My Foundations of Education

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My Foundations of Education by Mind Map: My Foundations of Education

1. Equality of Opportunity

1.1. Social Stratification in the U.S.

1.1.1. Upper Class: 1-3% of the population

1.1.2. Upper Middle Class: 15% of the population

1.1.3. Lower Middle Class: 25% of the population

1.1.4. Working Class: 40% of the population

1.1.5. Underclass/ Lower Class: 20% of the population

1.2. Types of Stratification

1.2.1. Caste Stratification- occurs in agrarian societies where social level is defined in terms of strict criteria such as race or religion.

1.2.2. Estate Stratification- occurs agrarian in societies where social level is defined in terms of the hierarchy of family worth.

1.2.3. Class Stratification- occurs in industrial societies that define social level in terms of a hierarchy of differential achievement by individuals, especially in economic pursuits.

1.3. Achievement gaps

1.3.1. Achievement gap refers to the observed, persistent disparity of educational measures between the performance of groups of students (especially groups defined by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity or gender).

1.3.2. Example: Females achieve at higher levels in reading at ages 9, 13, 17 but achieve lower levels in science at ages 9, 13, 17.

1.4. The Coleman Report

1.4.1. An influential and controversial study, the Coleman Report was based on an extensive survey of educational opportunity (the national sample included almost 650,000 students and teachers in more than 3,000 schools), was mandated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and directed by the sociologist James Coleman.

1.4.2. Coleman's work was oft misinterpreted as an argument that 'schools don't matter, only families matter'.

2. Educational Inequality

2.1. Functionalist

2.1.1. The Functionalist vision of a "just society" is one where individual talent and hard work are based on universal principles of evaluation.

2.1.2. Functionalists expect that the process of schooling will produce unequal results, but that the results should be due to individual differences between students, not on group differences.

2.2. Conflict

2.2.1. Conflict theorists believe that the role of schooling is to reproduce instead of eliminate inequality (this assertion is consistent with data that shows educational outcomes that are strongly linked to family background).

2.3. Interactional

2.3.1. Interactional theory suggests that we must understand how people within institutions such as families or schools interact on a daily basis in order to comprehend the factors explaining academic success or failure.

2.3.1.1. Student Centered or Extra-school explanations of inequalities focus on factors outside of school such as family, the community, culture, peer groups and the individual student.

2.3.1.2. School centered or within-school explanations of inequalities focus on factors within the school such as the teachers, teaching methods, curriculum, ability grouping, school climate, and teacher expectations.

2.4. Controversial Perspectives

2.4.1. Genetic or Biological Differences Theory: born dumb or smart-no changing

2.4.2. Cultural Deprivation Theories: lower-socio-economic students will start school behind

2.4.3. Cultural Difference Theories: First theory asserts that African American children do less well in school because they adapt to their oppressed position in the class structure. Second theory views working class and non-white students as resisting the dominant culture of schools. Third theory asserts that Asian Americans possess family values that place great emphasis on educational achievement along with high expectations for children.

2.5. Characteristics of Effective Schools

2.5.1. High expectations for students by teachers and administrators

2.5.2. Strong, effective leadership by school administration

2.5.3. Accountability processes for both students and teachers

2.5.4. Close monitoring of student learning

2.5.5. A high degree of instructional time on task

2.5.6. Flexibility for teachers to adapt to new situations and solve problems.

3. Educational Reform

3.1. A Nation at Risk: The First Wave of Education Reform The first wave of education reform in the United States stressed the need for increased educational excellence through increased educational standards.

3.1.1. The reform focused on:

3.1.1.1. The need for excellence and equity in schools.

3.1.1.2. The need to clarify educational goals.

3.1.1.3. The need to develop a common core curriculum.

3.1.1.4. The need to eliminate tracking programs.

3.1.1.5. The need for major changes in vocational education.

3.1.1.6. The need for education to teach about technology.

3.1.1.7. The need to increase duration and intensity of academic learning.

3.1.1.8. The needs to recruit, train, and retain more academically able teachers.

3.2. The second wave of reform was based on the recommendations made at the State Governor's Conference. The reform focused on:

3.2.1. Teaching, leadership, and management.

3.2.2. Parental involvement and choice in schools.

3.2.3. Student readiness for school (for preschoolers).

3.2.4. School facilities being fully utilized.

3.2.5. Quality colleges and accountability for learning.

3.2.6. The Carnegie Report entitled A Nation Prepared : Teachers for a 21st Century focused on the educational quality of teacher education programs. It asserted:

3.2.6.1. Teacher education programs lacked rigor and intellectual demands which would negatively impact success and student achievement in schools.

