Contemporary Research in the Sociology of Education (RLE Edu L)

John Eggleston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136468599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The subject matter of this book – what happens in schools, the effects of curriculum change, the reasons why some children are successful and others are not – explains just why the sociology of education is one of the most important areas to achieve political importance. There are five sections to the book covering: Educational Achievement; Educational Provision; The Organization of the School; Roles in the School and Values and Learning. The editor discusses the implications of the material presented (much of which was available for the first time when this book was originally published).

V Values and learning

INTRODUCTION

In this final section of papers we return to an aspect of research in the sociology of education that has recurred throughout the volume – the significance of values, attitudes and perceptions as a key area of causality, underlying not only observable behaviour but also the patterns of interaction that lead to observable behaviour. Each of the papers included in this section could have found a place in at least one of the preceding sections: they are grouped here because they also bear a wider range of implications that form an appropriate conclusion to this volume.

At this stage in the collection it is proper that the papers should speak for themselves. The first, by Bernstein and Henderson, is a highly regarded, influential paper indicating the importance of differential parental value systems as expressed in the use of language in child socialization in middle class and working class families. This is part of the work of an overall research programme that has been executed with notable skill and effectiveness in the major studies of the Sociological Research Unit of the London Institute of Education directed by Bernstein (Bernstein 1971, 1973). (The same theme appears in its different research context, in the work of the educational priority areas research project (Halsey 1972) and in a number of other researches represented in this collection.)

The paper by Ford is an excerpt from her well-known Social Class and the Comprehensive School (1969). Again it is concerned with the interaction of value systems, in this case the interaction of parental and teacher values in Cherry Dale Comprehensive School. Together these are shown to be a more powerful influence on achievement than the more manifest and seemingly widely endorsed objectives of the school. In short, the school, even though comprehensive, appears to have had unexpectedly little influence on the social distribution of opportunity of its pupils. This excerpt has been chosen because of its considerable relevance to earlier research papers in this volume, though an important feature of Ford’s work is her analysis, in subsequent chapters, of the ‘social arguments’ as well as the academic arguments used in favour of comprehensive schools.

As the various studies have shown, the analysis of values is complex and is regularly in danger of oversimplification. Witkin’s paper on social class influences on the evaluation of school lessons demonstrates this complexity in a highly effective way and offers a cautionary example of the dangers of an over enthusiastic acceptance of ‘self-evident truths’.

A similar example arises from Patrick’s work on the study of Glasgow gangs, anticipated in the introduction to the first section, which provides one of the most dramatic and informative contributions to the volume. His participant observation study offers an illuminating account of the values of a small but highly significant part of the Glasgow adolescent population and the ways in which these influence their perception of and interaction with the community and the schools – ways that have previously been largely unknown to those outside the gang. Patrick offers us a salutory reminder of the merits of pioneer studies such as those of Thrasher (1927) and Whyte (1940) that have at times been overlooked in a search for scientific purity.

A final paper by Bourdieu in collaboration with Saint-Martin leads us, almost in culmination, to the complex central matrix of values and perceptions that constitute the educational system and its schools. In particular it explores the link between the thinking and intellectual activity of teachers and the nature of schools, their structural and behavioural patterns and their values.

The consideration of these papers brings us to a point where we can see a close connection between what conflict theorists have labelled as values and phenomenologists have labelled constructions of reality. Indeed, in many of the analyses the terms are in principle, if not in practice, interchangeable. Certainly the two are complementary. Conflict analysts are able to emphasize the recurring and regular nature of values and the ways in which they are expressed in action. Phenomenologists, by viewing them as ‘definitions of a situation’ or ‘constructions of reality’ have helped sociologists to come to terms with their subjective, illusive, shifting, often irrational but undeniably motivating nature.

This dual perception of values must in turn alert us to the elusiveness of certainty and predictability in the field of sociological research. A built-in caution in the appraisal of all the research reported in this volume may have been noted; certainly it was one of the criteria of selection applied. Shipman (1972) in a review of research on socialization comments:

At one extreme there are investigations into natural situations in family and school. These may have produced valuable insights but there are too many factors in natural situations for the research to be completely reliable. At the other extreme there are experimental studies where all but a single factor have been controlled. Here the method may be reliable, but the results come from such a synthetic situation that generalization is impossible.

But if even sensitive and skilful research cannot guarantee to lead us to certainty what can it offer? Here Taylor (1972) offers part of the answer:

Only exceptionally will the daily discussion of a problem or difficulty include the citation of a particular piece of research that contributed significantly to resolution or decision. Yet even when there is no explicit reference to particular studies, it is unlikely that such discussion will be unaffected by research. It exerts its influence by helping to determine the agenda of problems and difficulties, and in providing some of the elements that shape individual and group orientations towards particular issues. Just as anyone who talks and writes about man and society today is likely to have been influenced by, even if they never refer to, have never read or have never even heard of, the work of Darwin, Marx or Freud – so discussions about education are likely to be influenced by research on such topics as, for example, social class and educational opportunity and stages in children’s learning as have been reported during the past twenty-five years. This, and earlier research, arose from the problems of its time, and produced findings which have helped to suggest and define new problems and issues. Research on mental functioning has had the effect of removing certain.concepts from our vocabulary, such as faculties, and of downgrading the importance of others, such as attention to memory. Equally, it has pointed up the existence of problems which now feature as important items in the agenda of our concerns, such as the effects of early maternal deprivation, or of impoverished linguistic environments, or the task of delimiting more accurately the stages of growth.

