1. 6- Schools as Organizations
1.1. Marshall County School District
1.1.1. Superintendent: Cindy Wigley
1.1.2. Board Members: Joe Van Bunch, Vince Edmonds, Mark Rains President:Terry Kennamer Vice President: Tony Simmons
1.2. Alabama
1.2.1. State Senators: Richard Shelby and Luther Strange
1.2.2. House of Representatives: Bradley Byrne, Martha Roby, Mike Rogers, Robert Aderholt, Mo Brooks, Gary Palmer, Terri Sewell
1.2.3. State superintendent: Michael Sentance
1.3. Elements of Change
1.3.1. Conflict
1.3.1.1. Efforts to democratatize schools do not create conflicts, but they allow previously hidden problems, issues, and disagreements to surface.
1.3.2. New Behaviors
1.3.2.1. Because change requires new relationships and behaviors, the change process must include building communications and trust, enabling leadership and initiative to emerge, and learning techniques of communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution.
1.3.3. Team Building
1.3.3.1. Shared decision making must consciously work out and give on-going attention to relationships within the rest of the school's staff.
1.3.4. Process and Content
1.3.4.1. The process a team uses in going about its work is as important as the content of educational changes it attempts.
2. 5- Philosophy of Education
2.1. Existentialism
2.1.1. Generic notations
2.1.1.1. Existentialists pose questions as to how their concerns impact on the lives of individuals
2.1.1.2. Believe individuals are placed on earth alone and must make some sense out of the chaos they encounter
2.1.1.3. People must create themselves, and they must create their own meaning
2.1.2. Key researchers
2.1.2.1. Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Jean Paul Sartre, Maxine Green
2.1.3. Goal of education
2.1.3.1. Education should focus on needs of individuals, both cognitively and affectively
2.1.4. Role of teacher
2.1.4.1. Must take risks; expose themselves to resistant students
2.1.4.2. Work constantly to enable their students to become "wide awake"
2.1.5. Method of instruction
2.1.5.1. View learning as personal
2.1.5.2. Teacher help students understand the world through posing questions, generating activities, and working together
2.1.6. Curriculum
2.1.6.1. Curriculum towards humanities
2.1.6.2. Literature evokes responses in readers
2.1.6.3. Art, drama, and music encourages personal interaction
3. 7- Curriculum, Pedagogy, and the Transmission of Knowledge
3.1. 1. Developmentalist Curriculum
3.1.1. Related to needs and interests of student rather than needs of society.
3.1.2. Student centered
3.1.3. Relating curriculum to needs and interests of each at particular developmental stages.
3.1.4. Stressed flexibility in what was taught and how it was taught.
3.1.5. Relating schooling to the life experiences of each child in a way that would make education come alive in meaningful manner.
3.1.6. Teacher not transmitter of knowledge but but facilitator.
3.2. 2. Dominant Traditions of Teaching
3.2.1. Mimetic
3.2.1.1. Purpose of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students. Main form of communication is lecture and presentation. Education is a process of transferring information from one to the other.
3.2.2. Transformative
3.2.2.1. Purpose of education is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally. Reject the authoritarian relationship between teacher and student. Believe teaching begins with active participation of the student.
4. 8- Equality of Opportunity and Educational Outcomes
4.1. Class
4.1.1. Education is very expensive. The longer a student stays in school, the more likely he or she needs parental financial support. This situation favors wealthier families.
4.1.2. Upper class and the middle class are more likely to expect their children to finish school. Working-class and underclass families often have lower levels of expectation for their children.
4.1.3. Middle and upper middle-class children are more likely to speak "standard" English.
4.1.4. Direct correlation between parental income and children's performance on achievement tests.
4.2. Race
4.2.1. An individual's race has a direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve.
4.2.2. Lower levels of proficiency are related by the fact that minorities have, on average, lower SAT scores than white students.
4.2.3. There is a direct link between SAT scores and admission to college.
4.2.4. Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.
4.3. Gender
4.3.1. Females are less likely to drop out of school than males.
4.3.2. Females are more likely to have a higher level of reading proficiency than males.
4.3.3. Males outperform females in mathematics proficiency.
4.3.4. Males are more likely to score higher on the SAT than females
4.4. Coleman Study-1982
4.4.1. Response 1
4.4.1.1. The differences between public and Catholic schools are statistically significant, but in terms of significant differences in learning, the results are negligible.
4.4.1.2. Catholic schools seem to advantage low-income minority students, especially in urban areas. However, they are also becoming more elite and like suburban public schools.
4.4.2. Response 2
4.4.2.1. Racial and socioeconomic composition of a school has a greater effect on student achievement than an individual's race and class.
4.4.2.2. Geoffrey Borman and Maritza 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 achievement.
5. 9- Explanations of Educational Inequality
5.1. Cultural Deprivation Theories
5.1.1. Working-class and nonwhite families often lack the cultural resources, such as books and other educational stimuli, and thus arrive at school at a significant disadvantage.
