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Ecology of the School - Coggle Diagram

- - - - School choice is consistent with a democratic form of government that promotes freedom.
      - Choice will foster competition among schools to better educate students.
      - Individual students will be more empowered to succeed in some schools than in others (Olsen & Fuller, 2011).
- - - - handicapism assumptions and practices that promote the deferential and unequal treatment of people because they are different physically, mentally, or behaviorally
      - In 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which required that children with disabilities be educated in a regular public classroom whenever possible. It applied to children ages 3 to 21. In 1986, an amendment was passed to serve children from birth to age 3 in order to minimize the risks of developmental delays due to a lack of appropriate services early on. In 1990, the name of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was changed to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In 1991, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed to ensure nondiscriminatory treatment of people with disabilities in areas of their lives such as employment, use of public facilities, transportation, and telecommunications.
      - The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), passed in 1990, provides federal money to states and local agencies to educate children with disabilities ages 3 to 21. The equitable response of IDEA to diversity is the concept of inclusion. Inclusion is the educational philosophy of being part of the whole—that children are entitled to participate fully in their school and community.
      - The main purpose of the act is to guarantee that all children with disabilities have available to them a free and appropriate public education. The principal method of guaranteeing the fulfillment of that purpose is the individualized education program (IEP). The IEP is basically a form of communication between the school and the family. It is developed by the group of people responsible for the child's education—the parents, the teacher, and other involved school personnel.
- - - - Mesosystem
        
        The mesosystem, as exemplified by the link between schools and families, can empower families to share the responsibility for creating a safe school environment. This can mean accompanying young children to and from school, providing older children with cell phones, being involved in school activities, supporting school policies regarding safety and conflict resolution, and monitoring children's behavior (including those who are withdrawn, as well as aggressive). The mesosystem, as exemplified by the link between communities and families, can provide services to support families (examples will be discussed in Chapter 10), thereby proactively contributing to the prevention of violence.
        
        Microsystem
        
        The microsystem, referring here to the school itself, can implement a curricular priority at all grade levels of anger management (learning cues to when angry feelings get out of control and how to deal with them appropriately) and conflict resolution (learning positive strategies to resolve differences). Consistent behavior standards and consequences, as well as academic expectations, must be established. Classes for parents in parenting methods, as well as violence prevention, should be available. Teacher in-service training should include methods for dealing with disruptive or uncooperative behavior before it escalates. Teachers need to be more responsive to bullies, victims, and social outcasts at all school levels.
        
        Safety: Emergency Preparedness
        
        Children and youth rely on and find great comfort in the adults who protect them. Teachers and staff must know how to help their students through a crisis and return them home safely. Knowing what to do when faced with a crisis can be the difference between calm and chaos, between courage and fear, between life and death. Schools need to be ready to handle crises, large and small, to keep our children and staff out of harm's way and ready to learn and teach.
        
        According to Margaret Spellings, former secretary of education (U.S. Department of Education [USDE], 2007), “Knowing how to respond quickly and efficiently in a crisis is critical to ensuring the safety of our schools and students. The midst of a crisis is not the time to start figuring out who ought to do what. At that moment, everyone involved—from top to bottom—should know the drill and know each other.”
  - - - Socialization of the child begins in the family; the school extends the process by formal education. The outcome of this joint effort depends to a considerable extent on the relationship between family and school. Many research studies, from preschool to elementary school to high school (Epstein & Sheldon, 2006), have provided evidence showing that when schools work together with families to support learning, children tend to succeed in school and afterward. These studies point to family involvement in learning as a more accurate predictor of school achievement than socioeconomic status.
      - Family Involvement
        
        There are three major types of family involvement: (1) decision making—determining school programs and policies; (2) participation—working in the classroom as paid or volunteer instructional assistants; and (3) partnership—providing home guidance to their children to support learning and extend school goals. Yale University psychiatrist Dr. James Comer found that involving parents of culturally diverse children in these three areas overcame parent distrust of the school (2004).
        
        Families also become involved in school and education when they vote. They elect people to serve on the local school board to make decisions about educational goals, school facilities, budget allocations, personnel, student standards of achievement and conduct, and evaluation methods. This interaction is indirect, but nonetheless influential
        
        Communities and Class Size
        
        Communities vary in their school districts' policies regarding class size. The size of the classes within a school influences socialization. Classes are considered “large” if they have more than 25 students, “small” if they have fewer than 20 students, and “regular” if they are in between. In 1999, the federal Class-Size Reduction (CSR) Program was authorized. It represented a major federal commitment to help school districts hire additional qualified teachers, especially in the early elementary grades, so children would learn in smaller classes.
        
        Community Businesses and Schools
        
        The businesses in a community can support schools by donating resources and time (“Adopt-a-School”). A business can donate equipment, offer expert guest speakers, provide field trips, and/or offer apprenticeship training to students. Such supportive linkages enable children to understand the connection between school learning and the world of work, as well as discover new role models to emulate.
        
        Community Services and Schools
        
        Many schools require students to participate in the community by providing service, for example, by picking up trash at a local park, volunteering in a hospital, tutoring, and so on. For actual curricula, see The Learning Network on the New York Times website (Ojalvo, 2010). Service learning, which involves incorporating community service experiences into students' schoolwork, has long been viewed as a positive educational reform option. Beginning in the 1970s, educators began paying more attention to this teaching option, and the 1990s saw an array of initiatives to help promote the practice (Institute of Education Sciences, 1999).
      - Mesosystem Influences on Schools: School-Peer Group
        
        Children's attitudes about learning can be influenced by the peer group to which they belong. The peer group can thus help or hinder the school's role in socialization.
        
