Studied by 2 people
Looks like no one added any tags here yet for you.
Durkheim - Functionalist
Education creates social solidarity. School is society in miniature.
Parsons (1961) - Functionalist
Education acts as a bridge between school and the wider society. It socialises people into society's values. It opens us up to society's universalistic values, rather than the particularistic values we find within the family. Education is meritocratic.
Davis and Moore (1967) - Functionalist
Education sifts people according to ability, providing role allocation. The most talented gain high qualifications, high status and high jobs with high rewards.
Althusser (1971) - Marxist
Education forms part of the ideological state apparatus. It reproduces class inequality by failing each successive set of working-class students in turn and produces ideological beliefs so that workers don't feel able to challenge capitalism.
Bowles & Gintis (1976) - Marxist
The Correspondence Principle. There are close similarities between work and school. Both have hierarches, with headteacher and boss taking the decisions. Both reward competition - through merit/exam results and pay.
Bowles & Gintis say that this results in the myth of meritocracy, as people think they can better themselves.
Willis (1977) - Marxist
Willis shows how hen people rebel against capitalism and education, they are destined for the unskilled work at the bottom which capitalism needs someone to perform.
Chubb & Moe (1997) - New Right
State education is unresponsive. There is no need to work hard as there is no incentive and state schools cannot go out of business.
Private education has to please its customers, therefore standards are high and there is pressure to improve them further.
Margaret thatcher (Conservative 1979-1990)
Used New Right theory to underpin major reforms such as the 1988 Education (Reform) Act. Her reforms were based on:
Competition & Choice (League Tables, Ofsted)
Testing & Examining (SATs, GCSEs)
Restricted Curriculum Content (National Curriculum)
McKnight (2005) - New Labour
Standards in education improved under New Labour. Participation in further and higher education grew. A small reduction in the class gap was seen.
Becker - Interactionist
Becker said that teachers have certain expectations of students and 'label' them appropriately.
Rosenthal & Jacobsen (1968) - Interactionist
Teacher expectations and demands of a student create a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'.
Hargreaves - Interactionist
Students are categorised by teachers based on first impressions - The Halo Effect
Gillborn & Youdell (2001) - Interactionist
Teachers perceive working class and black students to have low ability even when they are doing well. Once places in lower sets, they cannot make it back to higher tier entry at GCSE, making good grades unreachable.
Sharpe (1976/1994) - Gender
Found that girls were focused on marriage and children rather than careers in 1976. By 1994, this had shifted and girls were more motivated to succeed and secure higher status work.
Stanworth (1984) - Gender
Found that girls' underachievement (pre 1990s) was due largely to them receiving much less attention from teachers.
Mitsos & Browne (1998) - Gender
State that girls' success nowadays is largely due to feminism raising expectations and self-esteem of women.
Francis & Skelton (2005) - Gender
The identify a 'moral panic' over boys' underachievement. The situation isn't that bad - boys are still improving, just not as fast as girls.
Willis (1977) - Gender
Many boys see no value in gaining qualifications. They see manual labour as more respectable than 'pen-pushing'.
Jackson (2006) - Gender
Academic work is too feminine to be seen as cool by boys - it goes against 'laddish masculinity' to achieve.
Modood (2004) - Ethnicity
Social class makes more difference to attainment between white British students, than in ethnic minority groups.
Gillborn & Youdell (2000) - Ethnicity
Racism continues to disadvantage ethnic minority students in education. Many black children are 'written off' rather than supported.
Mirza (1992) - Ethnicity
Black girls achieve higher than black boys. Although there is some evidence of racism, Mirza states that most black girls kept their self-confidence and were concerned with academic success. They were prepared to work hard even though teachers didn't push them.
Sewell (1997) - Ethnicity
Sewell found that Afro-Caribbean boys suffered from being raised in lone parent families due to a lack of role models and material deprivation. They are more susceptible to peer pressure.
However, his study did show that, despite high exclusion rates amongst black students, the majority of black students conform and value education.
Coard (1971) - Ethnicity
Afro-Caribbean students feel inferior in the British Education system due to:
Racist teachers
Content of the curriculum
Low expectations
Bullying
Youth Cohort Study (2006) - Social Class
57% of children from higher professional backgrounds gained A/AS level qualifications compared with 16% of those with manual backgrounds.
Howard (2001) - Social Class
People from poorer backgrounds have worse housing and poor diet leading to more absence, poor concentration and low results.
Douglas (1964) - Social Class
Parental interest is the key factor in educational attainment. Middle-class parents communicate with schools much more and gave their children more attention and stimulus in their early years.
Feinstein (2003) - Social Class
Found as Douglas did that Parental Interest was key. Found that working class children performed better in schools where there was a large presence of children from professional backgrounds.
Bernstein (1972) - Social Class
Middle-class children benefit from using the same elaborated code at home as is used in schools. Working class struggle to understand the language of school due to their restricted language code. Middle-class children can switch between codes.
Bourdieu (1984) - Social Class
Cultural Capital. Students from higher classes have a built-in advantage as they are already socialised into the dominant culture (of schools and society). Trips, visits, holidays and home activities such as reading give them an advantage.
Ball et al (1995) - Social Class
Middle class parents have more stamina to research and find good schools. They also have material advantages such as the ability to provide or pay for transport to get their children to better schools that may be greater distances away. They can also move home to get into a good school's catchment area - Middle-class drift.
Reay et al (2005) - Social Class
Students from ordinary 6th Forms or 6th Form colleges felt they would be out of place at the elite universities. Private school students are comfortable applying to these places as they find they are full of people with similar values and lifestyles.
Bull (1980) - Social Class
Free schooling is never 'free'. Education has hidden costs.
Keddie (1973) - Ability Grouping
More advanced knowledge is withheld from students in lower streams. Middle-class children fitted the image of the ideal pupil.
Ball (1981) - Ability Grouping
Students from professional backgrounds tended to occupy the upper bands.
Teachers had lower expectations of lower bands and set less testing work.
Hargreaves (1967) - Subcultures
Teachers perceive lower sets to be disruptive and level them as troublemakers. As a result the students turn against the school and form anti-school subcultures.
Mac an Ghaill (1994) - Ability Grouping
Macho lads - academic failures - low skilled working-class backgrounds.
Academic achievers - highly skilled working class backgrounds.
