1. Sociological Perspectives
1.1. Functional Theory on the Relationship between School and Society
1.1.1. This theory stresses interdependence of the social system. In other words, everything in the social system depends on each other.
1.1.2. Education is of critical importance in creating the moral unity necessary for social cohesion and harmony.
1.1.3. Education reform is supposed to create structures, programs, and a curriculum that are technically advanced, rational, and encourage social unity.
1.2. Three Effects of Schooling on Individuals
1.2.1. Knowledge
1.2.1.1. This effect provides individuals with a higher amount of knowledge that will benefit them for the remainder of their lives.
1.2.2. Employment
1.2.2.1. This effect provides individuals the better opportunities to find jobs after they graduate from school.
1.2.3. Moblity
1.2.3.1. This effect provides individuals with opportunities to move up the social ladder to better their lives.
2. Pragmatic Philosophy of Education
2.1. Generic Notions
2.1.1. Dewey's form of pragmatism is instrumentalism and experimentalism. These were founded on the new psychology, behaviorism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. Also, Dewey's ideas were influenced by the theory of evolution and by an eighteenth-century optimistic belief in progess.
2.1.1.1. This means that Dewey thought that the attainment of a better society was through education.
2.1.2. A school would become an "embryonic community" where children could learn skills both experimentally as well as from books, in addition to traditional information, which would enable them to work cooperatively in a democratic society.
2.1.3. Dewey's ideas about education are often referred as progressive education.
2.1.3.1. Progressive education proposes that educators start with the needs and interests of the child in the classroom, allow the child to participate in planning his or her course of study, employ project method or group learning, and depend heavily on experiential learning.
2.1.4. Students need both freedom and responsibility.
2.2. Key Researchers
2.2.1. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
2.2.2. John Locke (1632-1704)
2.2.3. John Dewey (1859-1952)
2.3. Goal of Education
2.3.1. To balance the social role of the school with its effects on the social, intellectual, and personal development of individuals. In other words, schools need to balance the needs of society and community and the needs of the individual.
2.3.2. To integrate children into a democratic society.
2.3.3. Growth leading to more growth.
2.3.3.1. "John Dewey liked to define the aim of education as growth, and when he was asked growth toward what, he liked to reply, growth leading to more growth. That was his way of saying that education is subordinate to no end beyond itself, that the aim of education is not to merely make parents, or citizens, or workers, or indeed to the surpass the Russians or Japanese, but ultimately to make human beings who will live life to the fullest, who will continually add to the quality and meaning of their experience and to their ability to direct that experience, and who will participate actively with their fellow human beings in the building of a good society." -Lawrence Cremin
2.4. Role of the Teacher
2.4.1. The teacher is not the authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows.
2.4.2. The teacher is the facilitator of knowledge. The teacher encourages, offers suggestions, questions, and helps plan and implement courses of study.
2.5. Curriculum
2.5.1. An integrated curriculum.
2.5.2. All academic and vocational disciplines in an integrated, interconnected way.
2.5.3. The curriculum changes as the social order changes and as children's interests and needs change.
2.6. Method of Instruction
2.6.1. Children learn individually and in groups.
2.6.2. Children use the inquiry method (or problem-solving method).
2.6.3. Children learn in nontraditional but natural ways.
3. Curriculum and Pedagogy
3.1. Social Efficiency Historical Curriculum Theory
3.1.1. This was the response to the development of mass public secondary education.
3.1.2. This curriculum theory views that all students are different. Therefore, students have different needs for the curriculum.
3.1.3. The curriculum is differentiated to meet the individual needs of each student.
3.2. The Functionalist Sociological Curriculum Theory
3.2.1. The functionalist curriculum creates students become competent members of society.
3.2.2. The role of the functionalist curriculum is to give students the knowledge, language, and values to ensure social stability, for without a shared common culture social order is not possible.
3.2.3. The functionalist curriculum is to be designed to enable students to function in a democratic, meritocratic, and expect society.
3.2.4. The functionalist curriculum must change with the ever-changing requirements of the modern world.
3.2.5. A goal of this curriculum is to teach students how to learn instead of only memorizing facts.
4. Politics of Education
4.1. Liberal Perspective
4.1.1. Liberals believe that the role of school should be a balance between the needs of society and the individual in a manner that is consistent with a democratic and meritocratic society.
4.1.2. Liberals believe that the reason for unequal educational performance differences between students is that individual students or groups of students begin school with different life chances and therefore some groups have significantly more advantages than others.
4.1.3. Liberals believe that the problems in education include:
4.1.3.1. Schools have too often limited the life chances of poor and minority children and therefore the problem of underachievement by these groups is a critical issue.
4.1.3.2. Schools place too much emphasis on discipline and authority, thus limiting their role in helping students develop as individuals.
4.1.3.3. The differences in quality and climate between urban and suburban schools and, most specifically, between schools with students of low socioeconomic backgrounds and high socioeconomic backgrounds is a central problem related to inequalities of results.
