Write a 4 page paper (double-spaced) responding to the following question:
What school(s) of thought, philosophical camp(s),
and/or explanatory framework(s) best describe(s) your
theoretical positionality within the field of Education?
The purpose of this activity is to declare your opinions, beliefs, and overall subjectivity about schooling and education. As we have read and discussed about the history/philosophy/anthropology/sociology/culture of schooling in the U.S., I hope that you have come to agree that your own experiences and opinions are a viable form of knowledge.
Therefore I expect you to draw from your personal experiences when responding to the above question.
However, to receive full credit for this assignment you must define and integrate at least 4 major concepts or terms thus far from class (lectures/readings) to illustrate your response.
Lectures
Session 7
Lecture: Social Transmission Theories
CONSENSUS THEORY — POSITIVISM
– Social science frameworks during the 20th century have been dominated by a functionalist/structuralist perspective. Also known as functionalist systems theories, this most historically influential body of theories is based on an organic analogy that argues that societies possess basic functions analogous to biological living organisms. Each part of the system has a function, to when all work together, it ensures the basic survival of the whole organism. It has been a scientific methodological trend in research that seeks to reveal the structure of objects. It uses methods of research borrowed from math, physics and the biological sciences in general to inquire about the state of objects, their relationships, and learn their intrinsic timeless properties.
– Durkheim is the classic sociologist credited for pioneering this approach. He argued that it was vital that societies are allowed to carry out their inherent functions such as reproduction, cultural transmission, distribution of authority and the like, so as to survive. He propagated that the educational system had come to replace prior institutions like the church and families as the principal social institution that transmits culture. He wrote that this was an example where if one institution doesn’t fulfil its function, that soon another one will take over its role, and ultimately maintain the equilibrium of the whole society.
– Functionalism has sought then to identify and describe social functions and operations, and map the different relationships between the functions in that system. It has sought to answer how a basic survival need is being served, and believes that role differentiation and social solidarity are the two primary requirements of social life. Schools are believed to serve a latent or not very readily visible function of producing students who will share the basic cultural, political and economic norms of that society.
– Looking for the functions of society led to closer focus on social structures themselves. This variant of the functionalist perspective has been called structural functionalism. Keeping in with functionalism’s biological analogy, it seeks out to not just understand the functions, but the particular bodily organs themselves that must cooperate with other bodily organs to stay healthy. The schooling theme was believed to had disappeared from the work of early functionalists, but had reemerged in later theorists. Probably the most well known version of structural functionalism is the work of Talcott Parsons in the U.S..
– Central to this body of research has been the belief that homeostasis or equilibrium is the most natural, desirable and healthy state of systems, like that of living organisms. Conflict is an illness which the system seeks to avoid and resolve immediately, and any change can only take place in gradual increments.
– the Educational system is one such structure under this view which must fulfil its function of transmission to the next generation in order to maintain the healthy overall society. Functionalists and structural functionalists have researched the ways that schools reinforce the existing cultural, political, and social status quo. They have mostly concentrated on defining purposes of schooling in the name of intellectual acquisitions, political integration, preparation of students for the work force, and promoting a sense of social responsibility and morality.
CONFLICT THEORY
– Influenced mostly by the theories of Marx and Simmel, another stream of literature known as conflict theory believes that the functionalist emphasis on social maintenance is inadequate to truly understand the energetic activities of social systems. It draws its theory from the contradictions of capitalism, particularly the economic determinism and patterns of property ownership between labor and capital. The underlying thought is that the unequal distribution of wealth and goods in society is the unequivocal source of conflict.
– Schools are linked to this distribution in society, and are viewed as arenas where the social conflict takes place and gets played out. Schooling as a social practice is viewed to be utilized and supported by powerful sectors of society that wish to maintain their social dominance. In this view, particular attention is given to the various conflicts between the poor and rich classes, and the powerless workers and powerful capitalists.
– The same general systems and structural analysis of functionalism is used, but change/conflict is argued to be the natural and inherent state of the system (not social equilibrium).
