Traditional Explanations of Educational UnderAchievement

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Traditional Explanations of Educational
(Under)Achievement
EDFN 440 June 28, 2006
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COLLEGE OPORTUNITY RATIO
Geographic Class Differences
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(No Transcript)
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Within-School Racial Disparities
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Dominant Explanations of School Failure
Genetic Deficit explanations
Individuals or groups are born with disabilities
Blacks are naturally inferior in terms of
intelligence when compared to Whites She
cannot learn because she was born with a learning
disability.
Cultural Deficit explanations
Cultural deprivation - Failure is attributed to
the individual or groups lack of cultural
experiences or, something inherent in the
culture of the individual or group. Latino
parents dont value education. Learning two
languages creates a learning handicap in the
future. Girls are right brained and, therefore,
are not good in math.
Cultural Mismatch/Discontinuities explanations
Failure is due to cultural mis-match between
the home and school culture Hawaiian
Talk-Story, Navajo Silence, Tracktons Ways
of Speaking-- ethnography of education tradition.
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Three Narrative Structures in Explanations
1. Structural-functional
Emphasis on socio-historical structures
(economic, political, institutional) and how
these structures determine educational
processes.
2. Cultural-ecological
Emphasis on culture and how it develops within
historical and geographic contexts. Educational
processes are conceived as complex sets of
interacting, dynamically evolving, systems.
Racial and class disparities are attributed to
social interaction in various local settings,
classrooms, family, community, etc.
3. Reductive-psychological
Emphasis on psychological processes (e.g.
intelligence, learning, etc.) as a way of
explaining educational processes such as race and
class educational achievement disparities.