Theories of education Flashcards
Basic concepts: Learning
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
Basic concepts: education
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
Basic concepts: schooling
Education processes and experiences designed and delivered through formal institutions
Major sites of schooling in Canada include k-12 systems and post secondary institutions
Basic concepts: instruction (teaching)
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
Basic concepts: adult education
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
Emile Durkheim
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
Structural functionalism and liberal theory : talcott parsons
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
Talcott parsons: 2 social functions
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
Human capital theory
Proposes that education is an investment that increases opportunities and capacities among individuals, therefore stimulating productivity and economic growth
Status attainment functionalism
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
Educational progressivism
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
Limitations of functionalism
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.
Interpretive analysis
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
Weberian conflict theory of education
3 key postulates:
- Status groups as constitutive of society
- Continuing struggle for advantage between groups
- Education as a means of imprint the culture of status groups
Symbolic interactionism
Mead: education is part of the never ending process of human development, a process in which individuals learn and share social meanings
Definition of the situation
W.i. Thomas used to address the important role that shared meanings and perceptions play in guarding social action
Self fulfilling prophecies
Teachers create and apply particular labels to children and their parents based on common sense assumptions, background information, and observations from encounters
The new sociology of education
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
Limitations of interpretive sociology
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
Classical critical theory : Marx
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
Marxism
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
Marxism: correspondence principle
Schooling has contributed to the reproduction. Of the social relations of production largely through the correspondence between school structure and class structure
Base/ super structure logic:
modes of production drive the development and evolution of institutions
Limitations of classical critical theory and Marxism
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
Education has a duel nature
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
Postmodernity
Scepticism regarding science and progress
Questioning of epistemological and ethical foundations of educational systems
Faith in rationality with the promise of process - significant attack
Postmodern skepticism
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
Post modern science and knowledge
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
Education and postmodernity
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
Cultural reproduction
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
Resistance theory
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
Resistance theory 2
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
Critical pedagogy
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
Critical pedagogy: signified
Form (whale)
Sign: the signified
Content (mammal, giant , sea)
Critical pedagogy: michel Foucault
Words create a certain reality- modifies how we relate to each other and the world
Michel Foucault: regimes : critical pedagogy
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
Feminist pedagogy
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
Radical feminism:
Patriarchy- systematic oppression and devaluation of women
Socialist feminism
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
Feminist pedagogy:
Tried to unify all these concerns and move toward the creation of particular strategies to face practical problems
Critical race theory and anti-racist pedagogy
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
