education mock predictions

• Durkheim - Role of education?

  Functionalist

  2 main functions: specialist skills and knowledge, maintaining social solidarity through a value consensus (shared norms and values)
• Parsons - Role of education?

  Functionalist

  Education serves as a bridge between home and work, preparing us to move from home to wider society

  Believes in meritocracy, applying this between four factors: ascribed status, achieved status, particularistic standards, universalistic standards
• Davis and Moore - Role of education?

  Functionalist

  Role allocation: education sorts us according to ability, with the most able gaining higher qualifications and positions

  Inequality is necessary to ensure important roles are filled by the most capable
• Blau and Duncan - Role of education?


  Functionalist

  Argues that a modern economy depends on using human capital for its prosperity
• Chubb and Moe - Role of education?


  New Right

  Called for marketisation into state education through a voucher system in order to prevent 'silt-shifting' and 'cream-skimming'

  No solution for over/under subscribed schools
• Althusser - Role of education?


  Marxist

  Suggests the state uses an ideological state apparatus to keep the state in power, maintained through media etc but notably education
• Bowles and Gintis - Role of education?

  Marxist

  Correspondence principle: schools are organised to achieve what the bourgeoisie want in the workplace, students learn to do what they are told or face consequences aka school corresponds with work

  Argues schooling creates obedient workers and distorts student development, students with creativity and independence receive low grades, whilst those with obedience and discipline gain higher ones
• Cohen - Role of education?

  Marxist

  Suggests youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers the attitude needed in a subordinate labour force - lowers aspirations so the proletariat accept low paid work
• How do interactionists criticise the functionalist view of education?

  Believe functionalists hold an 'oversocialised' view of people as puppets in society - it wrongly implies all students are taught and never reject school values
• Paul Willis -Role of education?

  Neo-Marxist

  Studied 12 working-class boys in the 1970s from their last 18 months in school to work

  Argues the working-class do not live in a false class consciousness but actively rebel against education, just ending up in the same place
• Hubbs-Tait et all - Class achievement?


  Found that where parents use language that challenges their children's understanding, this enhances cognitive performance
• Douglas - Class achievement?

  Found working class parents place less value on education, less ambitious for their children, visited school less often, thus meaning children had lower motivation and achievement
• Feinstein - Class achievement?


  Argues parent's education is the most important factor affecting childrens achievement

  Middle class parents socialise their children through income, parenting styles and education behaviours
• Keddie - Class achievement?


  describes cultural deprivation as a 'myth' and a victim blaming explanation

  School achievement cannot be blamed on a culturally deprived background as a child cannot be deprived of their own culture
• Becker - Class achievement?


  Interactionist

  Interviewed 60 Chicago teachers, finding that they judged pupils to the 'ideal student' stereotype, with work, conduct, and being middle class seen as ideal
• Sharp & Green - Class achievement?

  Supports interactionist views that labelling depends on backgrounds, but suggested further that negative labels on working-class children echoes wider society
• Gillborn & Youdell - Class achievement?

  In teacher predication of 5A*-C at GCSE, working class and black students were thought to be lower ability, streamed in lower sets, and entered for lower tier GCSEs
• Rosenthal & Jacobson - Class achievement?

  Studied Oak community school. Using fake tests and fake results, they told teachers who would 'spurt' ahead. Of the random 20%, 47% had made significant progress, an effect greater on young children. Works similarly for underachievement
• Douglas - Class achievement?

  Found children placed in a higher stream at age 8 had an improved IQ by age 11, the opposite true for low streams
• Lacey - Class achievement?

  Proposed two definitions for pupil behaviours: differentiation and polarisation
• Hargreaves - Class achievement?

  Found lower stream boys in a secondary modern school were triple failures

  Failed the 11+, had been placed in lower streams, and had been labelled 'worthless louts'
• Furlong - Class achievement?


  Found pupils are not committed to one of Peter Wood's suggested responses but may move between them with different classes and teachers
• Evans - Class achievement?

  Studied 21 working class alevel girls at a london comprehensive, found they were reluctant to apply to Oxford due to hidden barriers and not fitting in
• Bordieu - Class achievement?

  Many working class people think of Oxbridge as being 'not for the likes of us'
• Reay et all - Class achievement?

  Self-exclusion from elite or distant universities narrows the options of many working-class pupils and limits their success
• Ingram - Class differences?

  Studied two groups of working class catholic boys in a highly deprived Belfast neighbourhood
• What happened to the two groups in Ingram's study?

  1. One group passed 11+ to grammar school

  2. Others failed and went to a local secondary
• How did the habitus differ between schools?

  • Grammar school had middle-class habitus of high expectations
  • Secondary school had habitus of low expectations of underachieving pupils
• Working class boys at the grammar school

  Felt pressure to conform due to tension between their working class habitus and the middle-class grammar school
• Symbolic violence


  • Working class boy Callum was ridiculed for wearing a tracksuit on non-school uniform day
• Peter Woods - Class achievement?

  Ingratiation (teacher's pet)

  Ritualism (going through the motions, staying out of trouble)

  Retreatism (daydreaming, mucking about)

  Rebellion (rejection of school values)
• What is the difference between labelling and self-fulfilling prophecies?

  Labelling is attaching a meaning to someone, whereas a self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true simply by making it
• What is the difference between differentiation and polarisation?

  Differentiation explains teachers categorizing pupils on perceived behaviours, attitudes and ability, whereas polarisation is how pupils response by moving to one of two opposite extremes
• What are the characteristics of a pro-school subcultures?

  They tend to form in high streams, are largely middle class, share the values of the school, gain status through academic success
• What are some criticisms of labelling theory?


  It is deterministic in nature, ignores the wider structures of power in which labelling takes place
• What is meant by 'habitus'?

  The learned ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class
• What are the external factors affecting educational achievement?

  Cultural deprivation

  Material deprivation
• What are the internal factors affecting educational achievement?

  Labelling

  Streaming

  Pupil subcultures
• Which sociologists explored pupil subcultures?

  Lacey

  Hargreaves

  Ball
• Which sociologists explored streaming?

  Douglas

  Gillborn and Youdell