Sociology AQA A-Level Education (Complete)

Ideological State Apparatus

social institution whose main role is to pass on the dominate ideology of the ruling class

Repressive State Apparatus

social institution whose role is to enforce the dominant ideology through force/threat of force

Correspondence Principal

means in which the education system mirrors the world of work

Hidden Curriculum

informal learning processes that happen a side effect of education that teaches students about norms and values of society

Marxist view on education

main role of education is to maintain capitalism and reproduce social inequality

Althusser (Marxist): Reproduction of social inequality

- Education deliberately engineers w/c failure in order to create an unqualified factory workforce
- Private education prepares children of the elite for positions of power
- Hidden curriculum is shaped to assist m/c achievement and deter w/c achievement

Althusser (Marxist): Legitimisation of social inequality

- M/c has access to more cultural and economic capital which puts them at an advantage
- Education encourages students to blindly accept capitalist values, through hidden curriculum

Bowles and Gintis (Marxist): Correspondence principal

School processes mirror the world of work in order to prepare them for manual labour:
- wages not satisfaction
- lack of control
- obedience
- achieved status
- discipline and consequences
- boredom

Bowles and Gintis (Marxist): Myth of Meritocracy

- Education claims to be meritocratic but schools discriminate in favour of m/c
- Hidden curriculum lowers w/c ambitions

Marxism Evaluation: Giroux (Neo-Marxism)

- Rejects the view that w/c passively accept their position
- Existence of anti-school subcultures, truancy and exclusion suggest both the hidden curriculum and correspondence principal have failed
- Marxists often fail to acknowledge that gender and ethnicity often combine with class to produce success and failure

Marxism Evaluation: Social Democratic

- Halsey Floud and Martin suggest Marxists exaggerate the effect education has on w/c achievement
- They point out that govt policies have improved chances of the w/c (eg. comprehensivisation)

Marxism Evaluation: Neo-Liberals

Saunders claim that middle class educational success is due to biological differences

Marxism Evaluation: New Right

- Chubb and Moe argue Marxist fail to see how education has failed all social groups not just the w/c
- Believe education has failed to equip all students with the skills needed to be successful in the global market place

Marxism Evaluation: Postmodernism

- Marxists fail to acknowledge education actually reproduces diversity rather than inequality
- Morrow and Torres claim students create their own identities rather than being constrained by traditional structures. In postmodern societies students are able to make their own choices about their identity. (eg. increasing numbers of trans students)

Equality Policies: 1988 Education Reform

- National Curriculum, all schools had to teach the same core curriculum
- Evaluation: not suitable for all, suits 'academic' pupils more

Equality Policies: 1965 Comprehensivisation Act

- Got rid of 11+ exam and made it so all students would get 'Parity of Esteem' & 'Equality' within education
- Evaluation: comprehensives are large schools so lack individual attention

Equality Policies: Schools Admissions Code

- Forbids discrimination in admitting pupil on grounds of socio-economic backgrounds or ability
- Evaluation: covert selection still takes place by both schools and parents, postcode lottery

Equality Policies: Policies that improve inequality in circumstances

- Pupil premium; additional funding for those students from a poor socio-economic background
- Compensatory education
- Evaluation: Kerr and West, too many other factors outside of school that impact achievement

Aims of Education Policy

- Economic Efficiency: develop the skills of the young to improve the labour force. Making education system meet the needs of industry and employers
- Raising Educational Standards: UK education needs to compete in a global market and is ranked against other countries
- Creating equality of educational opportunity: ensuring all students get the best educational opportunities

Gillborn and Youdell: 4 aspects of educational equality

- Equality of Access: everyone has same opportunities to access educational provision of similar quality regardless of socio-economic background
- Equality of Circumstance: all should start school with a similar socio-economic background so they're truly equal
- Equality of Participation: all have the chance to participate on an equal footing in processes that make up school life
- Equality of Outcome: all have same chances of achievement in education regardless of socio-economic background

Selection and Admissions Policies: Types of selection

- Selection by ability (entrance tests)
- Selection by aptitude (talents)
- Selection by faith

Selection and Admissions Policies: Arguments against selection

- Late developers don't benefit
- Mixed ability fosters social cohesion
- Reduced risk of labelling therefore self-fulfilling prophecy

Selection and Admissions Policies: Arguments in favour of selection

- Allows 'high-flyers' to benefit
- Specialised and focused teaching can take place

Selection and Admissions Policies: Over Subscription

Priority to:
- Children in care
- Pupil premium
- Siblings
- Catchment area, closest first
- Faith

