education/theory method rev

• Overview of sociological explanations for social class differences in achievement and experiences
• External Factors (outside school)


  • Material deprivation
  • Cultural deprivation
  • Capital (cultural, economic, educational, social)
  • Social policies - Marketisation
• Internal Factors (inside school)


  • Teacher labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy
  • Pupil subcultures
  • School organisation and effect
  • Social policies - Marketisation / selection
• Key names and concepts: Class & EXTERNAL factors

  • Howard
  • Flaherty
  • Waldfogel & Washbrook
  • Tanner
  • Leech and Campos
  • Ridge
  • Douglas
  • Hubbs-Tait et al
  • Bereitier and Engelman
  • Feinstein
  • Bereitier and Young
  • Reay
  • Sugarman
  • Bourdieu
  • Sullivan
  • Keddie
• Key names and concepts: Class & INTERNAL factors

  • Hempel-Jorgensen
  • Dunne and Gazeley
  • Becker
  • Rosenthal and Jacobson
  • Gillborn and Youdell
  • Lacey
  • Archer
  • Bourdieu
  • Bartlett
  • Gerwirtz
• Ethnicity External Factors


  • Cultural factors
  • Racism in wider society
  • Material factors
• Key names and concepts: Ethnicity External

  • Lupton
  • Sewell
  • Bereitier and Engelman
  • Bialystok
  • Palmer
  • Rex
  • Wood
• Ethnicity Internal Factors


  • Labelling and pupil identities
  • Pupil responses and subcultures
  • Institutional racism
• Key names and concepts: Ethnicity Internal

  • Archer
  • Wright
  • Gilborn and Youdell
  • Fuller
  • Sewell
• Gender External & Internal Factors

  • Inside school factors affecting girls
  • Inside school factors affecting boys
  • Inside school factors affecting both
  • Outside school factors affecting girls
  • Outside school factors affecting boys
  • Outside school factors affecting both
• Key names and concepts: Gender External & Internal

  • Sharpe
  • McRobbie
  • Mitsos and Brown
  • Boaler
  • Gorard
  • Lobban
  • Sewell
  • Francis
  • Epstein
  • Kelly
  • Mac and Ghaill
• Marketisation Policies


  Policies that aim to run schools like businesses
• Key names and concepts

  • Gender
  • External &Internal
  • Sharpe
  • Unstructured Interviews 70's and 90's found girls aspirations had shifted from wife/home/mother to career centred
  • McRobbie
  • Bedroom culture: girls communicate in their rooms and this helps them in education
  • Mitsos and Brown
  • Crisis in masculinity - transition to a service industry means fewer manual jobs. Girls do better at coursework
  • Boaler
  • Impact of equal opportunities policies such as GIST/WISE and the national curriculum as a key reason for the changes in girls' achievement
  • Gorard
  • Increasing coursework led to girls doing better after 1988
  • Lobban
  • Content analysis on children's books, found sexist themes and content still exists
  • Sewell
  • Feminisation of education
  • Francis
  • Teachers attention towards boys is negative, girls, positive
  • Epstein
  • w/c boys are bullied by peers if they appear to be 'geeks', as 'real boys don't work'
  • Kelly
  • Science is seen as masculine
  • Mac and Ghaill
  • Male teachers told boys off for 'behaving like girls', and ignored boys' verbal abuse of girls (verbal abuse)
  • Rutter
  • A well run school can overcome gender, class and ethnic differences
  • Lees
  • Double standards
• Revision checklist for education/policies

  • Dates for left and right wing governments since 1979
  • Learn 5 policies for each era
  • Learn examples of marketisation policies and privatization
  • Learn globalization/policies and effects on educational policy
  • Learn Gerwirtz and Gillborn and Youdell's research
  • Examples of how policies shape identity/reinforce inequalities
  • Compensatory education policies
• Privatisation


  Bringing private companies into schools to help with organisation, e.g. IT, supply teaching, inspection services
• Marketisation


  Running a school like a business
• Examples of marketisation policies

  • Funding formula
  • Parental choice (parents could choose which school their child went to)
  • The introduction of league tables
  • The introduction of the National curriculum
  • OFSTED inspections and reports (publically available)
• Although established by RIGHT WING conservative government, LEFT and RIGHT wing governments have continued to marketise education since 1988
• Benefits of marketisation

  • The aim is to drive up standards in education through creating competition between schools
  • The more successful schools are the more funding they get (funding formula)
  • It is good that parents, and pupils are able to have access to information about school results so they can make an informed choice
  • Parental choice is a plus especially regarding types of schools e.g. choosing a specialist school
  • OFSTED ensure that schools that are not performing well are made to improve (or else be shut down!)
  • National curriculum led to increasing coursework and girls having to take maths and science to GCSE level – leading them to outperform boys
• Problems with marketisation

  • Schools cannot be run like most businesses – education requires caring and nurturing and pupils require treating as individuals, not all of whom will succeed
  • Marketised education leads to focus only on getting good grades/results when education is also about other things such as learning about life
• Gerwirtz's criticism of marketisation


  Marketisation only benefits the middle class: Middle class parents only have the skills to 'play the system', Using their cultural, social and economic capital they can negotiate with the system to make sure their children get into the best schools, This widens the gap between the working class and the middle class, Disadvantages pupils from some ethnic minorities who are unable to 'play the system' due to language barriers or lack of cultural/social/economic capital
• Examples of privatisation in education

