1. CH6 Schools as Organizations
1.1. Major Stakeholders
1.1.1. Alabama Senators - Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions
1.1.2. House of Representatives - Robert Aderholt District #4
1.1.3. Alabama State Board of Education Superintendent - Michael Sentance
1.1.4. Alabama State Board of Education Representative - Mary Scott Hunter District #8
1.1.5. Fort Payne City Board of Education Superintendent - James B. Cunningham
1.1.6. Fort Payne City Board of Education Representatives - James Durham, Jr. (President) / Randy McClung (Vice-President) / Carolyn Martin / Neal Bain
1.2. Elements of Change
1.2.1. School Processes
1.2.1.1. Teachers, represented through their unions, have a great deal to say about the conditions of their employment. School board members struggle with teacher's pay, productivity, and professional standards. Many conflicts are resolved through negotiation.
1.2.2. School Cultures
1.2.2.1. Changing the school culture requires patience, skill, and good will. It is not an easy task for teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and students to arrive at consensus.
2. CH7 Curriculum and Pedagogy
2.1. Developmentalist Curriculum
2.1.1. Related to the needs and interests of the students rather than the needs of society.
2.1.2. Emanated from the aspects of Dewey's writings related to the relationship between child and the curriculum and emphasized the process of teaching as well as its contents.
2.1.3. This approach is student centered and concerned with relating the curriculum to the needs and interests of each child at particular developmental stages.
2.1.4. Flexibility of what is taught and how it is taught with emphasis on development of student's individual capacities.
2.1.5. Stresses the importance of relating schooling to life experiences and the teacher is a facilitator of student growth.
2.2. Traditions of Teaching
2.2.1. Mimetic Tradition of Teaching
2.2.1.1. Based on the viewpoint that the purpose of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students.
2.2.1.2. Commonly relies on lecture or presentation as the main form of communication.
2.2.1.3. Based on the belief that the student does not possess what the teacher has, stresses the importance of rational sequencing in the teaching process and assessment of the learning process.
2.2.1.4. The emphasis on measurable goals and objectives is the central component of teacher education programs, with the attempt to create a science of teaching often viewed as the key to improving educational achievement.
2.2.2. Transformative Tradition of Teaching
2.2.2.1. Defines the function of education more broadly and more ambiguously.
2.2.2.2. The purpose of education is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally.
2.2.2.3. Educators do not see the transmission of knowledge as the only component of education and they provide more multi-dimensional theory of teaching.
2.2.2.4. They reject the authoritarian relationship between teacher and student. Belief that teaching and learning are inextricably linked.
3. CH8 Equality of Opportunity
3.1. Impact on Educational Outcomes
3.1.1. Class: Education is expensive - Some students need financial assistance with tuition. Wealthier families do not need help with tuition and expect their children to finish school. Working and underclass families have lower expectations for their children. Children from working-class and underclass families are more likely to underachieve and drop out of school.
3.1.2. Race: Minority students receive fewer and inferior educational opportunities than white students. Minorities do not receive the same educational attainment are significantly less.
3.1.3. Gender: Today females are less likely to drop out of school than males. Males outperform females in mathematics. Males are more likely to score higher on SAT's than females. Society discriminates against women occupationally and socially.
3.2. Coleman Study Responses
3.2.1. Private schools were more effective learning environments than public schools because they place more emphasis on academic activities and private schools enforce discipline in a way that is consistent with student achievement.
3.2.2. Schools that are less bureaucratic and more academically oriented are better learning environments for students. it i likely that differences among schools matter for middle-class children because they are beneficiaries of the meritocratic scramble for educational advantage.
4. CH9 Educational Inequality
4.1. Cultural Deprivation Theories
4.1.1. In the 1960's, the Cultural Deprivation Theory suggested that the working-class and nonwhite families often lack the cultural resources, such as books and other educational stimuli, and thus arrive at school at a disadvantage.
4.1.2. The Cultural Deprivation Theory suggests that it blames the victims of poverty for the effects of poverty rather than placing the blame where it belongs: on the social and economic processes that produce poverty.
4.2. Explanations For Educational Inequality
4.2.1. 1.) School Financing - Public schools are financed through a combination of revenues from local, state, and federal sources. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do not receive equality of opportunity.
4.2.2. 2.) Effective School Research - Effective research suggests that there are school-centered processes that help to explain unequal educational achievement by different groups of students.
4.2.3. 3.) Within-School Differences: Curriculum and Ability Grouping - Critics suggest that homogeneous grouping results in unequal education for different groups, with differences in academic outcomes often due to the differences in school climate, expectations, pedagogic practices, and curriculum between tracks.
4.2.4. 4.) Gender and Schooling - Feminists agree that schooling often limits the educational opportunities and life chances of women in a number of ways. Boys and girls are socialized differently through a variety of school processes. The organization of schools reinforces gender roles and gender inequality.
5. CH10 Educational Reform
5.1. School-Based Reforms
5.1.1. 1.) Teacher Education - The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future recommends the following: 1. Get serious about standards, for both students and teachers. 2.) Reinvent teacher preparation and professional development. 3.) Fix teacher recruitment and put qualified teachers in every classroom. 4.) Encourage and reward teacher knowledge and skill. 5.) Create schools that are organized for student and teacher success.
5.1.2. 2.) Teacher Quality - NCLB's requirement that all schools have highly qualified teachers in every classroom. Most teachers meet the standards, but are not highly qualified in the particular subject they are assigned to teach.
