Week of October 24th Agenda

1
Week of October 24th Agenda

• 330 pm Announcements
• Reading Assignment Group Reading assigned four
  articles in Part III of Coursepack (for Nov.
  14th)
• 345 pm Lecture Theories of Schooling and
  Society
• 445 pm Break
• 500 pm Seminar Groups

2
Theories of Schooling and Society

• Functionalist Theories
• (Talcott Parsons Emile Durkheim)
• Source of explanation and justification for the
  role of schools in maintaining the organization
  of society in equilibrium
• The role of schools - to teach the necessary
  skills and norms for the individual to
  participate in society, by sorting, selecting and
  training people for jobs at each level of society

3
The Watch Analogy (Coulson Riddell, 1970)

• In discussing social structure, Coulson and
  Riddell over this analogy
• The most important point to start with is a
  watch is more than the sum of its parts.
• take it (the watch) to pieces.
• Collect all the parts together and put them in
  your hand.
• You do not have a watch, but a heap of parts.

4
The Watch Analogy

• Therefore, a watch is not just the sum of its
  parts, but the sum of its parts plus the way they
  are put together, related to each other,
  organized.
• In the same way, society is more than the sum of
  the people in it.

5
The Watch Analogy

• It is not only the people, but also the way they
  are related to each other, organized - the social
  structure.
• Can subdivided into groups of parts those
  connected with power supply with regulation
  with information with protection.
• With in groups are the individual parts.

6
The Watch Analogy

• The action of each part is explained by the
  organization of its group of parts
• The action of the group by the organization of
  the groups to which the individual part belongs.
• The action of the groups partly by the
  organization of the whole society, the social
  structure.

7
Theories of Schooling and Society

• Conflict and Neo-Marxist Theory
• (Karl Marx and Max Weber)
• Neo-Marxist Theory Theory interested in the
  relationship between political and economic
  forces.
• Assumes a tension between society and its parts
  created by the competing interests of individuals
  and groups
• Identified the relationship between schooling and
  the future economic status of students
• The idea that there are haves and have nots and
  that education is a vehicle for the haves to
  continue having.

8
Conflict and Neo-Marxist Theory

• The idea that schools teach status culture
• a particular life-style language, dress code,
  peer association, and interested - deemed
  desirable by the dominant group in society.
• Pierre Bourdieu (1977, Social and Cultural
  Reproduction Theory) maintained language in texts
  used in schools reflect the interests, values and
  tastes of the dominant power groups helping those
  students to be placed in higher educational
  streams with a more demanding curriculum.

9
Conflict and Neo-Marxist Theory

• Culture Capital The inherited values of ones
  group and/or social class (economic, cultural,
  social and symbolic), reinforced in schools
  through curriculum and pedagogy.
• The higher status groups transform their culture
  capital into academic capital.
• This, in turn, transforms into economic capital.

10
Conflict and Neo-Marxist Theory

• Addressed the issue of the links between
  intelligence, school achievement, and the future
  economic status of students
• Introduced the Correspondence Principle or
  Theory
• The role of the school in reproducing the class
  system.

11
Five Key Social Theorists

• Auguste Comte (1798 -1857)
• Karl Marx (1818 -1883)
• Emile Durkheim (1858 -1917)
• Max Weber (1864 -1920)
• George Herbert Mead (1863- 1931)

12
George Herbert Mead (1863- 1931)

• Mead stated that self-development and
  self-awareness require the capability to use
  language and interact symbolically
• Symbolic interaction a perspective focusing on
  how the self and social relationships develop
  through social experience and communication
• It involves individuals responding to objects,
  situations, and events according to the meanings
  that these have for them.

13
Symbolic Interaction - G.H. Mead

• Argued that to interact with others the
  individual must take on the role of the other -
  to imagine how this other views him/her and to
  know what this other expects.
• Individuals act and react to one another
  according to these mental interpretations

14
Symbolic Interaction - G.H. Mead

• The concept of self includes the me
• Self An individuals notion of who he or she is.
• Me The part of the self which represents
  inte4rnalized social attitudes and expectations.
• The self also includes the I.
• I The individuals reaction to situations from
  his/ her standpoint - produces spontaneity
  individuality.

15
Symbolic Interaction - G.H. Mead

• Mead suggested that these societal and individual
  aspects of the self collaborate to form an
  interactive quality he called interactionist.

16
Symbolic Interactionist Interpretive Theories
(Mead Cooley)

• Symbolic-Interactionist Model
• Introduced by the Chicago School of Sociology
• Links social structural realities such as wealth,
  power, and status position with patterns of
  interaction
• education is related to social inequality.
• Attempt to understand how structural variables
  become incorporated into the individuals
  perceptions and interpretations and how the
  individual acts on the basis of these
  interpretations

17
Symbolic Interactionist and Interpretive Theories

• Interpretive procedures Basic rules and
  procedures drawn upon by teachers when
  interacting with students and with each other in
  an educational setting.
• Results in social differentiation in educational
  settings through teachers categorizing and
  classifying various student behaviours

18
Symbolic Interactionist and Interpretive Theories

• Structures of dominance - the institutions and
  ideologies used by the dominant class to
  perpetuate and increase their advantaged position
• The schooling process - achievement testing,
  ability grouping, and tracking - reflects the
  structural needs of society.
• e.g. Caroline Persell (1977) drawing on Meads
  work, says there is a dominant ideology that is
  carried through by the teachers to the students.
  Teacher expectations of students have been
  learned in teacher-training institutions and
  reflect the dominant ideology.

