Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Education (Topic 4 - gender differences in achievement: (The gender gap in…
Education
Topic 4 - gender differences in achievement:
The gender gap in achievement
External factors and gender differences in achievement
Internal factors and gender differences in achievement
Identity, class and girls achievement
Boys and achievement
Gender and subject choice
Pupils sexual and gender identities
Topic 5 - the role of education in society:
The functionalist perspective on education
Parsons: He argues that within the family a person's role is 'ascribed' however in society it has to be 'achieved and this is done through education.
There are the four functions of education: Selective role (selects the best people for the most important jobs), secondary socialisation (norms and values learnt through friends and media), economic role (taught maths and numeracy), social control role (people are punished for not conforming to norms and values) and political role (being taught to be a good british citizen).
Parsons believes school uses meritocracy (a merit system) to bridge students between home and work.
Functionalists over all believe schools are there to 'knit' people together to create a consensus of norms and values or social solidarity here everyone identifies together.
Criticisms: Marxists argue they ignore inequalities in educational achievement. They have a 'rose tinted' view which can sometimes be seen as overly positive.
Neoliberalism and the new right perspective on education
The new right and neoliberalism: They believe that some people are just brighter than others and determine this based off of meritocratic principles. They also believe people should have be socialised into shared values with this idea of 'one size fits all' through the use of state school. However these problems are solved through the marketisation of education resulting in league tables and greater competition between schools.
Criticisms of the new right: Ignores inequality of class and ethnicity. Ignores different cultures. Fails to address the problems that comes with competitive schools such as student neglect.
The marxist perspective on education
Bowles and Gintis: Argue the correspondence theory which is the idea that the workforce is reproduced through education. Education is seen as a 'myth making machine' designed to justify inequality by stating that hard work pays off rather than addressing the inequalities of society. This allows the maintenance of a high rate of unemployment. They also believe that oppression of the working class is enforced through fear of unemployment and so they work for low wages and long hours. They believe this is all encouraged through the hidden curriculum.
Althusser: His main argument is that the proletariat are controlled by two main apparatuses: ISA which pass on the ideals of the bourgeoisie (ideological state apparatus e.g school) and RSA which is physical control through things like the army (repressive state apparatus). He argues that in education the bourgeoisie go to the top of the pile for example by going to university whilst the proletariat go to the bottom of the pile and essentially forced out into low paying jobs.
Criticisms of marxism: They cannot prove the hidden curriculum actually exists and if the education system is against helping the working class then why is there things such as apprenticeships and vocational subjects.
Hidden curriculum
Bowles and Gintis believe that the hidden curriculum serves five main criteria: subservience (teaches you to obeying those above you), motivation (this is done through rewards e.g certificates), acceptance of hierarchy (teaching 'roles' and acceptance of these mainly to the working class), fragmentation of knowledge (this prepares individuals for a fragmented economy) and legitimation of inequality (the myth of meritocracy).
Feminists perspective on education
Topic 2 - class differences in achievement and external factors:
Labelling the self fulfilling prophecy
The definition of labelling is where a teacher perceives what they think a student will be like whether that be positive or negative and treat the student like they are the perceived label.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is where the student becomes their label. However there can also be a self-rejecting prophecy where the student rejects their label.
Teachers label in accordance to stereotypes based on: ethnicity, gender and or class.
Becker found that teachers labelled students based off how much they fit the idea of the 'ideal student'. This normally consisted of middle and upper class students.
Rosenthal and Jacobson studied labeling by going into a school and pretending to give the students an IQ test then picked at random and told the teachers which ones were 'highest'. When they returned they found that these students had done significantly better than others.
Streaming
Lacey: Believes students can be separated on this based on three things: differentiation (essentially labelling students but is described as categorising), polarisation (how students respond to streaming in one of two extremes: really pro-school or really anti-school) and setting (students are separated based on ability).
Streaming is where students are placed in all the same sets across the board for example if a student is bad at one subject they will be placed in low sets for all subjects.
Setting is where students of different abilities are taught separately.
Ball believes that streaming is what causes anti-school subcultures because it groups together all the children who are not doing well in school allowing them to group together and turn against school.
Pupil subcultures
Subculture is a group of individuals who follow different norms and values to the mainstream.
Wood argues that there are four types of subcultures: ritualism (the average student who gets on with it), retreatism (the student who does not do well and so becomes the 'class clown'), rebellious (the student who openly rebels against school) and integration (the really good student who try's hard).
Pupils class identities and the school
Topic 6 education policy and inequality:
Educational policy in Britain before 1988
Marketisation
This is the introduction of introducing market forces into areas of the state. This makes schools much more competitive as it introduces things such as league tables meaning the schools have to get better scores.
This sometimes have very negative effects though because schools sometimes become more focused on grades and scores than the students themselves.
The states role within this is to create a framework of competition for example by publishing Ofsted reports. Alongside this they create a shared culture between all schools by creating a national curriculum the aim of this is to create a cultural heritage.
