My Foundations of Education

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

1. Schools as Organizations

1.1. Alabama State Senators: Greg Albritton, Gerald Allen, William Beasley, Mark Blackwell, Dick Brewbaker, Paul Bussman, Clyde Chambliss, Linda Coleman-Madison, Gerald Dial, Priscilla Dunn, Vivian Figures, Rusty Glover, Bill Hightower, Jimmy Holley, William Holtzclaw, Steve Livingston, Del Marsh, Jim McClendon, Tim Melson, Arthur Orr, Lee Pittman, Greg Reed, Quinton Ross, Hank Sanders, Paul Sanford, Clay Scofield, Shay Shelnutt, Bobby Singleton, Harri-Anne Smith, Roger Smitherman, Larry Stutts, J.T. Waggoner, Cam Ward, Tom Whatley, Phillip Williams.

1.1.1. Alabama State House of Representatives: Will Ainsworth, Louise Alexander, Alan Baker, Michael Ball, George Bandy, Paul Beckman, Jr., Elaine Beech, Marcel Black, Christopher Blackshear, Alan Boothe, Barbara Boyd, Napolean Bracy, J.r., Koven Brown, James Buskey, Mack Butler, Jim Carns, Ronnie Chesteen, Adline Clark, Steve Clouse, Merika Coleman, Terri Collins, Danny Crawford, Anthony Daniels, Randy Davis, Dickie Drake, Barbara Drummond, Corley Ellis, Christopher England, Allen Farley, David Faulkner, Joseph Faust, Robery Fincher, Craig Ford, Berry Forte, Matthew Fridy, Daniel Garrett, Victor Gaston, Juandalynn Givan, Lynn Greer, Dexter Grimsley, Laura Hall, Micky Hammon, Thomas Hanes, Corey Harbison, Alan Harper, Ed Henry, Jim Hill, Mike Holmes, Alvin Holmes, Ralph Howard, Steve Hurst, Reed Ingram, Thomas Jackson, Ron Johnson, Ken Johnson, Mike Jones, John Knight, Kelvin Lawrence, Nathaniel Ledbetter, Paul Lee, Richard Lindsey, Joe Lovvorn, Jimmy Martin, Artis McCampbell, Thad McClammy, Mac McCutcheon, Steve McMillan, Mike Millican, Arnold Mooney, Mary Moore, Barry Moore, John Morrow, Becky Nordgren, Jim Patterson, Phillip Pettus, Dimitri Polizos, Bill Poole, Chris Pringle, Kerry Rich, Oliver Robinson, John Rogers, Connie Rowe, Howard Sanderford, Rod Scott, Chris Sells, David Sessions, Randall Shedd, Harry Shiver, Kyle South, David Standridge, Patricia Todd, Allen Treadaway, Mark Tuggle, Tim Wordsworth, Pebblin Warren, April Weaver, Ritche Whorton, Isaac Whorton, Margie Wilcox, Jack Williams, Phil Williams, Jack "J.D" Williams, Rich Wingo, and Randy Wood.

1.1.1.1. Alabama State Superintendent: Michael Sentance

1.1.1.1.1. Alabama State School Board Representatives: Governor Robert Bentley, Michael Sentance, Jeffrey Newman, Yvette Richardson, Betty Peters, Stephanie Bell, Ella Belle, Cynthia Sanders, and Mary Scot Hunter.

1.2. Ch. 6 Part Two: The four elements of change: 1. Conflict- Conflict is necessary for change because it brings to light exactly what it is that needs to be changed. 2. New behaviors- change requires trust and suitable behavior to the situation. 3. Team building- decisions are made based on a school-wide effort to give voice to each person that is part of the school. 4. Interrelating process and content- finding suitable processes to interpret the content.

