1. Philosophy of Education
1.1. Pragmatisim
1.1.1. Generic Notions: Dewey's ideas about education 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 experiential learning.
1.1.2. Key Researchers: John Dewey, William James, and George Sanders Peirce,
1.1.3. Goal of Education: Dewey viewed the role of the school within the larger societal conditions of which it was a part. His 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. The role of the school was to be"a lever of social reform."
1.1.4. Role of the Teacher: The teacher is no longer the authoritarian figure, rather the teacher assumes the peripheral position of facilitator. They encourage, offer suggestions, questions, and help plan and implement courses of study.
1.1.5. Method of Instruction: Children learn both individually and in groups. Children should today start their mode of inquiry by posing questions about what they want to know. Formal instruction and blocks of time for specific discipline instruction were abandoned. Furniture was that which allowed students to sit and work with each other in groups.
1.1.6. Curriculum: Progressive educators support starting with contemporary problems and working from the know to the unknown. They are not wedded to a fixed curriculum rather curriculum changes as the social order changes and as children's interests and needs change.
2. Schools as Organizations
2.1. Governance
2.1.1. Senators: Richard Shelby and Luther Strange
2.1.2. House of representatives: Mo Brooks
2.1.3. State Superintendent: Michael Sentance
2.1.4. State School Board Representative: Ella B. Bell,
2.1.5. Local Superintendent: Madison County: Dr Mark Minskey
2.1.6. Local School Board: Nathan Curry
3. curriculum and Pedagogy
3.1. Developmentalist Curriculum- is related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of society. It emphasizes the process of teaching as well as its content. it emanated from the aspects of Dewey's writings related to the relationship between the child and the curriculum. it is student centered and is concerned with relating the curriculum to the needs and interests of each child at particular developmental stages. It stresses the importance of relating school to life experiences of each child in a way that would make education come alive in a meaningful manner.
3.2. Mimetic tradition: is based on the viewpoint that the purpose of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students. The best method of doing this is through what is termed the didactic method, a method that commonly relies on the lecture or presentation as the main form of communication. At the heart of this tradition is the assumption that the educational process involves the relationship between the knower and the learner and that education is a process of transferring information from one to the other.
3.3. Transformative tradition: rests on a different set of assumptions about the teaching and learning process. Although learning information makes the student different than her or she was before, this model defines the function of education more broadly and according to some, more ambiguously. Proponents of this tradition believe that the purpose of education is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally. Transformative educators do not see the transmission of knowledge as the only component of education and thus they provide a more multidimensional theory of teaching.
4. Equality of Opportunity
4.1. Responses to Coleman study 1982
4.1.1. Response one: What coleman and his associates saw as significant, others saw as nearly insignificant. the differences that do exist between public and catholic schools are statistically significant, but in terms of significant differences in learning, the results are negligible. Subsequent studies that have compared public and private schools have also found that private schools seem to do it better, particularly for low-income students. The debate is not resolved, and one can expect that more research and more controversy will surface.
4.1.2. Response two: Formal decomposition of the variance attributable to individual background and the social composition of the schools suggests that going to a high poverty school or a highly segregated african american school has a profound effect on a student's achievement outcomes. Both the racial and social class composition of a student's school are 1 3/4 times more important than a student's individual race or social class for understanding educational outcomes. Where individuals go to school is often related to her race and socioeconomic background, but the racial and socioeconomic composition of a school has a greater effect on student achievement than an individual's race and class. Borman and Dowling argue that school segregation based on race and socioeconomic status and within school interactions dominated by middle class values are largely responsible for gaps in student and achievement. Their study concludes that education reform must focus on eliminating the high level of segregation that remains in the U.S. education system and that schools must bring an end to tracking systems and biases that favor white and middle-class students.
4.2. class: This situation favors wealthier families. Upper class and middle class families are more likely to expect their children to finish school. Middle and upper class children are more likely to speak "standard" English. Teachers think more highly of middle class and upper middle class children than they think of working class and underclass children. Class is directly related to achievement and to educational attainment. The more elite the college, the more likely the college is to enroll upper class and upper middle class students.
4.3. Gender: 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. Same is true for writing. Males outperform females in math. In the last 20 years gender differences between men and women in terms or educational attainment have been reduced.
4.4. Race: An individual's race has a direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve. Among 16-24 year olds 5.2% of white students drop out of school whereas 9.3% of African-American students and 17.6% of Hispanic-American students are likely to drop out of school. That race is related to educational outcomes is undeniable, although given the nature of U.S. society it is difficult to separate race from class.
5. Educational Inequality
5.1. Cultural deprivation theory: 1. Working-class and nonwhite families often lack the cultural resources such as books and other educational stimuli. 2. 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. School Centered explanations for inequality
5.2.1. School Financing: Public schools are financed through a mixture of federal, state, and local government. 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. This explains why not all schools are equal. The more funding a school gets the more academic clubs, activities and supplies the school can make available for the students.
5.2.2. gender: first curriculum materials portray men's and women's roles often in stereotypical and traditional ways, second traditional curriculum silences women by omitting significant aspects of women's history and women's lives from discussion, third the hidden curriculum reinforces traditional gender roles and expectations through classroom organization, instructional practices, and classroom interactions, fourth organization of schools reinforces gender roles and gender inequality
5.2.3. Curriculum and ability grouping some researchers argue that the race and social class-based composition of tracks is evidence of discrimination. diferences in tracks help to explain the variation in academic achievement of students in different tracks
5.2.4. curriculum and pedagogic practices: students that attend schools in high socioeconomic communities achieve well in school because schools in these communities have school climates conducive to positive academic climate. Private schools have a more rigorous curriculum than public schools and schools in higher socioeconomic areas have higher curriculum standards than schools in Lower socioeconomic areas
6. Educational Reform
6.1. school-based reforms
6.1.1. 1. School based reform: Some researchers reasoned that magnet schools and private schools were superior to neighborhood public schools. For several decades, the idea of school choice had been on the fringes of the educational policy world in the form of voucher proposals. By the late 1980s, however school choice was at the forefront of the educational reform movement.
