1. "The School as an Informal System of Socialization"
1.1. article was largely from sociological perspective. Thoroughly addresses the process of socialization, and the numerous issues that come along with it. However the issues that schools have with socialization of students - answeres to the problems were not really given
1.2. Article might be more effective it if it offrered a new way to assess students without streaming them, which causes inequalites and insecurities in children
2. "Nourishing the Learning Spirit"
2.1. Article presented great insight into the processes of socializing Aboriginal youths, but the sense of the Learning Spirit still appears a bit abstract
2.2. I understand that it is important to incoorporate the Aborginal culture into the classroom, but wouldn't it also in an indirect way, cause greater segregation between students?
3. Historical
3.1. Klein "Revolution" (1993) (Kachur & Harrison)
3.1.1. Embarked on social and political revolution, resulted in changes to education (Kachur & Wilson)
3.2. Alberta Redefines Opportunity(Kachur and Harrison)
3.3. Introduction of 'New Right Ideas' (Kachur & Harrison)
3.4. The rise of globalization public education has been transformed
3.4.1. Post World War expanson of public services including education (Kachur &Wilson)
3.4.2. inclusion of cultural minorities promoted (Kachur &Wilson)
3.5. Unravelling of Welfare State on economic and socio-politcal fronts - 1970 (Kachur & WIlson)
3.6. 1970's Education becomes scapegoat for Alberta's economic, social, and political crisis (KAchur & Wilson)
3.7. 1990s reform of education based largely on neo-liberal principles: (9 commonalities) (Kachur & Wilson)
3.8. Further research: Contemporary schools succeed in reducing inequality, but can never eliminate it(Davies & Guppy)
3.9. Educational reforms throughout history have encouraged youth across all levels to stay in school longer, however patterns of educational inequality still persist (Davies & Guppy)
3.10. If equality of education was improving, we would expect SES gradient to lessen: it is not (Davies & Guppy)
3.11. Gender imbalance began to change in 1950s (Davies & Guppy)
3.11.1. By 1987, more women enrolled in post-secondary than men
3.11.2. Women now more successful than men in Educational areas
3.12. Gender Segregation has historically characterized university participation for women and men (Davies & Guppy)
3.13. Movement of gender dominated fields into university programs results in more women attendind post-secondary (Davies & Guppy)
3.13.1. Shortly after, women began entering other fields in post-secondary as well
3.14. Canadian HIstory full of inequality (Davies & Guppy)
3.15. John Porter's Veritcal Mosaic (Davies & Guppy)
3.15.1. Showed those with most education were British Canadians
3.15.2. Canadians of Northern European ancestry followed close behind british - because they resembled the british
3.15.3. Portrait of Innequality: multi tiered ladder with ethnic groups ranked according to resemblance of british
3.15.4. Porter made multiple mistakes: did not take time of immigration into consideration
3.16. The Abella Image
3.16.1. Groups in Canada were divided into two parties: Whites and visible minorities (Davies & Guppy)
3.17. The 'Coleman Report' - Student achievement better predicted by parental background than by variations in school resources (Davies & Guppy)
3.17.1. Large inequalities emerge within schools
3.17.2. Socio-economic background is powerful predictor of student success
3.18. SES patterns need to be understood from history (Davies & Guppy)
3.18.1. Schooling processes that result in inequalities likely stem from inequalities that were made by conquests
3.19. 1972 National Indian Brotherbood - Indian Control of Indian Education- change to relationship of FN children and family with education system (Anuik)
3.19.1. offered alternatives to FNMI students
3.20. 2007 Banff Dialogue (Anuik)
3.20.1. Dominant theme of spirituality
3.20.2. Ongoing process of coming to know and validating knowledge
4. Philosophical
4.1. Centralized authority and decreased equality of student opportunity (Kachur & Harrison)
4.2. Advantage to countries with best educated work force (Kachur & Wilson)
4.3. Education takes on greater political significance (Kachur & Wilson)
