Foundations of Education

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Foundations of Education by Mind Map: Foundations of Education

1. Educational Inequality

1.1. 1. Cultural Differences are said to lead to educational inequality. This can be things like race, family, and living area.

1.2. 2. For example, working class nonwhite students will have different cultural dispositions than white middle-class students, therefore, they may be without the skills and attitudes required by schools.

1.3. 3. John Ogbu claims that a "job-ceiling" exists for African Americans and says that these children limit themselves to stay within their caste system.

1.4. 4. School-Centered Explanations can also lead to educational inequality. These are things can be school financing or school research.

1.5. 5. School financing: students of affluent communities are more likely to provide more per-pupil, leading to a school financial gap than the poorer schools of the community.

1.6. 6. In the Serrano v. Priest (1971) cause, the CA Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional to give unequal school financing between districts of various affluency.

2. Educational Reform

2.1. 1. School-based educational reforms are a somewhat recent development, not coming into play until the 1980s and 1990s. They have led to many judicial decisions and controversies.

2.2. 2. Charter schools are a school-based reform that are unique public schools with the freedom to be more innovative. They are still expected to improve student achievement, but aren't bound to the same standards and expectations that most public schools are.

2.3. 3. There are currently no charter schools in Alabama, but a few are expected to open soon because of the recent law passed to legalize them. Here is an article from al.com that explains the new legislation: http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/03/charter_schools_coming_to_alab.html

2.4. 4. Whereas it is important to reform the whole child, it is almost as equally important to reform the community.

2.5. 5. For example, full-service schools are focused on meeting all types of needs for their students and parents. This means they support them physically, emotionally, psychologically, etc.

2.6. 6. Full-service schools, like Harlem Children's Zone, seek to reform the community instead of removing people from the community. This helps to nurture and allow, yet improve a community's culture so that people are free to live but maintain their identity.

3. Equality of Opportunity

3.1. 1. Coleman Study- Responses to the Coleman Study were controversial, but almost all were shocked by the results. No one could believe that students could be from any type of school with any population and have the same potential.

3.2. 2. Upon reading A Black Student's Reflection on Public and Private Schools, it is obvious that race and type of school can cause extremely negative effects on a students' education.

3.3. 3. In A Black Student's Reflection on Public and Private Schools, Perry complains that public schools do not focus on the methods and content of knowledge, but the form and precision instead.

3.4. 4. Perry also says that teachers either aren’t trying or just aren’t trained to relate to students that are different than them. This causes students to lack respect for their teachers and vice versa, which makes the learning process suffer

3.5. 5. The Education Trust report claims that the achievement gap of African Americans/Hispanics to whites has increased in reading and math since 1988.

3.6. 6. After reading Perry's story, I reflected on my own experiences. I noticed and toiled over these same issues in high school, fearing that my classmates of color were not having their needs met. I felt a bit useless in that battle, though, because being a middle-class white female in advanced classes didn’t really make me out to be the most relatable person.

4. Curriculum and Pedagogy

4.1. Historical Curriculum: Social Meliorist Curriculum is related to the goal of education to reform society.

4.2. The Social Meliorist Curriculum stemmed from the radical depiction of John Dewey's Progressivism writings and is Social Reconstructivist in nature.

4.3. George Counts and Harold Rugg were huge advocates in this type of curriculum because they believed that students should end up helping solve fundamental societal problems.

4.4. Sociological Perspectives - A functionalism viewpoint of curriculum is exactly what its name suggests, students should be trained to function in an ever changing society.

4.5. Modern functionalism is headed by Parsons and Dreeben, who both stress the role of schools preparing students for the increasingly complex roles required in a modern society.

4.6. Basically, functionalists believe that schools should teach general norms, values, and knowledge (like good character, communication skills, conflict resolution) so that students can be prepared for the world around them.

