Soc of education midterm - terms and concepts

schooled society

refers to our current society where formal schooling is mandated and has moved to the centre stage of social life over the past century. School now plays a more important role in our identities, career opportunities, and has even more power to shape lives. It has become the major route for social mobility and is expected to teach children key values like equity, progress, merit etc.

social mobility

ability of individuals to move up or down in a society, school is the primary way of moving up.

School as socialization

schools help prepare kids for real world, pass along knowledge and values that are deemed important. examined by Durkheim

schools as selection devices

schools award badges of ability to those with the most talent, schools constantly evaluate and reward students, select the best ones to push forward into higher education. studied by Marx, ideas of who gets selected for what and why, does everyone have an equal chance

schools as means of organization and legitimation

schools organize and legitimate knowledge by setting knowledge requirements and certificates needed for certain jobs. legitmated through authority. decide how knowledge is transfered and taught. schools organized like a bureaucracy

Absolute social mobility

are you better off objectively than your parents at your age ex. if i’m making more now than my dad was at my age, i have experienced absolute social mobility

relative social mobility

how do you do relative to your parents, depends on your place in society. If you were making top 10% of income and your parents were in the bottom you’ve experienced relative mobility

Role of schooling in society

socialization, selection, organization and legitimation

Non cognitive/soft skills

perseverance, hard word, personality traits, grit, social trust 

General skills

valuable across many jobs and industries - they are transferable 

Specific skills

valuable only in a particular job, occupation, or firm

Polarization of labour

• growth of high skill, high pay and low skill, low pay service 

• Ex. mcdonalds 

social transformations leading to today

information society, service based economy, aging population, decline of nuclear family, immigration, more diversity, decline of religious authority, economic power in financial institutions

Macro theory

• links schooling to broader forces (modernization, capitalism, culture ex. Industrialization leads to mass schooling - applies across societies)

Middle range

more tied to specific place and time ex. Canada's post secondary expansion in the immediate WW2

Micro theory

face to face ex. Teacher and student

Emilie Durkheim

focused on shift to modern values, how schools socialize kids, thought education was meant to teach values and help kids become moral individuals, education reflects society, meritocracy. hated individualism

Karl Marx

schools reporduce inequalities, education reflects ruling class ideology, schooling benefits rich kids, schools teach skills to match capitalist workplace, make kids into obedient workers

max weber

concerned with how modern societies are organized and governed, rationalisation and rise of reasoning is the key feature of modern society

structural functionalism

durkhiem, what is the function of education

• universalism

• meritocracy

• hidden curriculum

• streaming

• collective effervervescence

• health of society is the ultimate goal

Functionalist theory of stratification: selecting for merit

• Stratification is a necessity 

• Ensures key social positions are filled 

• Maintains social stability

• Schools play a major role in sorting and selection process 

• Functionally important positions, rank order of most to least essential 

• Not all social roles play equal role in societal stability/survival 

• Society responsible to provide strong incentives (ex. Money, prestige) for people to take most functionally important jobs 

• Talent, training, and scarcity, some require natural talent or long and costly training 

• People have to be motivated to take these jobs 

• Education is a key role by selecting people, schools identify talent and allocate people into appropriate social positions 

• Some people earn more because of differentiated natural talent, training etc doctor vs janitor 

Neo-Marxism

• Correspondence principle: school reflect capitalist workplaces

• Schools sort people into positons that reproduce existing hierarchies

• People are selected on the basis of their social class not so much talent or hard work 

• cultural capital signals wealth and mistaken for intelligence

• social capital

• strong and weak ties

• employees dont claim the profit they make

• ruling ideas of each age are of working class

cultural capital

familiarity with high status culture like opera and arts, big vocab, knowing how to dress etc. These prestigious tastes are rewarded in school because they are conflated with intelligence

social capital

who you know, Resources or advantages gained through social relationships

• Higher SES students have stronger ties to schools and institutions 

• Weak ties: acquaintances, classmates, weak ties more common for networking

• Weak ties expands your network more because people you have ties to don't all know each other  

• Strong ties: parents, siblings, close friends

Human capital theory

• Education viewed as an investment in skills

• Hoping for a return on your education

• Companies want productivity because you get greater output for input

education, training, health, and skills are economic investments that increase an individual's productivity and future earnings

opportunity costs

people accept the opportunity costs because of the later pay off in the labour market. Ex. we’re in class because we think its a better use of time tht is likely to pay off later

Skills biased technological change

• Inequality skills fail to match new technologies

• Technological advancement raises demand for skilled labor

• If education supply lags this leads to rise in wage inequality

Credentialism

• School functions as a credentialing institution, not building skills

• Credentials as entry tickets

• school focuses on giving credientials instead of teaching skills

Credential Inflation

• Post WW2: urbanization, women entering labour force

• Schools produce more graduates than available matched jobs, vertical mismatched 