4.4. Neo-liberal Criticism: Competitice global market compromised by poor education system
4.5. Corporate executives support privatization (Kachur & Wilson)
4.6. Involvement of business community in restructuring of education (Kachur & Wilson)
4.7. Education in Alberta privatized (Kachur & Wilson)
4.7.1. Appeals to business and moral conservatives
4.8. Illusion of "defecit Crisis" (Kachur & Wilson)
4.8.1. Albertans become concerned that cuts to education have gone too far (Kachur & Wilson)
4.9. Conservatives fail test of social realism (Kachur & Wilson)
4.10. Publi Education can only be defended on the basis of its capacity to develop human potential and promote democracy (Kachur & Wilson)
4.11. Knowledge becomes a promary resource and personal asset (Davies & Guppy)
4.11.1. More and more people begin placing high value on education (Davies & Guppy)
4.12. Affluent Youth have always done better in school than poorer youth (Davies & Guppy)
4.13. Seasonal Learning (Davies & Guppy)
4.13.1. Schooling during fall and winter reduces learning gaps, the learning gaps widen again during the summer break
4.13.2. It would be good for disadvantaged children to go to school all year, because they would have the possibility of 'catching up' to their advantaged peers
4.14. Indian Values are the means to enable a child to learn the forces which shape him: the history of his people, values. customs and language (Anuik)
4.14.1. Band Run Schools are key to revitalizing language and culture
4.15. AFN reminded Canadian gov't that it must provide education that affirms FN culture (Anuik)
4.15.1. FNMI look for ways to nourish the learning spirit - coming to know and validating knowledge processes (Anuik)
4.16. Coming to Know (Anuik)
4.16.1. knowing is always in the present and coming to know is the gift of the moment
4.16.2. Children are born into tacit infrastructure
4.16.2.1. can restrain learners - takes the form of a set of ideas & traditions that hold society together
4.16.3. Teachers are more interested in teaching things inherited from somewhere else and less interested in helping students come to know
4.16.3.1. to connect successfully with learners teachers must form relationships with community members, as well as know and respect FNMI tacit structures that learners access prior to schooling
4.16.4. Testing in schools deviates from the process of coming to know
4.16.5. Learners come to know as whole beings in the present
4.17. Teachers are challenged with connecting the wisdom of the community to modern curricula (Anuik)
4.18. Teachers should be catalysts stimulating students (Anuik)
4.19. Validating Knowledge (Anuik)
4.19.1. Experience of validating and knowing are interlinked
4.19.2. Occurs through experience
4.19.3. Processes of validation operate in schools, but format does not match validation process for learners coming to know
4.19.4. Validation is ongoing
5. Social Mechanisms of Educational Inequality (Davies & Guppy)
5.1. I thought since this was such a large topic in the article it deserved its own branch - please note: Everything from this branch is taken from Davies & Guppy
5.2. Secondary Mechanisms: Processes that generate inequality within range of options afforded by students performances
5.2.1. Orientations to school and Cultural Mismatches
5.2.1.1. 'Status Attainment' - lower-class families found to be less aspiring of academic success
5.2.1.2. Social class background affects how students assess risks that come along with attaining high education
5.2.1.3. Affluent youth will need to choose a more ambitious path to reach their parents success and uphold expected life style
5.2.1.4. Poorer youth may lack role-models
5.2.1.5. Possibility of teachers having preconceived biases and expectations of student success based on family history
5.2.1.6. Schools reward areas that are not necessarily markers of intelligence
5.2.2. Gender
5.2.2.1. Men and women have different natural capacities
5.2.2.2. Many areas of further education are often geared towards a specific gender
5.2.2.3. Wherever women are denied equal access to education, they cannot be said to have equality
5.2.2.4. Substantial amounts of blue-collared jobs remain to be male dominated
5.3. Primary Mechanisms: social forces that create inequalities in education by directly affecting children's capacity to learn curricula
