Sed2601 Exam Pack -study notes.

Question Outline two reasons why marketisation policies may produce inequality of educational achievement between social classes. Answer:  cream-skimming; successful schools can attract higher achievers, who are more likely to be middle-class.  silt-shifting; successful schools can avoid taking less able, largely working-class pupils, who thus end up in low-achieving schools. Question Outline three reasons for gender differences in educational achievement. Answer:  laddish subcultures; boys are more likely to join antischool subcultures that prevent them from achieving.  changes in the job market: more jobs for women/decline in traditional men’s jobs increase girls’/reduce boys’ motivation to achieve.  feminisation of education; more female teachers as role models today gives girls an advantage over boys.  leisure pursuits; for example, girls’ leisure often involves a ‘bedroom culture’ of talking with friends, which develops their communication skills. Question Item A According to Marx, capitalism is based on the ownership of the means of production by a wealthy minority. Capitalism continues to exist because each new generation of workers is forced to undertake low-paid, alienating work to survive. This makes capitalism potentially unstable, since it depends on the proletariat not seeking to overthrow this unequal system. Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which the education system might serve the needs of capitalism. Answer: There will be two developed applications of material from the item, eg the proletariat do not seek to overthrow capitalism because the education system acts as an ideological state apparatus; the education system reproduces capitalism by preparing each generation of working-class children to fill their future roles as alienated, exploited workers. There will be appropriate analysis/evaluation of two ways, eg the education system meets capitalism’s need by legitimating class inequality through ideologies such as the myth of meritocracy, thus preventing its overthrow; the education system meets capitalism’s need to continue through the correspondence principle, whereby the schooling of working-class children mirrors the capitalist workplace in terms of hierarchy, alienation, extrinsic rewards, fragmentation and competition. Question Item B Social class differences in achievement are found at all stages of the education system and sociologists have put forward several explanations for these differences. Some sociologists focus on factors outside school, such as the material circumstances of pupils’ families or the ways in which parents socialise their children. Other sociologists see factors internal to the education system itself as responsible. However, it can be argued that it is the interaction between these external and internal factors that produces class differences in educational achievement. Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of social class differences in educational achievement. Answer: Appropriate material will be applied accurately and with sensitivity to the issues raised by the question. Analysis and evaluation will be explicit and relevant. Evaluation maybe developed, for example through a discussion of the relative importance of material or cultural factors and/or internal or external factors, or their interrelationship. Analysis will show clear explanation. Appropriate conclusions will be drawn. Application of material is largely explicitly relevant to the question, though some material maybe inadequately focused. Some limited explicit evaluation, for example of cultural deprivation as a victimblaming approach, and/or some appropriate analysis, eg clear explanations of some of the presented material. Applying listed material from the general topic area but with limited regard for its relevance to the issues raised by the question, or applying a narrow range of more relevant material. Evaluation will take the form of juxtaposition of competing positions or one to two isolated stated points. Analysis will be limited, with answers tending towards the descriptive