Theories of education

Question 1

Basic concepts: Learning

Answer 1

The development of new knowledge,skills or attitudes

Learning can take place with or without the conscious intention of the learner, and with or without the direct participation of other people in the learning process

Question 2

Basic concepts: education

Answer 2

Is different from learning because it is intentional , and it involves a process of instruction by someone other than the learner

In education transactions, an organization or an individual other than the learner exists to help design and facilitate the learning process

Question 3

Basic concepts: schooling

Answer 3

Education processes and experiences designed and delivered through formal institutions

Major sites of schooling in Canada include k-12 systems and post secondary institutions

Question 4

Basic concepts: instruction (teaching)

Answer 4

Instruction is the intentional facilitation of learning toward identified goals

Learning can be an outcome of instructional processes but it can also take place in the absence of explicit instruction

Question 5

Basic concepts: adult education

Answer 5

A process through which individuals or organizations intentionally addis adults to develop new knowledge, skills or attitudes

Ex: workplace training, health education, and continuing education

Question 6

Emile Durkheim

Answer 6

Structural functionalism and liberal theory

Education is an integrative and regulator mechanism that creates social solidarity

Main functions: bind members of society together
- transmit to the students society’s norms and values

Question 7

Structural functionalism and liberal theory : talcott parsons

Answer 7

Schools are social systems that reflects and serve the interests of the wider society - individuals are redirected from the person centred, emotional expectations of home and family life to the formalized, more competitive and achievement-oriented world of work and public life

Question 8

Talcott parsons: 2 social functions

Answer 8

Grading and other more informal processes of selection, schooling sorts the members of society into different positions within the social hierarchy

2) schooling inculcates in individuals the dispositions, values and behaviours that they need for successful participation in Sofia life and in the particular social positions each person occupies

Question 9

Human capital theory

Answer 9

Proposes that education is an investment that increases opportunities and capacities among individuals, therefore stimulating productivity and economic growth

Question 10

Status attainment functionalism

Answer 10

Believes in educations ability to promote social progress and democratic opportunities. However not much in these studies challenge functionalist assumptions such as the idea that inequality is necessary for a social system

Question 11

Educational progressivism

Answer 11

The school of thought offers a critique of modern social life but retains faith In the ability of schools to improve those conditions. It has the humanistic philosophy of John Dewey at its core

Question 12

Limitations of functionalism

Answer 12

Evidence runs contrary to or makes questions the assumption of a meritocratic social structure in which educational achievement and individual effort and not ones social origins, account for social success or failure

Functional and liberal analyses tend to ignore the significance within the field of education of power relations associated with class race gender.

Question 13

Interpretive analysis

Answer 13

Two aspects: the meaning of school practices for individual participants
2) other symbolic aspects of the field of education

Society is not a fixed reality but instead is continually constructed and modified by human practice

Question 14

Weberian conflict theory of education

3 key postulates:

Answer 14

1. Status groups as constitutive of society
2. Continuing struggle for advantage between groups
3. Education as a means of imprint the culture of status groups

Question 15

Symbolic interactionism

Answer 15

Mead: education is part of the never ending process of human development, a process in which individuals learn and share social meanings

Question 16

Definition of the situation

Answer 16

W.i. Thomas used to address the important role that shared meanings and perceptions play in guarding social action

Question 17

Self fulfilling prophecies

Answer 17

Teachers create and apply particular labels to children and their parents based on common sense assumptions, background information, and observations from encounters

Question 18

The new sociology of education

Answer 18

Expose the power dynamics that exist within educational practices

Knowledge is produced , defined and given meaning and importance through the social contexts in which it appears

Question 19

Limitations of interpretive sociology

Answer 19

Does not link what happens in schools with the rest of the social world

Paying attention to everyday processes obscures historical questions in terms of change and how school practices emerged in the first place

Tendency to ignore the impact of broader social structures on schooling

Question 20

Classical critical theory : Marx

Answer 20

Like other institutions within capitalism- constrains human potential because schooling serves capitalist priorities such as labor market discipline and profit

Instrument for the production of a submissive workforce

Just enough knowledge to create enough workers ready for jobs, schooling indoctrinated ideologies that advance capitalist interests

After revolution- school would foster a critical consciousness and personal development in students, no longer serving the bourgeoisie social order

Question 21

Marxism

Answer 21

The educational system is an integral element in the reproduction of the class structure

The long shadow of work: education, the family and the reproduction of the social division of labor

Education and economic transformation go hang in hand

Question 22

Marxism: correspondence principle

Answer 22

Schooling has contributed to the reproduction. Of the social relations of production largely through the correspondence between school structure and class structure