– Max Weber was in agreement with the Marxist privilege of conflict, but rejected the notion that the contradictions of labor and capital lead to social breakdown. Where in a Marxist perspective, class is an interactional function of one’s relation with the modes of production, the Weberian perspective views class as a positional function of one’s relation with their income, profession, and educational attainment. He argued that power then refers more to the legitimization of authority under these systems. His classic theory is known as a model of Bureaucracy. This is to say that though he believed that group struggle was an inherent feature of social life, the conflicts related to class aren’t necessarily the only ones central as a whole. The emphasis is on the role of the state as the mediator of group conflict, rather than the expression of the interests of a dominant class (Morrow & Torres). Educational sociologists have taken his theory of society and applied it to scho
ols. The argument is that schools are a prototypical kind of social organization, similar to hospitals, prisons, and factories. Along these lines, schools are viewed to be formal and multi leveled bureaucracies, unlike industrial corporations, created and organized by professionals.
ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL REPRODUCTION
– Theories of Economic, Social, and Cultural Reproduction build on TRANSMISSION theories such as CONSENSUS and FUNCTIONAL – STRUCTURALISM, but take a critical MARXIST perspective, meaning it is CLASS based. They were the first critical challenges to the notion of meritocracy (social and economic power is, and will in the future, be held by those selected on the basis of measurable merit).
Marx: primary divisions:
1) proletariat or labor: own no part of the place they work, tasks controlled by supervisors, must sell their labor. They produce surplus labor that results in profits for the ruling class.
2) capitalists: own the means of production, do not sell their own labor, purchase the labor of others.
3) petty bourgeoisie: own their means of production, do not sell their own labor, yet do not purchase the labor of others.
Capitalism built on inequality, necessity of continuing proletariat (i.e. reproduction). This is an industrial model; many have critiqued and adapted Marxism to more contemporary globalized economic patterns. One of these that we’ll deal with later is the growing importance of knowledge (as in, “knowledge workers” like computer scientists) in today’s economic rhetoric.
In general, theories of economic, social, and cultural reproduction are concerned with processes through which existing social structures maintain and reproduce themselves. Students are shaped by their experiences in schools to internalize or accept a class position that leads to the reproduction of existing power relationships and social and economic structures.
– Distinguish between social structure and cultural:
Social Structure: refers to those durable structures in social life. Social difference and discrimination along the lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, etc. Also refers to body of institutions (church, school, state, etc.) and the power relations solidified in them. Social power works through systems. Social structure refers to power, privilege, and status (see D & L ch. 5).
Cultural: refers to meaning, symbols, shared among a group of humans. Includes material {palpable, material existence) and symbolic culture. Refers to interpretation and meaning.
– Economic and Social Reproduction both refer specifically to the reproduction of class structures.
– Economic Reproduction: Bowles and Gintis: Correspondence Principle:
What is learned in schools corresponds to what is needed in the work place: not only in terms of knowledge, but also types of personal demeanor, modes of self presentation, self image, and social class identifications. Schools in industrial capitalist societies reproduce a stratified work force whose members accept their class position and who learn appropriate work discipline (punctuality, submissiveness, manual dexterity, etc.). The role of the state is to maintain conditions conducive to profit for the ruling class while widely distributing the social returns from capitalism, including to the working class — this creates a tension between the goals of accumulation / profit and goals of equity / equalization.
The educational system provides a legitimizing function for the state and the capitalist system: the rhetoric of meritocracy makes students believe anyone can succeed, if only they try hard enough. Schools defuse class antagonisms by getting students to believe that the position they attain is the best they can achieve. Meritocracy individualizes failure, and the work schools do to favor one group is “invisible,” cloaked by the provision of education for ALL and by test and teacher bias.
– Social Reproduction: According to Althusser, schools are ideological state apparatuses or state institutions that pass on ideologies. Schools prepare students to assume their place in the class structure.
Two concepts are central to his writing: ideology and the subject.
– Ideology: a system of values and beliefs which provide the concepts, images, and ideas by which people interpret their world and shape their behavior toward other people. It is accepted as the natural and common-sense explanation of the way the world operates. Ideologies often act to reinforce the power of dominant groups in society.
— Subject: the individual. {Althusser uses this word to avoid the assumption of free will implied by the term “individual.”)
