theories of education Flashcards
The functionalist perspective on education
Durkheim - creating social solidarity,
teaching specialist schools
AO3: he assumes students all accept the norms & values they are taught, but they may reject them, his view is too DETERMINISTIC
Parsons - school is a bridge between family and work
Davis + Moore - role allocation
AO3: they assume that education is meritocratic, but children don’t have an equal chance to succeed in education
New Right perspective on education
Chubb & Moe - private schools deliver a better education because they are answerable to paying customers.
schools should be made to compete against each other (marketisation)
parents given voucher to buy child an education at school they want to go to, forcing schools to improve as the vouchers would be their main source of income.
AO3: Marxists argue competition between schools benefits the middle class, who use their knowledge of the education system (cultural capital) and money (economic capital) to get their children into the best state schools
Althusser marxist
Althusser - bourgeoisie control the proletariat through Repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) which control the working class through force (police)
and Ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) which control the ideas of the working class, making them think capitalism is a fair system (education system/media)
AO3: Functionalists argue that education passes on shared norms/ values rather than ruling class ideology, and that schools are meritocratic and so failure is the fault of students
Bowles and Gintis marxist
the main function of education is to produce an obedient workforce which accepts inequality
- parallels between school and work (correspondence principle) works through the ‘hidden curriculum’
example: school Hierarchy: teachers at the top, students at the bottom. work Hierarchy: bosses at the top, workers at the bottom
AO3: they are too deterministic: they assume that students accept the norms/values they are taught in schools, yet Willis’ study shows how they may reject them.
Paul Willis study marxism
Willis studied 12 working-class boys through interviews and observations. They formed an anti-school culture: they rejected school. They saw meritocracy as a ‘con’, and saw manual work as superior and more masculine than non-manual work.
Due to their behaviour, Willis said they ended up in the low-paid jobs that capitalism needs people to perform
AO3: As he only did his study on one group of 12 students in one school, it is difficult to generalise his findings to the whole education system.
Bourdieu marxist
middle class students achieve more than working class students as their parents possess more capital than working class parents.
- Economic capital- money and wealth.
- Educational capital- qualifications.
- Cultural capital- the knowledge, attitudes and values of the middle class
feminist perspective on education
Radical feminists argue the education system is used to maintain/reproduce patriarchy
Liberal feminists believe that education is now promoting gender equality, as can be seen by the improvement in female achievement in recent decades
postmodernist perspective on education
our economy has changed from Fordism (based on factory production lines) to post-Fordism which requires a skilled workforce which can use new technology.
education needs to promote creativity and self-motivation, as these are the characteristics needed from workers today. rather than socialising children into one culture, education should promote cultural diversity through multicultural education
AO3: the curriculum is still largely ethnocentric, promoting White British culture above others and causing ethnic minority students to feel marginalised.