5.3.1. Family Based Learning
5.3.1.1. Not every child has the same level of preparation for school
5.3.1.2. Not every family can afford to provide their children with summer camps, or educational material such as games for learning outside of school
5.3.1.3. Even in nominally free schools, children from less privileged backgrounds earn lower grades and test scores
5.3.1.4. There is a relationship between high and low educated parents in the ammount of verbal interactions with young children
5.3.1.5. Students are more likely to be successful if they come from households taht encourage literacy and study habits
5.3.1.6. Early learning programs are working to help less fortunate children be better prepared for school but further policies need to be put in place
5.3.2. Sources of Ability
5.3.2.1. Can knowledge be inherited? No it can not
5.3.2.2. Labelling people as smarter than others is a choice
5.3.2.3. Schools place more value on mathematical skill than musical skill
5.3.2.4. Nature Vs. Nurture
5.3.2.4.1. Nature and Nurture work together to establish intelligence
5.3.2.5. Socially defined concept of intelligence: multi dimensional intelligences, such as kinaesthetic
5.3.2.6. Twin studies show that intelligence has important hereditary component
5.3.2.7. Throughout recent history IQ scores have been rising
5.3.2.7.1. This can be accredited to a multitude of things including better health care, nutrition, and more participation in schooling
5.3.3. Stress
5.3.3.1. Low SES can expose children to income related stress
5.3.3.2. Parent child relationships can be affected by stressors, which can reduce ammount of interaction time, exposing children to mental health problems and harsh parental discipline
5.3.3.3. Even a child's nervous system can be affected by stressful situations within the family dynamic
5.3.4. Contexts of schools and neighbourhoods
5.3.4.1. ability grouping, grade retention and tracking foes not help under performing students, and they might even worsen the gap between students
5.3.4.2. Schools should extend mainstream opportunities instead of segregating weaker students
5.3.4.3. Poor neighbourhoods expose children to unsafe environments
6. "Unequal Student Attainments: Class, Gender, and Race"
6.1. Article provided very in depth explanation of history behind such social problems, as well as possible solutions.
6.2. The statistics behind Class Gender and Race were very interesting
6.3. Still I am left wondering, does any of this matter if we can not make it change?
7. "Public Education, Globalization, and Democracy: Whither Alberta"
7.1. Article provides an in depth historical perspective of the Klein Government in Alberta
7.2. As an out of province student I am left wondering however, how the majority of people reacted to the Klein government
7.3. Many of the things that happened, such as the cuts to education, seem to be similar to the ongoing battles to education today.
8. Sociological
8.1. "Neo-liberal" ideas which have construed the meaning, purpose and value of education (Kachur & Harrison)
8.2. Emphasis and blame placed on teacher instead of social and political agendas (Kachur & Harrison)
8.2.1. Education becomes scapegoat for: social inequality, family structure, rise in juvenile crime and consumerism (Kachur & Harrison)
8.3. Education treated as both "problem" and "solution" for productivity decline and international competitiveness (Kachur & Harrison)
8.4. Public education inseparable from broader moral, economic, and political issues (Kachur & WIlson)
8.5. Globalization changes groundrules for human interction on a worldwide scale (Kachur & WIlson)
8.5.1. Extension of Capitalism (Kachur &Wilson)
8.6. Education denounced for failing to deal with racism and sexism (Kachur & WIlson)
8.7. Introduction of 'Streaming" within schools, reorganization of schools, opportunities for profit-making in schools (Kachur &Wilson)
8.8. Marketization and commodicfication of educational services (Kachur & Willson)
8.9. Liberal Education (Kachur & Wilson)
8.9.1. Promotes equality of opportunity
8.9.2. social achievement based on merit
8.9.3. Supports working-class children to go to university
8.10. Public education is a fundamental element in transformation of demcratic citizenship - through the process of how things are taught - (Kachur & Wilson)
