education all sociologists
Functions of education
Durkheim argued that education played two roles:
Creation of social solidarity e.g., history, assembly, uniform
Teaching specialist skills
Parsons argued that school acts as the focal socializing agency, acting as a bridge between the family which is largely based on ascribed status and wider society, which is based on achieved status. Within school, adherence to universalistic standards is rewarded through methods such as positive behavior points preparing students for wider society.
Davis and Moore argued that school allocates students their future professions based on their ability. Educational inequality is necessary within society to ensure that the most important roles in society are filled by the most talented individuals. Talented individuals can gain the high-level qualifications which allow them to enter high level professions.
Chubb and Moe argued that public education in the USA was failing and that low-income students who attended private schools did 5% better in private schools on average. They argued that a voucher/market system was needed to fix public education by forcing schools to compete and answer to the consumer.
Althusser argues that the education system acts as a powerful ideological state apparatus by reproducing inequalities within the next generations by consistently failing working class pupils and legitimizing inequality by socializing children into believing that they deserve their subservient role within the workforce, maintaining false class consciousness.
Bowles and Gintis argue that the capitalist system requires an obedient and passive workforce willing to do alienating and hard work for them to be easily exploited. Education helps to create this workforce through two methods:
Rewarding students with personality traits valued by the bourgeoisie such as obedience, subservience, meekness and discipline through giving them higher grades.
The correspondence theory, within school students directly learn the skills needed within the workforce through the hidden curriculum e.g., fragmentation, alienation and respect of hierarchy.
Willis, whilst still being Marxist, also takes a more interactionalist approach. He studied a group of working-class boys called “the lads” who had created an anti-school subculture and disagreed with Bowles and Gintis about the fact that all students passively accept the values but still found that working class boys who rejected school values still met the same fate of low paid, alienating, blue collar work. By messing about in school, Willis found that the boys were already accustomed to the shop-floor culture and were able to use humor as a coping mechanism. Ultimately, it created lowly educated workers who could cope with grueling, alienating work through humor.
Social Class and educational achievement
External
Centre for longitudinal studies – By 3 years old, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are already a year behind their peers and the achievement gap only widens with age.
Feinstein – Educated parents are more likely to use high level language which makes children question their own understanding and increases their cognitive ability. while lowly educated parents lower-level language which hinders their children’s performance. Highly educated parents also typically praise their children increasing their self confidence and their feelings of self-competence.
Bernstein – Identified the elaborated code:
Used typically by the middle class, which has a wider vocabulary and complex grammar. Speech is varied and not reliant on previous context e.g., The boy kicked the football through the window and the old woman got angry with him.
And the restricted code:
Used typically by the working class, using simpler vocabulary and grammatical structures. Speech is predictable and based on short sentences often reliant on previous context e.g., He kicked the football. She was angry.
Douglas – Working class parents place less value on education and therefore have lower expectations for their children and took less interest in their educational achievements.
Bernstein and Young – Middle class mothers are more likely to buy educational toys that encourage reasoning skills and stimulate intellectual development.
Sugarman – Identified 4 traits of working-class subcultures which affected pupil’s achievements:
Fatalism – a belief that there is nothing they can do to change their status and that they are fated to be working class. There’s little point in trying if nothing can be done anyways.
Collectivism – Value being part of a group e.g., the working-class subculture which makes them not want to achieve in fear of “betraying the group”.
Immediate gratification – Seeking pleasure now and being unwilling to make sacrifices for the future.
Present time orientation – Seeing the present as most important and lacking long term goals.
Howard – Children from poor homes lack key nutrition, minerals and vitamins causing them to have low energy levels in lessons and weaker immune systems causing them to have more absences from school.
Wilkinson – Children from lower social classes are more likely to have behavioural issues such as hyperactivity, anxiety or conduct disorders.
Bladen and Machin – Children from lower social classes are more likely to have externalising behaviour when upset e.g., tantrums or screaming.
Bull – Identified that there was a cost even to free education and that students from lower social classes had to go without equipment e.g., textbooks due to lack of financial support despite attending a comprehensive school.
Tanner et. Al – Researched the cost of education in the Oxford area and found that the cost of education e.g., transportation, uniform, textbooks placed a significant burden on poorer families.
Jackson – Working class pupils largely fear debt and avoid debt more often which heavily influences their decision on whether to go to university.
Bourdieu – Both cultural and capital reasons affect educational achievement.
Middle class possess cultural capital (knowledge, attitudes, tastes and values that align with educational system). Middle class children have a deeper understanding of the educational system while the working class lack understanding and cultural capital, leading to attitude that education just “isn’t for them”.
Middle class possess economic capital (use of income) which they can convert to educational capital (textbooks, private school, tutors, certain TV shows)
Sullivan – Tested Bourdieu’s ideas by surveying students and found that pupils who read complex fiction and watched documentaries had wider vocabularies and cultural knowledge, indicating high cultural capital. Children of graduates often had the highest cultural capital.
