1. Ch. 4 Sociological Perspectives
1.1. Functionalism is concerned with the ways that societal and institutional forces create a collective conscience based on share volumes.
1.2. Conflict theory is concerned with the ways in which differences among groups at the societal level produce conflict and domination that may lead to change.
1.3. Interactionism is where individuals choose how they want to behave because of the way they perceive themselves from the interaction with other people.
1.4. Impacts of schooling
1.4.1. 1. The knowledge and attitudes students acquire in school have a huge impact on them because those attitudes they have acquire early on about school are the attitudes they will have for the rest of their lives.
1.4.2. 2. Teachers have a big impact on students because their behavior can effect the students learning and behavior.
1.4.3. 3. Student culture idealizes athletic ability, looks, and that detached style that indicates "coolness". Student culture plays an important role on a students' educational experiences because if you do not fit in the expectations you could be alienated and alienation leads to school violence.
1.4.4. 4. Inadequate schools create inequality and do not give all students equal opportunity. Students in urban schools are minorities and poor students, these students do not get an adequate education which means they are less prepared for the future.
1.4.5. 5. Gender discrimination has a huge impact on students, females in particular. By the end of high school most girls have lower self-esteem than boys and show signs of not living up to their full potential. This could be a result of several things such as, most administrators being male while most teachers are female or textbooks traditionally being biased against women by ignoring their accomplishments.
2. Ch. 5 Philosophy of Education
2.1. Pragmatism is a philosophy that encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends. The founders of this philosophy were George Sanders Pierce, Williams James, and John Dewey. Dewey's ideas about education were referred to as "progressive" and said that you should first have the best interests of the children in mind and then allow them to help plan the course of study. His progressive methodology rested on the notion that children were active, organic beings, constantly changing and growing and so their course of study should reflect the stages of development of each individual child. He believed that the goal of education was to provide students with the knowledge of how to improve the social order. In a progressive setting instead of the teacher being an authority figure in which all the knowledge comes from the teacher will encourage, offer suggestions, and help plan the course of study.
3. Ch. 6 Schools as Organizations
3.1. Alabama State Senator - Richard Shelby, Three current House Representatives - Terri Collins, Mike Ball, Ed Henry Alabama Superintendent - Mike Sentance Local Superintendent - Craig Pouncey Jefferson County School Board members - Oscar Mann (president), Martha Bouyer (vice president), Jacqueline Smith, Ronnie Dixon, and Donna Pike
3.2. School processes - the requirements the a school has to follow. Things like content for classrooms, standards and objectives, and the curriculum.
3.2.1. School cultures - the environments of a school. Things like the setup of the school and the teachers and students.
4. Ch. 8 Equality of Opportunity
4.1. Class - As the book says, different social classes all have different educational experiences. Lower class families don't expect their children to finish school as much as upper and middle class families do. This could be because the farther a student gets in school the more likely they will need help financially from their parents or families.
4.2. Race - In the book, it says that the educational outcome due to race is very closely related to the educational outcomes of the different classes. Minorities often don't get the same opportunities as white students.
4.3. Gender - In the past, females weren't given the same opportunities as males were when it came to a lot of things, including education. Now, females are less likely to drop out of school than males which means they are more likely to go on to higher education. Females also seem to make higher reading test scores than males.
4.4. Responses to Coleman: Round Two - "What then of Coleman, Hoffer, Kilgore's claim that Catholics 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 little basis for this conclusion."
4.4.1. Responses to Coleman: Coleman Round Three - "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 profound effect on a student's achievement outcomes, sbove and beyond the effect of individual pverty or minority status. Specifically, both the 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. Ch. 10 Educational Reform
5.1. School-Business Partnerships - Corporate businesses give money to schools because the business leaders believed the schools were not producing the kind of graduates that were needed to revitalize the United States economy.
5.2. School-to-work Programs - This reform was supposed to give students the opportunities to explore different careers and give them access to learn the skills needed for achieving these career positions they were interested in. It was made for non-college bound students.