  • Bringing private companies in to school to help with the organisation of the school e.g. companies to run IT e.g. registers, school clubs, activities, supply teaching, inspection services
  • Aspiring to private schools, e.g. becoming selective
  • Academies designing specialist uniforms e.g. only allowed 1 brand/expensive design
  • Involvement of businesses in the management of the school – academies
  • Exam boards are sometimes owned by global companies
• Many of the companies involved in privatisation of schools make a profit
• Cola-isation of schools

  The process of schools becoming more commercialised and business-like
• Impact of marketisation on different social groups

  • Social class: Reinforces class inequalities 'myth of inequality' (Ball), A-C Economy, Parental Choice: privileged, semi skilled, disconnected choosers, Admissions procedures complex and disadvantage the working class
  • Ethnicity: Reinforce ethnic based inequalities, EM from disadvantaged backgrounds have less chance of 'playing the system', Admissions procedures complex and disadvantage some EM
  • Gender: Girls respond positively to pressure to get into better schools, Some boys are seen as less attractive to selective schools
• Issues raised by globalisation in education

  • Increased pressure due to international rankings
  • Increased migration/multiculturalism
  • The influence of international educational policies
  • How schools can prepare students for the global economy
• Preparation for Methods in Context (MIC)

  • Questionnaires
  • Structured interviews
  • Unstructured interviews
  • Group interviews
  • Official statistics
  • Documents
  • Non-participant observation
  • Participant observation
  • Experiments
  • Material deprivation
  • Parental attitudes/role of parents
  • Cultural capital
  • Marketisation (selection processes/admission)
  • Labelling/self fulfilling prophecy
  • The organisation of the school
  • Compensatory education policies
  • Streaming
  • Language/linguistic deprivation
  • Subcultures
  • Admission procedures
  • League tables/school documents
• What to consider for MIC

  • Who? Pupils, parents, teachers, senior managers, governors, Types of/willingness to be involved/motivation?
  • What? Break the issue up into parts. What would you want to know? How would you operationalise the concepts/issues? give an example question of relevant.
  • Where? School gate, classroom, corridors, staff room, parents homes, playgrounds, What are the specific challenges/benefits of each context?
• What a top mark band MIC includes


  • Practical
  • Ethical
  • Theoretical
  • Access
  • Cost/time
  • Researcher characteristics
  • Skills
  • Sample
  • Consent
  • Harm to participants/researcher
  • Anonymity
  • Long term effects
  • Type of data, qualitative, quantitative, representativeness, validity, reliability, positivist or interpretivist
  • Would another method be better? Would methodological pluralism help overcome some research issues
• capitalism potentially unstable, since it depends in the proletariat not seeking to overthrow this unequal system
• Where are the 'hooks' in the item?

  Acceptance of authority
• What are the needs of capitalism?

  • Docile workers
  • Acceptance of authority
  • Exploited workers so that the bourgeoisie can make profit
• Which studies/concepts could you draw from?

  • Acceptance of authority
  • Exploited workers so that the bourgeoisie can make profit
  • Docile workers
• Althusser


  Education is part of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) which teaches people to love the system rather than to challenge capitalism
• Bowles and Gintis


  via hidden curriculum (things taught but not directly) e.g. accepting authority of teachers
• Willis


  interactionist/Marxist, 12 W/C lads, group interviews 'Learning to Labour' learnt to do the bare minimum at school in prep for work
• Bowles and Gintis


  Correspondence Principle, learning how work is from school, learning e.g. to work hard
• Bowles and Gintis


  Myth of Meritocracy, learning to believe the system is fair and rewards people equally even though it does not. This produces docile workers who have false class consciousness
• Capitalism requires docile workers. The bourgeoisie want to make profit from the proletariat without making a fuss. Schooling prepares students from working class backgrounds to accept being told what to do so that they are ready to do the same at work. Therefore education helps the capitalist system by churning our lots of working class people ready to be told what to do. Furthermore, the working class are taught to think that this is a fair system and not question it at all. Some sociologists actually believe the system is fair. However we know the system is not fair because working class children do not do well at all.
• As suggested by the item, capitalism requires docile workers who are required to undertake low paid alienating work. Willis (1971) a Marxist Interactionist carried out group interviews with 12 year 11 lads in a Wolverhampton comprehensive before and after they left school. He discovered that the boys had given up on thinking they could do well and instead, were 'learning to labour' by forming anti school subcultures, mucking around and doing the bare minimum in preparation for low paid factory work, in this sense the education system serves the needs of capitalism. Marxists Bowles and Gintis (1976) also develop this idea of the hidden curriculum (things taught but not directly) such as respecting authority, docility, which are also necessary to provide capitalism (a system based on middle class ownership of private property and the pursuit of profit) with its work force. By encouraging the working class to accept the authority of the ruling class, the teachers, they are unlikely to challenge the unfair system and thus education plays an important role in 'false class consciousness' - making people blind to the fact that they are being exploited and then they are prepared to accept their place in the capitalist system when they leave school. However, Willis' claims are based on a very small sample and therefore it is difficult to use his findings to make generalisations about the role of education in supporting capitalism in contemporary society.