2. Philosophy of Education

2.1. Ch. 5                                                         Pragmatism developed in the nineteenth century, and can easily be considered a synonym for a “practical” process. Pragmatists believe that one should seek out a route that will meet his desired goals. John Dewey, one of the founders of pragmatism, emphasized “instrumentalism and experimentalism” (Cookson, Sadovnik & Semel, 2013). This form of pragmatism included current research in psychology, behaviorism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. Dewey believed in progress, and that at its root lay education; he believed in an educational environment that achieves a balance between academic studies and “traditional information, which would enable an individual to work cooperatively in a democratic society” (Cookson, et al., 2013). Dewey believed the student’s learning patterns should be taken into account in order for the student to achieve his academic goal. Key researchers of Pragmatism include: American philosophers George Sanders Pierce, William James, (previously mentioned) John Dewey, and European philosophers Frances Bacon, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The educational goal of pragmatists is to challenge ideas, improve the social order, and positively affect the student’s education while adhering to democratic societal processes. Pragmatist view the role of a teacher as one not authoritarian, but rather one that behaves as a guide. Teachers should interact and offer suggestions and create a curriculum specific to the course of study they are teaching. John Dewey believed that some children prefer to learn individually and some in groups, inquiry based learning, and informal instruction. Pragmatism emphasizes the “notion of a core curriculum, or an integrated curriculum” (Cookson, et al., 2013). Pragmatists choose a subject matter and introduce problems that can be solved using academic and vocational processes. Educators who have a progressive teaching philosophy create a bridge with the beginning being everything known and the end of the bridge being anything unknown. Source: Sadovnik, A. R., Cookson, P. W., & Semel, S. F. (2012). Exploring education: An introduction to the foundations of education (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.

2.1.1. Research and prepare experiment

3. Curriculum and Pedagogy

3.1. Ch. 7 Part One: The Social Efficiency curriculum centers itself around the academic and developmental needs of the student. Rather than focusing solely on societal needs or traditional common curriculum, the Social Efficiency curriculum is somewhat of a balance between the two. This method of curriculum includes processes to determine a student's academic needs or weaknesses, and prepares students for the world beyond the classroom.

3.1.1. Ch. 7 Part Two: The mimetic tradition of teaching uses the process of imitating to teach. This tradition emphasizes the process by which the student learns, and the content of each lesson. Usually, content in mimetic teaching traditions is information that is already known. Essentially, the tradition entails a teacher passing on information that they have learned in classes or experiences elsewhere. The transformative teaching tradition, unlike the mimetic tradition, is not solely focused on content information being passed; rather, the focus is on the transmission of characteristics. Transformative teaching attempts to strip a student of negative characteristics and replace them with the characteristics he needs to make it in the world.

4. Equality of Opportunity

4.1. A student's social class can effect him either positively or negatively. Our text points out the expense of a quality education, and relays that students born into high or middle class families are more likely to get the quality of education that they need. Schools in high or middle class areas often impose higher academic standards than those in a low or under class area. A student's race can also impact his education. African-American and Hispanic-American high school dropout rates are significantly higher than those who are white and native to the United States. Historically, gender discrimination in the classroom is aimed at women. Now that women are given the same educational opportunities, they are more likely to finish their education with higher reading rates than their male counterparts. However, males are more likely to achieve higher in maths. Gender differences in the classroom are significantly less pronounced today, but there is still evidence of female discrimination within schools.

4.2. The first response to The Coleman Study (1982) was that his findings were essentially insignificant. When comparing private Catholic schools with public schools, significant differences were of course found. However, there were no significant differences in learning. The second response was that students will have better overall opportunities if educated by a private school.

5. Educational Inequality

5.1. Ch. 9

5.2. Cultural Deprivation Theories: The first theory is that minorities are predestined to lack many of the resources needed for a quality education. The second states that in certain poverty-stricken areas, students cannot be motivated if they are not promised immediate reward. They tend to think in the short term rather than the long term. As a result, these areas produce students who lack any sort of quality education.

5.3. One school-centered explanation for inequality centers around financing. Local sources account for a significant amount of school funding. If a student goes to school in a low socio-economic area, it is almost guaranteed that the student will not be afforded the resources available to higher-class areas. Another explanation is curriculum and pedagogic practices. Again, students in low income areas are not guaranteed the quality of schooling  they would get in areas with more money to spend on resources and teacher salary. A third explanation is curriculum and ability grouping. This explanation relays that schools sometimes do not pay the needed attention to student learning abilities. The last explanation is gender and schooling. Essentially, this explanation suggests that women are subject to prejudice and lack of equal opportunity within the school.

6. Educational Reform

6.1. Ch. 10

6.2. School-Business Partnerships and Privatization: School-business partnerships emerged in the 1980's. Certain business leaders decided to team up with schools to produce efficient learners and workers. Privatization began in the 1990's, and resulted in private companies of education becoming more involved with public schools that had low academic acheivment.

