Education Portal for Students in India

Learning Objectives –

1. List the major functions of education.
2. Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
3. Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009). Table 16.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these approaches say. Table 16.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical perspective	Major assumptions
Functionalism	Education serves several functions for society. These include (a) socialization, (b) social integration, (c) social placement, and (d) social and cultural innovation. Latent functions include child care, the establishment of peer relationships, and lowering unemployment by keeping high school students out of the full-time labor force.
Conflict theory	Education promotes social inequality through the use of tracking and standardized testing and the impact of its “hidden curriculum.” Schools differ widely in their funding and learning conditions, and this type of inequality leads to learning disparities that reinforce social inequality.
Symbolic interactionism	This perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues. Specific research finds that social interaction in schools affects the development of gender roles and that teachers’ expectations of pupils’ intellectual abilities affect how much pupils learn.

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What is meant by sociological perspective?

Learning Objectives –

1. Define the sociological perspective.
2. Provide examples of how Americans may not be as “free” as they think.
3. Explain what is meant by considering individuals as “social beings.”

Most Americans probably agree that we enjoy a great amount of freedom. And yet perhaps we have less freedom than we think, because many of our choices are influenced by our society in ways we do not even realize. Perhaps we are not as distinctively individualistic as we believe we are.

For example, consider the right to vote. The secret ballot is one of the most cherished principles of American democracy. We vote in secret so that our choice of a candidate is made freely and without fear of punishment. That is all true, but it is also possible to guess the candidate for whom any one individual will vote if enough is known about the individual.

This is because our choice of a candidate is affected by many aspects of our social backgrounds and, in this sense, is not made as freely as we might think. To illustrate this point, consider the 2008 presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.

Suppose a room is filled with 100 randomly selected voters from that election. Nothing is known about them except that they were between 18 and 24 years of age when they voted. Because exit poll data found that Obama won 66% of the vote from people in this age group ( http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/ExitPolls ), a prediction that each of these 100 individuals voted for Obama would be correct about 66 times and incorrect only 34 times.

Someone betting $1 on each prediction would come out $32 ahead ($66 – $34 = $32), even though the only thing known about the people in the room is their age. Young people were especially likely to vote for Barack Obama in 2008, while white men tended, especially in Wyoming and several other states, to vote for John McCain. These patterns illustrate the influence of our social backgrounds on many aspects of our lives.

Now let’s suppose we have a room filled with 100 randomly selected white men from Wyoming who voted in 2008. We know only three things about them: their race, gender, and state of residence. Because exit poll data found that 67% of white men in Wyoming voted for McCain, a prediction can be made with fairly good accuracy that these 100 men tended to have voted for McCain.

Someone betting $1 that each man in the room voted for McCain would be right about 67 times and wrong only 33 times and would come out $34 ahead ($67 – $33 = $34). Even though young people in the United States and white men from Wyoming had every right and freedom under our democracy to vote for whomever they wanted in 2008, they still tended to vote for a particular candidate because of the influence of their age (in the case of the young people) or of their gender, race, and state of residence (white men from Wyoming).

• Yes, Americans have freedom, but our freedom to think and act is constrained at least to some degree by society’s standards and expectations and by the many aspects of our social backgrounds.
• This is true for the kinds of important beliefs and behaviors just discussed, and it is also true for less important examples.

For instance, think back to the last class you attended. How many of the women wore evening gowns? How many of the men wore skirts? Students are “allowed” to dress any way they want in most colleges and universities, but notice how few students, if any, dress in the way just mentioned.

1. They do not dress that way because of the strange looks and even negative reactions they would receive.
2. Think back to the last time you rode in an elevator.
3. Why did you not face the back? Why did you not sit on the floor? Why did you not start singing? Children can do these things and “get away with it,” because they look cute doing so, but adults risk looking odd.

Because of that, even though we are “allowed” to act strangely in an elevator, we do not. The basic point is that society shapes our attitudes and behavior even if it does not determine them altogether. We still have freedom, but that freedom is limited by society’s expectations.

Moreover, our views and behavior depend to some degree on our social location in society—our gender, race, social class, religion, and so forth. Thus society as a whole and our own social backgrounds affect our attitudes and behaviors. Our social backgrounds also affect one other important part of our lives, and that is our life chances —our chances (whether we have a good chance or little chance) of being healthy, wealthy, and well educated and, more generally, of living a good, happy life.