3.2.6.2. The necessity to reorganize the academic and professional components of teacher education programs.

3.2.6.3. The need to attract and retain competent teacher candidates.

3.3. Goals 2000:

3.3.1. Goal 1: All children will start school ready to learn.

3.3.2. Goal 2: High school graduation rates will increase to at least 90%.

3.3.3. Goal 3: American students will leave grades 4, 8, 12, having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter so that they would be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy.

3.3.4. Goal 4: U.S. students will be first in the world in math and science achievement.

3.3.5. Goal 5: Every adult American will be literate and will possess the skills necessary to compete in a global economy.

3.3.6. Goal 6: Every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conductive to learning.

3.4. No Child Left Behind:

3.4.1. Annual testing required of students in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math, plus at least one test in grades 10 through 12 with science testing. Graduation rates are used as a secondary indicator for high schools.

3.4.2. States and districts are required to report school data on student test performance broken out by whether the student is African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Asian American, white non-Hispanic, special education, limited English proficiency, and/or low income.

3.4.3. States must set adequate yearly progress (AVP) goals for each school.

3.4.4. Schools that don't meet AVP for two year are labeled "In Need of Improvement". This means that schools must offer the students the option to go to another public school and/or receive federally funded tutoring. Funds would also be made available for teacher professional development. If the school does not meet subsequent year's AVP, it would be subject to restructuring.

3.4.5. Schools must have "highly qualified teachers" for teachers in the core academic subjects.

3.5. Race to the Top: Suggestions for educational reform:

3.5.1. Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy.

3.5.2. Building data systems that measure student growth and success and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction.

3.5.3. Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals.

3.5.4. Turning around the lowest-achieving schools.

4. Foundations of Educations

4.1. Four Issues in Education

4.1.1. 1. Achievement Gaps based on social class, race/ethnicity, and gender.

4.1.2. 2. Crisis in Urban Education includes inequality in school and staffing crisis.

4.1.2.1. Inequity in School Financing- School districts that have more expensive properties to tax fare better than schools in rural areas that receive less tax revenue from lower priced properties.

4.1.2.2. Staffing Crisis- If a school district is having financial problems, they may cut back on staff. This means that extracurricular programs suffer and class sizes become larger due to lack of teaching staff.

4.1.3. 3. Battling a Decline in Literacy by adoption of national standards, balancing higher standards, and development of core curriculum.

4.1.3.1. Common Core is being used to combat illiteracy.

4.1.3.2. Balancing higher standards with the ability of all students.

4.1.3.3. The development of core curriculum required for graduation from high school so that all students who earn a high school diploma are literate.

4.1.4. Assessment Issues the question of whether high stakes testing is an accurate assessment of student learning/achievement.

5. Politics of Education

5.1. Neo-Liberal

5.1.1. The neo-liberal viewpoint is a combination of both conservative and liberal perspectives.

5.1.2. Neo-liberals critique failing traditional schools and attribute school failures to teacher unions, teacher tenure, layoffs based on seniority, and the absence of school, teacher, and student accountability.

5.1.3. Neo-liberal reforms focus on five areas of educational policy: austerity, the market model, individualism, state intervention, economic prosperity, race, and class.

5.2. Traditional

5.2.1. Traditional views of school assert that schools are necessary for the transmission of traditional U.S. values in society, such as hard work, individual initiative, and family unity.

5.2.2. Traditionalists believe the schools should pass on the best of what was and what is.

5.2.3. Traditional visions encompass the right liberal to the conservative spectrums.

5.3. A political science perspective focuses on the politics of education-on power relations; on the relationship between local, state, and federal governments and education; on school financing and law; and on the question of who controls the schools.

6. History of U.S. Education

6.1. 18th Century: Development of a National interest in education, state responsibility for education, & growth in secondary education.

6.1.1. 1785, 1787 Land Ordinance Act, Northwest Ordinance- made a place where every town had to have a school, and they had to pay for it.