Selection and Admissions Policies: Covert Selection

Tough and Brooks:
- Backdoor social election to cherry pick students
- Discouraging parents of poorer students from applying through high uniform prices, making literature hard to understand & not advertising in poorer areas
- Faith schools require a letter from spiritual leader to gain insight of family and commitment to both faith and school ethos

Selection and Admissions Policies: Open Enrolment Policies & Parental Choice

- Parents can apply to any state school in any area, if a school is under-subscribed the school must take them
- Over-subscribed schools fill up quickly so many parents don't get their 1st choice

Human Capital

stock of knowledge, skills, values, habits and creativity that make someone an economic asset to society

Particularistic Values

values and rules which only apply to that particular person in a given situation

Universalistic Standards

value and rules that apply to all members of society equally

Durkheim (Functionalist): Socialisation and Social Solidarity

- System meets a functional pre-request of society by passing on culture and values of society, achieved by hidden curriculum and PSHE
- Helps to build social solidarity because it teaches core values of society

Parsons (Functionalist): Bridge between family and society

- Schools provide a link between family and wider society that allows students to move from the ascribed status and particularistic values of home to the meritocratic and universalistic values of wider society

Schultz (Functionalist): Developing Human Capital

- Investment in education benefits wider economy
- Education can provide properly trained, qualified and flexible workforce
- Education makes sure that the best and most qualified people end up in jobs that require the most skill

Davis and Moore (Functionalist): Role Allocation

- Education systems provides a means to collecting and sifting people into the social hierarchy
- In meritocracy, access to jobs and power, wealth and status are directly linked to achievement

Evaluation of Functionalism

- Ignores dysfunctional aspects of education eg. negative conflict
- Myth of meritocracy, private education
- Marxist: hidden curriculum reinforces social inequality and maintains ruling classes ideology
- Feminist: hidden curriculum maintains and reinforces patriarchy, not meritocracy
- Wong: functionalist see children as passive puppets of socialisation when the process is much more complex and involves teacher-pupil relationships
- Weak link between educational achievement and economic success

New Right: Role of Education

- Similar to functionalists but believe state takes too much of a role and marketisation would raise standards
- Schools could compete with one another and parents and pupils should be seen as consumers
- Chubb and Moe: Education vouchers and Parentocracy

New Right: Influence of Education Policy

- 1980s Vocational Education
- 1988 Education Reform Act: funding formula and league tables
- New Labour: Academies
- Coalition Govt: Free Schools and Privatisation of Education

Marketisation

process where services like education are pushed towards operating like a business based on supply and demand, students are considered consumers rather than pupils

Privatisation in Education

changing internal processes of a school to be more like a business, eg. treating parents like consumers, target setting

Privatisation of Education

opening assets of education to private businesses, for example staff training, school management, exams

Parentocracy

'Ruled by parents'. Parents have choice over where their child is educated meaning schools will change based on their demands

Features of Marketisation

- Independence: allowing schools to run themselves how they see fit
- Competition: making schools compete with each other for students
- Choice: giving customers choice in where they go to school

Elements of Quality Control

- Ofsted inspections
- Publication of performance tables, such as exam results
- National Curriculum, baseline for what is taught

Evaluation of Privatisation of Education

Positive:
- More efficient
- More choice for parents
- Profit making might induce companies to support failing schools
Negative:
- Takes money from the education system
- Businesses go out of business, schools left stranded
- Less equality

Conservative Govt 1979-1997 Marketisation Policies

- League tables
- Local Management Schools
- Funding Formula
- Open enrolment

Conservative Govt 1979-1997 Raising Standards Policies

- Ofsted
- National Curriculum
- National Testing

Labour Govt 1997-2010 Marketisation Policies

- Business sponsored
- Specialist schools

Labour Govt 1997-2010 Raising Standards Policies

- Maximum class sizes for 5-7 yr old
- Building schools for the future programme
- Education Action Zones
- Business sponsored academies

Coalition Govt 2010-2015 Marketisation Policies

- New style academies
- Free Schools

Coalition Govt 2010-2015 Raising Standards Policies

- Pupil premium
- English baccalaureate
- Reform of the National Curriculum
- Reform of the exams system
- Tougher performance targets for girls

Evaluation of Marketisation & Raising Standards Policies: Myth of Parentocracy

- Parents don't have equal freedom to choose schools due to covert selection process, postcode lotteries in catchment areas.
- M/C parents have more freedom due to their cultural capital, higher education and income

Evaluation of Marketisation & Raising Standards Policies: Educational Triage

- Teachers tend to allocate more resources to students on the C/D border line in order to achieve the 5 A*-C needed for league tables, ignoring those unlikely to achieve this

Evaluation of Marketisation & Raising Standards Policies: Dumbing Down

- Funding formula means schools need to retain and attract students in order to receive funding
- Schools then dumb down teaching and and standards in order to retain students who might leave if they are pushed too hard or if the courses are too difficult