• Vertical mismatched is like doctor working at mcdonalds

• Education level attained higher than education level required for the job

• degrees worth less than in the past

Weak education-job link

• School content has weak link to jobs

• Employers rarely look for or test skills when hiring

• Credentials matter more than grades or performance 

• Supply side effect, increased competition, individuals pursue credentials to have a leg up

• Employers respond to supply be raising educational requirements 

• Credentials as a screening device: reject applicants without the right credentials 

New institutionalism

• Schools as a national project - common values, citizenship 

• Argue the world and institutions becoming very similar 

• International organizations like the UN, WHO, UNESCO et expectations for how schools should be running

• Dominant nations like the US provide template and others copy that 

Isomorphism

•  last few decades schools across the world taking similar forms

• Schools all categorized by age, gender, curricula (math and science taught the same everywhere)

Signalling theory

• Employers have incomplete information about applicants 

• Skills and productivity aren't directly observable 

• Credentials act as signals of something, like ability, motivation, hard work, perseverance 

Labour queue theory

• Employers rank applicants in a labour queue

• Credentials are used to sort and screen applicants

• More education, higher in the queue

• Employers select the most educated first

• Education signals trainability, not necessarily productivity 

• Training workers is costly

• Skills formation occur on the job training

Sheep skin effect

person A and person B take same classes but A lists the credential, match in every other aspect but the credential sets them apart 

Beginings of a schooled society

• Schooling prior to 16th century was a privilege of the few 

• Education wasn't centralized or compulsory 

• not age segregated

• 
  

reasons for transition to formal schooling

1. Economics: schooling became essential to ensure a skilled and compliant labour force was available 

2. Technical complexity: schooling was necessary to ensure young people had skills for success in a growing technological world

3. Child susceptibility in a diverse world: schooling provided a venue to ensure children adopted a common value system 

4. Nation building: school was part of a larger process of building an independent country

Modern schooling in mid 19th century

• Students grouped by age

• Instructions in separate classroom

• Set times 

• School becomes centralized and standardized 

• State regulated

• Compulsory attendance at least 4 months of the year

• Minimum attendance requirements 

• Mandated teacher certification 

Enrollment and Attendance

• Early Canadian public schools

• One room with single teacher

• Minimally trained teachers

• Instructions rudimentary, with basic literacy, arithmetic, religion, citizenship

• Few students completed high school by 1900

• For most school was intermittent - not a continuous daily experience 

• 20th century expansion, department expansion, schools more bureaucratic, Canadian school size grew dramatically 

• Attendance ir norm 

• By 1960 full attendance achieved 

Shift from elite to masses

• Post secondary became expected not exceptional

• Now sooo many students get bachelors degrees 

• Many disengaged students in hs still continue in school

• More students in post secondary than ever before 

Expanding curricula

• Higher education served narrow, elite purposes

• Most jobs didn't require post secondary now they do

• Universities main gateway to elite positions

• Secondary level: multiple specialized tracks and course 

• Post secondary level: hundreds of programs at undergrad and grad level 

Expanding alternatives 

• Lifelong learning, early years to adult education

• Rationales vary: childcare, socialization, early cognitive development

• Early investment prevents later social health/cost problems 

• French immersion

• Alternative programing for students, more autonomous learning 

• Home schooling 

• Online school, more efficient and can host moore students 

• People claim higher education bubble is about to burst 

Expanding functions

• Non cognitive and social functions

• Modern schools have a whole bunch of services 

• Social workers, psychologists, haircutting, stores

• Childcare, drivers ed, nutrition, outdoor education

• Schools have sex ed, anti racism, multicultural curricula

• Schools try to address social problems 

• Schools have also diversified in form, online school, homeschool, french immersion, private school 

Exporting its model

• School form exported to other institutions

• Contemporary criminal justice has more programs for learning and reform movements

• Educate them about toxic acts instead of punishing 

• Drunk driving seminars, anger management schools

• Family life being altered by parenting classes, 

• Leisure being altered by courses for hobbies like how to play sports, how to do etc 

