SOCIAL CLASS AND EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

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SOCIAL CLASS AND EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

• An Overview of Sociological
• Positions in the field

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THE FUNCTIONAL PARADIGM

• Dominated the traditional approach to sociology.
• Society as a functioning mechanism with
  constellations of interdependent institutions,
  comprising educational institutions

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CLOCKWORK SYSTEM

• Projects the idea of schools and the
  educational system as ensuring
• MERITOCRACY
• EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY
• PROVISION OF SKILLS FOR AN EXPERT SOCIETY
• They play their part to ensure that society is a
• Smoothly functioning Mechanism

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DISILLUSION!!!

• Society not regarded as a smoothly functioning
  mechanism tending to equilibrium
• On the contrary!!!
• It is an area of power conflict
• with victory going to the strong.
• Marxism, Neo-weberianism, anti-racism, feminism

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MARXISM

• Ones life chances are determined by
• Ones class location
• Ones relation to the
  forces of production

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SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IDEOLOGY

• Schools Institutions playing an important part
  in the process of social reproduction.
• Schools institutions for the inculcation of the
  dominant ideology

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MAJOR THEORETICAL BREAKTHROUGHS

• Baudelot Establet in France
• (a) schools stream students on a class basis
  (vocational and higher stream)
• (b) they promote the dominant ideology

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MAJOR THEORETICAL BREAKTHROUGHS

• Bowles Gintis in the USA
• (a) Correspondence principle
• (b) Allocation and legitimation function

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HEGEMONY

• Schools contribute towards consolidating the
  existing hegemony
• HEGEMONY a social condition in which all
  aspects of social reality are dominated by or
  supportive of a single class (D.W. Livingstone)

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WEBERIAN SOCIOLOGY

• Max Weber introduced the notion of
• STATUS
• in power differentiation
• Social class has to do not only with earning
  power but also with
• CULTURAL ETHOS

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CULTURAL REPRODUCTION

• Status culture Randall Collins
• DISTINCTION
• Cultural Capital Habitus Pierre
  Bourdieu - Pierre Bourdieu
• Linguistic codes Basil Bernstein

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CULTURAL PRODUCTION

• RESISTANCE
• COUNTER-CULTURE
• ACCOMMODATION

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CHALLENGE FOR TEACHERS

• Understand different forms of cultural production
• Understand different forms of resistance
• Valorise different cultures in the classroom

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CAN TEACHERS DO THIS?

• Their habitus
• Their working class roots
• Their contradictory class location

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IMPORTANT AREAS OF INVESTIGATION

• How the working class
• has traditionally learnt
• Do we have an expanding working class, with more
  social sectors, including educated ones, living a
  precarious life?
• THE END