        In his classic study on adolescents in schools, Coleman (1961) demonstrated that peers influence the educational process. Coleman found that in most high schools, boys value athletic ability and girls value popularity. That this is still true today is evidenced by a review of AA studies on peer group identification (Sussman, Pokhrel, Ashmore, & Bradford Brown, 2007). Adolescent peer group identification is one's self-perceived or other-perceived membership in discrete teenage peer groups.
        
        Mesosystem Influences on School: School-Media
        
        Schools are linked to media through its use in the classroom as well as by media-related experiences outside the classroom that may influence student learning. Many schools and teachers subscribe to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) to complement their lessons. PBS offers a service called “Learning Media” that provides educational support for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Teachers can get lesson plans and activities related to videos they choose. PBS videos on arts and literature, health and fitness, math, science and technology, social studies, history, and early childhood can be purchased; some are available for free streaming on a computer.
        
        Mesosystem Influences on School: School-Community
        
        Communities allocate resources for schools. They may use tax money to fund school construction or services. They may pass laws requiring builders to include a school in a new housing development. They set school boundaries (districts), thereby influencing the socioeconomic and/or cultural composition of schools.
        
        Communities and School Size
        
        Generally, large schools are found in large communities, and small schools are found in small communities. Communities with ample budgets can afford to have more schools per capita, hence smaller schools and classes. Studies relating the size of a school to socialization (Lee, 2004; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2009) have found that students in small schools (fewer than 400 students) engage in a greater variety of activities than students in large schools (more than 760 students). Students in small schools also hold more leadership positions than those in large schools.
- - - - The first amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and requires separation of church and state. This means educational policy mandates that public schools cannot promote a particular religion, nor can they inhibit religious beliefs. The word “God” is in many government documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and money. In 1956, Congress adopted “In God we trust” as the official motto of the United States. This policy has been debated throughout the country's history, as exemplified by such issues as school prayer, appropriate science curriculum, extracurricular activities in public school facilities, and school vouchers.
- - - - Elementary schools traditionally taught academic skills and good citizenship. Gradually development of critical thinking skills, individuality and self-concept, and interpersonal relationship skills crept into the curriculum. The reasons for the gradual changes were many.
      - Chronosystem Influences on School: Technology
        
        Schooling for the future includes being prepared for the world of work and technological change. Learning to use computers is now essential to successful functioning in society. This is a good example of the impact of a macrosystem (technology) and a chronosystem (societal change) on a microsystem.
        
        The computer is an interactive tool that can enhance learning in a variety of subjects. It can present and store information, motivate and reward learners, diagnose and prescribe, provide drill and practice, and individualize instruction (Oppenheimer, 2011). It can support a wide range of learning styles because it enables children to construct their own knowledge (Plowman, Stephen, & McPake, 2010; Prensky, 2010). The computers effectiveness as a tool for learning depends on how it is used by teachers and students, as well as the software selected.
        
        Chronosystem Influences on School: Health and Safety
        
        The NCLB contains provisions for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Community Act. States can apply for federal funds to implement programs grounded in scientific research that prevent illegal use of substances and violence. Parents and communities are required to be involved and new programs must be coordinated with other public programs to foster a safe, drug-free learning environment that fosters school achievement.
        
        Health: Substance Use and Abuse
        
        Substance use and abuse remain major problems among middle schoolers and high schoolers, with 8.9 percent of the population age 12 and up having used an illicit drug at the time of the government study (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2012). Substances include tobacco, alcohol, and various drugs, as well as performance-enhancing supplements. The use of mind- and physical-altering chemicals has dangerous effects on development and deleterious effects on school performance. Students under the influence of such substances are not in a state of readiness to learn, and there may be long-term impairment of cognitive ability and memory
        
        The use of substances in school by some students impairs the educational environment for others. Along with the family and community, schools must be involved in dealing with the substance use and abuse problem.
        
        Health: Obesity
        
        According to the AACAP (201 Ik), the problem of childhood obesity in the United States has grown considerably in recent years. Between 16 percent and 33 percent of children and adolescents are obese. Obesity is among the easiest medical conditions to recognize but most difficult to treat. Unhealthy weight gain due to poor diet and lack of exercise is responsible for over 300,000 deaths each year. The annual cost to society for obesity is estimated at nearly $100 billion. Overweight children are much more likely to become overweight adults unless they adopt and maintain healthier patterns of eating and exercise.
        
        According to the National Association of State Boards of Education (2000), “Health and success in school are interrelated. Schools cannot achieve their primary mission of education if students and staff are not healthy and fit physically, mentally, and socially.” Thanks to the efforts of educators and policymakers, many schools are making important contributions to our nation's struggle against the obesity epidemic.
        
        Violence
        
        The National Academy of Sciences defines violence as “behaviors by individuals that intentionally threaten, attempt, or inflict harm on others” (Elders, 1994). School violence is a subset of youth violence. Youth violence refers to harmful behaviors that may start early and continue into young adulthood. It includes a variety of behaviors such as bullying, slapping, punching, and weapon use. Victims can suffer serious injury, significant social and emotional damage, or even death. The young person can be a victim, an offender, or a witness to the violence—or a combination of these.
        
        Parents, teachers, students, and communities are very concerned about the rise in school violence. The shootings of 12 students and a teacher in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado was the first school incident alerting society to the negative outcomes of being rejected by peers, of being victims of bullying, and, most important, of being disengaged from family, school, and community.