The influence of our social environment in all of these respects is the fundamental understanding that sociology —the scientific study of social behavior and social institutions—aims to present. At the heart of sociology is the sociological perspective, the view that our social backgrounds influence our attitudes, behavior, and life chances.

1. In this regard, we are not just individuals but rather social beings deeply enmeshed in society.
2. Although we all differ from one another in many respects, we share with many other people basic aspects of our social backgrounds, perhaps especially gender, race and ethnicity, and social class.
3. These shared qualities make us more similar to each other than we would otherwise be.

Does society totally determine our beliefs, behavior, and life chances? No. Individual differences still matter, and disciplines such as psychology are certainly needed for the most complete understanding of human action and beliefs. But if individual differences matter, so do society and the social backgrounds from which we come.

• Even the most individual attitudes and behaviors, such as the voting decisions discussed earlier, are influenced to some degree by our social backgrounds and, more generally, by the society to which we belong.
• In this regard, consider what is perhaps the most personal decision one could make: the decision to take one’s own life.

What could be more personal and individualistic than this fatal decision? When individuals commit suicide, we usually assume that they were very unhappy, even depressed. They may have been troubled by a crumbling romantic relationship, bleak job prospects, incurable illness, or chronic pain.

But not all people in these circumstances commit suicide; in fact, few do. Perhaps one’s chances of committing suicide depend at least in part on various aspects of the person’s social background. In this regard, consider suicide rates—the percentage of a particular group of people who commit suicide, usually taken as, say, eight suicides for every 100,000 people in that group.

Different groups have different suicide rates. As just one example, men are more likely than women to commit suicide ( Figure 1.1 “Gender and Suicide Rate, 2006” ). Why is this? Are men more depressed than women? No, the best evidence indicates that women are more depressed than men (Klein, Corwin, & Ceballos, 2006) and that women try to commit suicide more often than men (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008).

If so, there must be something about being a man that makes it more likely that males’ suicide attempts will result in death. One of these “somethings” is that males are more likely than females to try to commit suicide with a firearm, a far more lethal method than, say, taking an overdose of sleeping pills (Miller & Hemenway, 2008).

If this is true, then it is fair to say that gender influences our chances of committing suicide, even if suicide is perhaps the most personal of all acts. Figure 1.1 Gender and Suicide Rate, 2006 Source: Data from U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2010, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab, In the United States, suicide rates are generally higher west of the Mississippi River than east of it ( Figure 1.2 “U.S.

• Suicide Rates, 2000–2006 (Number of Suicides per 100,000 Population)” ).
• Is that because people out west are more depressed than those back east? No, there is no evidence of this.
• Perhaps there is something else about the western states that helps lead to higher suicide rates.
• For example, many of these states are sparsely populated compared to their eastern counterparts, with people in the western states living relatively far from one another.

Because we know that social support networks help people deal with personal problems and deter possible suicides (Stack, 2000), perhaps these networks are weaker in the western states, helping lead to higher suicide rates. Then too, membership in organized religion is lower out west than back east (Finke & Stark, 2005). Although suicide is popularly considered to be a very individualistic act, it is also true that individuals’ likelihood of committing suicide depends at least partly on various aspects of their social backgrounds. Figure 1.2 U.S. Suicide Rates, 2000–2006 (Number of Suicides per 100,000 Population)
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What are the four perspectives of sociology of education?

The four main theoretical perspectives are symbolic interactionism theory, social conflict theory, structural-functional theory, and feminist theory.
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What is the sociological perspective examples?

The Sociological Imagination – Many individuals experience one or more social problems personally. For example, many people are poor and unemployed, many are in poor health, and many have family problems, drink too much alcohol, or commit crime. When we hear about these individuals, it is easy to think that their problems are theirs alone, and that they and other individuals with the same problems are entirely to blame for their difficulties.

• Sociology takes a different approach, as it stresses that individual problems are often rooted in problems stemming from aspects of society itself.
• This key insight informed C.
• Wright Mills’s (1959) (Mills, 1959) classic distinction between personal troubles and public issues,
• Personal troubles refer to a problem affecting individuals that the affected individual, as well as other members of society, typically blame on the individual’s own personal and moral failings.

