Foundations of Education

1. Chapter 3: History of U.S. Education

1.1. Reform Movement

1.1.1. The struggle for free public education was led by Horace Mann of Massachusetts. His annual reports served as models for public school reforms throughout the nation, and, partly due to Mann's efforts, the first state normal school, or teacher training school, was established in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839. Mann's arguments for the establishment of the common school, or free publicly funded elementary schools, reflects both the concern for stability and order and the concern for social mobility-- both of which were to be addressed through free public education. Mann was one of America's greatest educational reformers, radicals take issue with his arguments, pointing to the common school as a pernicious device for teaching skills such as hygiene, punctuality, and rudimentary skills that would create docile, willing workers.

1.2. Historical Interpretation of U.S. Education

1.2.1. The different interpretations of U.S. educational history revolve around the tensions between equity and excellence, between the social and intellectual functions of schooling, and over differing responses. 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. As more students from diverse backgrounds went to school for longer periods of time, the goals of education became more diverse, with social goals often becoming as or more important than intellectual ones. Democratic-liberals believe that the U.S. educational system must continue to move closer to each, without sacrificing one or the other too dramatically.

2. Chapter 5: Philosophy of Education

2.1. Pragmatism

2.1.1. Pragmatism is generally viewed as an American philosophy that developed in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Pragmatism comes from the Greek word pragma, meaning work. Pragmatism is a philosophy that encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends. Although pragmatists do study the past, they generally are more interested in contemporary issues and in discovering solutions to problems in present-day terms. Pragmatists are action oriented, experientially grounded, and will generally pose questions.

2.1.2. Generic Notions

2.1.2.1. Dewey's form of pragmatism was founded on the new psychology, behaviorism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. His ideas were influenced by the theory of evolution and by an eighteenth-century optimistic belief in progress. This meant the attainment of a better society through education. Dewey's ideas about education, often referred to as progressive, proposed 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 experimental learning. Dewey's progressive methodology rested on the notion that children were active, organic beings, growing and changing, and thus required a course of study that would reflect their particular stages of development. He advocated both freedom and responsibility for students, since those are vital components of democratic living. He believed that the school should reflect the community in order to enable graduating students to assume societal roles and to maintain the democratic way of life. He believed that it could be more perfectly realized through education that would continually reconstruct and reorganize society.

2.1.3. Key Researchers

2.1.3.1. The key to Dewey's vision is his view that the role of the school was to integrate children into not just any type of society, but a democratic one. Dewey's view of integration is premised on the school as an embryonic democratic society where cooperation and community are desired ends. Dewey did not believe that the school's role was to integrate children into a non-democratic society. He believed that if schools instilled democratic and cooperative values in children, they would be prepared as adults to transform the social order into a more democratic one.

2.1.4. Goals of Education

2.1.4.1. Dewey's vision of schools was rooted in the social order; he did not see ideas as separate from social conditions. He fervently believed that philosophy had a responsibility to society and the ideas required laboratory testing; hence, he stressed the importance of the school as a place where ideas can be implemented, challenged, and reconstructed, with the goal of providing students with the knowledge of how to improve the social order. He believed that school should provide "conjoint, communicated experience"-- that it should function as preparation for life in a democratic society. Although Dewey was certainly concerned with the social dimensions of schooling, he also was actually aware of the school's effects on the individual. Dewey's philosophy of education made a conscious attempt to balance the social role of the school with its effects on the social, intellectual, and personal development of individuals. Dewey believed that the schools should balance the needs of society and community on one hand and the needs of the individual on the other. The primary role of education was growth.

2.1.5. Role of the Teacher

2.1.5.1. The teacher is no longer the authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows; rather, the teacher assumes the peripheral position of facilitator. The teacher encourages, offers suggestions, questions, and helps plan and implement courses of study. The teacher also writes curriculum and must have a command of several disciplines in order to create and implement curriculum.

2.1.6. Method of Instruction

2.1.6.1. Dewey proposed that children learn both individually and in groups. He believed that children should start their mode of inquiry by posing questions about what they want to know. Today, we refer to this method of instruction as the problem-solving or inquiry method. Books, often written by teachers and students together, were used; field trips and projects that reconstructed some aspect of the child's course of study were also an integral part of learning in Dewey's laboratory school. Formal instruction was abandoned. Traditional blocks of time for specific discipline instruction were eliminated.

