Education

• Consensus view on education - it plays a positive role for all members of society and performs useful functions.
• Conflict view on education - it only benefits one group in society over all others.
• education serving the economy - it prepares students for work, (ensuring a supply of skilled works for society).
• Functionalist view on education - school promotes value consensus which is when students are socialised into the same values and goals (this helps them work together later in life which is important for society). Sociologists: Durkheim and Parsons
• Education facilitating social mobility - schools provide students with opportunities to move up or down the social class system
• Education fostering social cohesion - schools teach a shared set of norms and values creating 'togetherness'
• Education transmitting norms and values - education acts as an agent of secondary socialisation by behaviours of British culture
• Meritocracy - a fair society that rewards the most able and hard working with high income, wealth and status, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed
• Emile Durkheim's education theory (functionalist view) - Education serves the needs of society by transmitting society's norms and values
• Talcott Parson's education theory (functionalist view) - Education is meritocratic as it is based on achieved values.
• Marxist education theory - schools maintain inequality in society
• Bowles and Gintis' education theory (marxist view) - what students learn in school through hidden curriculum mirrors what is required in the workplace
• Feminist education theory - the education system is dominated by males, for the benefit of males
• Becky Francis' education theory (feminist view) - boys dominate the classroom and attract more attention, both negative and positive, from teachers
• What is meant by labelling? - a teacher attaching a characteristic to particular individuals or groups (can be positive or negative)
• Self-fulfilling prophecy - when people are labelled in a certain way, they may live up to the label and and the prediction becomes true
• David Hargreaves' labelling theory - the stream that a student was placed in, affected the way the teacher viewed them
• Hidden curriculum - the messages and ideas that pupils learn indirectly at school that are not formally taught
• Streaming/banding - a system where students in an academic year are divided into ability groups
• Setting - when pupils are placed in ability groups for each subject
• Anti-school sub-culture - students who reject the norms, values and goals of the school
• Paul Willis research (marxist view) followed 'the lads' who rejected the lies of the school system
• Stephen Ball research - students in top bands were hard working whereas students in bottoms bands were poorly behaved
• Education attainment - qualifications achieved by students and the grades they recieved
• Patterns of attainment by gender - girls have outperformed boys in GCSEs since 1988 but recently the gap has narrowed
• Patterns of attainment by social class- disadvantaged students are less likely to perform well
• Patterns of attainment by ethnicity - Chinese pupils achieve higher than any other ethnicities
• Material deprivation - lack of basic needs e.g. housing, clothes and food caused by lack of money
• Cultural capital - knowledge, attitude and values that middle class parents provide for their children that gives them advantages in the education system
• Cultural deprivation - some working class and ethnic minority students underachieve at school because they lack the 'correct' values, skills and behaviours
• School's catchment area - the area from which a state school draws its pupils from
• What are selective schools - schools that admit students on the basis of some sort of selection criteria
• State schools - government funded schools that provide education for free
• Independent/private schools - schools that are independent from government control, pupils usually pay to attend
• marketisation of schools - policy introduced in 1988 which encouraged competition and choice in education
• Stephen Ball's research on streaming, choice and competition between schools - criticised the the marketisation of schools
• ethnocentric curriculum - curriculum that judges on culture superior to others
• Halsey's research on class-based inequalities - middle class boys were 11 times more likely to go to uni than working class
• feminisation of schools - schools have become more favourable to girls
• how does the crisis of masculinity explain the difference in attainment by gender - men are losing their traditional roles and authority