1. Chapter 5: Philosophy of Education
1.1. Pragmatism (Progressivism)
1.1.1. Key Researcher: John Dewey
1.1.2. Generic Notion: believed it could be more perfectly realized through education that would continually reconstruct and reorganized society
1.1.3. Relationship between Student and Teacher
1.1.3.1. facilitates learning by helping students formulate meaningful questions
1.1.3.2. dense strategies to answer questions
1.1.3.3. teacher asks questions and make suggestions
1.1.4. Nature of Curriculum
1.1.4.1. built around experiences, interests, and abilities of students
1.1.4.2. encourages students to work together
1.1.4.3. students integrate several subjects in their studies
1.1.5. Role of Assessment
1.1.5.1. not promoted from one grade to another without mastering certain material
1.1.5.2. grouped according to their individual interests and abilities
1.1.5.3. teacher may not be concerned with standardized testing
1.1.6. Methods of Instruction
1.1.6.1. scientific method
1.1.6.2. working model of democracy
1.1.6.3. small groups/ moving around freely
1.1.6.4. interest centers staged around the classroom to attract student interests
2. Chapter 8: Equality of Opportunity
2.1. Impacts on Educational Outcomes
2.1.1. Class
2.1.1.1. There is a direct correlation between parental income and children's performance on achievement tests, as well as placement in ability groups and curriculum.
2.1.2. Race
2.1.2.1. Minority students do not receive the same educational opportunities as white, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less
2.1.3. Gender
2.1.3.1. 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.
2.2. Responses to the Coleman Study
2.2.1. Sociologists examined and reexamined Coleman's data.
2.2.2. A group of minority students from Harvard set about on a task to define characteristics of schools that made them effective.
3. Chapter 2: Politics of Education
3.1. Purposes of Education
3.1.1. Intellectual: teach basic cognitive skills; to help students acquire high-order thinking skills
3.1.2. Political: to insulate allegiance, prepare citizens, and help assimilate diverse culture groups to existing political order; to prepare students for society
3.1.3. Social: to solve social problems, ensure social cohesion, and socialize children into various roles, behaviors, and values of society
3.1.4. Economic: to prepare for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor
3.2. Conservative Perspective
3.2.1. Role of the School: essential to both economic and social stability
3.2.2. Explanations of Unequal Performance: believe students rise and fall on their own intelligence, hard work, and initiative, and that achievement is based on hard work and sacrifice
3.2.3. Educational Problems: decline of standards, cultural literacy, values or of civilization, and authority
4. Chapter 6: Schools as Organizations
4.1. Major Stakeholders
4.1.1. Senator
4.1.1.1. Richard Shelby
4.1.2. House of Representatives
4.1.2.1. Speaker: Mac McCutcheon
4.1.2.2. Speaker Protempore: Victor Gaston
4.1.2.3. Clerk: Jeffery Woodard
4.1.3. State Superintendent
4.1.3.1. Michael Sentance
4.1.4. Representative on State Board
4.1.4.1. Terri Collins
4.1.5. Superintendent
4.1.5.1. Matt Massey
4.1.6. Local School Board
4.1.6.1. Nathan Curry
4.1.6.2. Angie Bates
4.1.6.3. Mary Louise Stowe
4.1.6.4. Dave Weis
4.1.6.5. Shere Rucker
4.2. Elements of Change
4.2.1. Confict
4.2.1.1. Conflict allows previously hidden problems, issues, and disagreements to surface
4.2.2. Learning New Behaviors
4.2.2.1. Allows you to build trust and communication, enabling leadership and initiative to emerge, and learning techniques of communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution
4.2.3. Team Building
4.2.3.1. Sharing decision making allows you to consciously work out and give on going attention to relationships within the rest of the school staff
4.2.4. Relationship between Process and Content
4.2.4.1. The process a team uses in going about it work is as important as the content of educational changes it attempts.
5. Chapter 7: Curriculum & Pedagogy
5.1. Social Efficiency Curriculum
5.1.1. It is rooted in the belief that different types of students require different types of learning needs. This includes the use of ability groups and tracking
5.2. Mimetic Tradition
5.2.1. The purpose of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students. It emphasizes connection between teacher and student.
5.3. Transformative Tradition
5.3.1. The purpose is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally.
6. Chapter 3: History of U.S. Education
6.1. Education for Women and African Americans: women and African Americans are now able to get as much education as they want and there are no limitations
6.1.1. Materials
6.1.2. Personel
6.1.3. Services
6.1.4. Duration
6.2. Post WWII Equity Era (1945-1980): emphasized post-secondary education; more equal educational outcomes at all levels; tensions b/w equity and excellence became crucial in the debates
7. Chapter 4: Sociological Perspectives
7.1. Theoretical Perspectives
7.1.1. Functionalism: the educational reform is suppose to create structures, programs, and curricula that are technically advanced, rational, and encourage social unity
7.1.2. Conflict Theory: schools represent social status, which in turn, reflect and correspond to the power relations within the larger society
7.1.3. 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
7.2. Effects of Schooling
7.2.1. Knowledge and Attitudes: related to individuals sense of well-being and self-esteem
7.2.2. Employment: getting a higher education is important for earning more money, but does not fully explain differences in levels of income
7.2.3. Teacher Behavior: attitudes of teachers has a direct impact on student achievements and perceptions of self
7.2.4. Education and Inequality: we live in a hierarchal society where mobility is blocked because of structural inequalities that have little or nothing to do with individual merits or abilities
7.2.5. Gender: men and women are not equal in the workforce; schools tend to reproduce social inequalities; Are schools really open doors to equal opportunities?
8. Chapter 9: Educational Inequality
8.1. Cultural Deprivation Theory
8.1.1. Theory number one suggests that working-class and non-white families often lack the cultural resources and thus arrive at school at a significant disadvantage
8.1.2. Theory number two suggests that it blames the victims of poverty for the effects of poverty rather than placing the blame squarely where it belongs: on the social and economic processes that produce poverty.
8.2. School-Centered Explanations for Inequality
8.2.1. School Financing
8.2.1.1. Since property values are significantly higher in more affluent areas, these communities are able to raise more money for schools through this form of taxation than poorer communities with lower property values.
8.2.2. Effective School Research
8.2.2.1. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do poorly because they attend inferior schools.
8.2.3. Between-School Differences
8.2.3.1. A number of theorists argue that there are significant differences between the culture and climate of schools in lower socioeconomic and higher socioeconomic communities
8.2.4. Within-School Differences
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.
9. Chapter 10: Educational Reform
9.1. School-Based Reforms
9.1.1. School-Business Partnerships
9.1.1.1. Business leaders became increasingly concerned that the nation's schools were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for the realization of the U.S. economy. They have attracted media attention, but there is not indication that they have significantly improved schools or that school-business partnerships will address the fundamental problems facing U.S. education.
9.1.2. School-to-Work Programs
9.1.2.1. This was a reform that targeted non-college-bound students in order to give them the necessary skills and stress the importance of work-based learning.
9.2. Societal, Economic, Community, or Political Reforms
9.2.1. Full Service and Community Schools
9.2.1.1. Specifically designed to target and improve at-risk neighborhoods, fill-service schools aim to prevent problems, as well as to support them.
9.2.2. Harlem Children's Zone
9.2.2.1. Geoffrey Canada provides programs for parents in Harlem before their children are even born as an attempt to infuse all knowledge that middle-class parents know they should do for their fetuses and infants in a "sensitive way". Canada's formula paid off when a significant number of his middle-school students improved test scores and earned an "A" on the NYC Department of Education school report card evaluation process.