6.1.2. 1783- Noah Webster's American Spelling book was published. (Webster's Dictionary)

6.2. 19th Century: Increasing role of public secondary schools, increased but segregated education of women and minorities, attention to the field of education and teacher preparation.

6.2.1. 1821- First Public High School opens in Boston.

6.2.2. 1855- First Kindergarten in the U.S.

6.2.3. 1896- Plessy v. Ferguson- "Separate but equal"

6.3. Twentieth Century: Increasing Federal support for educational rights of underachieving students; increased federal funding of specific educational programs.

6.3.1. 2002- No Child Left Behind Act- law passed by George W. Bush in 2002 in which called for increased school accountability.

6.3.2. 1954- Brown v. Board of Education- overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. (separate is not equal)

6.4. Historical Interpretations of U.S. Education

6.4.1. Conservatives assert that due to progressive movements in education, academic quality has suffered.

6.4.2. Democratic-Liberals- assert that the history of education in the U.S. involves progressive evolution, although flawed, of school systems that are committed to providing equal opportunity for all students.

6.4.3. Radical/Revisionists educators assert that educational expansion has benefitted the elite few rather than the general population, and has not produced equality of opportunity or effective results.

7. Sociology Perspectives

7.1. The purpose of sociological inquiry is to focus on the influence of schooling on equity and opportunity for students.

7.2. Interactional sociologists take a up close view of the interactions between students/ students and teachers/ teachers.

7.2.1. Interaction theory is an approach to questions about social cognition, or how one understands other people, that focuses on behaviors and environmental contexts rather than one mental processes or academic achievement.

7.3. De Facto Segregation: Racial segregation, especially in public schools, that happens "by fact" rather than by legal requirement.

7.3.1. Some schools systems are reevaluating division lines and busing students to schools away from their area as a solution.

7.4. Inadequate schools usually share these three items in common: Overcrowding, poor physical condition of the buildings, and lack of supplies/materials for the teachers and students.

7.5. Schools serve as "gatekeepers" of knowledge and skills, and hence provide students with both economic and social worth in the world of employment.

8. Philosophy of Education

8.1. Philosophy is considered to be an integral part of the foundations perspective, arguing that education is shaped by practice rather than by theory.

8.2. Realism (Essentialism)

8.2.1. Theorists: William Bagley & E.D. Hirsch

8.2.2. Teacher-led classrooms

8.2.3. Traditional

8.2.4. Back to the basics (reading, writing, math)

8.2.5. Direct Instruction

8.2.6. Orderly classroom environment

8.2.7. Syllogism-a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning.

8.2.8. Empirical point of view-based on observation or experience.

8.2.9. Tabula Rasa-the theory that children were born as "blank slates", beginning their lives morally neutral.

8.2.10. "Core Curriculum"-which includes math, science, history, foreign language and literature.

8.3. Idealism (Perennialism)

8.3.1. Theorists: Robert Hutchins & Mortimer Adler

8.3.2. Teacher-led classrooms

8.3.3. Traditional

8.3.4. Focuses on literature and shuns textbooks

8.3.5. Electives are viewed as unnecessary

8.3.6. "Great books"-Ex: the Bible, the Illiad, and the Odyssey

8.3.7. Few, if no textbooks are used in a perennialist classroom. Robert Hutchins opinioned that textbooks "have probably done as much to degrade the American intelligence as any single force".

8.4. Pragmatism (Progressivism)

8.4.1. Theorists: John Dewey & Nel Noddings

8.4.2. Student-led classroom

8.4.3. Inquiry method of learning

8.4.4. Group/Collaborative learning

8.4.5. Learning by doing

8.4.6. Project based learning

8.4.7. Concerns, curiosity, and real world experiences of students

8.4.8. Teacher facilitates learning by helping students formulate meaningful questions and devise strategies to derive answers.

8.4.9. Pragmatism is used in the theory of progressivism in that pragmatism practices the art of determining whether an idea has merit by testing it to real world standards.

8.5. Neo-Marxism (Social-Reconstructionism)

8.5.1. Theorists: George S. Counts and Paulo Friere

8.5.2. Student-led classrooms

8.5.3. Focus on bettering society

8.5.4. Flexible, integrated curriculum

8.5.5. Social awareness

8.5.6. Creates problem solvers

8.5.7. Purpose of students becoming socially aware, intelligent problem solvers

8.5.8. No set curriculum

8.5.9. Paulo Freire believed that praxis, the doctrine that indicates that when actions are based on sound theory and values, they can make a real difference in the world.