Examples include such different problems as eating disorders, divorce, and unemployment. Public issues, whose source lies in the social structure and culture of a society, refer to social problems affecting many individuals. Problems in society thus help account for problems that individuals experience.

Mills felt that many problems ordinarily considered private troubles are best understood as public issues, and he coined the term sociological imagination to refer to the ability to appreciate the structural basis for individual problems. To illustrate Mills’s viewpoint, let’s use our sociological imaginations to understand some contemporary social problems.

We will start with unemployment, which Mills himself discussed. If only a few people were unemployed, Mills wrote, we could reasonably explain their unemployment by saying they were lazy, lacked good work habits, and so forth. If so, their unemployment would be their own personal trouble. When only a few people are out of work, it is fair to say that their unemployment is their personal trouble. However, when millions of people are out of work, as has been true since the economic downturn began in 2008, this massive unemployment is more accurately viewed as a public issue.

As such, its causes lie not in the unemployed individuals but rather in our society’s economic and social systems. The high US unemployment rate stemming from the severe economic downturn that began in 2008 provides a telling example of the point Mills was making. Millions of people lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

While some individuals are undoubtedly unemployed because they are lazy or lack good work habits, a more structural explanation focusing on lack of opportunity is needed to explain why so many people were out of work. If so, unemployment is best understood as a public issue rather than a personal trouble.

Another social problem is eating disorders. We usually consider a person’s eating disorder to be a personal trouble that stems from a lack of control, low self-esteem, or another personal problem. This explanation may be OK as far as it goes, but it does not help us understand why so many people have the personal problems that lead to eating disorders.

Perhaps more important, this belief also neglects the larger social and cultural forces that help explain such disorders. For example, most Americans with eating disorders are women, not men. This gender difference forces us to ask what it is about being a woman in American society that makes eating disorders so much more common.

To begin to answer this question, we need to look to the standard of beauty for women that emphasizes a slender body (Boyd, et. al., 2011). If this cultural standard did not exist, far fewer American women would suffer from eating disorders than do now. Because it does exist, even if every girl and woman with an eating disorder were cured, others would take their places unless we could somehow change this standard.

Viewed in this way, eating disorders are best understood as a public issue, not just as a personal trouble. Picking up on Mills’s insights, William Ryan (1976) (Ryan, 1976) pointed out that Americans typically think that social problems such as poverty and unemployment stem from personal failings of the people experiencing these problems, not from structural problems in the larger society.

1. Using Mills’s terms, Americans tend to think of social problems as personal troubles rather than public issues.
2. As Ryan put it, they tend to believe in blaming the victim rather than blaming the system,
3. To help us understand a blaming-the-victim ideology, let’s consider why poor children in urban areas often learn very little in their schools.

According to Ryan, a blaming-the-victim approach would say the children’s parents do not care about their learning, fail to teach them good study habits, and do not encourage them to take school seriously. This type of explanation, he wrote, may apply to some parents, but it ignores a much more important reason: the sad shape of America’s urban schools, which, he said, are overcrowded, decrepit structures housing old textbooks and out-of-date equipment.

• To improve the schooling of children in urban areas, he wrote, we must improve the schools themselves and not just try to “improve” the parents.
• As this example suggests, a blaming-the-victim approach points to solutions to social problems such as poverty and illiteracy that are very different from those suggested by a more structural approach that blames the system.

If we blame the victim, we would spend our limited dollars to address the personal failings of individuals who suffer from poverty, illiteracy, poor health, eating disorders, and other difficulties. If instead we blame the system, we would focus our attention on the various social conditions (decrepit schools, cultural standards of female beauty, and the like) that account for these difficulties.
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Why is the sociological perspective important?

The Most Important Sociological Lessons By Peter Kaufman As a reader of this blog you must have some idea about the major themes that sociologists study. You also know that sociologists write about a lot of topics. If you were asked to identify the most important lessons that one can learn from sociology what would they be? What themes, concepts, theories, perspectives, ways of thinking, or even skills do you think are the most significant? I recently posed this question to a group of undergraduate sociology students in their final semester of college.