• Corporations use school forms for training 

• Campus like layouts of headquarters ex. Google HQ

What is streaming

• Sorts students into different educational pathways

• Based on perceived ability

• Academic vs vocational streams 

• They operate at different levels 

• Level A: academic vs vocational

• Level B: subject vs field of study

• Level C: program or placement decision

• Each level narrows future options 

• Higher SES more likely to end up in academic stream 

Social class and streaming options

• Marxists would say schools reproduce social inequalities 

• Schools become selection mechanism

• Sorts people into different pathways which lead to different life chances 

• Differences between schools are small, most have the same curriculum

• Schools segregated by neighbourhood and that's reflective of SES

• Differences between students matters most, school matters the least

• Europe has more rigid schooling, germany, switzerland, japan

• Selection occurs early on, in elementary stage 

• Mobility between tracks is limited 

• Streaming shapes opportunities to learn 

Stratification within post secondary

• Two axes: international prestige and field of study 

• Shape access to opportunities: high paid jobs, social networks, resources

• Fields differ in prestige, business more valuable than film 

• Canadians less hierarchical than the US by institutional prestige

• Mostly publicly funded public university

• Most undergrad applicants are local 

• More field stratification in canada

Accommodation

• Becoming more acceptable to retain struggling students

• Shift in policy after WW2

• Two reasons: economic utility and educational equity/human rights

• Education is a human right

• Decline in high school completion is viewed as a social problem 

• In 60s described high schools as shopping malls

• Offering them different product for each student

How do schools accommodate

• levels of difficulty: multiple course pathways

• ▪ choice breadth: many electives and extracurriculars

• ▪ Specialty program: gifted programs, ESL, AP, vocational shop

• Making school an experience for everyone

• Services, Multiple Intelligence and Consequences

• ▪ Non-instructional services: therapist, social workers, nutrition programs

• ▪ Theories like multiple intelligences

• ▪ Possible erosion of academic standards

Competition

• 
   Educational Expansion and Competition

• School has expanded but doesn't necessarily lead to equality 

• ▪ Paradox: expansion may not necessarily lead to lesser inequalities

• ▪ Two mechanisms or theories explain:

• o Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI)

• o Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI)

Maximally maintained inequality

• Vertical stratification

• As one level becomes saturated, the advantaged groups move up

Effectively maintained inequality

• Horizontal stratification

• advantaged groups become more selective within the same level

• Institutions, fields, program

• Despite the expansion, the advantaged groups seek high quality opportunities

• Field and institution the most important within BA, the main way to differentiate yourself 

• Don't have to go up, they can go sideways

EMI and MMMI

• Access to higher education remains stable despite expansion

• Institutional factors weaker than field factors in canada

• Recycling: acquire credential at a lower level

• person likely chooses lucrative field at a less prestigious institution than choose less

lucrative field at a prestigious 

• Competition produces credential stacking, multiple alternatives or paths 

Attainment and inequality

• SES differences in literacy are visible from grade 1 onward

• High school: teens with university educated parents outperform pears on reading, math, science

• Youth from bottom income quartile far more likely to drop out of high school

• University attendance: 50% top quartile vs 31% bottom quartile 

• SES gradient present at all levels of schooling

• Persists after controlling for ethnicity, region, family structure 

• Strong across different measures of SES and education (income, parental education, test scores, attendance)

Causes of inequality

• Schools, families, broader environments

• Coleman report challenged the belief that unequal schools resources lead to unequal outcomes, differences in funding, teachers, class size, facilities 

• The report concluded that student outcomes were strongly influenced by SES not school resources 

• Larger inequalities within schools than between schools 

• Parental income influence on grades, when we control for gender, we compare female and female together and male and male together 

• Later findings say that in wealthy countries, family background matters more 

• In poor countries school effects are stronger 

• Richer societies have more mature systems of education

• Affluent societies learn to play the game - preparation

• In summer rich kids get opportunities to keep developing skills

• Poor kids don't and experience learning loss

Mechanisms/processes

• What mechanisms of educational inequality are at play here

primary mechanisms

• directly affect children's capacity to learn (skills, readiness). What are the factors affecting ability and skill

Secondary

• affect outcomes via choices, expectations, and sorting independent of raw learning capacity ex. Controlling for ability and skill and looking at choices 

• Ex. me and julia have same abilities but i go to college and she goes to university, why did we make those decisions 

Primary mechanisms

• Nature vs nurture

• Heredity: identical twins more similar than fraternal twins, adopted kids IQ more similar to bio parents

• Flynn effect: generational rise of IQ

• Family based opportunities also influence ability

• They get richer verbal interactions, more books, homework support, regulation of activities, organized learning time, access to cultural and educational resources

• Early environment influences later grades 

• Early learning programs get highest return on investment

• SES gaps appear before school in vocabulary and cognitive readiness

• Neighbourhood influences you with safety, peer culture, disengagement from school

Secondary mechanisms

• Why does inequality still persist even though some students have similar abilities

• Rational choice/risk benefit framework 

• Education involves choices, not just ability

• Alternative exists and families need to make a choice

• Academic vs vocational track, stay in school vs exit; college vs university vs work

• Students and families assess expected risks vs benefits 

• Relative risk aversion

• Everyone wants to avoid downward mobility

• Higher SES families choose advanced courses and accept higher risks for higher reward

• Lower SES families prefer safer, less demanding routes; avoid paths with high failure risk 

Time discounting

• higher SES families can wait longer for returns, have financial buffers, see longer education as worthwhile, lower SES families can't necessarily do that 

charter school

when a government body funds an independent school in exchange for offering a special theme or meeting various performance indicators

class struggle

a contest for power or rewards vetween social classes, often the capitalists/ownership class vs working class

collective effervescence

momentary state in which social interaction creastes intense shared experience in which people deepen their emotional attatchemtns