SOCIOLOGY CHAPTER 13 EDUCATION

_________ ____________ is the process through which academic, social, and cultural ideas and tools are developed.

The inability to read or write well enough to function in society.

Having insufficient math skills to function in society.

***The two main functions of schools are to EDUCATE students and to SOCIALIZE them by:

***Refers to the knowledge and skills that make someone more productive and bankable.

Schools have been described as sorting machines that place students into programs and groups according to their skills, interests, and talents. Critics argue that this sorting process is based solely on merit and that ultimately it serves to reproduce social inequalities.

The 1966 Coleman Report showed that two primary factors; Family background and peers explained differences in achievement among schools, rather than differences in school resources as had been expected.

Since the 1980's it has been shown that smaller class sizes have a positive impact on student performance.

Private school students perform better academically than their peers at public schools, in part due to academic and behavioral differences.

_____________ is dividing students into different classes according to ability or future plans. In practice ____________ has a number of negative effects and may be more beneficial for those who are already privileged.

***___ ________ ______, or self-fulfilling prophecy, is the process that occurs when behavior is modified to meet preexisting expectations. In the context of education, researchers have proposed that teachers' expectations may influence students' behavior (p. 510).

In 1910, 3 % of men and women over age 25 had a college degree. In 2004, 28%of men and women over age 25 had a college degree.

An overemphasis on credentials, such as college degrees, for signaling social status or job qualifications. -As more and more people meet the job qualifications for certain types of jobs, employers upgrade the requirements in order to weed out more people.

***_____ ____________ ________ ______ (SAT) has been shown to accurately predict a student's potential for college success. However critics argue that there are other equally good predictors that don't share the SAT's downsides.

Sociologists are still interested in understanding the achievement gap between white an minority students. This has often been attributed to class, but other theories circulate.

The achievement gap between girls and boys has been closing in many academic measures, but women are still earning less money than men, leading sociologists to investigate it further.

Studies show that family size, spacing between siblings, gender, and birth order can all affect educational outcomes.

Socioeconomic class, race, and ethnicity are often intertwined and clearly affect educational outcomes.

A ________ response to the question of why there has been a significant increase in the number of high school and college graduates in the United States over the past century might point to the simple rules of supply and demand: a need for a more educated workforce has encouraged more people to stay in school longer.

Affirmative action can best be defined as _________.

A parent's decision to become actively involved in the Parent Teacher Association at his or her child's school may be related to that parent's level of ________.

Which of the following statements about changes in the boy-girl achievement gap during the past 30 years is true?

Define education, in sociological terms, as well as functional illiteracy, innumeracy, and human capital.

Summarize the various ways schools can be used, and have been used, to socialize students.

Explain the concept of schools as SORTING MACHINES AND contingent arguments that schools reproduce societal inequalities.

Summarize what was learned about achievement differences among schools in the 1966 Coleman Report and explain why the results were surprising to many people.

________________ have argued that the rise in education rates in the United States over the past one hundred years is a response to the demands of the marketplace, though there are many critics of this theory. ***Recall that functionalism is the theory that various social institutions and processes in society exist to serve some important (or necessary) function to keep society running. In this case, __________________ believe that industrialization influenced a need for more technical jobs, which required a more educated workforce (p. 512).

Explain the significance of findings about differences in educational achievement in public schools and private schools.

Define the concept of tracking as used in education and explain its potential positive and negative effects.

Explain why the classroom is one of the most socially intimate spaces in society.

Define the Pygmalion effect and explain how it can be positive or negative.

Define best practices and explain how they can affect teaching effectiveness.

Explain how students can influence one another's performance in the classroom.

Describe how conflict theorists explain the educational boom in the United States over the past one hundred years.

Define credentialism and explain how it has affected the job market.

Describe the arguments surrounding the merits of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

Define affirmative action and understand arguments made by critics of affirmative action as well as rebuttals to those arguments.

Describe how class, race, and ethnicity affect educational outcomes.

Define cultural capital and explain its influence on student performance.

Describe reasons other than class differences that researchers have put forward to explain the black-white achievement gap.

Describe current research on the boy-girl achievement gap and the relationship between men's and women's education levels and their earning power.

Explain how family size, spacing between siblings, gender, and birth order can affect educational outcomes.

Describe some of the limitations of an intelligence quotient (IQ) test.

____________ the process through which academic, social, and cultural ideas and tools, both general and specific, are developed.

_________ _____________ the nonacademic and less overt socialization functions of schooling. ***The hidden curriculum is the nonacademic socialization and training that takes place in the schooling system, such as learning not to talk when another person is talking (p. 498).

_______ _________ the information, knowledge of people, and connections that help individuals enter, gain power in, or otherwise leverage social networks. ***Social capital is any relationship between people that can facilitate the actions of others. In the context of education, several researchers suggest that the strong effects of Catholic schools stem from large amounts of social capital within the community (p. 505).

___________ a way of dividing students into different classes by ability or future plans.

____________ an overemphasis on credentials (e.g., college degrees) for signaling social status or qualifications for a job.

***_________ __________is a set of policies that grant preferential treatment to a number of particular subgroups within the population—typically women and historically disadvantaged minorities (p.517). ***Affirmative action only significantly affects selective, elite institutions, which represent one-fifth of American colleges (p. 517).

_______ ______ or ______________ _________ (SES) an individual's position in a stratified social order. ***Socioeconomic status, or social class, is based on any combination of parental educational attainment, parental occupational status, family income, and family wealth. Students whose parents have higher measures of any of these four measures generally have better educational opportunities (p. 520).

___________ ____________ symbolic and interactional resources that people use to their advantage in various situations. *Cultural capital is symbolic and interactional resources that people use to their advantage in various situations. In this case, cultural capital is embodied in the ability to deal with bureaucracies and confidence in the public school system (p. 521).

***_________ _______ when members of a negatively stereotyped group are placed in a situation where they fear they may confirm those stereotypes.

***________ ________ ______ hypothesis stating that parental resources are finite and that each additional child dilutes them.

Studies that compare public schools with private schools have generally found that private school students _____________ their public school peers, even among students with similar backgrounds. Within private schools, researchers have found that Catholic schools are associated with higher test scores than non-Catholic private schools and public schools (p. 503).

***_____ _________ are teaching methods that are supported by extensive research (p. 511).

***Research has found that ______-__-______ ____________ also affect educational outcomes. However, this effect goes both ways; in other words, some research has shown that when high-achieving students are placed in classes with mostly low-achieving students, they make fewer gains (p. 511).

Socioeconomic status, or social class, is based on any combination of: _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ Students whose parents have higher measures of any of these four measures generally have better educational opportunities (p. 520).

In his interview with Conley, Steven Morgan discusses why high school students who attend Catholic schools generally outperform students in public schools. What does Morgan thinks accounts for this difference in performance?