5.2.1. Full service and community schools - These schools focus on students and the students family's needs. These schools are usually open extended hours and service as a community center offering adult education, health clinics, recreation facilities, after-school programs, drug and alcohol programs, job placement and training programs, and tutoring services. They are meant to not only prevent problems in at-risk neighborhoods, but support them too.
5.2.2. Harlem Children's Zone - This program helps expecting parents. Lower class parents aren't as likely to give their child the things they need. Such as reading to them when they are younger and encouraging them to read when they are older. Black children are more likely to watch television for longer periods of time than white children. This program helps teach lower class families that things like this can put their child farther behind in formal schooling.
6. Ch. 2 Politics of education
6.1. Purposes of Education:
6.1.1. 1. The intellectual purpose - to teach students basic cognitive skills and help them acquire higher order thinking skills.
6.1.2. 2. The political purpose - to teach students patriotism, to prepare them to participate in the political order, to join together different cultural groups into common political order, and to teach the basic laws of society.
6.1.3. 3. The social purpose - to help solve social problems and to social students into society.
6.1.4. 4. The economic purpose - to prepare students for their later occupational roles.
6.2. 1. The conservative perspective of the role of the school - views the role of schools as a necessity to social stability and economic productivity.
6.3. 2. The liberal perspective of unequal performance - all students begin school with different chances so therefore some have more advantages than others do.
6.4. 3. The radical perspective of educational problems - the curriculum and policies of schools is racist, sexist, classist, and homophobic.
7. Ch. 3 History of US Education
7.1. The rise of common school - This reform gave all children equal opportunity despite their social or economic background.
7.2. The Democratic-Liberal School - believe that the US educational system must continue to move closer to each without sacrificing on or the other too dramatically.
8. Ch. 7 Curriculum and Pedagogy
8.1. I advocate for the developmentalist curriculum - This theory is learner centered and focuses on relating the curriculum to the learner at each individual developmental stage. Teachers would try to make the content come to life by relating it to experiences in the students' lives. The teachers would be flexible with what was taught and how they taught it so the content would relate to each student.
8.2. The mimetic tradition - In this tradition, knowledge or content is presented to a learner instead of the learner discovering it for himself/herself. The teacher or instructor just passes knowledge down from themselves or from text.
8.2.1. The transformative tradition - In this tradition, the learners are "a kind of vessel into which knowledge is 'poured' or 'stored' (p. 319). The aim is to see a change in the learner with the information or content they are given.
9. Ch. 9 Educational Inequality
9.1. Cultural differences theory one - African American students don't do as well in school because they begin to adapt to their oppressed position. Families of African American students often don't encourage their children to break the stigma of the "job ceiling" for African Americans and other minorities, instead they teach them to live with it and adapt to their oppression. This leads to under preforming in school because they believe their is no point.
9.1.1. Cultural difference theory two - Even though minority families and students believe that standard English is important to be taught, they do not use it within their communities. Obgu says that this makes it harder to use standard English and it is a big factor in the educational inequalities.
9.2. School financing - inner city schools often get far less funding than other schools. This leads to a lack of resources and then to educational inequality.
9.2.1. Between School Differences -There are differences between the climate and culture of schools that are higher on the socioeconomic scale and schools that are in the lower socioeconomic scale. Usually schools in higher socioeconomic areas have a school climate that is more conducive for academic achievement.
9.2.1.1. Wi
9.3. Within School Differences - Within the school there are all different students. They may all be on the same socioeconomic level, but their learning abilities and how they learn can differ.
9.3.1. Gender and Schooling - Men and women are socialized very differently throughout this schooling process. Literature read in school and the curriculum often portrays very stereotypical gender roles. The curriculum often omits important aspects of history for women. Traditional curriculum reinforces the traditional gender roles. The organization of schools reinforce gender roles and inequality.