5.2. Community-Based Reforms
5.2.1. Full service schools focus on meeting students' and their families educational, physical, psychological, and social needs in coordinated and collaborative fashion between school and community services. Schools service as community centers within neighborhoods that are open to extended hours to provide a multitude of services such as adult education, health clinics, recreation facilities, after-school programs, mental health services, drug and alcohol programs, job placement and training programs, and tutoring services.
5.3. Societal Reforms
5.3.1. Research suggests that a combination of school, community, and societal level reforms are necessary to reduce the achievement gap. Successful school reform must be based on a number of essential supports including: 1.) leadership as the driver for change 2.) parent-community ties 3.) professional capacity 4.) student-centered learning climate 5.) instructional guidance.
6. CH2 Politics of Education
6.1. Purposes of Education
6.1.1. Intellectual -teach basic cognitive skills; transmit specific knowledge; help students acquire higher-order thinking skills
6.1.2. Political - inculcate allegiance to the existing political order; to prepare citizens who will participate in this political order; help assimilate diverse cultural groups into a common political order; teach basic laws of the society
6.1.3. Social - to work as one of many institutions to ensure social cohesion; to socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and values of the society
6.1.4. Economic - prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor
6.2. Perspectives
6.2.1. Role of the School - conservative perspective - provides the necessary educational training to ensure that the most talented and hard-working individuals receive the tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity
6.2.2. Explanations of Unequal Performance - liberal perspective - individual students or groups of students begin school with different life chances and therefore some groups have significantly more advantages than others
6.2.3. Definition of Educational Problems - radical perspective - the educational system promotes inequality of both opportunity and results
7. CH3 History of U.S. Education
7.1. Reform Movement
7.1.1. The Rise of the Common School - This reform movement was led by Horace Mann. This movement was for free public education. Mann established the first state normal school in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839. Mann believed that schools could change the social order. I believe this movement had the most influence in education because public schools were created because of what Horace Mann believed in.
7.2. Historical Interpretation of U.S. Education
7.2.1. The Democratic-Liberal School - Democratic-Liberals believe that the history of U.S. education involves the progressive evolution of a school system committed to providing equality of opportunity for all. They also suggest that each period of educational expansion involved the attempt of liberal reformers to expand educational opportunities to larger segments and reject conservative view of schools as elite institutions.
8. CH4 Sociological Perspectives
8.1. Theoretical Perspectives
8.1.1. Functionalism - Belief that education was of critical importance in creating the moral unity necessary for social cohesion and harmony. Educational reform creates structures, programs, and curricula that is technically advanced, rational, and encourages social unity.
8.1.2. Conflict Theory - Belief that social order is based on the ability of dominant groups to impose their will on subordinate groups through force, cooptation, and manipulation. Schools are similar to social battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administrators, and so on.
8.1.3. Interactionalism - Attempt to make the commonplace strange by turning on their heads everyday taken-for-granted behaviors and interactions between students and students, and between students and teachers. By examining the microsociological or the interactional aspects of school life, people are less likely to create theories that are logical and eloquent, but without meaningful content.
8.2. Effects of Schooling on Individuals
8.2.1. 1.) Knowledge - The more education an individual receives, the more likely they are to read and take part in politics and public affairs.
8.2.2. 2.) Employment - Large organizations require high levels of education for white-collar, managerial, or administrative jobs.
8.2.3. 3.) Teacher Behavior - Teachers are models for students, set standards, and influence self-esteem and sense of efficiency.
8.2.4. 4.) Inadequate Schools - Urban education has failed to educate minority and poor children. Differences between schools and school systems reinforce existing inequalities.
8.2.5. 5.) Gender - Men and women do not share equally in U.S. society. Schools, despite educators' best intentions, tend to reproduce social inequalities.
9. CH5 Philosophy of Education
9.1. Pragmatism - An American philosophy that developed in the latter part of the 19th century. A philosophy that encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends.
9.1.1. Generic Notions
9.1.1.1. Belief that children were active, organic beings, growing and changing, and thus required a course of study that would reflect their particular stages of development.
9.1.1.2. Advocated freedom and responsibility for students.
9.1.1.3. Belief that school should reflect the community in order to enable graduating students to assume societal roles and to maintain the democratic way of life.
9.1.1.4. Belief that it could be more perfectly realized through education that would continually reconstruct and reorganize society.
9.1.2. Goal of Education
9.1.2.1. To make human beings who will live life to the fullest, who will continually add to the quality and meaning of their experiences and to their ability to direct that experience, and will participate actively with their fellow human beings in the building of a good society.
9.1.3. Role of the Teacher
9.1.3.1. The teacher is no longer the authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows; rather, the teacher assumes the peripheral position as facilitator.
9.1.4. Method of Instruction
9.1.4.1. Children learn both individually and in groups. Children should start their mode of inquiry by posing questions about what they want to know.
9.1.5. Curriculum
9.1.5.1. Schools follow Dewey's notion of a core curriculum, or an integrated curriculum. All the academic and vocational disciplines in an integrated, interconnected way.
9.2. Key Researchers
9.2.1. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - Sought a way of thinking in which people might be persuaded to abandon the traditions or "idols" of the past for a more experiential approach to the world. He emphasized experience posited firmly within the world of daily existence.
9.2.2. John Locke (1632-1704) - Believed that the mind was a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, and that one acquires knowledge through one's senses.
9.2.3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) - Believed that individuals in their primitive state were naturally good and that society corrupted them.
9.2.4. John Dewey (1859-1952) - Introduced the terms instrumentalism and experimentalism. Believed the attainment of a better society was through education. Proposed that educators start with the needs and interest of the child in the classroom, allow the child to participate in planning his/her course of study, employ project method or group learning, and depend heavily on experiential learning.