Sociology of Education - Essay Example

Sociology of Education The interactionist approach has its focus on people and processes of our day-to-day social interactions between the people on focus and larger organizations for instance an educational system. The interationist theory foresees an individual’s behavior as a product of everyone’s social relationship. This theory also declares that people always define each other’s decisions and actions rather than solely acting through mediation by use of symbols, in particular language and words (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2009). Interactionists study the process of socialization in details since it s the foundation of people’s interaction. This approach stipulates that we form the products of social and cultural relationships where they take part in. Cooley once argued that those we interact with are our mirrors such that we learn about ourselves by seeing and hearing how the rest react to us. Rosenthal and Jacobson conducted a case study of the Pygmalion Effect in 1968. It states that people, in this instance students will always live up to what others expect of them and they will tend to be much better if they got different treatment as if they have a potential to do better in what they do (Wolters, 2008). At the start of an academic year, Rosenthal and Jacobson said to the teachers that the aim of this test is to see which students will have positive changes and bloom by the time the academic year ends. They cheated the teachers how their genius students had undergone tests by a new methodology in finding out the success in children of school age and the selected kids were the top best performers. The truth is that, they picked these children randomly from 18 classes and the test scores they achieved would not prove them as the best bloomers in academics (Wolters, 2008).The experiment’s results indicated a distinguishable variation between their control students and the sample ones. The bloomers achieved seven points in reasoning, two points in verbal ability and an overall IQ of four points. This experiment alone proved how the expectation of their teachers acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy such that if teachers were expecting an improved performance from their students then it is true the students will show improvement in return. In 1968, Schrank did the very same case study to show that the self-fulfilling prophesy does exist within group level too. The outcome of this experiment was very similar to that of Rosenthal and Jacobson’s experiment. Based on no truth, Schrank told teacher how their classes have students in particular those of high or low potential in learning. The group of students with high potential in learning performed much better as well as learns much more than those of low learning potential (Dörnyei, Ushioda, 2013). Both Rosenthal and Jacobson, and Schrank’s experiments focused on positive expectations but Brophy’s looked more into negative expectations of Pygmalion Effects. Brophy found out that there are serious factors that led to this negative expectation. They included false evaluation and discrimination mediated by expectations and in most cases they were very harmful towards a student’s motivation. After this experiment in 1985, he came up with eight solid types of negative expectations that made unfavorable learning environment. They included criticizing students more on failure they had, less praising on their achievements, easily giving up on low expectation students, failing to give them a response upon an enquiry or contribution, putting the at the back of the room, praising inappropriately, having no interest in them, and paying them less attention to them (Chang, 2011). The results from the experiment provide more prove that the expectations of someone else’s behavior can be a self-fulfilling prophecy in that when teachers showed their confidence in some kids they did show a great intellectual development in return and the reverse is true. For that year, the self-fulfilling prophecy was a real prove at low-grade levels since young students were more malleable, easy to change, influence, and less fixed. This made the experiment more effective compared to when they could use older students. The young children in a particular school had the perception to have a much less well-established reputation concerning their expectation and blooming in academics and other sectors. Therefore, this would be more logic if a teacher for a teacher to believe that the young student will show development in his or her intellectual. Contrary to older students, it will be hard for the teacher to believe that he or she has the capability of intellectual growth because the teacher know them better by their reputation already. In addition, the greater gains of a young student have an easy association with the expectancies of the teacher since the teacher believe them to be more malleable and not the vice versa. Another interpretation is that teachers will tend to react to these children the same way because they believe they are capable of having the same intellectual gain. Perhaps, the performance of a young student is directly proportional to the things the teacher says to him or her, the special way she looks at them, says them, and touches the student that there are expectations on better intellectual gain in them. Another case study is from Marxist who views the society as based on conflict such that we can understand all institutions in our society in perspective of how they recount with our economic system. Education is therefore an institution that gives the class system as well as our economy the required workforce (Weir, 2007). In the labor force, we need both managerial and professional workers together with manual workers who are skilled and unskilled. Hence, according to Marxist, the educational system’s main responsibility is to give and fill every part of the economy with workers. Bowles and Gintis support the Marxist view and they feature a very strong agreement between what we learn in school and what workers need for the capitalist system. For instance in a school, the most successful students are those who are unquestioning and the most obedient instead of curious and independent. Bowles and Gintis also believe that the most treasured traits are these characters are essential in workers too because they are willing to accept authority and orders from their employers and bosses without questioning their decisions (Bowles & Gintis, 2014). These two also believe that the curriculum content is not important and pupils learn most from what is not part of the curriculum, which can be the mastery of being in school for instance they will acclimate in doing thing that are not interesting for just a reward which is qualification. Marxist got more support from Willis who took to study a group of 12 class boys working between an interface of their last year at school and first months in their jobs. During his qualitative methodology, he discovered that these boys embraced counter school culture in that they had no belief in education offering them anything hence they did not work. This culture disadvantaged them and they settled on class jobs. This supports the Marxist theory on education since the counter school culture was different to the working class thus the boys failed themselves due to low societal position status (Covington, 2008). Durkheim and Parsons assert that the students who are both hardworking and talented the most, the education system will identify them and reward them with different qualifications in return (Smelser, 2013). With these rewards, these students can have access to high spots in the society and according to the functionalities, this is something bound to occur despite an individual’s position in class. Finally, it is factual to support Marxist claim in that our system of education gives out social classes but there are vivid instances of people in the working class who are successful and can access high positions as well. In addition, it is also hard to distinguish when all students undergo the same curriculum nationally. It is also evident assert that the correlation between job and education is not so clear due to the diminishing number of manual works. References Bowles, Samuel., & Gintis, Herbert. (2014). Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. Chicago; New York: Haymarket Books. Chang, Jie. (2011). A Case Study of the “Pygmalion Effect”: Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement. International Education Studies. 4(1), 198-201. Covington, P. (2008). Success in sociology AS for AQA. Haddenham: Folens. Print. Dörnyei, Zoltán., & Ushioda, Ema. (2013). Teaching and Researching: Motivation. Routledge. Smelser, Neil. (2013). Sociological Theory - A Contemporary View: How to Read, Criticize and Do Theory. Quid Pro Books. Weir, R. E. (2007). Class in America: An encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Wolters, R. (2008). Race and education, 1954-2007. Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri Press. Zastrow, C., & Kirst-Ashman, K. K. (2010). Understanding human behavior and the social environment. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning. Read More