Coalition government policies from 2010
The privatisation of education
Topic 3 - ethnic differences in achievement:
External factors and ethnic differences in achievement
When looking at who does the best Chinese and Indian students do the best whilst white working class and black Caribbean students do the worst.
White families: Evans believes that street culture is very brutal and so students have to intimidate each other and so act school this is where power roles come out. Lupton argues that in working class families standards are much lower than that of ethnic minority families and so their behaviour is worse.
Asian families: Pryce argues that one ethnic minority withstands racism the best which gives them a greater sense of worth. Lupton argues that adult figures in asian families is similar to teachers and authority figures in school and so asian students thrive in school as it is similar to their home life.
Black families: Arnot argues that when boys have absentee fathers they turn to media for a 'father figure' and find stereotypes which they then aspire to be like for example very 'ghetto'. Sewell argues that it is not the lack of a female role model but the lack of 'tough love' that comes from fathers. Murray argues that a high rate of lone parenthood leads to a lack in positive male role models which results in underachievement in education.
Material deprivation - Palmer states that ethnic minorities are more likely to be homeless or unemployed in comparison to white people.
Internal factors, labelling, identities and responses
Archer believes there are three kinds of student identities: Ideal (typically white middle class achieves through natural ability), pathologized (typically asian and achieves by putting in hard work) and demonised (white or black working class underachiever).
Fuller studied a group of black girls in year 11 who were streamed into lower sets and who were angry from the racism they received from teachers. They channeled this anger into academic success and portrayed this image of not working hard and ignored remarks from the black boys in lower sets who were typically anti-school.
Internal factors - institutional racism
Gilborn states that teachers expect more behavior problems from black students and misinterpret their behavior as threatening.
Wright found that with asian students they felt left out because teachers believed they had a poor grasp of english and were unable to pronounce names and so they were left out of class discussions.
Mirza found three types of racist teachers: Colour blind (believes everyone is equal but ignore racism within the classroom), the liberal chauvinist (believes black students are culturally deprived and does not expect a lot from them) and the overt racist (believes black students are inferior to whites and is openly racist towards them).
Ethnocentric curriculum is where the curriculum only focuses on one ethnicity. Ball argues that the ethnocentric curriculum ignores diversity and encourages 'little englandism'.
Topic 1 - class differences in achievement and external factors:
Explaining class differences
One argument is that these differences are all due to parental achievement as parental achievement determines if the school a child attends is public or private.
It is also argued that it is based on either internal (inside education) or external (outside of school) factors.
There is the idea of a working class subculture which is what causes class differences in educational achievement. Working class subculture encourages the idea of immediate-gratification which is the idea of working for something and being instantly rewarded. This is different to upper and middle class norms as they normally encourage deferred gratification which is this idea of working hard to recieve more later on.
Sugarman argues that working class subculture is seen through four key concepts: fatalism (a belief in fate - 'whatever will be will be'), collectivism (preferring success or the feeling if being a part of group rather than individual success), immediate gratification (seeking pleasure now rather than later) and present time orientation (seeing the present as more important rather than making plans around the future).
Cultural differences/ material deprivation and cultural capital
There is the difference in language which causes a difference in educational achievement. Class language difference is based on the working class speaking the restricted code (slang) and the upper and middle class speaking the elaborate code (grammatically correct). With varying ethnicities it is argued there are more EAL students who struggle in education due to the language barrier. It is argued that this then gives the middle class an upper hand in school.
Bereiter and Engelmann state that language spoken by low income black american families is inadequate for intellectual success meaning they are also poorly equipped for school and lack intellectual stimulation which prevents them having enriching experiences. They also state that language spoken in working class homes is insufficient.
However EAL students tend to be ethnic minorities who tend to achieve higher for example chinese students achieve the highest.
There is also the point of parental income and what they chose to spend it on. Bernstein found that middle class parents spend more money on educational toys whereas working class parents lack these resources.
Again when looking at parents there is parental attitudes towards education for example if a parent is more anti-school the child is more likely to neglect there schoolwork.
When looking at factors of material deprivation there is: housing (if a house is small and cramped there is less space for students to work and study), family size (overcrowding means students may struggle to study at home), diet and health (poor diet results in poor health which means students are more likely to miss school this is supported by Howard) and financial support (lack of financial support means students cannot afford educational resources).
Bull argues that although school is free within school there are a lot of things people have to pay for for example lunch.
Douglas argues that working class students do worse in school than upper and middle class students because working class students are not supported throughout there intellectual development whereas middle class students are.
There are ways how cultural deprivation can be tackled for example there are programmes set up to provide educational resources to those who cannot afford it. There is also free school meals.
Cultural capital is this idea of having a higher standard of intellect, language and values which is seen more in middle and upper class and less in working class. This is gained through experiences that promote educational experiences.
Criticisms: Keddie argues that it is a victim of blaming theory and that they are nit culturally deprived but culturally different. Driver argues that this theory only focuses on the negatives of varying ethnicities in education. Finally Lawrence argues that black people fail due to racism not low self esteem.