Sociology of education
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The sociology of education is the study of how social institutions and individual experiences affect educational processes and outcomes. Education has always been seen as a fundamentally optimistic human endeavour[1] characterised by aspirations for maintaining a given status quo or progress towards a higher status quo. To many in society, education is perceived as a means of overcoming handicaps of their current position, knowledge base, culture, and inherent skill levels and advancing to a position of perceived higher status. [Sargent, 1994]. Education, ideally, is perceived by many as a process where children can learn useful skills and knowledge according to their unique needs and potentialities.[1] Ideally, it is also perceived as a possible means of achieving somewhat greater equality in society despite the inherent inequalities in any life.[Sargent, 1994]. Lack of education nearly always leads to a lower level of status in society, particularly if this is lower than the family's prior status. The purpose of education then, must be keep the knowledge base up to at least maintain the status quo and hopefully to allow individuals to come to a higher potential. Ideally, education should give students a chance to achieve more in life according to their natural abilities and opportunities. This promising vision, however, often does not unfold into a complete reality because of inherent restrictions and obstacles inherent in any human activity. Education also works towards a larger societal goal to maintain social stability, through allowing people to find position where they can productively contribute to society.
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[edit] Theoretical Perspectives
[edit] Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalists believe that society tends towards equilibrium and social order. They see society like a human body, where key institutions work like the body’s organs to keep the society/body healthy and well [Bessant & Watts, 2002]. Social health means the same as social order, and is guaranteed when nearly everyone accepts the general moral values of their society. Hence structural functionalists believe the purpose of key institutions, such as education, is to socialise young members of society. Socialisation is the process by which the new generation learns the knowledge, attitudes and values that they will need as productive citizens. Although this purpose is stated in the formal curriculum [NSW Board of Studies], it is mainly achieved through a subtler, but nonetheless powerful, indoctrination of the norms and values of the wider society. Students gradually internalise the values of their peers, family and friends around them. Education must, however perform another function to keep society running smoothly. As various jobs in society become vacant, they must be filled with people. Education should be broad enough that students can find a productive placement in the labour market [Munro, 1997].
Ability alone seldom decides who is rewarded with higher status jobs and pay. Like all human activities it depends in part on where the individual is, who they know, their interpersonal skills, their culture, their aptitudes and abilities, and how much they desire a given job. Large numbers of students from all backgrounds fail to achieve satisfactory levels of schooling and therefore fail to get the better jobs they may desire. Jobs of all skill levels and educational level are filled by individuals depending upon a large number of factors, where education may be a major one. Many people substitute job experience to advance on the job to jobs of higher status and pay they may desire. Some do not believe it is worth the effort to try for higher status jobs. Yet the structural functionalist perspective maintains that this social order, this continuity, is what most people desire [Bessant & Watts, 2002]. As long as the so called working class are treated with respect and renumberated at an adequate level most are quite happy to stay with their status quo positions. Not everyone can be in the top positions and many do not believe it is worth the work and hassle to try for a higher social status position. Another perspective may be more useful in examining the issue further.
[edit] Conflict Theory
[edit] Education and Social Reproduction
The perspective of conflict theory, contrary to structural functionalist perspective, believes that society is full of vying social groups who have different aspirations, different access to life chances and gain different social rewards from education [Furze & Healy, 1997]. Relations in society, in this view, are mainly based on exploitation, oppression, domination and subordination [Sargent, 1994]. This is a considerably more cynical and pessimistic picture of society and a much more static view than what is ovserved in reality. Different social groups rise and fall in social power so the status quo is in a constant state of flux. Some conflict theorists believe education is controlled by the state which is controlled by those with the power, and its purpose is to reproduce the inequalities already existing in society as well as legitimise ‘acceptable’ ideas which actually work to reinforce the privileged positions of the dominant group [Furze & Healy, 1997]. The fact that education is controlled by a complex mixture, of state, school distict, teacher and parents is apparently never considered. Connell and White [1989] state that the education system is as much an arbiter of social privilege as a transmitter of knowledge. Education achieves its purpose by maintaining the status quo, where lower class children become lower class adults, and middle and upper class children become middle and upper class adults.
