A level education cond, socio

Durkheim

• education fulfils positive functions for society: by promoting social solidarity, by teaching specialist skills

• Social solidarity: ties that bind people together, two forms of social solidarity: pre-industrial era(mechanical solidarity) modern era(organic solidarity)

  education ensures that solidarity is not lost

• How does education do this?

  passes on shared heritage, communal gatherings, social cohesion

• Contemporary applications:

• Michael Gove, secretary of state for education, curriculum reform 2013 ‘Island story’ of Britain, from magna carta to internet, compulsory teaching of British values- coalition government

• CRITICISMS: Marxists: whose values and heritage are being passed on? ethnocentric curriculum focused on ‘little Englandism’ (Ball), British values- marginalises some groups in society

• Teaching of specialist skills: core knowledge- National Curriculum, Specialist knowledge-subject choice at A-level, Vocational skills- BTEC, T-levels, Creation of universities- ‘red bricks’

• evidence of teaching of specialist skills through educational policy: Additional funding for maths students at Level 3, Standardised assessments (SATs), testing for key skills, Teaching bursaries for shortage subjects, Reforms to the curriculum-global skills

• Davis and Moore argue that education selects the most appropriate people to do particular jobs

Criticisms of Durkheim: Marxist perspective

• Marxists: over-qualified workforce: fragmentation(students taught fragmented knowledge, rather than seeing connections in subjects, enables them to perform specific roles) lower wages, reserve army of labour

• high levels of youth unemployment: NEETs

• Skills shortage areas in UK- sciences, engineering

• Feminists: girls discouraged from certain subjects

David Hargreaves 1982 argues that education promotes competition and not shared values

Marketisation of education

Application of market forces to the education system

Promoting more choice in type of education students receive

promoting competition between institutions for students- raising standards

Education Reform Act 1988: open enrolement, national currciculum, standadised testing

Formula funding- meant schools recieved a certain amount per pupil

league tables and OFTED- early 1990s, seeing quality of provision in schools, created choice

New universities- provision of polytechnics and colleges to apply for university status 1992 gave students choice when it comes to higher education

• New Labour 1997-2010

  City academies, took failing schools in inner-city areas and combined them into city centre academies with additional funding from private enterprises, wider choice

• Growth of specialist schools

• faith schools expansion

• introduction of tuition fees, enabled growth of higher education market, 3000 a year by 2010

How did the coalition achieve this?

• expansion of academies

• pupil premium- additional funds, for low income families, further expanded competition between schools for funding

• Reforms to curriculum- more challenging targets for schools

• progress 8- a measurement tool based upon the progress a student would make during their school career

• Free schools- allowing parents and other stakeholders to set up provision of education in areas of need, increasing choice of education available

• increased tuition fees- tripling tuition fees for high value courses, increasing competition between unis

Impacts of marketisation:

• increased choice of schools

• more private investment in education

• increased university attendance, from overseas too

• improvements in GCSE and A level pass rates

CRITICISMS of MARKETISATION

Stephen Ball- amongst many sociologists who suggested that increased parent choice (parentocracy) is a myth, education market only serves those with a cultural capital to negotiate it, middle class ‘MYTH OF PARENTOCRACY’

Selective rather than open enrolment: open enrolments have been replaced in many areas with covert selection policies such as selection by mortgage- pricing w/c students out of schools due to high resource/uniform costs

Teaching the test- rather than developing deeper knowledge and higher order thinking skills

Educational Triage process- increased focs on getting borderline pupils to achieve a qualification, accused of off-rolling (excluding students with low academic ability before tests) so they do not end up impacting on league table performance

Bourdieu and education (Marxist)- external factor

External factor (someone's cultural capital and habitus is formed outside school) but of course the habitus of the school and the cultural capital needed to access some aspects of education is "internal", so it's quite a good example of how the two impact each other.