4.1.3.4. The traditional curriculum leaves out the diverse cultures of the groups that comprise the pluralistic society.
4.2. Progressivism Vision
4.2.1. The progressive view sees schools as central to solving social problems, as a vehicle for upward mobility, as essential to the development of individual potential, and as an integral part of a democratic society.
4.2.2. The progressive view sees that schools should be part of a steady progress to make things better.
4.2.3. The progressive view falls in between the liberal and radical political perspectives.
5. Schools as Organizations
5.1. Governance
5.1.1. State Senator
5.1.1.1. Shay Shelnutt
5.1.2. State House of Representative
5.1.2.1. David Standridge
5.1.3. State Superintendent
5.1.3.1. Dr. Tommy Bice
5.1.4. State School Board Representative
5.1.4.1. Dr. Cynthia Sanders McCarty
5.1.5. Local Superintendent
5.1.5.1. Rodney Green
5.1.6. Local School Board
5.1.6.1. Blount County Schools
5.2. Comparison to Germany
5.2.1. Germany selects and sorts their children in elementary school and tracks them into a tri-system in secondary school.
5.2.1.1. The three different sections of the tri-system are:
5.2.1.1.1. Hauptschule
5.2.1.1.2. Realschule
5.2.1.1.3. Gymnasium
5.2.2. The US does not track elementary students like Germany does. The US does track secondary students, but not to the extreme that Germany does.
5.2.3. Germany's education placement system is based on achievement, which is related to social class background.
6. Equality of Opportunity
6.1. Educational Achievement and Attainment of Women
6.1.1. Women made about $10,000 less than men for the same level of education received.
6.1.2. Females achieve at higher levels in reading at ages 9, 13, and 17 than males do.
6.1.3. Females achieve at slightly higher levels in mathematics at age 9 than males do.
6.2. Response to the Coleman Study
6.2.1. Sociologists, other than Coleman, examined and reexamined Coleman's study.
6.2.2. A group of minority scholars performed the task of defining the characteristics of schools that makes them effective.
6.2.3. The results of the Coleman study were shocking because the organizational differences between schools were not particularly important in determining student outcomes when compared to the differences in student-body compositions between schools.
7. History of U.S. Education
7.1. The Common School Reform Movement
7.1.1. The common school reform movement was led by Horace Mann. He believed that a free public education was to help people to become equal, that it prepared people for citzenship, and that it reflects the concern for stability and order along with social mobility.
7.1.2. The people interested in education realized by 1820 that schools that were established before the war were not doing an effective job of providing an well-rounded education.
7.1.3. I believe that the common school reform movement was the most influential educational reform movement because it allowed everyone to get a primary education.
7.2. The Democratic-Liberal Historical Interpretation
7.2.1. Democratic-Liberals believe that the history of U.S. education involves the progressive evolution, albeit flawed, of a school system committed to providing equality of opportunity for all.
7.2.2. Democratic-Liberal historians suggest that each period of educational expansion involved the attempts of liberal reformers to expand educational opportunities to larger segments of the population and to reject the conservative view of schools as elite institutions for the meritorious (which usually meant the privileged).
7.2.3. Democratic-Liberals believe that the U.S. educational system must continue to move closer to both equality and excellence, without sacrificing one of the other too dramatically.
8. Educational Inequality
8.1. Functionalist Sociological Explanations of Unequal Achievement
8.1.1. Schooling produces unequal results, but that is because of individual differences in students and not group differences.
8.1.2. There are unequal results in educational outcomes because there are unequal educational opportunities.
8.1.3. The source of educational inequality to necessary to know for there can be the elimination of it so to provide an equal educational opportunity for all students.
8.2. Within-School Centered Explanation
8.2.1. Tracking plays a good part of why different students get different educational outcomes even when students go to the same school.
8.2.2. In the secondary level of schooling, students are divided both by ability and curriculum. Thus, different groups of students often receive considerably different types of education with the same school.
8.2.3. A reason for tracking students is heterogeneous groups are far more difficult to teach, and with heterogeneous groups, teachers tend to teach to the middle of the group. Thus, students at the lower end fall behind and students at the higher end are bored and unchallenged.
9. Educational Reform
9.1. School-based reforms: School-Business Partnerships
9.1.1. During the 1980s, business leaders became concerned that school's were not making graduates that were necessary for a revitalization of the U.S. economy.
9.1.2. Over the years, entrepreneurs have contributed significantly to education reform efforts.
9.1.3. School-Business partnerships have attracted lots of media attention, but there is little convincing evidence that they have significantly improved schools.
9.2. Community reforms
9.2.1. Community reforms are a way to attempt to change educational inequity.
9.2.2. Full service schools are a way to better the community. Full service schools focus on meeting students' and their families educational, physical, psychological, and social needs in a coordinated and collaborative way between school and community services.
9.2.3. Full service schools are designed to target and improve at-risk neighborhoods, to prevent problems, and to support students and their families.