8.6. Existentialism

8.6.1. Theorists: Maxine Green & A.S. Neill

8.6.2. Student-led classrooms

8.6.3. Students choose own pace of learning

8.6.4. Students grade/evaluate themselves

8.6.5. Shuns traditional curriculum

8.6.6. Phenomenology- is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.

8.6.7. Hermenetics-is philosophical theory of text interpretation, especially the interpretation of wisdom, literature, and philosophy texts.

8.6.8. Help students find the meaning of their lives

8.6.9. Individuality and introspection

8.6.10. Existentialism asserts that the purpose of education is to help students find the meaning of their lives, and it rejects the assertion that adults should direct meaningful learning for children.

8.6.11. Promotes the idea that each student determine their own pace and direction of learning. Students study what they wish to study, and students also evaluate their own performance.

8.7. Constructivism- focuses on how a learner constructs new knowledge (learns) from receiving information.

8.8. Behaviorism-is derived from the belief that free will is an illusion and that human beings are shaped entirely by their environment. (change a person's environment, and you will alter their thoughts, feelings, and behavior)

9. Schools as Organizations

9.1. Decentralized school system-each state maintains its autonomy, authority, and responsibility regarding education. The federal government has very little input regarding individual schools.

9.2. Consolidation and Centralized of Schools-during the past 80 years schools in the United States have consolidated so that education is more efficient and cost effective.

9.3. Willard Waller, an educational sociologist, asserted that schools are separate social organizations due to:

9.3.1. 1. Schools have a definite population. 2. Schools have a clearly defined political structure. 3. Schools represent a central network of social relationships. 4. Schools are permeated with a "we" ideal rather than a "me" ideal. 5. Schools each have a definite culture that is specific to the individual school.

9.4. Great Britain has five stages of education: Early Years, Primary, Secondary, Further Education, and Higher Education. Highly Centralized

9.5. France is highly centralized. It has two public school systems; one for ordinary citizens and one for elite society.

9.6. Japan has Double Schooling which includes two sets of educational systems: the traditional public school and the informal school called the "study institution" (Juku).

9.7. Germany sorts children at a young age and tracks them into a three part system of secondary education.

9.7.1. Blue collar or service positions, lower level white collar positions, and academic preparation for higher level professions.

9.8. Finland places emphasis on formative assessment rather than standardized tests, the elimination of tracking, a focus on all students achieving a high level of academic success, and rigorous teacher education programs.

10. Curriculum and Pedagogy

10.1. Four types of curriculum

10.1.1. The Humanist curriculum is based from the Idealist philosophy that knowledge of the traditional liberal arts as the basis of an educated society. This view of curriculum purports that the purpose of education is to present students the best of what has ever been thought or written. "Great books"

10.1.2. Social Efficiency curriculum is pragmatic/progressive in nature, with a belief that different groups of students have different needs, and should receive different types of education to meet those specific needs.

10.1.3. Developmentalist curriculum is also based on progressive educational practices. John Dewey and Jean Piaget emphasized the importance of the process of teaching along with the curricular content. This curriculum focuses on the needs and interests of each individual child at each of the particular developmental stages. (Cognitive Development)

10.1.4. Social Meliorist curriculum is based on the social reconstructionist theory that schools should work to change society and help solve fundamental social problems.

10.2. Influences on Curriculum

10.2.1. Pluralist Model of Political Power: argues that the political system in the U.S. is not controlled by any one influence and control.

10.2.2. Political Elite Model: argues that a small number of powerful groups dominate the political landscape and have disproportionate control over decision making.

10.3. Traditions in Pedagogic Practices

10.3.1. Mimetic Tradition is based on the view that the purpose of education is to relay specific knowledge to students. This practice uses the didactic method of teaching which relies heavily on lectures or presentations as the main form of communication (Essentalism)

10.3.2. Transformative Tradition views the purpose of education as having the ability to change each student in a meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally.

10.3.3. Dialectic teaching is the means of communication in this approach to curriculum, with the use of questioning and question/answer sessions as the main vehicle to transmit knowledge.