6.2.1. Reforms: Abbott v. Burke - ruling in 1990 that recognized financial deficiencies and brought more funding and programs to in-need schools. Before Abbott v. Burke, the case of Rodriguez v. San Antonio ended in a ruling that there is no right to equal education, but it also brought to light many funding lapses, and caused advocates to try that much harder. Eventually, it paid off with the ruling in the case of Abott v. Burke.

7. The four purposes of education are intellectual, political, social, and economic. Intellectual purposes involve teaching the basic cognitive skills which include reading, writing, and mathematics. Acquiring these basics is necessary to help students evolve their thinking into higher degrees with a hope that it will enable skills such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. The political purpose in schools is to establish patriotism within the student and teach basic laws of the society. The social purpose of education is to teach students how to solve social problems and learn to socialize in a productive way. Lastly, the economic purposes of education are to prepare students for future occupational roles, and to select, train, and place individuals into the division of labor.

8. Politics of Education

8.1. Ch. 2:

8.2. Part One:

8.3. The Role of the School seemed the obvious choice; considering that the author of the text being used considers this particular perspective “a central focus of each of the perspectives…” (Cookson, Sadovnik & Semel, 2013). The role of the school takes on the concerns of the “aims, purposes, and functions of education in a society” (Cookson, et al., 2013). The conservative perspective sees the role of the school as taking the strong and making them stronger, and preparing students for future societal roles and society in general. The conservative view on curriculum emphasizes integrating cultural tradition; their ultimate perspective “views the role of the school as essential to both economic productivity and social stability” (Cookson, et al., 2013).  The liberal perspective on the role of the school differs slightly in its aims. Rather than taking the strong and making them stronger, a liberal perspective emphasizes the importance of equal opportunity amongst all students. There is also an emphasis on the importance of learning and respecting cultural diversity and adhering to democratic tendencies in society within the liberal view of the role of the school (Cookson, et al., 2013). The radical perspective views the role of the school important, but limited. The perspective is similar to liberal in that equality is emphasized; however, a radical perspective views it as impossible to eliminate inequality under capitalism (Cookson, et al., 2013). Source: Sadovnik, A. R., Cookson, P. W., & Semel, S. F. (2012). Exploring education: An introduction to the foundations of education (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.

8.4. Part Two:

8.5. The Role of the School

9. History of U.S. Education

9.1. Ch. 3

9.1.1. Text book p. 55-60

9.1.2. Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness"

9.2. Part One:

9.3. The movement led by Horace Mann in the nineteenth century with a goal of making public education free for any individual was and is pertinent to the equality longed for within the liberal view of the role of the school. Previous to his movement, education was available only to the higher class with no room for improvement amongst lower socioeconomic areas of society. Horace Mann “laid out now-ubiquitous arguments for public schooling: to provide children with a basic education and the experience of learning with (and about) others different from themselves. He formulated a rationale for both the intellectual and political purposes of education…” (Westhoff, 2011), and played a crucial role in the evolution of education and its purpose.

9.4. Source:

9.5. Westhoff, L. (2011). Horace Mann's Troubling Legacy: The Education of Democratic

9.6. Citizens.Journal Of American History, 98(2), 515-516.

9.7. Part Two:

9.8. The historical interpretation that piqued interest is within the section Education for All: The Emergence of the Public High School (Cookson, Sadovnik & Semel, 2013). From 1875 to 1920 the number of studentsmenrolled in a public high school tremendously rose from 25,000 to 2,382,542, and that number continued to rise until it reached 6,500,000 in 1940; this made the number of students in public schools equal to or higher than that of students in private academies or vocational schools (Cookson, et al., 2013). This steady rise was due to newly developed laws for minors to attend one type of school or the other. Of course, this evolution and expansion came with new tensions and questions as to the exact purpose of education. The “four themes in particular that were troubling high school educators at the turn of the century…” (Cookson, et al., 2013) were first:

9.9. Due to the confusion surrounding the purpose of education, attempts were made to “clarify the purpose of a high school education” (Cookson, et al., 2013). A committee was created, and included prestigious names, to ultimately decide that secondary education was to essentially prepare students for life in their society. The integrative curricula created included both modern and traditional academic subjects; amongst these were “classical and modern languages, English, mathematics, history, and science…” (Cookson, et al., 2013). The same committee recommended a similar teaching method for all students but was questionably silent on vocational education (Cookson, et al., 2013). These recommendations were backed up by both the National Education Association’s committee on college entrance requirements, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching through their conformation to the guidelines of the original Committee of Ten (Cookson, et al., 2013). This reform was contradicted by the perspective of those who agreed with progressivism and emphasized a “curriculum less academically demanding and far more utilitarian than the one proposed by Charles Eliot’s Committee of Ten” (Cookson, et al., 2013). Progressivism emphasized goals of health, command of fundamental process, worthy home-membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character. These goals were created to lessen the tensions of the vocational versus academic debate and led to further movements to balance teaching life skills and teaching academic courses (Cookson, et al., 2013). Source: Sadovnik, A. R., Cookson, P. W., & Semel, S. F. (2012). Exploring education: An introduction to the foundations of education (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.

9.10. the tension between classical subjects, such as Latin Greek, and modern subjects, such as science, English literature, and foreign languages. The second was the problem of meeting college entrance requirements, since different colleges required different courses of study. The third involved educators who believed that students should study subjects that would prepare them for life, as opposed to traditional academic subjects. And the fourth, inextricably linked to the other three, was whether all students should pursue the same course of study or whether the course of study should be determined by the interests and abilities of the students (Cookson, et al., 2013)

10. Sociological Perspectives

10.1. Ch.4

10.1.1. Midterm

10.2. Part One:

10.3. Functionalism stresses interdependence and emphasizes a society where everyone does their part. “Functionalists view society as a kind of machine, where one part articulates with another to produce the dynamic energy required to make society work” (Cookson, Sadovnik & Semel, 2013). Functionalists tend to view the purpose of education to be to assimilate individuals into their respective places in society, and emphasize the importance of a student making his special set of skills stronger.

10.4. Conflict theory tends to go against ideas of functionalism, and its overall emphasis is power. Sociologists who tend to pursue this theory do not believe in climbing up the figurative social ladder, and believe that biology and history should play a role in a student’s education. Examples in this section include Karl Marx and his belief in a class system that would essentially make the rich richer and keep the poor from any opportunity to better themselves, and Max Weber and his theory that “education is increasingly used by dominant groups to secure more advantageous places for themselves and their children within the occupation and social structure” (Cookson, et al., 2013).

10.5. Interactional theories critique and extend both the Functionalism perspective and Conflict theory perspective. The critique issued addressed the problem of abstract ideas amongst most perspectives that need to be structured. Interactionalists also believe that good will come from getting to know a student and conform to his needs as well as one can.

10.6. Part Two:

10.7. The five effects of schooling on individuals that I believe have the greatest impact on students are knowledge and attitudes, employment, education and mobility, teacher behavior, and inadequate schools. On knowledge and attitudes: Obviously, a higher class student is going to have the opportunity to use many resources he otherwise would not be able to afford. Especially today; if you cannot afford a smart phone or are unable to get rides to the library at your leisure you will be out of luck on some of the assignments required. If a student is unable to do these things, the attitude he might acquire would be that he should not even continue to try. Without access to knowledge needed, what is the point in trying? I believe it equal access is one of the most important goals of this century. On employment: Students with higher education tend to have more employment opportunities. Unfortunately, those that cannot afford the education required to get a stable job are left with few (stressful) options. On education and mobility: It is widely believed that education is required for social mobility. According to Hopper, referenced in our text, there are two components required to achieve the goal of upward social mobility. The first is the amount of time you have spent in higher education, and the second is where a student attends school. Again, without certain resources, even some of the most creative and intellectual students are left with few options. Fortunately, the number of resources is growing for those in even low socioeconomic status. On teacher behavior: Teachers have always played a pertinent role in the education of their students. I have experienced both supportive and negligent teachers, and can confirm that it indeed does make an enormous difference in student behavior and learning. On inadequate schools: inadequate schools have previously and continue to have a huge impact on student learning. Unfortunately, the quality of your education still largely depends upon your class and geographical location (Cookson, et al., 2013).  Source: Sadovnik, A. R., Cookson, P. W., & Semel, S. F. (2012). Exploring education: An introduction to the foundations of education (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.