6.1.2. 2. Teacher quality: Data indicates that significant numbers of classrooms are staffed by teachers who are not highly qualified in the particular subject they teach. By out-of-field teaching high qualified teachers may become highly unqualified in there certification field.
6.2. Other based reforms
6.2.1. 1. Full service and community schools: full service schools focus on meeting students' and their families educational, physical, psychological, and social needs in a coordinated and collaborative fashion between school and community services. Here schools serve as community centers that are open extended hours
6.2.2. 2. School finance reforms: states that more funding was needed to serve the children in the poorer school districts. The state was also required to implement a package of supplemental programs, including preschool, as well as plans to renovate urban school facilities.
7. Politics of Education
7.1. Purposes of Education
7.1.1. Intellectual purpose- to teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and math' to transmit specific knowledge
7.1.2. Political purpose- to 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; and teach children the basic laws of the society
7.1.3. Social Purpose- help solve social problems; work as one of many institutions to ensure social cohesion; and socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and values of the society.
7.1.4. Economic Purposes-
7.2. Perspectives
7.2.1. 1) The Role of the School- The Conservative Perspective Sees it as providing the necessary training to ensure that the most talented and hard-working individuals receive the tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity; schools socialize children into adult roles necessary to the maintenance of the social order; and they see the school's function as one of transmitting the cultural traditions through what is taught
7.2.2. 2) explanations of unequal performance-Conservatives: individuals or groups of students rise and fall on their own intelligence, hard work, and initiative, and the achievement is based on hard work and sacrifice; the school system is designed to allow individuals the opportunity to succeed; if not it may be because they are deficient in some manner or because they are members of a group that is deficient
7.2.3. 3) definition of educational problems- Conservatives: 1. in their response to liberal and radical demands for greater equality in the 1960s and 1970s, schools systematically lowered academic standards and reduced educational quality 2. in their response to liberal and radical demands for multicultural education schools watered down the traditional curriculum and thus weakened the school's ability to pass on the heritage of American and Western civilizations to children 3. schools lost their traditional role of teaching moral standards and values 4. schools lost their traditional disciplinary function and often became chaotic 5. schools are stifled by bureaucracy and inefficiency
8. History of U.S. Education
8.1. reform movement- a back to basics reform where academics was the focus of education as well as teacher centered education. All the students are taught the same material instead of multiple levels in same room. Discipline and authority is also deemed important in this type of education.
8.2. Democratic-Liberal School- Believes that the history of US education involves the progressive evolution of a school system. Equality of opportunity for all is important. Everyone should have equal opportunity to go to school and get an education. Historians suggest each period period of expansion involve attempts of liberal reformers to grow school opportunities to larger groups of the population. they also reject the conservative of schools as elite institutions.
9. sociology of education
9.1. relationship between school and society
9.1.1. Functionalism: view society as a kind of machine, where one part articulates with another to produce the dynamic energy required to make society work. They tend to assume that consensus is the normal state in society and that conflict represents a breakdown of shared values. schools socialize students into appropriate values, and sort and select students according to their abilities. Educational reform is supposed to create structures, programs, and curricula that are technically advanced, rational, and encourage social unity. functionalists emphasize cohesion in explaining social order
9.1.2. Conflict theory: In this view, the glue of society is economic, political, cultural, and military power. Conflict sociologists don't see the relation between school and society as unproblematic or straightforward. They emphasize struggle. Schools are similar to social battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administrators and so on.
9.1.3. Interactionism: is primarily critiques and extensions of the conflict and functional perspectives. The critique arises from the observation that functional and conflict theories are very abstract, and emphasize structure and process at a very general level of analysis. The processes by which students are labeled gifted or learning disabled are, from an interactional point of view, important to analyze, because such processes carry with them many implicit assumptions about learning and children.
9.2. Effects of schooling on individuals
9.2.1. 1. Knowledge and attitudes: Effective schools research demonstrates that academically oriented schools do produce higher rates of learning. 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. Taming into account the importance of individual social class background when evaluating the impact of education, more years of schooling leads to greater knowledge and social participation.
9.2.2. 2. Employment: credential inflation has led to the expectation among employers that their employees will have an ever-increasing amount of formal education . The economic credential cannot be fully measured by examining its effects on job performance. The most thorough research cannot demonstrate that more than one third of income is directly attributable to level of education. Getting a college and professional degree is important for earning more money, but education alone does not fully explain differences in levels of income.
9.2.3. 3. Teacher Behavior: teachers have a huge impact on student learning and behavior. They have as many as 1,000 interpersonal contacts each day with children in their classroom. They are models for students and, as instructional leaders, teachers set standards for students and influence student self-esteem and sense of efficacy.
9.2.4. 4. Student peer groups and alienation: The adult culture of the teachers and administrators is in conflict with the student culture. this can lead to alienation and violence. Students in vocational programs and headed toward low-status jobs were the students most likely to join a rebellious subculture. Students are not only attacking each other in increasing numbers but they are also assaulting teachers.
9.2.5. 5. Inadequate schools: The way children are educated today will not prepare them for productive and fulfilling lives in the future. Urban education has failed to educate minority and poor children. The high the class of school the better the education the child got.