Cultural Reproduction model- suggests that cultural differences between individuals are result of three factors;

Habitus- tastes, attributes of individual

• result of how an individual was socialised, their family background, likes and interests, ethnic and national backgrounds and most importantly their social class

Field- cultural framework of specific context

• Secondly he referred to the field or social context in which an individual’s habitus enters, argued that many fields in French society like the arts and education had norms and values that were structured by those from the upper and middle classes, individuals who did not posses a middle-class habitus were at a disadvantage

Cultural capital-value a person’s cultural knowledge has within a field

The sum of an individual’s habitus and the field in which they entered determined their cultural capital or the value of their cultural knowledge

• everybody has a certain amount of cultural capital depending upon the field they enter into. Eg: a male with working-class habitus would have higher cultural capital in a working-class field such as a factory floor than if they were to enter a middle class field such as the arts

• This is also true according to Bourdieu on working class students in the middle and upper class fields of education

How education leads to cultural reproduction- Bourdieu

Middle-class habitus given symbolic capital

• teachers and heads are middle class

• those that write curriculum and policies are middle class

• education constructed by those with middle-class values and taste, students who have similar background/habitus will have higher cultural capital and will also obtain symbolic capital with teachers, as they share this habitus regarding those with power or influence in education

Working class disadvantaged subject to symbolic violence

• They have less cultural capital than their middle/upper class peers, the rejection of their habitus in the education system can be seen as a form of symbolic violence according to Bourdieu

How does education do this?

Language- accent, use of vocab and grammar (Bernstein): elaborated and restricted speech codes

Dress sense- formal, professional , tastes of middle class, removal of w/c due to dress code violations

Cultural knowledge- texts in literature is based on middle class tastes and knowledge, history that is taught differs from folk history w/c students may know

Contemporary applications:

• Ofsted- cultural capital

  educational policy states on teaching cultural capitol through education, though OFTED’s definition differs from that proposed by Bourdieu, suggests all students should learn skills needed to facilitate their social mobility

Marxists: suggest this is the imposition of middle class values onto working class students rather than the greater acceptance of the diversity of experiences that working class students may have

• School policies on uniform

  structured favouring those of a middle class habitus, suppliers of uniform, imposing this onto w/c students

  some sociologists argue these policies are a form of covert selection to discourage working class students

• Curriculum based on middle-class knowledge

  little progress has been made to engage with working-class cultures and teachers still hold negative labels of w/c students

• Teachers’ judgements

Bourdieu- support and criticisms

SUPPORT/

Archer- Nike identities

• focused on the symbolic capital gained from peers for w/c students wearing branded sportswear while simultaneously being treated with symbolic violence by the education system

Reay- Psycho-social approach- cleft habitus

• Their is a conflict particularly in young males between conforming to the middle class habitus designed to get them ahead and the w/c habitus of their friends

• she described this conflict as being a cleft habitus, impacts on male students self-esteem

Sullivan- students with higher cultural capital achieve higher

• Tested Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital, found students who achieved well had elements of a middle class habitus at home as they watched documentaries and read complex novels

• However Sullivan did also find that cultural capital is not the only factor influencing educational achievement

CRITICISMS/

Functionalists suggest that education is meritocratic

• the knowledge that students acquire through the curriculum is necessary in order to succeed in society

  Socialised into value consensus- skills are needed to achieve

  Students acquire cultural capital throughout their education

Others would suggest Bourdieu is being deterministic in suggesting that the habitus of home is important in determining educational success

Globalisation and educational policy

Globalisation: increased interconnectedness of different areas of the world

• looking to other cultures to find solutions to problems

International comparison between education systems- PISA rankings and TIMSS

• rating effectiveness of different education systems in different countries, comparing results across nations; science, reading and maths

• 2015 in the UK according to the PISA rankings ranked 15/72 for science, 21st for reading and 27th for maths

• UK can look at other nations to look at better ways to teach maths, eg from the Netherlands, this is a way which globalisation can improve educational policy

• Globalisation has affected educational policy; variety of schools- free schools and academies, skills for global market place

  Governments look to other education systems to improve own education system

Marxism nutshell education theories

Bourdieu-formal curricula:

• upper and middle classes have more cultural capital

• because of this, the dominant culture’s values seem to always be rewarded in the educational system

• Teaching and tests generally geared towards the dominant culture

• Other students can struggle to identify with values outside of their social class

Social class reproduction-hidden curriculum

• the cycle of rewarding those with cultural capital is found in the hidden curriculum, non-academic knowledge someone learns through informal learning and the passing on of culture