I was curious to find out what these students deemed to be the most important lessons they learned from their many years of studying sociology. I engaged the students in a collective brainstorming and writing exercise to see if they could identify and then explain the five most essential principles of their sociology education.

To begin, I asked the students to make a list of all of the sociology classes they took in college. This first step was intended to refresh their memories about some of the topics and themes that they may have studied years ago. Next, I asked them to make a list of the five most important lessons or takeaways that they learned from sociology.

• Once the students had their own lists of five items, I asked them to join together into groups of two.
• Here, they discussed their lists with their partners and worked on creating a joint list of five items.
• This joint list was the product of synthesizing items on each of their lists, convincing the other person of the importance of one of their items, or sometimes even creating a new item from their discussion.

Next, each pair joined with another pair and went through the same process: Discussing and debating their lists with the goal of creating a list of five items that they all (more or less) agreed on. We did this one more time so that the whole group was back together again.

This last stage of the collective brainstorming was challenging because there were about ten items that they were trying to trim down to five. There was more discussing and debating about what certain items meant, why they could or should be combined with other items, and whether they deserved to be in the top five.

Eventually, through a process of consensus instead of a vote, the students were able to create a final list of the five most important sociological lessons. They then went back into groups of two and each pair wrote a title and a description of one of the five lessons.

• Here is what they came up with (in no particular order and with some minor editing): Ever-Present Hierarchy Stratification is always present in all aspects of society—from the micro to the macro.
• For example, in a micro-analysis one can look at the traditional classroom as the students are subject to the will of the teacher; however, in a macro-analysis social class is stratified by wealth and prestige.

Society has historically been stratified and there has yet to be a completely un-stratified and equitable community. Think like a Sociologist Using Critical Thinking If you are thinking like a sociologist then everything you see can be studied with that mindset.

1. Even topics like the environment, sports, education, films, and families, can all be looked at through a sociological lens.
2. Thinking critically with a sociological imagination means asking questions and deconstructing social phenomena.
3. Thinking through a sociological perspective helps us to understand the situations of others and allows us to better understand the reason people are in the situations they are in.

Concepts like oppression, inequality, and intersectionality are realities in society that shape the lives of many. Acknowledging and understanding these concepts helps paint a picture of society and are essential in making a difference. The Value of Theory and Research Throughout any sociologist’s career, they will encounter many social phenomena that have a direct impact on society.

Research and theory help individuals have a better understanding of the world around them. Many inequalities that exist in society have theories behind them explaining why things happen the way that they do. Research is essential in this understanding as it ensures that these theories are backed up and understood on a larger scale.

Both theory and research share an equal importance in sociology as they go hand in hand. We are Products of Our Environment Decisions that seem to be products of individuals are largely products of larger social forces. Individuals like to think they act on their own or because of natural instincts.

1. However, societal influences usually determine our choices and actions.
2. For example, individuals tend to stay in the same status as the households they grew up in.
3. The status quo reinforces itself.
4. The reason for this is because the individual’s life chances are often determined and shaped by the environment in which they live.

Social Movements: The Power of the People In a society full of inequality, it is important for individuals to join together and access their interdependent power in the face of oppression. Individuals working as a collective have the capacity to create greater social change.

If individuals can take part in some type of small activism every day, they can create long-term improvements to their society. Collective action provides far greater potential for change rather than scattered groups. I know I may be biased because I teach and learn with these students but I was enthusiastic about what they came up with.

I was especially impressed because the students identified and wrote explanations for these five items in one class period. Overall, I feel as if the list captures some of the most important themes in the sociology curriculum. And I’m not alone in my approval of this list.

About fifteen years ago, there was a of sociology instructors asking them to identify the most important concepts, topics, and skills for the introduction to sociology class and the sociology curriculum. The top five responses for the sociology curriculum were: sociological critical thinking; sociological imagination; how to use and assess research; think like a sociologist; stratification in general.

With the exception of the students’ response, Social Movements: The Power of the People (which, unfortunately, scored far out of the top five for the sociology instructors), there is a strong amount of consistency in these two lists. So what do you think of these two lists? Are the items similar to ones that you would have included? Are these the most important sociological lessons in your estimation? Are there any themes, concepts, or skills that you would include? Discuss this question with your sociological friends and classmates and see what come up with! (Thanks to the following students who participated in this exercise: Christina Acampora, Samantha Bray, Catherine Callan, Shannon Cowgill, Michael Eberman, Shelly Karan, Jillian Lanza, Nicholas Millus, Ryan Schoenau, Jackson Shrout, and Jeaniese Torres.) : The Most Important Sociological Lessons
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What are the three 3 main purposes of sociology in education?

