Education

• Case study


  An in-depth investigation of a single example
• Ball's case study of Beachside Comprehensive


  • Investigated why working-class pupils underperformed at school
  • Spent 3 years carrying out participant observation
  • Focused on 2 groups of students - one banded/streamed by ability, one in mixed-ability classes

  
• Banding/streaming was well-intentioned - to prevent brightest being held back and weakest left behind
• Streaming


  Pupils of similar ability are in the same class for all subjects
• Setting


  Pupils could be in a high set for one subject and low set for another
• Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz investigated the impact of education policies and reforms, especially the 1988 Education Reform Act, which aimed to create a market in state education
• One key marketisation policy was league tables, to allow parents to make informed choices about schools
• Cream skimming


  Schools attracting the most able students to enrol
• Silt shifting


  Schools discouraging lower ability pupils to enrol
• Supporters of marketisation argue it was parental attitudes rather than policies, and middle-class parents should not be penalised for taking greater interest
• Policies since 1994 like Pupil Premium have aimed to resolve issues, ensuring low-income pupils carry more funding
• Correspondence principle


  School is deliberately made similar to work, with hierarchy, fragmented tasks, and extrinsic rewards, to create obedient, docile workers
• Bowles and Gintis argue the schooling system keeps working-class children working class and bourgeois children bourgeois, ensuring they accept low pay and poor conditions
• Bowles and Gintis explore the idea of a hidden curriculum - things education teaches that are not part of the formal curriculum

  
• Halsey, Heath and Ridge found clear class inequalities in education, with service class individuals much more likely to stay in school and attend university than working class
• The research excluded females, which may have affected the findings
• Factors from outside school, such as teacher stereotypes, have a greater effect on achievement than internal factors like setting and streaming
• Parsons viewed the school as a social system that transmits the norms and values of society
• Parsons' perspective


  • Functionalist
  • School acts as a bridge between family and society
  • School is the main agency of socialisation
  • School prepares children for adult life
  • School operates on meritocratic principles
  • School socialises children into basic values of wider society
  • School functions as a mechanism for selection of individuals for their future role in society
• Parsons' functionalist perspective has been criticised by those who argue that the values of the education system may simply be those of the ruling elite, or that equality of opportunity is an illusion in an unequal society where wealth and privilege are more important than individual merit
• Durkheim's perspective


  • Education is a crucial agent of socialisation
  • Teaching of history is key for socialisation
  • School encourages children to work together
  • Strict discipline in school is important for teaching morals and self-discipline
• Critics of Durkheim would suggest that these lessons do not benefit the whole of society but only powerful groups
• Marxists would suggest it is the ruling class who benefits, and feminists would suggest it is men who benefit
• Willis' perspective


  • Used a wide range of research methods
  • Interested in conflict in education and why working-class children went on to do working-class jobs
  • Studied a group of working-class boys who formed an anti-school subculture
  • Concluded that school was not working as an agent of socialisation
  • Suggested working-class boys actively chose to fail rather than the system being designed to have this outcome

  
• It has been suggested that the boys may have acted up more to "show off" to Willis, which could have occurred due to the Hawthorne Effect and interviewer effect