Sociology - Chapter 9: Sociology of Education

Education

The process of gaining knowledge and skills.

Functionalist View

This perspective emphasizes the smooth working of the machine and, by extension, the maintenance of the social order.

Socialization

The process by which people come to share the values, morals, beliefs, and ways of acting that are expected in their society.

Sorting

Schools who identifies those who seem best suited to be, say, doctors or teachers, and those who are not, an idea Functionalists emphasize.

Manifest functions

Functions that are the obvious, intended ones; these are what we openly create an institution to do.

Latent functions

Functions that are unintended or unrecognized.

Conflict Perspective

Begins with the idea that society is a struggle over power and that those who have power will work very hard, and in complex ways, to hold onto it.

Achievement Ideology

The belief that one reaches a socially perceived definition of success through hard work and education.

Social Reproduction

People who starts out in a certain social class tends to stay in that social class; the passing on of social inequality across generations through schooling.

Social Capital

The ways people can use their social connections to gain knowledge, access, and other benefits.

Cultural Capital

The knowledge and skills we possess that are 1) in short supply, where not everyone has them and 2) valued by schools and other institutions.

Institutionalized

Built into the practices of schools, political systems, and other institutions.

Achievement Gap

Large and enduring gaps in achievement between different groups.

Opportunity Gap

A renaming of Achievement Gap that focuses not on what students do or don’t achieve but on the access they have to resources (such as healthy food, reliable health care, good school, qualified teachers, and high expectations) that lead to academic achievement.

Food Insecure

Families that don’t have consistent access to nutritious food.

Concerted Cultivation

(Middle class) families that were deliberate about preparing their children for future success.

Accomplishment of natural Growth

A less intensive nature where the parenting style relied less on investing lots of time and money.

Social Construct

A concept people have developed and used, and its meaning can change over time and space.

de jure Segregation

Schools that were segregated by the law

de facto Segregation

Schools that were segregated continued to be despite the legislation telling otherwise.

Double Segregation

A pattern where large numbers of Black and Latinx students are more likely to have large numbers of low-income students.

Heteronormativity

The assumption that individuals are heterosexual and that biological sex and gender identity are aligned.

Hidden Curriculum

The unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school through socialization.

Tracking

Assigning students to classes based on their achievement levels.

Second-generation segregation

Segregation insides schools that are supposedly desegregated.

Education Policy

The decisions about a range of school issues, including funding, operations, curriculum, student assignment, and staffing.

No Child Left Behind Act

Mandated that schools test all students in most grades every year in math, reading, and science, where schools with students that didn’t make sufficient progress on improving scores facing a variety of consequences.

Charter Schools

Privately run but publicly funded schools that are common in struggling urban districts, presenting an alternative choice in schools.