The three functions of the sociology of education are: to understand the role educational systems play in the shape of society as a whole. how education as a social institution affects the individual.
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What are the 3 sociological perspectives and what do they mean?

These three theoretical orientations are: Structural Functionalism, Symbolic Interactionism, and Conflict Perspective. To understand a theoretical orientation in any profession it is critical to understand what is meant by the term theory.
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What are the 5 basic sociological perspectives?

Definitions of key terms for the five basic sociological perspectives – Functionalism, Marxism, Feminism, Social Action Theory and Postmodernism. More details on the perspectives below can be found at the relevant links on my sociological theories page, which has been written to specifically cover the AQA A-level sociology syllabus.
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What is the best sociological perspective?

The most effective sociological perspective is seen to be the functionalist perspective. This is because it explains that education serves different functions in the society like socialization, social integration, social and cultural innovation and also social placement.
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What are sociological perspectives looking for?

Sociologists analyze social phenomena at different levels and from different perspectives. From concrete interpretations to sweeping generalizations of society and social behavior, sociologists study everything from specific events (the micro level of analysis of small social patterns) to the “big picture” (the macro level of analysis of large social patterns).

The pioneering European sociologists, however, also offered a broad conceptualization of the fundamentals of society and its workings. Their views form the basis for today’s theoretical perspectives, or paradigms, which provide sociologists with an orienting framework—a philosophical position—for asking certain kinds of questions about society and its people.

Sociologists today employ three primary theoretical perspectives: the symbolic interactionist perspective, the functionalist perspective, and the conflict perspective. These perspectives offer sociologists theoretical paradigms for explaining how society influences people, and vice versa. The symbolic interactionist perspective The symbolic interactionist perspective, also known as symbolic interactionism, directs sociologists to consider the symbols and details of everyday life, what these symbols mean, and how people interact with each other.

Although symbolic interactionism traces its origins to Max Weber’s assertion that individuals act according to their interpretation of the meaning of their world, the American philosopher George H. Mead (1863–1931) introduced this perspective to American sociology in the 1920s. According to the symbolic interactionist perspective, people attach meanings to symbols, and then they act according to their subjective interpretation of these symbols.

Verbal conversations, in which spoken words serve as the predominant symbols, make this subjective interpretation especially evident. The words have a certain meaning for the “sender,” and, during effective communication, they hopefully have the same meaning for the “receiver.” In other terms, words are not static “things”; they require intention and interpretation.

Conversation is an interaction of symbols between individuals who constantly interpret the world around them. Of course, anything can serve as a symbol as long as it refers to something beyond itself. Written music serves as an example. The black dots and lines become more than mere marks on the page; they refer to notes organized in such a way as to make musical sense.

Thus, symbolic interactionists give serious thought to how people act, and then seek to determine what meanings individuals assign to their own actions and symbols, as well as to those of others. Consider applying symbolic interactionism to the American institution of marriage.

Symbols may include wedding bands, vows of life‐long commitment, a white bridal dress, a wedding cake, a Church ceremony, and flowers and music. American society attaches general meanings to these symbols, but individuals also maintain their own perceptions of what these and other symbols mean. For example, one of the spouses may see their circular wedding rings as symbolizing “never ending love,” while the other may see them as a mere financial expense.

Much faulty communication can result from differences in the perception of the same events and symbols. Critics claim that symbolic interactionism neglects the macro level of social interpretation—the “big picture.” In other words, symbolic interactionists may miss the larger issues of society by focusing too closely on the “trees” (for example, the size of the diamond in the wedding ring) rather than the “forest” (for example, the quality of the marriage).

The perspective also receives criticism for slighting the influence of social forces and institutions on individual interactions. The functionalist perspective According to the functionalist perspective, also called functionalism, each aspect of society is interdependent and contributes to society’s functioning as a whole.

The government, or state, provides education for the children of the family, which in turn pays taxes on which the state depends to keep itself running. That is, the family is dependent upon the school to help children grow up to have good jobs so that they can raise and support their own families.