Evaluation of Marketisation & Raising Standards Policies: Reduced Quality Control

- Ofsted is not as independent as it appears because of interference from the government and politicians who change standards and goal posts

Setting

placing students in groups according to ability in individual subjects

Streaming

placing students in groups according to ability across all subjects

Ideal Pupil

characteristics that a teacher subconsciously looks for in a good pupil

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

when a student takes on the label that they have been by the school and acts accordingly

Characteristics of an ideal pupil

- Female
- White
- Middle class
- Quiet

Bernstein Language Codes: Restricted Code

Restricted Code:
- Working Class
- Limited Vocabulary
- Short, unfinished sentences
- Simple grammar
- Context Bound

Bernstein Language Codes: Elaborate Code

Elaborate Code:
- Middle Class
- Wide vocabulary
- Complex grammar
- Varied and Abstract
- Context Free

Labelling Theory

- Teachers attach a label to a pupil that has little to do with their actual ability
- Instead they form an opinion of the student based on how close the student fits the ideal pupil
- Becker suggests teacher/pupil interactions are based upon these labels and can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy

Labelling Theory: Evaluation

- Deterministic
- Focuses on negative effects
- Attributes too much importance to 'teacher agency' (autonomous power of teachers to influence and affect pupils), structural sociologists might argue that schools themselves encourage teachers to label students
- Teacher training

Labelling Theory: Reactions

- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Rejection of the label, Margaret Fullers (1984) research on black girls in a comprehensive London school. Found that the girls she researched were labelled as low-achievers, their response was to knuckle down and study hard to prove their teachers and school wrong

Labelling Theory: Case Studies - Rosenthal and Jacobson

- Fake IQ test given to students
- 20% students identified as 'bloomers'
- Went back after a year and found that those students had progressed more than the others

Labelling Theory: Case Studies - Ray Rist

- US Primary school
- Teacher used home background to group/segregate students
- Tigers: neat, middle class, quick students
- Cardinals: working class, middle ability
- Clowns: working class, troublesome
- Labels continued through later years

Labelling Theory: Case Studies - Hempel Jorgenson

- Ideal pupil varies according to the make up of the school
- Aspen: W/C school, discipline was a problem. Ideal student quiet, passive and obedient
- Rowan: M/C school, few discipline problems. Ideal pupil defined by personality & academic ability rather than behaviour

Subcultures

group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs often maintaining some of the founding principals but developing their own norms and values

Symbolic Capital

status, recognition and sense of worth that students receive from others

Symbolic Violence

using symbolic capital in a negative way, for example demonstrating superiority through values, beliefs and attitudes

Working Class Dilemma

dilemma face by W/C pupils to achieve symbolic capital from their friends or academic capital by rejecting their W/C identity

Pupil Subcultures: Pro-School Characteristics

- Committed to school values
- Gain approval/status through academic success
- Involved in wider life of the school

Pupil Subcultures: Pro-School Types (Mac an Ghail 1994)

Academic Achievers:
- Seek to achieve academic success by focusing on traditional academic subjects such as English, Maths & Sciences
New Enterprisers:
- Rejected traditional academic curriculum but were motivated to study subjects such as business and computing which they see as a route to economic success

Pupil Subcultures: Anti-School Characteristics

- Lower streams
- Rejection of school values
- Truanting
- Disruption
- Not doing homework

Formation of Pupil Subcultures (Lacey)

Differentiation:
- Teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and behaviour
-Streaming is a form of this as it categorises pupils into different classes
Polarisation:
- Process by which pupils respond to differentiation by moving towards one of two opposite poles (pro or anti school subcultures)

How schools shape Pupil Identities: Peer Groups & Symbolic Capital

- Reinforcing acceptable behaviours by ostracising those that don't conform and giving status to those that do

How schools shape Pupil Identities: Symbolic Violence (Archer)

- Schools impose forms of symbolic violence against students whose identities are shaped by designer clothing or hyper-heterosexual feminine behaviour (usually W/C)
- This suggest to those students that education is not for them

How schools shape Pupil Identities: School Environments (Reay)

- Students align their ability with the type of school they attend
- Students who attend poor performing schools see themselves as poor students and are more likely to form anti-school subcultures
- Those who attend high performing schools tend to form pro-school subcultures

How schools shape Pupil Identities: Ethnocentric Curriculum (Ball)

- Current curriculum is focused on middle class white british culture, Ball calls this "Little Englandism"
- This can turn the opinions of ethnic minorites and girls who feel excluded