5.1.2. Cultural deprivation theorists assert that the poor have a deprived culture-one that lacks the value system of middle-class culture.
5.2. School-centered Explanations
5.2.1. 1. School Financing
5.2.1.1. 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.
5.2.2. 2. Between-School Differences: Curriculum and Pedagogic Practices
5.2.2.1. There are significant differences between the culture and climate of schools in lower socioeconomic and higher socioeconomic communities.
5.2.2.2. 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.
5.2.2.3. Schools in middle-class communities are more likely to have less authoritarian and more student-centered pedagogic class communities.
5.2.2.4. Upper-class students are more likely to attend elite private schools, with authoritarian pedagogic practices.
5.2.3. 3. Gender and Schooling
5.2.3.1. Curriculum materials portray men's and women's roles often in stereotypical and traditional ways.
5.2.3.2. Hidden curriculum reinforces traditional gender roles and expectations through classroom organization, instructional practices, and classroom interactions.
5.2.3.3. Females outperform males in almost all academic areas and females have higher high school graduation rates and higher levels of college attendance and graduation, and boys are significantly overrepresented in special education classes.
5.2.4. 4. Within-School Differences: Curriculum and Ability Grouping
5.2.4.1. Tracking is viewed as an important mechanism by which students are separated based on ability and to ensure that the "best and brightest" receive the type of education required to prepare them for society's most essential positions.
6. 10- Educational Reform and School Improvement
6.1. School-Business Partnerships
6.1.1. During 1980s, business leaders became increasingly concerned that the nation's schools were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for revitalization of the U.S. economy.
6.1.2. Some school-business partnerships include scholarships for poor students to attend college and programs where business "adopt" a school.
6.1.3. There is little convincing evidence that they have significantly improved schools or that, as a means of reform.
6.2. Teacher Education
6.2.1. If the schools were not working properly, then teachers and teaching had to be looked at critically.
6.2.2. 1. The percieved lack of rigor and intellectual demands in teacher education programs.
6.2.3. 2. The need to attract and retain competence teacher candidates.
6.2.4. 3. The necessity to reorganize the academic and professional components of teacher education programs at both the baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate levels.
7. 2- Politics of Education
7.1. 1. Intellectual Puropse
7.1.1. To teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics; to transmit specific knowledge
7.2. 2. Political Purpose
7.2.1. To inculate allegiance to the existing political order; to prepare citizens who will participate in this political order
7.3. 3. Social Purpose
7.3.1. Help solve social problems; to work as one of many institutions to ensure social cohesion
7.4. 4. Economic Purpose
7.4.1. Prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor
7.5. Conservative Perspective
7.5.1. 1. Role of the school
7.5.1.1. Provide necessary educational training to ensure that individuals receive tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity
7.5.2. 2. Explanations of unequal performance
7.5.2.1. Individuals rise and fall on their own intelligence, hard work, and initiative
7.5.3. 3. Definition of educational problems
7.5.3.1. Decline of standards
7.5.3.2. Decline of cultural literacy
7.5.3.3. Decline of values or of civilization
7.5.3.4. Decline of authority
8. 3- History of U.S. Education
8.1. 1. The Age of Reform: The Rise of the Common School
8.1.1. Opposition to Public Education
8.1.2. Education for Women and African-Americans
8.2. 2. Democratic-Liberal School
8.2.1. Provide equality of opportunity for all
8.2.2. Expand educational opportunities to larger segments of the population and to reject the conservative view of schools as elite institutions for the privileged
9. 4- Sociological Perspectives
9.1. 1. Theoretical Perspective
9.1.1. Funtionalism
9.1.1.1. Education is important in crating harmony and unity in society
9.1.2. Conflict Theory
9.1.2.1. Economic, political, cultural, and military power are the glue in society
9.1.3. Interactionalism
9.1.3.1. Educational system aspect and interactional aspect reflect each other
9.2. 1. Teacher behavior
9.2.1. Teachers are models
9.2.2. Set standards for students
9.2.3. Influence student self-esteem and efficacy
9.2.4. Many teachers have lower expectations for minority and working-class students
9.3. 2. Knowledge and Attitudes
9.3.1. More years of schooling leads to greater knowledge and social participation
9.4. 3. Gender
9.4.1. Men and women do not share equally in U.S. society
9.4.2. Girls start school cognitively and socially ahead of boys, by the end of high school, girls have lower self-esteem and lower aspirations than boys
9.5. 4. Student Peer Groups and Alienation
9.5.1. Student cultures play an important role in shaping students' educational experiences
9.5.2. Adult culture of the teachers is in conflict with the student culture leading to alienation
9.6. 5. Employment
9.6.1. Amount of education is weakly related to job performance.
9.6.2. College degree important for earning more money, but education alone does not fully explain differences in levels of income