Internal
Becker – Found that teachers judged pupils based on how closely they adhered to the idea of the “ideal pupil” with the middle class being the closest to the ideal due to a major part of teachers’ judgments being due to student appearance, work and conduct. This therefore caused a self-fulfilling prophecy because working class students felt demotivated by lack of teacher support.
Jorgenson – Reviewed Becker’s work and added that schools in different areas have different standards for their ideal pupils:
The working-class school valued quiet, passive and obedient students due to the schools having more struggles with behavioural issues.
The middle-class school valued students with personality who could think outside the box but still had high academic ability.
Dunne – Argued that teachers normalised working class underachievement and did not feel concerned because they felt that it could not be overcome. In contrast, underachieving middle-class pupils were offered extra help and support.
Rist – Labelling occurs from the outset of a child’s education due to teachers using a student’s background information to place them into ability groups with the middle class being more likely to be in the highly able group causing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rosenthal – Randomly assigned students at a school the “spurter” label and upon returning, 47% of the spurters had made significant academic progress.
Gilburn and Youdell – Teachers use stereotyped ideas surrounding academic ability to place students into streams and sets, denying working class pupils the opportunity to be entered for higher tier GCSEs and achieve better grades. Marketisation policies such as league tables created an “A to C Economy” where schools prioritised students whom they deemed capable of achieving 5 Cs and boosting their league table position in turn creating an educational triage:
Those who will pass anyways and don’t need any extra attention.
Those who can pass with teacher support and encouragement.
“Hopeless cases” who have no chance of passing the exams regardless and would be a waste of time trying to help.
This educational triage becomes the basis for streams and sets.
Lacey – Student subcultures formed in two ways:
Differentiation where teachers categorise students based on ability and students gain status through the level of their stream.
Polarisation where students respond to teachers’ categorisation and go to polar extremes where students in high streams form pro-school subcultures while students in low streams form anti-school subcultures.
Ball – Analysed Beachside Comprehensive which was abolishing streaming due to Lacey’s findings and found that students no longer polarised into extremes when in mixed ability lessons, but teacher differentiation continued as teachers identified students as able and unable.
Woods – There are 4 possible responses to streaming and setting:
Integration, where a pupil becomes a “teacher’s pet” and fully embraces the school’s values.
Ritualism, where a pupil just goes through the motions and stays out of trouble.
Retreatism, where a pupil is inattentive, daydreams and mucks about
Rebellion, where a pupil outright rejects the school’s values and often forms an anti-school subculture.
Bourdieu – Schools have a middle-class habitus (dispositions and ways of thinking) and pupils who are socialised into this habitus hold symbolic capital while the working-class habitus is seen as tasteless and worthless. Symbolic capital is withheld from the working-class, also known as symbolic violence.
Archer et al. – Working class pupils often felt that to achieve they’d have to lose themselves and change their behaviours into a “posher” way of acting. Working class pupils embraced “Nike identities” because of being victims of symbolic violence, they wore branded items to create an alternative sense of self-worth when rejected by the middle-class habitus within school.
Ingram – Studied a group of working-class boys where one group went to a grammar school while the other group attended a local comprehensive where despite the middle-class habitus of the grammar school, the working-class boys still had a strong sense of identification and belonging to their subculture and still exhibited signs of the “Nike identity”.
Evans – Found that girls from South London didn’t apply for prestigious universities because they were worried, they wouldn’t fit in and had a strong attachment to their local area.
Gender and achievement External
McRobbie – Compared magazines from the 1970s and 1990s and found that 1970s magazines were focused largely around finding a man and not being left on the shelf while magazines in the 1990s were more focused on encouraging female independence and young girls.
Sharpe – Conducted interviews with girls in 1970s and 1990s and found a clear shift in the attitudes of girls surrounding their careers and family aspirations. In the 1970s, girls had low ambitions and often dreamt of love, marriage and children before they thought of careers whereas in the 1990s, girls started to value their careers and had higher ambitions, instead wanting their future families to fit into their career aspirations.
Connor – Marriage and children were not a major part of women’s lives and women prioritised a career.
Internal
Boaler – Legal changes and new policies play a key role in the increased achievement of girls.
Gorard – The gender gap in educational achievement increased drastically when GCSEs were introduced which placed greater emphasis on coursework.
Mitsos and Browne – Girls succeed in coursework more due to early gender socialisation. Girls gain traits such as better language abilities, organisation and attentiveness in youth which are skills essential to success in coursework.
Archer – Class divisions in achievement is caused by a conflict between working class girls and their feminine identities and the school’s ethos and values. Their hyper heterosexual feminine identities allowed them to gain symbolic capital from their peer groups but often came with the consequence of conflicting with the middle-class values of the school e.g., wearing a lot of makeup is against the dress code of most schools.
Boys Underachievement
Sewell – Education has become feminised and does not nurture masculine traits causing male underachievement.
Yougov – 42% of males said the presence of a male teacher made them behave better.
Francis – 2/3 of students found the gender of their teacher irrelevant.
