Theoretical Perspectives: Sociology and Education

1. Symbolic Interactionism

1.1. George Herbert Mead (1863-1921)

1.2. Michele Lamont and Annette Lareau

1.2.1. Cultural Capital

1.2.1.1. "While Weber was mostly concerned with status groups, and Bourdieu, with differentiated class cultures and their relationship to the legitimate culture or cultural capital, we are reaching the conclusion that more attention should be given to the institutionalized repertoire of high status cultural signals and to conflicts around symbolic boundaries." (Lamont & Laureau, p.42)

1.3. Annette Lareau

1.3.1. Invisible Inequality (ethnography)

1.3.1.1. "The evidence shows that class position influences critical aspects of family life: time use, language use, and kin ties...parents do transmit advantages to their children in patterns that are sufficiently consistent and identifiable to be described as a "cultural logic" of childrearing." (Lareau, p.257)

1.3.1.2. "capture the interactive nature of rountine, everyday activity and the varying ways they affect the texture of family life " (Lareau, p.257)

1.4. Jeannie Oakes

1.4.1. The Distribution of Knowledge (ethnography)

1.4.1.1. "So, by the omission of certain content from low-track classes, students in effect were denied the opportunity to learn material essential for mobility among track levels."(Oakes, p.207)

1.4.1.2. "We wanted to know specific information about what was being taught, how teachers carried out their instruction, what classroom relationships were like, and how involved students seemed to be in classroom learning." (Oakes, p.199)

1.5. Tyson, Castellino, Darity

1.5.1. It's Not a "Black" Thing

1.5.1.1. "Designing studies that provide greater detail on students' experiences will allow researchers to identify the nuances that will distinguish a burden of acting white from other more generic problems of high achievement that confront the average teenager." (Tyson, Castellino, and Darity, p. 292)

1.6. Fordham and Ogbu

1.6.1. Black Students' School Success

1.6.1.1. "Barring changes in the opportunity structure, the perceptions, behaviors, and academic effort of black adolescents are unlikely to change to the extent necessary to have a significant effect on the existing boundary-maintaining mechanisms in the community" (Fordham & Ogbu, p.279)

1.6.1.2. "[O]ne major reason black students do poorly in school is that they experience inordinate ambivalence and affective dissonance in regard to academic effort and success.

1.7. Julie Bettie

1.7.1. Exceptions to the Rule (feminism)

1.7.1.1. "But ethnographic data do allow me to elaborate on the meaning of mobility for the girls studied." (Bettie, p.271)

1.7.1.2. "The influence of the structure of schooling on student identity formation and the responsibility of schools to provide the context for mobility should not be underestimated or ignored." (Bettie, p.272)

1.8. CJ Pascoe

1.8.1. "Dude, You're a Fag

1.8.1.1. "Thus, fag becomes a symbol around which contests of masculinity take place." (Pascoe, p.397)

1.9. Daniel McFarland

1.9.1. Resistance as a Social Drama

1.9.1.1. "When students resist learning they symbolically invert cultural forms in subtle and dramatic ways, such that the norms and pre-established codes of conduct in the school and classroom are distorted or undermined" (Mc Farland, p.416)

2. Conflict Theory

2.1. Karl Marx (1818-1883)

2.1.1. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis

2.1.1.1. Beyond the Educational Frontier

2.1.1.1.1. "On the one hand, by imparting technical and social skills and appropriate motivations, education increases the productive capacities of workers. On te other hand, education helps defuse and depoliticize the potentially explosive class relations of the productions process , and thus serves to perpetuate the social, political, and economic conditions through which a portion of the product of labor is expropriated in the form of profits." (Bowles & Gintis, p.96)

2.2. Max Weber (1864-1920)

2.2.1. The "Rationalization" of Education and Training

2.2.1.1. "When we hear from all sides the demand for an introduction of regular curricula and special examinations, the reason behind it is, of course, not a suddenly reawakened "thirst for education" but the desire for restricting the supply for these positions and their monopolization by theowners of educational certificates." (Weber, p.5)

2.2.2. Pierre Bordieu

2.2.3. Randall Collins (1941-)

2.2.3.1. Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification

2.2.3.1.1. "The mechanism proposed is that employers use education to select persons who have been socialized into the dominant status culture: for entrants into their own managerial ranks, into elite culture; for lower-level employees, into an attitude of respect for the dominant culture and the elite which carries it. " (Collins, p.82)

2.3. Adam Gamoran

2.3.1. Is Ability Grouping Equitable? (synthesis of research)

2.3.1.1. "I conclude that grouping and tracking rarely add to overall achievement in a school but they often contribute to inequality" (Gamoran, p.195)

2.4. Michael Apple

2.4.1. Teaching and Women's Work

2.4.1.1. "It is the very combination of patriarchal relations and economic pressures that continue to work their way through teaching to this day." (Apple, p.379)

3. Functionalism

3.1. Emile Durkeim (1858-1917)

3.2. Ralph H. Turner (1919-)

3.2.1. Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System

3.2.1.1. "[T]he organizing folk norm of upward mobility affects the school system because one of the latter's functions is the facilitation of mobility. " (Turner, p.12)

3.3. Maureen T. Hallinan (1940-2014)

3.3.1. Tracking: From Theory to Practice

3.3.1.1. "A good fit between a student's ability and the level of instruction is believed to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of the instructional process. Thus, tracking is meant to promote cognitive development" (Hallinan, p.188)

3.4. The Coleman Report

3.4.1. Equality of Educational Opportunity (quant)

3.4.1.1. "For most minority groups, then, and particularly the Negro, schools provide little opportunity for them to overcome this initial deficiency; in fact they fall further behind the white majority in the development of several skills which are critical to making a living" (Coleman et al., p.130)

3.5. Christopher S. Jencks and Marsha Brown

3.5.1. The Effects of High Schools on Their Students

3.5.1.1. "Conversely, if a society commits itself to eliminating disparities in high-school quality, however small, it may encourage other institutions and individuals to reassess their behavior." (Jencks & Brown,p.164)

3.5.1.2. "Most of the variation in adult characteristics arises among individuals who attend the same high school." (Jencks & Brown, p.164)

3.6. James Coleman

3.6.1. The Adolescent Culture

3.6.1.1. "Altogether, then, it appears that the role of girls as objects of attention for boys is emphasized by the adolescent values in these schools."(Coleman, p.413)

3.6.1.2. "[i]t might be that the schools themselves could so shape these relations to have a positive effect, rather than a negative one, on the school's goals."(Coleman, p.411)