| CODE | EDS2004 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Primary Education Histories, Systems, and Processes | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Education Studies | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Teaching and learning are socially embedded in the historical and social contexts in which Primary school education occurs. Student teachers are introduced to these contexts through the historical and sociological lens which critically looks at education systems and markets of schooling. This study-unit will also discuss the beneficiaries and those who lost out in forms of educational provision. School organisational and instructional processes will be examined as systems of selection, segregation and stratification. Student teachers will be introduced to core theories and empirical examples of educational inequality related to social class, ‘race’, ethnicity and immigration. The relation between families, economic and cultural capital and primary schooling, as well as health inequalities, will be approached through a critical theoretical knowledge base and examples founded in empirical research will be explored. Study-unit Aims: The study-unit aims to introduce students to the corpus of historical and sociological research on primary education systems, structures and processes. It invites them to take a sociological perspective which recognises that macro social systems, meso level school systems and micro classroom processes together impact learners from different social categories differently. Following Bourdieu and other scholars they should be able to distinguish different forms of capital (social, economic, cultural, political, symbolic) and how schools respond to learners and families with different types and amounts of capital. They should be able to identify structural and systemic factors leading to inequality in education, as well as the (mis)distributional and (mis)recognitional policies and processes that negatively impact minority learners. The normative approach invites students to reject classism, racism, Islamophobia and other forms of ‘Othering’ through an engagement with alternative models of teaching and learning in diverse primary school classrooms. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Distinguish between sociological and other perspectives on education; - Apply a historical approach to understand educational change in specific historical conjunctures; - Be familiar with the sociology of education’s theoretical language to analytically describe social differences and processes of equality and inequality; - Locate the empirical research which provides the robust evidence to study classism, racism, cultural racism and other forms of inequality in primary schooling; - Distinguish between the education system, the school organisational and the classroom/teacher level policies and practices which generate inequalities and different educational experiences and outcomes for different social categories of learners; - Recognise which methodological methods provide reliable and trustworthy sociological data. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Take a historical and sociological perspective to primary schooling policies, processes and practices; - Distinguish between rights to education ( education as a public good) and rights to choice in education ( education as a market); - Identify types of primary school organisation and the educational outcomes each one produces; - Evaluate how different forms of instructional grouping have social effects; - Locate examples of primary school institutional and individual discrimination on the grounds of social class, ‘race’, ethnicity and immigrant status and their intersectionality; - Locate the school and classroom policies, processes and practices that foster equality and inclusion. - Support learners with chronic health conditions; - Develop classroom policies and practices that address poverty, are anti-racist, and are accepting of religious diversity. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Ballantine, J. H., Spade, J. Z., Stuber, J. (Eds.) (2018). Schools and society: a sociological approach to education. Sage. A list of required readings will be provided. These will be available through HyDi or on VLE. Supplementary Reading: - Moore, R. (2004). Education and society. Issues and explanations in the sociology of education. Polity Press. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Mary Darmanin |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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