— in this view, schools train students in particular ideologies that favor the reproduction of current class relations (because the ruling class is in control and prefers it that way). Schools are not “innocent” sites of cultural transmission, or places for the inculcation of consensual values {as transmission theorists argued). Nor are they meritocratic springboards for upward mobility. Rather they perpetuate social inequalities. Schools respond to the capitalist need for an underclass and a ruling class.
Cultural Reproduction: refers to the reproduction of class cultures, knowledge, and power relationships.
– Bourdieu coined the concept “Cultural Capital”: which refers to the ways of talking and acting, moving, dressing, socializing, tastes, likes and dislikes, competencies, and forms of knowledge that distinguish one group from another. It’s the language, knowledge, and patterns of interaction which are arbitrarily sanctioned as “proper” and valued. For Bourdieu, it’s not just class, but the status markers or culture of class that matters. Bourdieu conducted ethnographic work among the Kabyle of Algeria and in French schools. He argued that in rural Algeria, shame and honor measured the family’s symbolic capital, which were key to their control over labor resources in the community. Symbolic contests of honor carried out face to face were thus key to the reproduction of the domination of one man over another, one family over another. Honor was the cultural capital in that setting {occurs not only in schools). However, in more urban settings with larger populations, a highly di
fferentiated and bureaucratized class structure evidenced a more impersonal means of cultural reproduction. There, schools performed the complex work of distributing and validating the symbolic capital, in the form of knowledge, styles, etc.
– Cultural capital refers to a kind of symbolic credit which one acquires through learning to embody and enact signs of social standing. This credit consists of a series of competencies and character traits, such as “taste” and “intelligence”. Thus, the children of middle and upper class appear to be successful in school because of their natural intelligence, whereas in reality they succeed because they already practice the “ways of knowing” that are valued in school settings. (Ways of turn-taking, answering questions, wondering aloud, dress, etc.) In other words, only those particular tastes and skills possessed by elite classes are recognized as signs of “intelligence” by schools. Schools employ elaborate testing procedures, qualifying requirements, etc. to maintain a neutral stance; never mind that the tests are “normed” around classed ways of speaking / thinking. Schools’ relative autonomy allows them to serve capital’s sorting demands under the guise of independence and
neutrality, to conceal the social functions they perform and so perform them more effectively. Cultural capital is relational and situational; its meaning is derived from context.
– Symbolic violence occurs when non-elite kids are taught not to value their culture. (not actual violence, but damaging nonetheless)
– Reproduction theory dealt exclusively with class advantage, which did not adequately account for other systems of privilege such as race and gender. Obviously, neither economic, social, nor cultural reproduction leaves much room for the student subject to negotiate or challenge the imposition of ideology or of power. Anyone who has worked with a group of kids or teen-agers knows very well they don’t simply accept the meanings of the world you offer them. In the ‘80s, theorists developed cultural production theory to take better account of agency or will. We’ll discuss that later as we go on.
Session 8
Lecture: Interpretive & Social Transformation Theories
INTERPRETIVE THEORY
– interpretive theory: this view sees the world as made up of purposeful actors that construct, interpret and share their constructions of reality. Schools, under this perspective, are sites where meanings are constructed through social interaction. Researchers working through this paradigm have departed from the classical objectivist quantitative research methods used in Educational sociology, to descriptive qualitative research methods relying heavily on participant/observation in micro-settings. This approach, propelled by phenomenologists and symbolic interactionists, allowed for a refreshing look at classroom interaction and curriculum. The roots of the “new sociology of education” are connected intricately with this methodological approach.
– Qualitative researchers work from an interpretive view of the nature of reality. That is to say, they share a view that reality is not given, but constructed (Berger and Luckman). Humans are actively engaging in the process of constructing culture through their daily interactions (Bennet and LeCompte). Cultural meanings are constructed across many social settings, and because people hold a variety of different perceptions, this interpretive view is based upon a flexible rather than a fixed ontology.
– Smith and Heshusius mark this alternative ontology or view of reality as a historical challenge to “scientific positivism.”