Taylor is saying that the most fundamental consequence of research is the development of awareness and sensitivity. He is also reminding researchers of their indirect but heavy burden of responsibility to a very wide public. To use the highly appropriate language of phenomenologists, research leads the individual to redefine the situation; to develop and to adjust his constructions of social reality. Here appears to lie the only way forward both for research as an activity and for sociology as a discipline.

References

BERNSTEIN, B.B., 1971, 1973, Class, Codes and Control, Volume 1: Theoretical Studies towards a Sociology of Language, Volume 2: Applied Studies towards a Sociology of Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

FORD, J., 1969, Social Class and the Comprehensive School. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

HALSEY, A.H. (ed.), 1972, Educational Priority. London: HMSO.

SHIPMAN, M.D., 1972, Childhood, a sociological perspective. Slough: NFER.

TAYLOR, W., 1972, ‘Retrospect and prospect in educational research’. Educational Research, 15(1).

THRASHER, F.M., 1927, The Gang. Chicago: University Press.

WHYTE, W.F., 1940, Street Corner Society. Chicago: University Press.

BASIL BERNSTEIN AND DOROTHY HENDERSON

Social class differences in the relevance of language to socialization*

Introduction

One of the most important movements in behavioural science since the war is the convergence of interest upon the study of basic processes of communication and their regulative functions. The one discipline which appears so far least affected is sociology. However, from different quarters there are now signs of growing interest (Grimshaw 1967, Fishman 1966, Circourel 1964,1 Garfinkel 1967, Hymes 1968). The study of the educationally disadvantaged has also led to a concentration of research into the process of language acquisition, into the relationships between language and cognition and into the social antecedents and regulative consequences of forms of language use.

The Sociological Research Unit at the University of London is engaged upon an exploratory study of forms of familial socialization which affect orientations towards the use of language. We shall present here the results of a closed schedule designed to reveal the relative emphasis which members of social class groups place upon the use of language in different areas of the socialization of the pre-school child. Although this report is confined to a study only of the mothers’ orientation towards the relevance of language, as this group of mothers have been interviewed twice within a three-year period and because two speech samples have been collected from their children when aged five years and seven years, it should prove to be possible to obtain some measure of both-the reliability and validity of the mothers’ reports.¹

This report is the first step in the analysis of the section of the second questionnaire given to the mothers which inquired into the orientation of the mother towards various uses of language. As the other sections were concerned with the decision making within the family, its kinship and community relationships, the procedures of control and role definition, the relationships between home and school, we can relate the orientation towards various uses of language to a range of variables.

In the discussion section of the paper we present a model which gives a sociological explanation of social learning in terms of the mediation of the linguistic process in socialization.

Hypotheses

The following hypotheses (derived from Bernstein 1966 and 1968) are to be tested:

1 Both middle class and working class would place greater emphasis upon the use of language in inter-personal aspects of socialization than the emphasis placed upon language in the socialization into basic skills.

2 The shift in emphasis in the use of language from the skill to the person area would be much greater for the middle class group.

3 Within the skill area the middle class group would place a greater emphasis upon language in the transmission of principles.

Description of the sample

The total sample consists of 311 mothers drawn from two areas: one a working class area and the other a middles class area. The r between area and social class of the parents is 0.74. The index of social class was constructed by W. Brandis of the Sociological Research Unit and is based upon the terminal education and occupation of husband and wife. A full description of the index will be found in Brandis, W. and Henderson, D. (1968). Social class is measured on a ten-point scale 0-9. The sample used in this papers consists of fifty mothers randomly selected from the middle class area and fifty mothers randomly selected from the working class area. It was necessary to limit the sample of this study in order that a detailed analysis could be carried out, and to examine possible social class differences in response to the schedule. In terms of the ten-point scale, the mean social class position of the middle class group is 2.8 and the mean social class position of the working class group is 6.9.

The closed schedule²

The closed schedule consisted of a list of eleven statements which covered the major aspects of socialization. As the schedule was presented, the interviewer put to each mother the question which was printed above the list of statements: ‘If parents could not speak, how much more difficult do you think it would be for them to do the following things with young children who had not yet started school?’ The mother’s attention was then directed to the statements and she was asked to asses the difficulty she thought dumb parents would experience in dealing with each situation. A six-point scale was provided: very much more difficult, much more difficult, more difficult, not too difficult, fairly easy, easy. The statements are listed below in the order in which they were presented on the schedule:

1	Teaching them everyday tasks like dressing, and using a knife and fork	(Motor skill)
2	Helping them to make things	(Constructional skill)
3	Drawing their attention to different shapes	(Perceptual skill)
4	Playing games with them	(Dummy)
5	Showing them what is right and wrong	(Moral principles)
6	Letting them know what you are feeling	(Mother oriented affective)
7	Showing them how things work	(Cognitive)
8	Helping them to work things out for themselves	(Independent cognitive)
9	Disciplining them	(Control)
10	Showing them how pleased you are with their progress	(Dummy)
11	Dealing with them when they are unhappy.	(Child oriented affective)

Statements 4 and 10 were deliberately inserted as dummy statements designed to move the mother’s responses across to ‘fairly easy’ and ‘easy’ and thus mitigate the emphasis placed on ‘difficulty’ in the initial questio...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Editorial introduction: The contemporary context of research in the sociology of education
• I    THE DISTRIBUTION OF EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT
• II   THE ECOLOGY OF EDUCATIONAL PROVISION
• III  THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOL
• IV  ROLES AND INTERACTION IN THE SCHOOL
• V   VALUES AND LEARNING
• Index