How schools shape Pupil Identities: Subject Choice

- Schools reinforced gender stereotypes in subject choices, pushing girls to expressive subjects and boys to instrumental ones, reinforces gender identity
- Can also be achieved through stereotypical images within school

How schools shape Pupil Identities: Uniforms

- Reinforces gender roles as girls are expected to wear skirts and blouses and boys wear trousers and ties
- Can also shape class identity with schools demanding certain standards of dress or pupils get sent home
- Most schools do not take ethnic minority dress into account with their policies, eg. hair cuts and hijabs

How schools shape Pupil Identities: Sub-cultures

- Rejection by school can lead working class and minority ethnic groups to identify as being anti-authoritarian and therefore reject authority in all walks of life

How schools shape Pupil Identities: Labelling

- Positive and negative labelling impacts self esteem and self image
- Students labelled negatively may assume that academic achievement is not part of their identity and therefore look towards a more vocational course in future

Gender gap in Achievement: Starting School

- 2013 assessments showed that girls were out-performing boys in literacy, language and maths

Gender gap in Achievement: Key Stage 1-3

- Girls continue to do better
- Especially in english where the gap continues to widen
- Gap begins to narrow in science and maths

Gender gap in Achievement: Key Stage 4

- Average gap stands at 10 point
- Gap is increasing

Gender gap in Achievement: Key Stage 5

- Gap at A-Level is much narrower than GCSE but girls still outperform boys, even in traditionally male subjects such as maths and science

Gender gap in Achievement: Vocational Education

- Boys are more likely to take a vocational qualification qualification than girls
- Girls are still more likely to receive a distinction

Gender & Educational Achievement: Equal Opportunities

- Internal Factor
- Government policies that have aimed to create more opportunities for girls to take part in traditionally male subjects (GIST & WISE)
- National Curriculum levelled playing field

Gender & Educational Achievement: Equal Opportunities - Impact on Achievement

Boaler:
- Suggests the policies are the key reason for changes in girls achievement
- Removed barriers faced by girls and has made education more meritocratic

Gender & Educational Achievement: Role Models

- Internal Factor
- Increase in number of females taking up head teacher and senior teacher roles in the last 20 years
- They act as role models for girls showing them that they can achieve positions of importance and power

Gender & Educational Achievement: Role Models - Impact on Achievement

- By having role models to look up to girls are more likely to work harder to achieve these goals themselves which leads to them achieving more educationally

Gender & Educational Achievement: GCSE Coursework

- Internal Factor
- Coursework was introduced in 1988
- Gorard noted the achievement gap was fairly constant between 1979 & 1989, once coursework was introduced girls began to out perform boys

Gender & Educational Achievement: GCSE Coursework - Impact on Achievement

Mitsos and Browne:
- Girls are more successful in coursework because they are more conscientious and better organised than boys which puts them at an advantage

Gender & Educational Achievement: Teacher Attention

- Internal Factor
French:
- Analysed classroom interactions and noted that teachers interact with girls and boys differently
- Boys get more attention in the classroom, but this is negative attention
- Boys also tend to dominate in whole class discussion whereas girls tend to be more democratic

Gender & Educational Achievement: Teacher Attention - Impact on Achievement

- Negative interaction could explain why teachers respond more positively to girls which could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy allowing girls to achieve and boys to underachieve

Gender & Educational Achievement: Challenging Stereotypes

- Internal Factor
- Removal of gender stereotypes from textbooks, reading schemes and has removed a barrier to girls aspirations
- 1970s and 1980s girls were portrayed as wives and mothers and textbooks would reinforce this image as well as putting girls off STEM subjects

Gender & Educational Achievement: Challenging Stereotypes - Impact on Achievement

Weiner:
- Since the 80s there has been significant change with teachers and textbooks challenging typical stereotypes which has led to greater achievement in girls as they are presented with more positive images of what they can achieve

Gender & Educational Achievement: League Tables/Selection

- Internal Factor
- Introduction of league tables have made girls more desirable for schools as they are likely to achieve better grades
- Slee points out that boys are more likely to have behavioural issues and four times more likely to be excluded which reflects badly on a school in the competitive nature of education

Gender & Educational Achievement: League Tables/Selection - Impact on Education

Jackson:
- Links this desire for high-achieving girls to a self-fulfilling prophecy
- League tables have created greater opportunities for girls and the fact they are more desired by schools means that girls take on a self-fulfilling prophecy and master status of higher achievement

Gender & Educational Achievement: Equal Opportunities & Role Models EVALUATION

Liberal Feminists:
- Celebrate progress that has been made in education and achievement for girls but believe there is still work to be done
- See the need for continued equal opportunities policies, more positive role models and education against sexist attitudes and stereotypes in order for true equality in education to be achieved