– Offered first by Dilthey, this approach believes it is impossible for there to exist an objective reality separate from people. Instead, understanding comes through interpretation, there exist many truths and multiple realities, and human expression is context-based.
– This interpretive view actually has various names attached. It may be known as the naturalistic paradigm (Lincoln & Guba), case-study methodology, the ethnographic paradigm, ethnography, anthropological methods, constructivism, qualitative research, qualitative methods descriptive data-collection or field research.
– The role of values is inherent in this view.
– The goals of qualitative research are many and multiple. On a simplistic level, it may be no more than to study real-world situations using descriptive rather than experimental methods of inquiry. Unlike de-contextualized quantitative measures which often serve no more than “knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” the goals of qualitative research serve to contextualize inquiries and inform action, enhance decision-making, and apply knowledge to solve human and societal problems (Patton). At a basic level, there is a belief that those who have lived their experiences know more about it than others.
– Though not exclusively, qualitative research has had the closest association with the field of anthropology. Classical anthropologists like Malinowski have been credited with establishing many of its standards of fieldwork. He recommended the bodily praxis of direct observation as a means to intensify cultural understanding. The more recent work of Geertz has also helped gained scientific legitimacy for ethnographers. First is his well known analogy (built from Weber’s analogy) that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. Therefore, a socio-cultural understanding cannot be an experimental science in search of law as in physics, but rather an interpretive one in search of meaning.
CRITICAL THEORY / RESEARCH
– The underlying themes of this are social responsibility and linking research with activism. The overriding concerns are with social justice and equity issues. “Research, for most critical investigators, either must help us understand the sources of inequity (and the social processes that sustain it) or must go beyond that to serve as an agent for remedial change by helping to empower members of an oppressed group (usually as a consequence of being participants in the study).” (142)
Critical researchers argue that there is no such thing as objectivity. “They simply believe that all research is value bound and see it as appropriate that they make their subjectivity (personal values about the question and commitments about their role as researchers) explicit and public, for both participants and readers.” (143)
Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research. Joe L Kincheloe and Peter L. McLaren. From: The Handbook of Qualitative Research, Eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994):
– “We are defining a criticalist as a researcher or theorist who attempts to use her or his work as a form of social or cultural criticism and who accepts certain basic assumptions.
– That all thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are social and historically constituted;
– That facts can never be isolated from the domain of values or removed from some form of ideological inscriptions;
– That the relationship between concept and object and between signifier and signified is never stable or fixed and is often mediated by the social relations of capitalist production and consumption;
– That language is central to the formation of subjectivity (conscious and unconscious awareness);
– That certain groups in any society are privileged over others and, although the reasons for this privileging may vary widely, the oppression that characterizes contemporary societies is most frequently reproduced when subordinates accept their social status as natural, necessary, or inevitable;
– That oppression has many faces and that focusing on only one at a the expense of others (e.g., class oppression versus racism) often elides the interconnection among them; and finally
– That mainstream research practices are generally, although most often unwittingly, implicated in the reproduction of systems of class, race, and gender oppression.”
“Critical research can be best understood in the context of the empowerment of individuals. Inquiry that aspires to the name critical must be connected to an attempt to confront the injustice of a particular society or sphere within the society. Research thus becomes a transformative endeavor unembarrassed by the label ‘political and unafraid to consummate a relationship with an emancipatory consciousness. Whereas traditional researchers cling to the guard rail of neutrality, critical researchers frequently announce their partisanship in the struggle for a better world. Traditional researchers see their task as the description, interpretation, or reanimation of a slice of reality, whereas critical researchers often regard their work as a first step toward forms of political action that can redress the injustices found
in the field site or constructed in the very act of research itself. Horkheimer ( 1972) put it succinctly when he argued that critical theory and research are never satisfied with merely increasing knowledge.” (pp. 139-140)
Knowledge, Culture, Power and Epistemological Racism:
A number of scholars, frequently those of color, argue that the epistemologies that all people use to comprehend the world are culturally laden. However, these works often are marginalized in the academy as non-Western ways of knowing are dismissed as superstition or as inherently subjective. The cultural groundedness of epistemology is an issue that has not been adequately addressed.
