1. Philosophy of Education
1.1. Idealism
1.1.1. Generic Notions-Plato thought that education played an important role in moving individuals toward achieving the good. He believed that the brighter students should follow a curriculum based on ideas rather than concrete matter.
1.1.2. Key Researchers-St. Augustine, Rene Descartes, Immanual Kant and George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1.1.3. Goal of Education-The goal of education is to have the students come to conclusions and truths by searching ideas rather than examination of the real world.
1.1.4. Role of Teacher-The teacher actively plays a role in the classroom by selecting material, discussions and posing questions in order to ensure the desired outcome of the teacher.
1.1.5. Method of Instruction-The method of instruction is generally to encourage the students ideas by questioning, analyzing etc.
1.1.6. Curriculum
2. Schools as Organizations
2.1. Major Stakeholders
2.1.1. State Senators
2.1.1.1. Richard Shelby
2.1.1.2. Jefferson Sessions
2.1.2. House of Representatives
2.1.2.1. Ainsworth, Alexander, Baker, Ball, Bandy, Beckman, Beech, Black, Blackshear, Boothe, Boyd, Bracy, Brown, Buskey, Butler, Carns, Chesteen, Clarke, Clouse, Coleman, Collins, Crawford, Daniels, Davis, Drake, Drummond, Ellis, England, Farley, Faulkner, Fraust, Fincher, Ford, Forte, Fridy, Garrett, Gaston, Givan, Greer, Grimsley, Hall, Hammon, Hanes, Harbison, Harper, Henry, Hill, Holmes, Holmes A., Howard, Hurst, Ingram, Jackson, Johnson, Johnson, Jones, Knight, Lawrence, Ledbetter, Lee, Lindsey, Lovvorn, Martin, McCampbell, McClammy, McCutcheon, McMillan, Millican, Mooney, Moore, Moore, Morrow, Nordgren, Patterson, Pettus, Polizos, Poole, Pringle, Rich, Robinson, Rogers, Rowe, Sanderford, Scott, Sells, Sessions, Shedd, Shiver, South, Standridge, Todd, Treadaway, Tuggle, Wadsworth, Warren, Weaver, Whorton, Whorton, Wilcox, Williams, Williams, Williams, Wingo, Wood.
2.1.3. State Superintendent
2.1.3.1. Michael Sentance
2.1.4. Representative on State School Board
2.1.4.1. Robert Bentley, Jeffrey Newman, Matthew Brown, Stephanie Bell, Cynthia McCarty, Michael Sentance, Yvette Richardson, Betty Peters, Ella Bell, Mary Hunter
2.1.5. Local Superintendent (Marshall County)
2.1.5.1. Cindy Wigley
2.2. Elements of Change
2.2.1. Conflict
2.2.1.1. Staff involvement in school restructuring must be prepared to elict, manage and resolve conflicts.
2.2.2. New Behaviors
2.2.2.1. New behaviors must be learned. Because change requires new relationships and behaviors, the change process must include building communication and trust, enabling leadership and initiative to emerge, and learning techniques of communication, collaboration and conflict resolution.
2.2.3. Team Building
2.2.3.1. This must extend to the entire school. Shared decision making must consciously work out and give on-going attention to relationships within the rest of the school's staff. Otherwise, issues of exclusiveness and imagined elitism may surface, and perceived "resistance to change" will persist.
2.2.4. Process and Content
2.2.4.1. The process a team uses in going about its work is as important as the content of education changes it attempts.
3. Curriculum and Pedagogy
3.1. Developmentalist Curriculum
3.1.1. This curriculum relates to the needs of the students rather than the needs of society. It is focused on the needs of the students and portraying the material in the lessons as related to live events of the students so that they can see the education come alive in a meaningful manner. The teacher is not a transmitter of knowledge but rather a facilitator of student growth.
3.2. Traditions of Teaching
3.2.1. Mimetic
3.2.1.1. This commonly relies on lecture or presentation as the main form of communication. With the teacher as the knower and the student as the learner.
3.2.2. Transformative
3.2.2.1. With this tradition the lecture or presentation is not what teaches the students, it is the conversation between them. More-so a discussion rather than sitting and listening.
4. Equality of Opportunity
4.1. Impact on Educational Outcomes
4.1.1. Race
4.1.1.1. Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less. Drop out rates among 16-24 year olds: Whites=5.2% African-American=9.3% Hispanic-American=17.6%
4.1.2. Class
4.1.2.1. Education is expensive and students that come from a lower class family may not be able to afford the education that a student from a higher class can. Also, studies show that the number of books in a family's home is related to the academic achievement of its children.
4.1.3. Gender
4.1.3.1. Historically, women are not rated as better students than men. This is mainly explained because of the teaching methods in the past, expecting that women could not learn as fast and as well as men. In the past 20 years gender differences in education have dramatically reduced. Women have caught up to men in educational achievement.
4.2. Responses to Coleman Study From 1982
4.2.1. Response 1: What then of Coleman, Hoffer, Kilgore's claim that Catholic schools are educationally superior to public schools? If trivial advantage is what they mean by such a claim, then we suppose we would have to agree. But judged against reasonable benchmarks, there is a little bias for this conclusion.
4.2.2. Response 2: Formal decomposition of the variance attributable to individual background and the social composition of the school suggests that going to a high-poverty school or a highly segregated African American school has a profound effect on a students achievement outcomes, above and beyond the effect of individual poverty or minority status. Specifically both racial/ethnic and social class composition of a student's school are 1 3/4 times more important than a student's individual race/ethnicity or social class for understanding educational outcomes.