8.11. MMI & EMI (Davies & Guppy)
8.11.1. more applicants go to advantaged institutions and post-secondary
8.11.2. Affluent families in schooled society greatly advantaged
8.12. Nepotism (Davies & Guppy)
8.12.1. Parents actively intervent to improve children's life chances
8.12.1.1. Reproduces status and advantage across generations
8.13. Structural functionalist view (Davies & Guppy)
8.13.1. Schools serve as equalzers in society
8.13.2. Modern schools produce meritocracy : rewards smartest students regardless of social origins
8.13.3. Schools are promoter of upward social mobility
8.14. Neo-Marxists views (Davies & Guppy)
8.14.1. Schools reproduce inequalities
8.14.2. Disadvantaged youth stay disadvantaged, cultural skills devalued, forced into lower streams
8.14.3. Inequalities occur from hidden and overt processes
8.14.4. Views females and ethnic minorities as disadvantaged - Schools offer them little choice.
8.15. Vertical Mosaic (Davies & Guppy)
8.15.1. intersection of class, ethnicity, inequality
8.15.2. Schools active generator of disparities
8.16. Parental education, income, and prestige - predictors of child's success (Davies &Guppy)
8.16.1. Applicable in majority of Western Countries
8.16.2. Reoccurrs at all stages of schooling
8.17. Socio-Economic Gradient (Davies & Guppy)
8.17.1. Views SES and inequality as social hierarchy
8.17.2. SES effects student's achievement in school: children from wealthier families are better prepared for school
8.17.3. Persist from K - 15 yrs. Are not erased or diminished by schooling
8.17.4. Gradients persist irregardless of factors taken into account
8.17.5. Gradients exist within ethnicity, genders, regions.
8.17.6. Causal link between SES and educational attainment
8.17.7. Has largely persisted over time and space
8.17.8. Exists everywhere
8.18. Gender Patterns have greatly changed (Davies & Guppy)
8.18.1. Howeverm only a small 'Reverse-Flow" of males into formerly female fields ie. Nursing
8.18.2. Gender patterns still occur in certain areas such as education and engineering
8.19. Functional Perspective (Davies & Guppy)
8.19.1. Schools should be compelled to be 'color bind' and reward everyone equally according to effort and talent
8.19.2. Ascriptive characteristics should have little impact on educational success
8.20. Marxist model of Reproduction (Davies & Guppy)
8.20.1. no mobility among disadvantaged
8.20.2. Canadian society a caste system
8.20.2.1. Destinations are pre-oredered from birth and arrayed by race
8.21. Limited Compensation Model (Davies & Guppy)
8.21.1. Predicts schools can partly counteract some inequalities
8.21.1.1. legacies of societal disparaties will constrain what they can do
8.22. On Average young visible minorities exceed young whites in attainment of University degrees (Davies & Guppy)
8.22.1. 40% of Asians have university degree, only 6.2% of aboriginal people have university degrees
8.23. In countries where school is institutionalized - affluent families know how to prepare their children (Davies & Guppy)
8.23.1. In countries where schooling is relatively new, families know less about prepareing children, and schools are more likely to see inequalities disappear
8.24. Spiritual aspect is very important to education of FNMI students (Anuik)
8.24.1. discussion of spirituality as foundation of learning and teaching is absent (Anuik)
8.24.2. Teachers hold a role of nourishing the learning spirit (Anuik)
8.24.3. Spirituality may be a conduit for practice (Anuik)
8.25. Socialization: complex, lifelong process through which individuals develop a sens of self and acquire knowledge and skills, values, and norms required to fulfill social roles(Barakhett & Cleghorn)(Everything from this branch)
8.25.1. how the individual takes on ways of thinking, seeing, believing and behaving