19
Symbolic Interactionist and Interpretive Theories

• Using Phenomenology, they study the face to face
  interactions inside the classroom.
• Phenomenology Study of events that includes the
  meaning and interpretations of the participants.
• They found that expectations of teachers have
  profound consequences for their students.

20
Symbolic Interactionist and Interpretive Theories

• Student performance was affected by
• Teachers middle class background
• Teachers expectations which comes from signals
  that they are good students.
• The teachers pick up those signals and reward
  them with better grades.
• The signals include eagerness to cooperate and
  accept what the teacher says combined with
  greater effort and interest.

21
Critical Theory in Education(Habermas)

• Critical Theory A school of thought and a
  process of critique that claims that any critique
  must not hold to its own doctrinal assumptions
  but be self-critical.
• Grew out of a reaction to Marxism - questioned
  notion of historical inevitability
• Critical theorists offer a dialectical view
• Acknowledges both the domination and liberation
  aspects of schooling. (As opposed to the Conflict
  or Neo-Marxist Theorists and the perspective of
  economic determinism).
• Experience and knowledge are both politically
  charged and interrelated.

22
Critical Theory in Education (Habermas)

• knowledge can be used as a tool for change.
• Knowledge must be used to transform nature and
  politics in a way that alleviates oppressive
  social conditions.
• Social Phenomena are made up of dialectic forces
• Provide a dialectical framework to understand
  what mediates between institutions and the
  activities of daily life (the relationship
  between theory and society).

23
Critical Theory in Education (Habermas)

• Example
• Teachers recognize that some students are at a
  disadvantage in the classroom because their
  values and beliefs are not congruent with that of
  the school.
• They would like to change the curriculum to meet
  the needs of the students, but Ministry of
  Education controls the curriculum.

24
Feminist Theory

• Liberal Feminism A perspective that is
  interested in the relationship between women and
  schooling.
• Documented gender bias and stereotyping of girls
  in curricular materials, and in school practices
• Sought to change this bias and distortions in
  textbooks, courses and in career counselling

25
Feminist Theory (Wolpe Arnot)

• Socialist Feminism A division of feminism that
  sees womens oppression as related to gender
  relations as well as to capitalism.
• Interested in how structures of power and control
  affect the schooling process.
• Place inequities between men and women in the
  patriarchal ideology that exists through the
  capitalist production, division of labour etc.
• Patriarchal ideology A set of beliefs held by a
  society that preserves the dominance and
  privileges of men in relation to women.

26
Feminist Theory - Socialist Feminism(Wolpe
Arnot)

• Based Marxist concepts
• Education helps to maintain the gender-based
  division of labour at work and in the home.
• Focus on the complex relationships between
  capitalist production, the division of labour,
  the family, and the education system
• Addressed Male Hegemony The worldview or power
  structure that is maintained by the dominant
  class (usually made up of men).

27
Feminist Theory - Socialist Feminism(Wolpe
Arnot)

• Hegemony - the process of domination by consent,
  in which the general population adopts a world
  view that reflects the interests of the dominant
  classes
• Looks at how our common-sense way of looking at
  things, which we derive from our traditions and
  experiences, is constructed so that ruling
  practices are maintained without usually being
  evident to us. (Wotherspoon, 2004)

28
Feminist Theory - Socialist Feminism

• Foucault influenced feminists
• He analyzed modern discourses on power
• Primary concerns were with the history of
  scientific thought, the development of
  technologies of power and domination, and the
  arbitrariness of modern social institutions.
• This work on power offered feminists a way in
  which class, race, and gender differences can be
  taken into account.

29
Feminist Theory - Socialist Feminism

• Discourse is a central concept in Foucaults
  analytical framework.
• Discursive practices Refers to what can be said
  and thought, by whom, when, and with what
  authority.
• Used to highlight the ways in which language,
  subjectivity, social institutions, intellectuals
  and power are related.

30
Feminist Theory - Radical Feminism

• Points out that systematic devaluation and
  oppression of women is embedded within all forms
  of social organization and is due to the inherent
  values of patriarchy in society.
• Critiques Liberal and Social Feminism as well as
  critical education theory
• Calls into question the privileged position of
  male theorists

31
Feminist Theory - Postmodern Feminism(Foucault,
Weiler Mitchell)

• Draws on Post-Modern Theory to call into question
  the privileged position of white male theorists
• Challenge the critical educational theorists, who
  are predominantly male, to examine how their
  assumptions and thoughts affect their discursive
  practices.