Theories of education Flashcards
(42 cards)
Basic concepts: Learning
The development of new knowledge,skills or attitudes
Learning can take place with or without the conscious intention of the learner, and with or without the direct participation of other people in the learning process
Basic concepts: education
Is different from learning because it is intentional , and it involves a process of instruction by someone other than the learner
In education transactions, an organization or an individual other than the learner exists to help design and facilitate the learning process
Basic concepts: schooling
Education processes and experiences designed and delivered through formal institutions
Major sites of schooling in Canada include k-12 systems and post secondary institutions
Basic concepts: instruction (teaching)
Instruction is the intentional facilitation of learning toward identified goals
Learning can be an outcome of instructional processes but it can also take place in the absence of explicit instruction
Basic concepts: adult education
A process through which individuals or organizations intentionally addis adults to develop new knowledge, skills or attitudes
Ex: workplace training, health education, and continuing education
Emile Durkheim
Structural functionalism and liberal theory
Education is an integrative and regulator mechanism that creates social solidarity
Main functions: bind members of society together
- transmit to the students society’s norms and values
Structural functionalism and liberal theory : talcott parsons
Schools are social systems that reflects and serve the interests of the wider society - individuals are redirected from the person centred, emotional expectations of home and family life to the formalized, more competitive and achievement-oriented world of work and public life
Talcott parsons: 2 social functions
Grading and other more informal processes of selection, schooling sorts the members of society into different positions within the social hierarchy
2) schooling inculcates in individuals the dispositions, values and behaviours that they need for successful participation in Sofia life and in the particular social positions each person occupies
Human capital theory
Proposes that education is an investment that increases opportunities and capacities among individuals, therefore stimulating productivity and economic growth
Status attainment functionalism
Believes in educations ability to promote social progress and democratic opportunities. However not much in these studies challenge functionalist assumptions such as the idea that inequality is necessary for a social system
Educational progressivism
The school of thought offers a critique of modern social life but retains faith In the ability of schools to improve those conditions. It has the humanistic philosophy of John Dewey at its core
Limitations of functionalism
Evidence runs contrary to or makes questions the assumption of a meritocratic social structure in which educational achievement and individual effort and not ones social origins, account for social success or failure
Functional and liberal analyses tend to ignore the significance within the field of education of power relations associated with class race gender.
Interpretive analysis
Two aspects: the meaning of school practices for individual participants
2) other symbolic aspects of the field of education
Society is not a fixed reality but instead is continually constructed and modified by human practice
Weberian conflict theory of education
3 key postulates:
- Status groups as constitutive of society
- Continuing struggle for advantage between groups
- Education as a means of imprint the culture of status groups
Symbolic interactionism
Mead: education is part of the never ending process of human development, a process in which individuals learn and share social meanings
Definition of the situation
W.i. Thomas used to address the important role that shared meanings and perceptions play in guarding social action
Self fulfilling prophecies
Teachers create and apply particular labels to children and their parents based on common sense assumptions, background information, and observations from encounters
The new sociology of education
Expose the power dynamics that exist within educational practices
Knowledge is produced , defined and given meaning and importance through the social contexts in which it appears
Limitations of interpretive sociology
Does not link what happens in schools with the rest of the social world
Paying attention to everyday processes obscures historical questions in terms of change and how school practices emerged in the first place
Tendency to ignore the impact of broader social structures on schooling
Classical critical theory : Marx
Like other institutions within capitalism- constrains human potential because schooling serves capitalist priorities such as labor market discipline and profit
Instrument for the production of a submissive workforce
Just enough knowledge to create enough workers ready for jobs, schooling indoctrinated ideologies that advance capitalist interests
After revolution- school would foster a critical consciousness and personal development in students, no longer serving the bourgeoisie social order
Marxism
The educational system is an integral element in the reproduction of the class structure
The long shadow of work: education, the family and the reproduction of the social division of labor
Education and economic transformation go hang in hand
Marxism: correspondence principle
Schooling has contributed to the reproduction. Of the social relations of production largely through the correspondence between school structure and class structure
Base/ super structure logic:
modes of production drive the development and evolution of institutions
Limitations of classical critical theory and Marxism
Over generalize the powers that capitalism, capitalists and dominant economic forces have in shaping social life, and thereby to undermine educations capacity to change and be changed through interaction among educators, students, community members and other social forces