8.25.2. The process will differ according to gender, race, social class, ethnicity etc.
8.25.3. Primary socialization
8.25.3.1. occurs within the family
8.25.3.2. development of language and identity and identity relating to ethnic or religious sub groups
8.25.3.3. involves developing cognitive skills and self control, internalization of moral standards, development of appropriate attitudes and behaviour for social interaction
8.25.3.4. Most influential in the years before a child enters school
8.25.4. Functionalist view
8.25.4.1. sees individual as reacting and responding to people and situations
8.25.5. Freud's psychoanalytic theory
8.25.5.1. biological factors explain development
8.25.5.2. Based on id, ego, and superego
8.25.6. Cognitive perspective - Piaget
8.25.6.1. Development of perceptions and thought processes
8.25.6.2. Human behaviour is collaboration of biological and environmental factors
8.25.7. Social learning theory
8.25.7.1. focuses on environmental factors
8.25.7.2. reinforcement shapes behaviour to conform with expectations of socialization agents
8.25.7.3. Child is a passive learner influenced by rewards and punishments
8.26. Mead's Theory (this whole branch - Barakhett & Cleghorn)
8.26.1. development of self including the 'me' and the 'I'
8.26.1.1. Me - internalized societal attitudes
8.26.1.2. I - spontaneity and individuality
8.26.1.3. require role-taking and role-playing
8.26.2. Significant and generalized others
8.26.3. Family background (class, ethnicity, race, language, gender, culture practices, religion) influences the socialization of the child
8.26.4. A teacher may affect the student in a manner that is comparable to a parent
8.26.4.1. significance lies in the mind and interpretations of the child as compared to the conscious part of the relationship
8.27. Shutz's Theory (this whole branch - Barakhett & Claghorn)
8.27.1. importance of examining interpretive principles/methods that individuals use to make sense of situations
8.27.2. Intersubjectivity
8.27.2.1. knowledge accumulated through experience - commonsense knowledge
8.28. Teacher expectations (This branch Barakhett & Claghorn)
8.28.1. Typification of students
8.28.1.1. placing children into categories by skill level with unquestioned commonsense knowledge
8.28.1.2. Tracking (Streaming)
8.28.1.2.1. A child who is placed in low levels may think of themself as lower
8.28.1.2.2. social meanings attached are equivalent to groups in society at large
8.28.1.3. Procedures that stratify students are part of the political and economic context
8.28.2. Social inequality is perpetuated in the classroom
8.28.2.1. teachers may not be aware that actions produce political, moral, and social consequences
8.29. Moral and Political Socialization (this branch Barakhett & Claghorn)
8.29.1. Schools pass on organization of injustice and inequality in society
8.29.2. Moral socialization - schools instil idealized view of society's values in students
8.29.3. Political socialization -role that school plays in inculcating values and norms that support prevailing structure of society
8.30. Hidden Curriculum (Barakhett & Claghorn)
8.30.1. most of what is taught in school does not appear in curriculum
8.30.2. students need the skill to discover the hidden rules and expectations
8.30.3. Contributes to student development of identity and personality
8.30.4. Teachers must create conditions necessary to enable individuals to participate in creating and changing meanings and values
8.31. Power of the Peer Group (Barakhett & Cleghorn)
8.31.1. Students strongly influenced by peers. especially during adolescents
8.31.1.1. Can have significant effects on students behaviour and choices
8.31.2. Informal part of schooling
8.31.3. Peer groups may have more emphasis on the student then their own parents
8.31.4. Development of sub cultures
8.31.4.1. participation in sets of norms and vales that play a role in controlling behaviour of group members
8.31.4.2. Subcultures may be at odds with parents and teachers
8.31.5. Pop culture
8.31.5.1. is part of students everyday life and becomes part of cultural politics of school
8.32. Teacher education (Barakhett & Cleghorn)
8.32.1. programs fail at educational reforms because focuses on technical forms of knowledge
8.32.2. Role of teacher presumed to be one that transforms knowledge in non critical manner
8.32.2.1. disempowers learners