Many teachers assume that students will have particular middle class experiences at home, and for some children this assumption isn’t necessarily true [Jacob, 2001]. Some children are expected to help their parents after school and carry considerable domestic responsibilities in their often single parent home [Wilson & Wyn, 1987]. The demands of this domestic labour and TV viewing habits often make it difficult for them to find time to do all their homework and thus affects their performance at school. However few teacher deviate from the traditional curriculum, and the curriculum conveys what constitutes knowledge as determined by the state, school and teacher.[Young in Sargent, 1994]. This knowledge isn’t thought very meaningful to many of the students, who do not see its relationship to jobs or skills they might want [Jacob, 2002]. Wilson & Wyn [1987] state that the students realise there is little or no direct link between the subjects they are doing and their perceived future in the labour market. Anti-school values displayed by these children their parents and peers are often derived from their lack of consciousness of their real interests and lack of understanding of what they have to do to rise to ahigher social level. Succeeding in school is perceived as accepting their inferior social position and not as a necessary step to improving their social position. Middle and some upper class children are born to smarter parents that have internalized many of the skills and attitudes needed to succeed in school. Despite paying for public schools with their taxes many send their children to private schools to obtain a ‘good education’ to avoid failing public schools. [Sargent, 1994]. In public or private school children from the higher socio-economic brackets nearly always perform better, learn more and obtain greater rewards.
Conflict theorists believe society perpetuate the "myth" that education is available to nearly all to provide a means of achieving more wealth and a higher status. Anyone who fails to achieve this goal has therefore only themself to blame [Sargent, 1994:234]. Many parents endure appalling jobs for many years, believing that this sacrifice will enable their children to have opportunities in life that they did not have themselves [Wilson & Wyn, 1987]. Asian parents have shown that for the most part this so called myth is true as their children succeed even in "poor" schools. Conflict theorists believe society has encouraged students and parents to believe that a major goal of schooling in to increase equality. Where equality, to conflict theorists minds, should be the "great goal" of all social structures. They tend to ignore the fact that people are not and never have been "equal".
This perspective has been criticised for being deterministic, pessimistic, perpetuating the unteachable myth, and allowing no room for the free agency of individuals to improve their lot.
[edit] Structure and Agency
[edit] Bourdieu and Cultural Capital
This theory of social reproduction has been significantly theorised by Pierre Bourdieu. However Bourdieu as a social theorist has always been concerned with the dichotomy between the objective and subjective, or to put it another way, between structure and agency. Bourdieu has therefore built his theoretical framework around the important concepts of habitus, field and cultural capital. These concepts are based on the idea that objective structures determine the probability of individuals' life chances, through the mechanism of the habitus where individuals internalise these structures. However, the habitus is also formed by, for example, an individual's position in various fields, their family and their everyday experiences. Therefore one's class position does not determine one's life chances but it does play an important part alongside other factors.
Bourdieu employed the concept of cultural capital to explore the differences in outcomes for students from different classes in the French education system. He explored the tension between the conservative reproduction and the innovative production of knowledge and experience [Harker, 1990:87]. He found that this tension is intensified by considerations of which particular cultural past and present is to be conserved and reproduced in schools. Bourdieu argues that it is the culture of the dominant groups, and therefore their cultural capital, which is embodied in schools, and that this leads to social reproduction [Harker, 1990:87].
The cultural capital of the dominant group, in the form of practices and relation to culture, is assumed by the school to be the natural and only proper type of cultural capital and is therefore legitimated. It thus demands “uniformly of all its students that they should have what it does not give” [Bourdieu in Swartz, 2000:209]. This legitimate cultural capital allows students who possess it to gain educational capital in the form of qualifications. Those students of less privileged classes are therefore disadvantaged. To gain qualifications they must acquire legitimate cultural capital, by exchanging their own (usually working-class) cultural capital [Harker, 1984:172]. This process of exchange is not a straight forward one, due to the class ethos of the less privileged students. Class ethos is described as the particular dispositions towards, and subjective expectations of, school and culture. It is in part determined by the objective chances of that class [Gorder, 1980:226]. This means, that not only is it harder for children to succeed in school due to the fact that they must learn a new way of ‘being’, or relating to the world, and especially, a new way of relating to and using language, but they must also act against their instincts and expectations. The subjective expectations influenced by the objective structures located in the school, perpetuate social reproduction by encouraging less-privileged students to eliminate themselves from the system, so that fewer and fewer are to be found as one progresses through the levels of the system [Bourdieu, 1990:155]. The process of social reproduction is neither perfect nor complete [Harker, 1990:87], but still, only a small number of less-privileged students make it all the way to the top. For the majority of these students who do succeed at school, they have had to internalise the values of the dominant classes and take them as their own, to the detriment of their original habitus and cultural values.
Therefore Bourdieu's perspective reveals how objective structures play a large role in determining the achievement of individuals at school, but allows for the exercise of an individual's agency to overcome these obstacles, although this choice is not without its penalties.