2.1.7. Curriculum

2.1.7.1. Progressive schools generally follow Dewey's notion of a core curriculum, or an integrated curriculum. Progressive educators support starting with contemporary problems and working from the known to the unknown. Progressive educators are not wedded to a fixed curriculum either; rather, curriculum changes as the social order changes and as children's interests and needs change. Dewey thought that an integrated curriculum provided the most effective means to this balance.

3. Chapter 2: Politics of Education

3.1. Four Purposes of Education

3.1.1. 1. Intellectual Purpose- to teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics; to transmit specific knowledge and to help students acquire higher-order thinking such as analysis, evaluation, and synethesis

3.1.2. 2. Political Purpose- to inculcate allegiance to the existing political order; to prepare citizens who will participate in this political order; to help assimilate diverse cultural groups into a common political order; and to teach children the basic laws of the society

3.1.3. 3. Social Purpose- to help solve social problems; to work as one of many institutions, such as the family and the church to ensure social cohesion; and to socialize children into the carious roles, behaviors, and values of society

3.1.4. 4. Economic Purpose- to prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor

3.2. Political Perspectives

3.2.1. 1. The Role of the School: Liberal perspective sees the role of education as balancing the needs of society and the individual in a manner that is consistent with a democratic and meritocratic society. Liberals envision a society in which citizens participate in decision making, in which adult status is based on merit and achievement, and in which all citizens receive a fair and equal opportunity for economic wealth, political power, and social status.

3.2.2. 2. Explanations of Unequal Performance: The liberal perspective argues that individual students or groups of students begin school with different life chances and therefore some groups have significantly more advantages than others. Society must attempt through policies and programs to equalize the playing field so that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have a better chance.

3.2.3. 3. Definition of Educational Problems: Liberal Perspective

3.2.3.1. 1. Schools have too often limited the life chances of poor minority children and therefore the problem of underachievement by these groups is a critical issue.

3.2.3.2. 2. Schools place too much emphasis on discipline and authority, limiting their role in helping students develop as individuals.

3.2.3.3. 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.

3.2.3.4. 4. The traditional curriculum leaves out the diverse cultures of the groups that comprise the pluralistic society.

4. Chapter 4: Sociological Perspectives

4.1. Theoretical Perspectives of the Relationship Between School and Society

4.1.1. 1. Functional Theory

4.1.1.1. Functionalists view society as a kind of machine, where one part articulates with another to produce the dynamic energy required to make society work. Perhaps the earliest sociologist to embrace a functional point of view about the relation of school and society was Emile Durkheim, who virtually invented the sociology of education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While Durkheim recognized that education had taken different forms at different times and places, he believed that education, in virtually all societies, was of critical importance in creating the moral unity necessary for social cohesion and harmony. For Durkheim, moral values were the foundation of society.

4.1.2. 2. Conflict Theory

4.1.2.1. Conflict sociologists do not see the relation between school and society as unproblematic or straightforward. From a conflict point of view, schools are similar to social battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administrators, and so on. The achievement ideology convinces students and teachers that schools promote learning, and sort and select students according to their abilities and not according to their social status. The achievement ideology disguises the real power relations within the school, which, in turn, reflect and correspond to the power relations within the larger society.

4.1.3. 3. Interactional Theory

4.1.3.1. Interactional theories about the relation of school and society are primarily critiques and extensions of the functional and conflict perspectives. Interactional theories 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.

4.2. Effects of Schooling on Individuals

4.2.1. 1.  Knowledge and Attitudes

4.2.1.1. Generally, it is found that the higher the social class background of the student, the higher his or her achievement level. Differences between schools in terms of their academic programs and policies do make differences in student learning. Schools where students are compelled to take academic subjects and where there is consistent discipline, student achievement levels go up. The more education individuals receive, the more likely they are to read newspapers, books, and magazines, and to take part in politics and public affairs.

4.2.2. 2. Education and Mobility

4.2.2.1. Most Americans believe that more education leads to economic and social mobility; individuals rise and fall based on their merit. Students are selected at an early age for academic and university education and where social class background is very important in determining who will receive academic or vocational training. The number of years of education is one measure of educational attainment, but where people go to school also affects their mobility. Private and public school students may receive the same amount of education, but a private school diploma may act as a "mobility escalator" because it represents a more prestigious educational route. An educational degree alone cannot lift many people out of poverty, and upper-class individuals do not lose their social class position if they fail to achieve a high-status educational degree. The data do not support the belief that education alone provides individuals with great amounts of economic and social mobility.

