Education

• Hidden curriculum


  While in school, you learn different norms and values but this is not a result of the lessons but a result of the values in school
• Cultural capital


  The knowledge, values, and ideas that people have about life e.g. language
• Social capital


  Having connections and contacts to be able to get far in life
• Feminisation of education


  More females are in education e.g. more female teachers than male teachers
• Teacher expectations


  How teachers see a student and how likely they think you are to achieve something
• Teacher Labelling


  Teachers attaching name or tag to your identity
• Self-fulfilling prophecy


  When a student constantly hears a label, so they start to believe it and act like it
• Formal curriculum


  The subjects student pick and do
• Pro school subculture


  Student that agree and conform the schools' values
• Anti school subculture


  People that rebel to school values
• Banding


  Putting student into ability groups for all subjects
• Setting


  Putting people into ability groups for certain subjects
• Institutional racism


  When the whole entire system is racist down to the roots
• Functionalism


  • Education is based of meritocracy
  • Meritocracy – everyone has equality and hard work is rewarded with good grade and the best jobs later in life
  • Hidden curriculum has a positive role, and it readies us for work
  • Parsons – education acts as a bridge between family and the wider society
  • Davis and Moore – Role Allocation – schools sort and select the most appropriate student for roles and jobs in the wider society, this is through their skill set
• Marxism


  • Meritocracy is a myth – schools are rigged to benefit the bourgeoisie at the expense of the working class
  • The hidden curriculum plays a negative role – it readies us for work, exploitation and teaches us how to be obedient
  • Bowles and Gintis – Correspondence principle – schools mirror the workplace and correspond to the needs of capitalism and workplaces through the hidden curriculum
  • Bourdieu – Cultural capital – the middle class have a lot of cultural capital due to having good resources, but the working class do not due to a lack of resources. The bourgeoisie also have a lot of social capital which helps them get further in life
  • Willis – the education system is based off m/c values which w/c students unconsciously resist to making them fail in classes. This results into them entering an anti-school subculture like 'the lads
• Feminism


  • Education maintains and justifies inequality
  • Schools run in favour of men and works to reflect a patriarchal society
  • There are gendered subjects, different teacher expectations and different representations of girls in school
  • Francis – schools mirror the patriarchal society; boys dominate spaces and time in schools, girls are marginalised due to this
  • Sue Lees – patriarchy and sexual control start in schools. There are sexual double standards. E.g. boys how have slept with a lot of people are glorified but women who have slept with a lot of people are sluts
• Labelling


  Can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Self-fulfilling prophecy


  When someone believe their label, they become a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Ideal pupil


  Every teacher has an 'ideal pupil' in their head and most the time it is with m/c values
• Banding and setting


  • Strongly related to teacher labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy
  • When a student is smart or dumb, they will be put into a set or band thar can make them feel empowered or demotivated
  • These bands or sets can limit a student's grade
  • Ball – top and bottom bands respond to these labels and make them become a self-fulfilling prophecy
  • Keddie – students and different bands are taught differently so they perform as such in their exams e.g. sets 1 will try harder than set 4
• Pro and anti-school subculture

  • Willis -1970s– saw how the w/c lads rejected the m/c values of the school and made their own set of values. There was more fun in having their own values than following the schools
  • Hargreaves - 1960s– saw how lower bands pupils turned to anti school subculture due to their label and become a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Internal factors that can affects achievement

  • Labelling
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy
  • Banding
  • Setting
  • School subcultures
  • Hidden curriculum
  • Type of school attended
  • Gendered subjects
• External factors that can affect achievement

  • Material deprivation – not having the resources needed to have a healthy lifestyle – e.g. income, occupation and poverty, access to resources, housing, diet, health
  • Cultural deprivation – not having the cultural capital (Bourdieu) needed to do well in school - e.g. language (Bernstein-m/c student have an elaborate code of language whilst w/c student have a restricted code of language), parental experiences, values and aspirations (young – 1967- parents have their own values about school which is passed onto students)
• Social Class


  • m/c achieve more than w/c in both state and independent school
  • This can be due to labelling/SFP (Becker), banding and setting (Ball), subculture (Willis), school type
  • Because m/c student embody the 'ideal pupil' they will be labelled as such and achieve better
  • w/c children are more likely to live in worse housing and they don't have the money to buy the needed resources in school
  • W/c students tend to have parent that don't involve themselves with school which can leave them culturally deprived
  • m/c parents provide the resources and install pro school values into their children
  • Marxists see education as rigged and favour the ruling class, meritocracy is myth
• Ethnicity


  • Chinese and Indian tend to perform better in schools
  • Black and w/c whites, and gypsies tend to perform worse
  • Can be due to racism, labelling due to students e.g. black kids are troublemakers
  • Black kids are more likely to be expelled or be in disabled
  • Can be due to institutional racism and there is ethnocentric curriculum which favours white history – this is different to other ethnic values which makes them underachieve
  • Lower s/c tend to be non-whites which leads to material and cultural deprivation
  • Lots of ethnic kids need to have EAL – effects their learning
  • Sewell – did a study on black children forming anti-school subculture – due to being grown in lone parent families
  • Link class and ethnicity
• Gender


  • Girls outperform boys and get more GCSEs
  • There has been a feminisation of school
  • There are a lot of gendered subjects
  • Labelling may affect results
  • There is a changing role in women so there are more female teachers to inspire young girls
  • Sharpe – found that over year's young girls aspiration changed – the first most girls wanted to get husbands but after years most girl wanted to get jobs
  • More laws to help women
  • Feminism is more popular, so women are more inspired
  • Crisis of masculinity – males do not know what their role in society is anymore
• Types of research


  • Questionnaires – primary – set of written questions given to a participant
  • Interviews – primary – structured, semi structured, unstructured
  • Focus group – primary – group interview
  • Observations – primary – covert, overt, participant, non-participant
  • Official statistics – secondary – come from the government
  • Documents – secondary – can be diary, newspaper
• PET Factors


  • Practical – time, cost, access to participant
  • Ethics – safety, consent, confidentiality, deception of participants
  • Theoretical – Reliability, validity, representativeness of data
• Quantitative data


  • Questionnaires, structures interviews and official statistics
  • These are reliable and representative
  • Helps us measure patterns and trends
  • Cheap and quick
  • Not many ethical issues
  • Not valid due to close questions
  • No qualitative data
  • Poor response rates
• Qualitative data


  • Unstructured interview, Observations
  • Small samlpe size
  • In depth data
  • Data is valid
  • Very Flexable and allows the researcher to identify unseen issues
  • Low reliability
  • Not representative due to small sample size
  • Timely and cost
  • More rapport
  • More can go wrong ethically