5. Educational Inequality
5.1. Cultural Deprivation Theory
5.1.1. Policy makers sought to develop programs aimed not at the schools but rather at the family environment of working-class and nonwhite students.
5.2. Cultural Difference Theory
5.2.1. Key difference is that although cultural difference theorists acknowledge the impact of student differences, they do not blame working-class and nonwhite families for educational problems. Rather than they attribute cultural differences to social forces such as poverty, racism, discrimination, and unequal life chances.
5.3. School Centered Explanations
5.3.1. School Financing: Public schools are financed through a combination of revenues, mostly from local taxes. These taxes are proportionate to property values and incomes in the area. Therefore more affluent communities are able to gain more revenue for schools.
5.3.2. Effective School Research: The finding that within-school differences are as or more significant than between-school differences raised questions about the common-sense argument that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do poorly simply because they attend inferior schools.
5.3.3. Between-School Differences (Curriculum and Pedagogical Practices): Much of this research looked at differences between schools in inner-city, lower socioeconomic neighborhoods in order to demonstrate that schools can make a difference in these communities.
5.3.4. Within-School Differences (Curriculum and Pedagogical Practices): The fact that different groups of students in the same schools perform differently suggests that there may be school characteristics affecting these outcomes.
6. Politics of Education
6.1. Purposes of Education
6.1.1. Intellectual- To teach children the cognitive and specific skills including mathematics, reading, writing, literature etc. Also, to teach students the thinking skills to get them through higher learning.
6.1.2. Political-To teach students (future citizens) the basic knowledge of the current political system and knowledge of basic laws of society.
6.1.3. Social-To promote and teach socialization. This is a key part of a functional society, each student should learn the proper values and behaviors of the society.
6.1.4. Economic-To teach students the necessary qualifications to succeed in a future occupation.
6.2. The Role of the School
6.2.1. A perspective of the role of the school is for all students to be equal in opportunity and have the understanding of societal roles with respect to cultural diversity. This perspective also lean towards the importance of participation in the community.
6.3. Explanations of Unequal Performance
6.3.1. A perspective of unequal performance is that students come from different backgrounds and may not be as advanced as other students when starting school. Therefore, schools must attempt to level the playing field and catch up the ones who were from a disadvantaged background.
6.4. Definition of Educational Problems
6.4.1. Educational system has limited life chances of poor and minority students. Schools basing too much emphasis on discipline and authority that the perspective of them helping students develop is limited. The quality and climate differences in urban and suburban schools is a problem related to inequalities of results. Traditional curriculum leaves out the diverse cultures of groups that comprise the pluralistic society.
7. History of U.S. Education
7.1. A reform movement that I believe most influenced education was that of Horace Mann. He wanted to make a better education available to all students. Education at that time was only for the wealthier families who could afford to send their children to private schools or hire a tutor. Others who were sent to "public schools were taught by poorly educated teachers and were in very large classrooms.
7.2. A historical interpretation of US education is that the democratic/liberals view the history of education optimistically. They believe the progress and growth of the system has been a healthy and active upward slope. All of this in sync with equality and excellence.
8. Sociological Perspectives
8.1. Theoretical Perspectives
8.1.1. Functional-begin with a picture of society that stresses the interdependence of the social system. Researchers often examine how well the parts are integrated with each other. Functionalists view the society as a machine where the parts of it work together to produce what is required to make the society work.
8.1.2. Conflict-these sociologists argue that social order is not based on collective agreement, but on the ability of dominant groups to impose their will through force and manipulation. In this view, the glue of society is economic, political, cultural and military power.
8.1.3. Interactional-primarily critiques and extensions of the functional and conflict perspectives. This questions more on what happens in everyday situations in the classrooms and examining and analyzing these situations to better categorize them.
8.2. Effects of Schooling on Individuals
8.2.1. Knowledge of Attitudes-According to research the knowledge and attitudes of students in the classroom varies depending on socioeconomic background. Students from higher backgrounds tend to score higher than that of students from a lower background.
8.2.2. Employment-Research has shown that most large organizations or corporations require high levels of education for their employees, which results in a higher salary for the student if all requirements are met and/or exceeded. Education plays a major role in the work field and is always valued.
8.2.3. Teacher Behavior-Teacher behavior has a large impact on the students learning and behavior. The actions of the teacher are an example to the students. Teachers should make the students feel better about themselves so that they will want to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
8.2.4. Inadequate Schools-In this instance it is the discussion of equality and that some schools are unable to keep up with other more funded schools. Minorities and poor students may fall behind in urban schools as where they may not fall behind in suburban schools.
8.2.5. Gender-Statistically girls start out academically ahead of boys but by the end of the high school years they are less optimistic of their future than boys. Some point this toward the gender bias in the school system where they see that teachers are mostly women and the administrators are mostly men. This produces an unintended inequality.
9. Educational Reform
9.1. School Based Reforms
9.1.1. School-Business Partnerships: Business leaders became concerned that schools were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for a revitalization of the U.S. economy. Therefore, schools and businesses began entering into partnerships.
9.1.2. School-to-Work Programs: Intent was to extend what had been a vocational emphasis to non-college-bound students regarding skills necessary for successful employment and to stress the importance of work-based learning.
9.2. Other Reforms
9.2.1. School Finance Reforms: There have been numerous reforms to improve school funding. A few of these are a court ruling in 1990 which stated that more funding was needed to serve the children in poorer school districts. Another in 1998 in which the state was required to implement a package of supplemental programs, including preschool, as well as a plan to renovate urban school facilities.
9.2.2. Full Service and Community Schools: Full service schools focus on meeting students' and the families educational, physical, psychological, and social needs in a coordinated and collaborative fashion between school and community services.