For example, Stanfield writes about the ethnocentric basis of knowledge production in the social sciences. His argument is that:
– social research instruments and theories are created by humans, and thus they are necessarily developed within certain cultural frames of reference, and effected by the cultural backgrounds of the researchers.
– As human constructs, theories and frames of vision are tied to particular cultural worldviews.
People from all different cultures have developed bodies of knowledge in order to make sense of, and best function, in the world. Yet certain approaches to knowing, as well as particular knowledge bases, historically have been deemed objective, and elevated above all others. This is due significantly to the exercise of power and privilege.
– Stanfield writes that “knowledge becomes the official way of interpreting realities through the ability of a privileged subset of the population to exert its will on others through its control of such major institutions and resources as the media, legislation, and compulsory schooling.”
– Knowledge is thus linked to power, as those with power get to decide which theories will prevail, and in essence, what constitutes knowledge.
– Knowledge is also linked to culture, as the dominant (read white) culture controls the bulk of the material resources in this society, and hence wields the most power.
– Not all people ‘know’ in the same way” and that cognitive styles are influenced by cultural experiences, priorities, and differing ideas about what is relevant.
– Furthermore, “dominant racial group members and subordinate racial group members do not think and interpret realities in the same way because of their divergent structural positions, histories, and cultures.”
PRODUCTION THEORY:
– resistance, consciousness, transformation, ideology.
– Builds on interpretive theories, especially phenomenological sociology that emphasized social construction of knowledge (critiques positivism), but adds analysis of symbolic and material power structures (limits within which social
construction occurs).
– Influenced also by Frankfurt School, Gramsci’s concept of consciousness, and Freire.
– Ground their work in a moral, political imperative to the project of human liberation and equality. Trying to understand how reproduction could be both contested and accelerated through actions by the same people in the same
educational institutions.
– Example: Paul Willis. Lads, construct themselves in opposition to “Earholes,” (having a laf , girls, and teacher authority. Masculine {value manual labor, fighting ability), sexist (built on sexual use of girls, but `saving’ virgins for
marriage) and racist (virulent racial superiority discourse, “Paki-bashing”). Importance of a counterculture among students, how through their own activity and ideological development they reproduce themselves as a working
class. The mechanism is their opposition to authority, their refusal to submit to the imperatives of a curriculum that encourages social mobility through acquisition of credentials. Truancy, counterculture, and disruption of the
intended reproductive outcomes of the curriculum and pedagogy of schools yield an ironic effect: the `lads’ disqualify themselves from the opportunity (?) to enter middle class jobs.
– Willis: “Social agents are not passive bearers of ideology, but active appropriators who reproduce existing structures only through struggle contestation and a partial penetration of those structures.”
– Similar example: black kids are accused of “acting white” when they succeed in school. If a black youth culture of resistance to school is elaborated, then some black kids disqualify themselves from the school credential necessary
for their own social mobility.
– Another: Girls often search for an alternative source of self-esteem, finding sexuality (and sexual displays) and/or motherhood as an alternative. Many either drop-out and marry or get pregnant and are forced by various factors
(health, institutional, time, monetary) to drop out. The ideology of romance works effectively on girls (see Holland and Eisenhart}.
– Foley: Cautionary tale. Speech patterns and culture generally are not PERMANENT; they are fluid and change over time, and can be used strategically. “Cultural groups in modern complex societies have no stable, essential cultural identities which are transmitted unproblematically from generation to generation. There are only `discursive skirmishes’ between ethnic, gender, and class identity groups in the ceaseless production of shifting cultural images.”
– Indians construct oppositional cultural identities through their expressive cultural forms. Silence is not simple enactment of language pattern and speech style (quiet in the white man’s presence). They use it strategically to
avoid work. Don’t psychologize it to `self esteem.’ But silent rebellion can have its price (drop-outs).
– Cultural and social production theory instituted long period of studying counterculture and youth culture in US and Britain. Emphasize RESISTANCE, COUNTER-CULTURES, AGENCY within STRUCTURES, RACE & CLASS & GENDER IDENTITIES (and how they interact). Not all studies are of ultimate reproduction of the system, although they do emphasize the limits of the power structures that people live within.
