habitus or culture of the dominant social class.

Question 10

What is a habitus?

Answer 10

The cultural framework and set of ideas possessed by a social class, into which people are socialized, and which influences their cultural tastes and choices.

Question 11

What do Bowles and Gintis argue about education

Answer 11

(2011, 1976) Like Althusser, they argue that the major role of education in capitalist societies is the reproduction of labour power - a hard working, submissive and disciplined workforce. This is reproduced in two main ways;

• Through the hidden curriculum of schooling and the correspondence, or very close similarity, between the social relationships at school and at work - in particular, the way schooling operates in the “long shadow of work”
• Through the role of the education system in legitimizing or justifying inequality and the class structure

Question 12

What are criticisms of the Marxist perspective?

Answer 12

• Lack of detailed research into schools (pupils often have little regard for teacher’s authority/school rules/discipline)
• Ignores some influences of the formal curriculum
• Deterministic, they assume people have no real ability to make choices or have control over what happens to them, and have no explanation for why working class children are successful in education

Question 13

What is Paul Willis’s perspective on education?

Answer 13

Learning to Labour (1977) adopts a Marxist approach but also draws on the interactionist perspective
Recognizes that schools do not produce a willing and obedient workforce
Studied 12 working class boys who had developed a counter/anti-school subculture, opposed to the main aims of the school and the conformist pupils

Question 14

What are similarities between the Functionalist and the Marxist perspectives on education?

Answer 14

• Both see schools playing a role in legitimizing (justifying and explaining) social inequality
• Both are macro (large-scale) theories concerned with the structural relationship between education and other parts of the social system, such as the economy and social inequality
• Both see education as serving the needs of industrial and/or capitalist society
• Both see the education system as a powerful influence on students, ensuring they confirm to existing social values and norms

Question 15

What are criticisms of both the Marxist and Functionalist perspectives?

Answer 15

• Both place too much emphasis on the role of education in forming students’ identity, and they pay too little attention to the influences of other agencies of socialization, such as the family, the media and work
• They don’t fully consider the way students react to schooling in ways that aren’t necessarily “functional” for the social system or capitalism. For example, pupils disrupt schools, play trust and don’t learn, and workers’ earlier experience of schooling does not stop them from going on strike. (However, note the exception of Willis’s work here.)
• They both see too tight a link between education and the economy, and exaggerate the extent to which schools provide a ready, willing and qualified labour force. The new emphasis on vocational education and pressure to drive up school standards are a direct response to employers who criticized schools for not providing a suitably disciplined and qualified labour force.

Question 16

What is globalization?

Answer 16

The growing inter connectedness of societies across the world, with the spread of the same culture, consumer goods and economic interests across the globe.

Question 17

What is the Interactionist approach?

Answer 17

Tend to use micro or small-scale detailed studies of what actually happens with in schools and classrooms, in contrast to the macro or large-scale structuralist approaches of Functionalism and Marxism. By using qualitative research methods, Interactionists seek to discover how, through interaction with others, teachers or pupils experience education and form identities.

Question 18

What is labelling?

Answer 18

Refers to the process of defining a person or group in a certain way - as a particular “type” of person or group.

Question 19

What is a halo effect?

Answer 19

When pupils become stereotyped, either favourably or unfavourably, on the basis of earlier impressions.

Question 20

What is the self fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 20

Where people act in response to predictions which have been made regarding their behaviour, thereby making the prediction come true.

Question 21

What did Waterhouse say about labelling pupils?

Answer 21

(2004), in case studies of four primary and secondary schools, found ghsf once these labels were applied they can then become a “pivotal identity”. This construction by teachers of normal or deviant pupil identities may lead to the self fulfilling prophecy.