5. Schools as Organizations

5.1. State Senators - Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions

5.2. House of Representatives - Mo Brooks

5.3. State Superintendent - Tommy Bice

5.4. State Representative Board Member - Mary Scott Hunter (R) District 8

5.5. Superintendent of District 8 - Matt Massey

5.6. Education in Canada vs Education in America - (follow the link for stats) These stats reveal that Canadian and American school systems aren't that much different. Each is specifically regulated by an individual state or province, the entrance and exit ages are the same. One difference is that Canada has less private schools than America, possibly because their education system is more well-funded than in America. This leads to better schools and more opportunities for children.

6. Politics of Education

6.1. Perspective

6.1.1. 1. The Conservative Perspective says that individuals and groups must compete in the social environment in order to survive.

6.1.2. 2. Conservatism believes that the free market is the most economically productive system.

6.1.3. 3. Central to the conservative perspective is the view that individuals are rational actors who make decisions on a cost-benefit scale.

6.1.4. 4. The conservative perspective sees the role of the school as providing educational training to ensure that the most talented and hard-working people receive the tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity.

6.2. Vision

6.2.1. 1. Ronald Reagan held the conservative perspective

6.2.2. 2. Traditionalists view the schools as necessary to the transmission of the traditional values of U.S. society, like hard work, family unity, and so on.

7. History of U.S. Education

7.1. Reform Movement

7.1.1. 1. During Reagan's presidency, the government began to push excellence with the National Commission on Excellence (1983).

7.1.2. 2. In 1983, Terrel Bell (the same Secretary of Education that founded National Commission on Excellence) published the famous A Nation at Risk which changed the face of education for a long time.

7.1.3. 3. Here is a summary on A Nation at Risk and it's effects on educational society: http://study.com/academy/lesson/a-nation-at-risk-summary-effects-on-education.html

7.2. Historical Interpretation

7.2.1. 1. The radical view of U. S. educational history is negative, pessimistic, and extreme.

7.2.2. 2. Radicals see the educational system as a system beneficial to no one but the elite, and harps on the lack of equality of opportunity.

7.2.3. 3. People who view education radically include: Michael Katz (who said that education was not creating stability in the newly expanding urban environments) and Joel Spring and Clarence Karier (who say that education has expanded only to meet the needs of the elite)

8. Sociological Perspectives

8.1. Theoretical Perspective

8.1.1. 1. Fundamentalists view society as a machine with many parts. Those parts work together to keep the society working efficiently.

8.1.2. 2. Emile Durkheim, a well-known fundamentalist, is known as one of the fathers of sociology for his major works like Moral Education (1962), The Evolution of Educational Thoughts (1977), and Education and Sociology (1956).

8.1.3. 3. This perspective believes education should create structures, programs and curricula that are technically advanced, rational, and encourage social unity.

8.2. Effects on Individuals

8.2.1. 1. Knowledge and Attitudes: studies have shown that a good education leads to more participation in society (like politics and social attitudes).

8.2.2. Employment: statistics show that 54% of U.S. college graduates in the U.S. entered professional and technical jobs in 1986.

8.2.3. This chart shows the correlation between educational levels and unemployment rates/earnings: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

9. Philosophy of Education

9.1. Pragmatism/Progressivism

9.1.1. GENERIC NOTIONS: Pragmatists think in the form of [ question --> speculative thought --> action --> results ] and believe that things get done using action.

9.1.2. KEY RESEARCHERS: John Dewey is known as the founder of the Progressive Education Movement and is supported by people like Emile Durkheim and William Heard Kilpatrick.

9.1.3. GOAL OF EDUCATION: Pragmatic goals are to teach students how to improve society. They seek to enrich students socially, intellectually and personally. They also seek to create lifelong learners.

9.1.4. ROLE OF TEACHER: A Pragmatic/Progressive teacher is a facilitator of knowledge instead of merely a lecturer. The teacher often writes curriculum and encourages student input and questioning.

9.1.5. METHOD OF INSTRUCTION: Progressive classrooms will have small group tables, chairs arranged in circles, open areas for interactive play and whole group discussion.

9.1.6. CURRICULUM: Progressive classrooms often use an integrated curriculum, which basically uses all of the academic and vocational disciplines inter-connectedly. They also use projects to apply knowledge. Here is Kilpatrick's Project Method: http://people.umass.edu/~rwellman/Philosophy/Kilpatrick.pdf