[edit] Educational sociologists Around the World
[edit] Educational sociologists in Europe
[edit] Educational sociologists in America
- James S. Coleman
- Michael Apple
- Henry Giroux
- Barbra Tye
[edit] Educational sociologists in Asia
Educational sociologists in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China
- Chan Kit Wah
- Cheng Kai Ming(程介明)
- Cheung Kwok Wah(张国华)
- Choi Po King
- Hayes Hei Hang Tang (鄧希恆)
- Gerard A. Postiglione （白杰瑞）
- Greg P. Fairbrother
- Koo Ching Ha, Anita
In India
- Krishna Kumar
- Avijith Pathak
- Meenakshi Thapan
- Suresh Shukla
- Anil Sadgopal
[edit] References
- ^ a b Schofield, K. (1999). The Purposes of Education, Queensland State Education: 2010 Accessed 2002, Oct 28.
- Apple, M.W. (1982) Education and Power. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Bessant, J. and Watts, R. (2002) Sociology Australia, Second Edition, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
- Bourdieu, P., (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
- Bourdieu, P., (1984) Distinction, a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Harvard University Press, Cambridge
- Bourdieu, P., (1986) “The Forms of Capital” in Halsey, A., Lauder, H., Brown, P., & Stuarts Wells, A., (eds) (1997) Education: Culture, Economy and Society, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.46-58
- Bourdieu, P., (1990) Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture, Sage Publications, London
- Bourdieu, P., (1996) The State Nobility, Polity Press, Cambridge
- Connell, R. W. and White, V., (1989) ‘Child poverty and educational action’ in Edgar, D., Keane, D. & McDonald, P. (eds), Child Poverty, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
- Foster, L. E. (1987) Australian Education: A Sociological Perspective, Second Edition, Prentice Hall, Sydney
- Foster, L. E. (1992) Australian Education: A Sociological Perspective, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, Sydney
- Furze, B. and Healy, P. (1997) “Understanding society and change” in Stafford, C. and Furze, B. (eds) Society and Change, Second Edition, Macmillan Education Australia, Melbourne
- Gorder, K., (1980) “Understanding School Knowledge: a critical appraisal of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu” in Robbins, D., (2000) Pierre Bourdieu Volume II, Sage Publications, London, pp.218-233
- Harker, R., (1984) “On Reproduction, Habitus and Education” in Robbins, D., (2000) Pierre Bourdieu Volume II, Sage Publications, London, pp.164-176
- Harker, R., (1990) “Education and Cultural Capital” in Harker, R., Mahar, C., & Wilkes, C., (eds) (1990) An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu: the practice of theory, Macmillan Press, London
- Harper, G. (1997) “Society, culture, socialisation and the individual” in Stafford, C. and Furze, B. (eds) Society and Change, Second Edition, Macmillan Education Australia, Melbourne
- Henry, M., Knight, J., Lingard, R. and Taylor, S. (1988) Understanding Schooling: An Introductory Sociology of Australian Education, Routledge, Sydney
- Jacob, A. (2001) Research links poverty and literacy, ABC Radio Transcript [Online] URL: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/s433501.htm [Accessed 2002, Oct 29]
- Meighan, R. & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (1997) A Sociology of Educating, Third Edition, Cassell, London
- Meighan, R. (1981) A Sociology of Educating, First Edition, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Sydney
- Munro, L., (1997) “Education” in Stafford, C. and Furze, B. (eds) Society and Change, Second Edition, Macmillan Education Australia, Melbourne
- NSW Board of Studies (no date), K-6 HSIE Syllabus [Online] URL: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au [Accessed 2002, Oct 28]
- Sargent, M. (1994) The New Sociology for Australians, Third Edition, Longman Chesire, Melbourne
- Schofield, K. (1999) “The Purposes of Education”, Queensland State Education: 2010, [Online] URL: www.aspa.asn.au/Papers/eqfinalc.PDF [Accessed 2002, Oct 28]
- Swartz, D., “Pierre Bourdieu: The Cultural Transmission of Social Inequality” in Robbins, D., (2000) Pierre Bourdieu Volume II, Sage Publications, London, pp.207-217
- Tang, H.H. (2002) New Arrival Students in Hong Kong: Adaptation and School Peformance. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
- Wilson, B. and Wyn, J. (1987) Shaping Futures: Youth Action for Livelihood, Allen & Unwin, Hong Kong[[Category:Sociology of education|Education, sociology of]