4.2.3. 3. Inside the Schools

4.2.3.1. Since most people are apt to think about learning and growth from a psychological perspective, it is illuminating to stand back and speculate how school structures can also influence student outcomes. Larger schools can offer students more in the way of facilities, but large schools are also more bureaucratic and may restrain initiative. Smaller schools may allow more student and teacher freedom, but small schools often lack resources. Schools are getting larger, if for no other reason than they are cost-effective. Whether schools are large or small, the content of what they teach is a topic of important study.

4.2.4. 4. Education and Inequality

4.2.4.1. Social class differences are not only reflected in differences in income but in other social characteristics such as education, family and child-rearing practices, occupation, place of residence, political involvement, health, consumer behavior, and religious belief. Class influences what people think, by shaping the way in which they think. People are not just stratified by class; they are also stratified by race, ethnicity, age, and gender.

4.2.5. 5. Sociology and the Current Educational Crisis

4.2.5.1. To grasp the magnitude of the current crisis in U.S. education, it is essential to recognize that at least one-third of the nation's children are at risk at failing in school, even before they enter kindergarten. The sociological imagination helps one understand what is and what can be when one tries to imagine schools and school systems that meet the challenges that are facing today's children and young adults. The current educational crisis is complex, and solutions to the pressing problems are difficult to find. But people should not despair; we need to begin the work of reconstructing U.S. education. Sociologists are committed to finding out the truth about the relationship between school and society, and it is this truth-seeking activity that is most likely to lead to meeting the challenges facing education today.

5. Chapter 6: Schools as Organizations

5.1. Major Stakeholders of my District

5.1.1. State Senator- Larry Stutts

5.1.2. House of Representatives- Johnny Mack Morrow

5.1.3. State Superintendent- Michael Sentance

5.1.4. Representative on the State School Board- Cynthia Sanders

5.1.5. Local Superintendent- Gary Williams

5.1.6. Local School Board- Ralton Baker, Pat Cochran, Shannon Oliver, Mike Shewbart, and Terry Welborne

5.2. Elements of Change within School Processes and School Cultures

5.2.1. Conflict is a necessary part of change. Efforts to democratize schools do not create conflicts, but they allow previously hidden problems, issues, and disagreements to surface.

5.2.2. New behaviors must be learned. 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.

5.2.3. Team building 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.

5.2.4. Process and content are interrelated. The process a team uses in going about its work is as important as the content of educational changes it attempts. The substance of a project often depends upon the team and between the team and the school.

6. Chapter 7: Curriculum and Pedagogy

6.1. Developmental Curriculum

6.1.1. This is related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of society. This curriculum emanated form the aspects of Dewey's writings related to the relationship between the child and the curriculum.

6.2. Two Dominant Traditions of Teaching

6.2.1. Mimetic Tradition

6.2.1.1. Called "transformative". It is the easier of the two traditions to describe. It is closer to what most people today seem to think education is all about. It is named "mimetic" because it gives a central place to the transmission of factual and procedural knowledge from one person to another, through an essentially imitative process.

6.2.2. Transformative Traditions

6.2.2.1. Describes what this tradition deems successful teaching to be capable of accomplishing. A transformation of one kind or another in the person being taught.

7. Chapter 8: Equality of Opportunity

7.1. Impact of Educational Outcomes

7.1.1. Students in different social classes have different kinds of educational experiences. One way class has an impact is that education can be extremely expensive. The longer a student stays in school, the longer they will need financial support from their parents. Obviously, this situation favors wealthier families and could possibly impact those who aren't as wealthy.

7.1.2. Race also has a huge impact on educational outcomes. An individual's race has a direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve. That race is related to educational outcomes and is undeniable, although, given the nature of the United State's society, it is extremely difficult to separate race from class. Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.

7.1.3. Historically, gender was directly related to his or her educational attainment. Even though women are often rated as being better students than men, in the past they were less likely to attain the same level of education. Today, females are less likely to drop out of school than males, and are more likely to have a higher level of reading proficiency than males.

7.2. Responses to the Coleman Study (1982)

7.2.1. Round Two:

7.2.1.1. The debate over the High School Achievement findings had centered on the interpretations attached to the magnitude of the findings. What Coleman and his associates saw as significant, others did not.

7.2.2. Round Three:

7.2.2.1. More than forty years after the publication of Coleman's Equality of Educational Opportunity, Geoffrey Borman and Maritza Dowling applied the most sophisticated statistical tools to evaluate educational data in a similar manner as Coleman had done in 1966.

