Education Key Thinkers

• Functionalism


  Education teaches specialist skills and encourages social solidarity
• Parsons


  Education provides secondary socialisation, teaches universalistic standards and is meritocratic. School is society in miniature.
• Davis and Moore


  Education sifts and sorts pupils into appropriate jobs, role allocation
• New Right


  Marketisation of education is best as it creates a paying customer mentality
• Althusser


  Education is an ideological state apparatus that reproduces and legitimates capitalism
• Bowles and Gintis


  Correspondence principle – school mirrors work e.g. hierarchy, following rules etc.
• Bourdieu

  The middle class habitus is valued over the working class habitus
• Willis


  Working class lads "learn to labour" at school as education fails them and they form anti-school subcultures
• Browne and Ross


  Boys and girls see certain tasks and activities as part of their "gender domain"
• Sharpe


  Girls' aspirations changed from the 70s to the 90s, they now aspire to a career/education
• Weiner


  The curriculum is a "woman free zone"
• Rosenthal and Jacobsen


  Students who are labelled positively by teachers who believe they are "spurters" will have a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Ball // Lacey


  Setting and streaming encourages the formation of pupil subcultures // differentiation and polarisation
• Sewell


  Black male pupils respond in different ways to negative labelling – rebels, conformists, retreatists, innovators (subcultural responses)
• Rutter


  Fifteen Thousand Hours study – good teaching can make a difference to student outcomes
• Usher


  Education needs to be lifelong and flexible
• Thompson


  Education needs to be customised, a "one-size-fits-all" approach is outdated
• Howard


  Poor diet and health among working class students = educational underachievement
• Flaherty


  Many students eligible for FSM reject them due to stigma
• Waldfogel and Washbrook


  Overcrowding and lack of study space in the home along with poor living conditions (cold, damp, illness) etc. disadvantages working class students
• Leech and Campos


  Selection by mortgage gives middle class students the advantage of living nearer to better school
• Tanner


  Education has hidden costs e.g. uniform, books, trips etc.
• Douglas


  Middle class children have more cultural capital and intellectual development before school
• Bernstein


  Restricted and elaborated speech codes
• Feinstein


  Parental attitudes and education
• Reay // Keddie


  Blaming the parents' cultural deprivation is a victim blaming approach // cultural dep. is a myth
• Sugarman

  Working class subcultural values; collectivism, immediate gratification, present-time orientation, fatalism
• Bourdieu


  Middle class have better cultural and social capital
• Sullivan

  Middle class children access educational books/TV giving them more cultural capital
• Keddie

  Cultural deprivation is a myth and victim blaming
• Whitty // Bernstein


  Compensatory education policies help extent but cannot overcome deep inequality/poverty
• Gewirtz


  Marketisation and parental choice only benefits the middle-class parents/students
• Dunne and Gazeley


  Schools normalise the underachievement of the working class so have low expectations
• Becker

  Middle class students fit the "ideal pupil" identity
• Rosenthal and Jacobsen


  Students who are labelled as "spurters" go on to have a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Gillborn and Youdell


  Setting and streaming based on notions of ability
• Lacey


  Polarisation and differentiation lead to subcultures
• Bourdieu


  Middle class habitus/culture better fits with that of the school
• Archer


  Uniforms/rules are felt as symbolic violence, Nike identities are a response
• Bartlett


  Marketisation leads to selection by schools – cream-skimming and silt-shifting