Question 23

Base/ super structure logic:

Answer 23

modes of production drive the development and evolution of institutions

Question 24

Limitations of classical critical theory and Marxism

Answer 24

Over generalize the powers that capitalism, capitalists and dominant economic forces have in shaping social life, and thereby to undermine educations capacity to change and be changed through interaction among educators, students, community members and other social forces

Question 25

Education has a duel nature

Answer 25

It can foster critical thinking and empower people to take control over their lives or it can function as a mechanism that creates subordination and disempowerment

Question 26

Postmodernity

Answer 26

Scepticism regarding science and progress

Questioning of epistemological and ethical foundations of educational systems

Faith in rationality with the promise of process - significant attack

Question 27

Postmodern skepticism

Answer 27

Human progress through the progress of scientific knowledge is one of the mets narratives or grand narratives, the higher order metaphysical forms of legitimation which are marked out as subject to incredulity in postmodernity

Inevitable process has been thrown into doubt

Holocaust and nuclear war as the pinko ales of modern rationality and science

Question 28

Post modern science and knowledge

Answer 28

A denial of modernist scientifically with its emphasis on the universal efficacy of scientific method and of the stance of objectivity and make neutrality in the making of knowledge claims

There is an increasing recognition that all knowledge claims are partial, local and specific rather than universal and ahistorical, and that they are always imbued with power and normative interests

Question 29

Education and postmodernity

Answer 29

Emphasis k the inscribed subject the decentred subject contacted by language, discourses, desire and the unconscious, seems to contradict the very purpose of education and the basis of educational activity

Question 30

Cultural reproduction

Answer 30

Pierre bourdieu

Class inequalities are reproduced

Habitual - a set of dispositions that influences social success in a variety of social situations, including education

Background knowledge and so on it gives certain classes advantage over other class fractions

Education= field of conflict where different cases fractions struggle for improving their position

Question 31

Resistance theory

Answer 31

Related to cultural studies a space continually open for contestant ion always an active process

Actively participate in the process of schooling

This participation can take many forms: from enthusiastic acceptance to complete rejection

Because of these differences students experience educational practices in a different way

Question 32

Resistance theory 2

Answer 32

Youth subcultures

Birmingham school of cultural studies

Analysis of working class youth 
- why working class youth rest of or fail school 

Use of mass culture (what you learn in school) and define and create identities

Most identities are defined against the authority of family and school

Question 33

Critical pedagogy

Answer 33

Influenced by post modern theory and post structuralism

Post structuralism: centre on how meaning is created and how it is transmitted from one person to the other

The linguistic turn: analyzes the arbitrary nature of symbols by exploring their social nature

Question 34

Critical pedagogy: signified

Answer 34

Form (whale)

Question 35

Sign: the signified

Answer 35

Content (mammal, giant , sea)

Question 36

Critical pedagogy: michel Foucault

Answer 36

Words create a certain reality- modifies how we relate to each other and the world

Question 37

Michel Foucault: regimes : critical pedagogy

Answer 37

A. The types of discourse harbours and causes to function as true

B. The mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true from false statements & the way in which each is sanctioned

C. The techniques and procedures which are valorised for obtaining truth

D. The status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true

Question 38

Feminist pedagogy

Answer 38

Gender unequally in education began heavily criticized

Centred on social problems such as sexism in the curricula and classroom and the unequal gender distribution

Propose that equality can be achieved though changes within existing educational, social and economic systems

Argue that change requires a much more fundamental transformation of social practices and systems

Question 39

Radical feminism:

Answer 39

Patriarchy- systematic oppression and devaluation of women

Question 40

Socialist feminism

Answer 40

Liberal reforms are not enough to overcomes gender inequality, proposes that women’s subordination is not just a result of gender but also of class and other forms of stratification

Like radical feminism
Close to Marxism

Question 41

Feminist pedagogy:

Answer 41

Tried to unify all these concerns and move toward the creation of particular strategies to face practical problems

Question 42

Critical race theory and anti-racist pedagogy

Answer 42

No negative thinkers - du bois

Analyses the unequal treatment on individuals based on race that takes place in education settings

Ascribed racial characteristics, often ignoring bases of identity or difference within groups

Race is always connected with power
Do not see race as a fixed thing

Pays little attention to the underlying causes of racial inequality

Racism is perpetuated both through Individual social practices and by systems that construct minorities

Schooling is a central focus- perpetuate unequal racial identities or be a place where these identities can be criticized and modified