Read – Identified the disciplinarian discourse where teachers make their authority visible and explicit and the liberal discourse where the teacher’s authority is implicit, and teachers speak to the children as if they were adults.
Found that most teachers used the disciplinarian discourse and argued that if all teachers were using the more “masculine” style of discipline, there was no need for more male teachers as female teachers could also create a strict classroom environment where males can thrive.
Lees – There is a double standard surrounding sexuality within schools, boys are allowed to boast about their sexual prowess whilst girls are slut shamed.
Mitsos and Browne - Decline in manufacturing jobs has resulted in a crisis of masculinity
Parker – Boys are labelled as “gay” and ridiculed for being too friendly to girls. Boys feared this as it emasculated them, and their masculine identities were reinforced by peer approval.
Mac an Ghail – Both male pupils and teachers looked female students up and down and often objectified them, devaluing women within society.
Mac an Ghail – Peer groups reproduce different masculine identities.
Ringrose – Popularity was crucial to girls’ identity and as they moved from friendship groups to a heterosexual dating culture, there emerged a conflict between the idealised and sexualised feminine identity.
Gender and subject choice
Norman – Differences in gender socialisation such as the toys given and clothes worn encouraged boys and girls to partake in different activities and develop different skills, ultimately leading to different subject choices.
Byrne – Teachers encourage boys to be tough and show initiative within the classroom while girls are encouraged to be passive and quiet leading girls to prefer quiet, more independent work and subjects which lean themselves into this while boys are socialised to prefer more hands-on subjects.
Browne and Ross – Children’s beliefs about gender domains and what tasks are acceptable for what gender are shaped by their parents’ expectations and their early experiences leading children to feel most comfortable and affirmed in their gender identities when they perform tasks within their gender domains, ultimately affecting subject choices.
Kelly – Science is seen as a more masculine subject because science teachers are more likely to be male and textbook examples are geared towards boys.
Ethnicity and achievement
Engelmann – Black American language is inadequate and does not adequately prepare children for school.
Gillborn and Mirza – Indian students outperformed white peers despite often not speaking English at home.
Moynihan – Black families are more likely to be headed by lone mothers depriving the children of adequate care financially and emotionally as they lack a male role model.
Murray – High rates of lone parenthood in ethnic minority families results in children lacking positive role models.
Pryce – Asians are higher achievers because they are more resistant to racism and have higher self-worth and motivation.
Sewell – The absence of fatherly nurture and a firm but fair relationship with a role model leads to Black boys struggling to overcome struggles in adolescence, pushing them towards gangs where anti-school sentiments are pushed.
Palmer – Ethnic minorities are more likely to be working class and materially deprived, causing their underachievement in education.
Gillborn – Black boys are the highest achievers on entry to primary school but by the time they reach GCSEs, they are the worst achieving.
Gillborn and Youdell – Teachers are quicker to discipline Black pupils and have racialised expectations for pupils. They expect Black pupils to be more misbehaved, creating a conflict between white teachers and black pupils.
Archer – Identified 3 pupil identities: The ideal pupil who had a masculinised identity and normal sexuality, taking initiative over their learning and achieving through natural ability; the pathologized pupil who achieves through hard work despite lacking natural ability and the demonised pupil who is seen as unable to achieve and culturally deprived. Ethnic minority pupils are most likely to be in the former categories
Policies affecting education
Marketisation - The process of running education like a business by reducing regulation/state control and increasing competition between schools
David - Post marketisation shifts power to parents creating a parentocracy.
League tables and Ofsted
Formula funding
Academies outside of local authorities
Free Schools
Competition for pupils
Cream skimming - Good schools can be more selectived and take in best students
Silt shifting - Good schools can avoid taking the worst students
Formula funding - Schools gain funding based on number of pupils admitted
League tables - Schools at the top of the league tables have more funding and can cream skim
Gerwitz - Parents’ economic and cultural capital affected their decision making when picking schools
Privileged skilled choosers - Professional middle class parents who use economic and cultural capital to prpduce educational capital for their children
Semi skilled choosers - Working class parents with high ambitions for children who lack cultural capital to get them into best schools
Disconnected local choosers - Working class parenrs with low cultural capital who lack understanding of league tables
Ball - The creation of parentocracy is a myth as the middle class have a clear advantage due to cultural capital. Marketisation only legitmises and continues inequality
Policies affecting inequality - Education Action Zones, Aim higher, Educational Maintenance Allowance, Boys literacy programme
Privatisation - The transfer of public assets to private companies
Ball - Education has become a source of profit for capitalism through the education services industry
Officials in the public sector now also work in the private sector e.g. headteachers give paid talks
Companies bid for contracts to provide services to schools e.g. food in the canteen
Private companies in education are now foreign owned e.g. Edexcel is owned by the American company Pearson
Buckingham and Scanlon - All 4 major educational software companies are foreign owned
Molnar - Schools have been the victims of colaisation as private companies now place their products within schools e.g. vending machines in the aims of creating long term brand loyalty from young ages
Ball - Privatisation is a key factor shaping education as education has become a commondity to be bought and sold by private investors