8. Chapter 9: Educational Inequality

8.1. Two types of Cultural Deprivation Theory

8.1.1. The poor have a deprived culture-- one that lacks the value system of middle-class culture. According to this perspective, middle-class culture values hard work and initiative, the delay of immediate gratification for future reward, and the importance of schooling as a means to future success. This deprivation results in educationally disadvantaged students who achieve poorly because they have not been raised to acquire the skills and dispositions required for satisfactory academic achievement.

8.1.2. The relative failure of many of the compensatory education programs that were based on its assumptions about why disadvantaged children have lower levels of achievement than more advantaged children. Compensatory programs, as a whole, have not improved significantly the academic performance of disadvantaged students.

8.2. School-Centered Explanations for Educational Inequality

8.2.1. 1. School Financing

8.2.1.1. Public schools are financed through a combination of revenues form local, state, and federal sources. The majority of the funds come from state and local taxes, with local property taxes a significant source. Since property values are significantly higher in more affluent communities, these communities are able to raise significantly more money for schools through this form of taxation than poorer communities with lower property values. More affluent communities are able to provide more per-pupil spending than poorer districts, often at a proportionately less burdensome rate than in poorer communities.

8.2.2. 2. Effective School Research

8.2.2.1. The effective school research suggests that there are school-centered processes that help to explain unequal educational achievement by different groups of students. School and student effects cannot be isolated and the interaction between these factors must be addressed more completely. Although the effective school literature has attracted much support form policy makers and is often cited in the educational reform literature as the key to school improvement, the road from research to implementation is not a clear one.

8.2.3. 3. Between-School Differences: Curriculum and Pedagogic Practices

8.2.3.1. The effective school research points to how differences in what is often termed school climates affect academic performance. 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. Most researchers agree that its findings support the argument that schools do affect educational outcomes, at times, independent of extra-school factors. Bernstein suggested that schools in working-class neighborhoods are far more likely to have authoritarian and teacher-directed pedagogic practices, and to have a vocationally or social efficiency curriculum at the secondary level. Schools in middle-class communities are more likely to have less authoritarian and more student-centered pedagogic practices and to have a humanistic liberal arts college preparatory curriculum at the secondary level. Upper-class students are more likely to attend elite private schools, with authoritarian pedagogic practices and a classical-humanistic college preparatory curriculum at the secondary level. There is reason to conclude that these school differences are part of the complex explanation of unequal educational achievement.

8.2.4. 4. Within-School Differences: Curriculum and Ability Grouping

8.2.4.1. The fact that different groups of students in the same schools perform very differently suggests that there may be school characteristics affecting these outcomes. For the most part, elementary students receive a similar curriculum in these different groups, but it may be taught a different pace, or the teachers in the various groups may have different expectations for the different students. At the secondary school level, students are divided both by ability and curriculum, with different groups of students often receiving considerably different types of education within the same school. Research on the self-fulfilling prophecy of teacher expectations and of elementary school ability groups and reading groups point to the impact of teacher expectations and ability grouping on student aspirations and achievement at the elementary school level. Research indicates that differences in tracks help to explain the variation in academic achievement of students in different tracks. It seems clear that differences in the curriculum and pedagogic practices between tracks are partly responsible for the diverse academic achievement of students in different tracks.

9. Chapter 10: Educational Reform

9.1. School-Based Reforms

9.1.1. School-to-Work Programs

9.1.1.1. School-to-Work Programs intended 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. Although the school-to-work programs were well intentioned, researchers have suggested that these programs often failed to fulfill their promise.

9.1.2. School-Business Partnerships

9.1.2.1. During the 1980s business leaders became increasingly concerned that the nation's schools were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for the revitalization of the United States economy. Several school-business partnerships were formed, the most notable of which was the Boston Compact begun in 1982.

9.2. Societal, Economic, Community, or Political Reforms

9.2.1. School Finance Reforms

9.2.1.1. Following the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Rodriguez v. San Antonio, which declared there is no constitutional right to an equal education, school finance equity and adequacy advocates litigated at the state level. The court ruled in 1990, stating that more funding was needed to serve the children in the poorer school districts. In order to provide a "thorough and efficient education" in urban districts, funding was to be distributed to provide additional programs in order to eliminate disadvantages within poorer school districts.

9.2.2. Harlem Children's Zone

9.2.2.1. Created by Geoffrey Canada. His idea was to help children deal with changes. Instead of removing children form their neighborhood, he wanted to leave them there and create changes with the neighborhoods. His aim was to "positively contaminate Harlem". Harlem children's zone provides programs to offer parental help within the community.