In the process, the children become law‐abiding, taxpaying citizens, who in turn support the state. If all goes well, the parts of society produce order, stability, and productivity. If all does not go well, the parts of society then must adapt to recapture a new order, stability, and productivity. For example, during a financial recession with its high rates of unemployment and inflation, social programs are trimmed or cut.

Schools offer fewer programs. Families tighten their budgets. And a new social order, stability, and productivity occur. Functionalists believe that society is held together by social consensus, or cohesion, in which members of the society agree upon, and work together to achieve, what is best for society as a whole.

Mechanical solidarity is a form of social cohesion that arises when people in a society maintain similar values and beliefs and engage in similar types of work. Mechanical solidarity most commonly occurs in traditional, simple societies such as those in which everyone herds cattle or farms. Amish society exemplifies mechanical solidarity. In contrast, organic solidarity is a form of social cohesion that arises when the people in a society are interdependent, but hold to varying values and beliefs and engage in varying types of work. Organic solidarity most commonly occurs in industrialized, complex societies such those in large American cities like New York in the 2000s.

The functionalist perspective achieved its greatest popularity among American sociologists in the 1940s and 1950s. While European functionalists originally focused on explaining the inner workings of social order, American functionalists focused on discovering the functions of human behavior.

• Among these American functionalist sociologists is Robert Merton (b.1910), who divides human functions into two types: manifest functions are intentional and obvious, while latent functions are unintentional and not obvious.
• The manifest function of attending a church or synagogue, for instance, is to worship as part of a religious community, but its latent function may be to help members learn to discern personal from institutional values.

With common sense, manifest functions become easily apparent. Yet this is not necessarily the case for latent functions, which often demand a sociological approach to be revealed. A sociological approach in functionalism is the consideration of the relationship between the functions of smaller parts and the functions of the whole.

Functionalism has received criticism for neglecting the negative functions of an event such as divorce. Critics also claim that the perspective justifies the status quo and complacency on the part of society’s members. Functionalism does not encourage people to take an active role in changing their social environment, even when such change may benefit them.

Instead, functionalism sees active social change as undesirable because the various parts of society will compensate naturally for any problems that may arise. The conflict perspective The conflict perspective, which originated primarily out of Karl Marx’s writings on class struggles, presents society in a different light than do the functionalist and symbolic interactionist perspectives.

• While these latter perspectives focus on the positive aspects of society that contribute to its stability, the conflict perspective focuses on the negative, conflicted, and ever‐changing nature of society.
• Unlike functionalists who defend the status quo, avoid social change, and believe people cooperate to effect social order, conflict theorists challenge the status quo, encourage social change (even when this means social revolution), and believe rich and powerful people force social order on the poor and the weak.

Conflict theorists, for example, may interpret an “elite” board of regents raising tuition to pay for esoteric new programs that raise the prestige of a local college as self‐serving rather than as beneficial for students. Whereas American sociologists in the 1940s and 1950s generally ignored the conflict perspective in favor of the functionalist, the tumultuous 1960s saw American sociologists gain considerable interest in conflict theory.

They also expanded Marx’s idea that the key conflict in society was strictly economic. Today, conflict theorists find social conflict between any groups in which the potential for inequality exists: racial, gender, religious, political, economic, and so on. Conflict theorists note that unequal groups usually have conflicting values and agendas, causing them to compete against one another.

This constant competition between groups forms the basis for the ever‐changing nature of society. Critics of the conflict perspective point to its overly negative view of society. The theory ultimately attributes humanitarian efforts, altruism, democracy, civil rights, and other positive aspects of society to capitalistic designs to control the masses, not to inherent interests in preserving society and social order.
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How can you use the sociological perspective in your daily life?

Asking Sociological Questions – Sociologists seek complex answers to what many would consider simple questions. Berger asserted that four key questions allow sociologists to see the connections between everyday life and the overarching social structure and forces that shape it. They are:

What are people doing with each other here?What are their relationships to each other?How are these relationships organized in institutions?What are the collective ideas that move men and institutions?

Berger suggested that asking these questions transforms the familiar into something otherwise unseen, leading to “a transformation of consciousness.” C. Wright Mills called this transformation ” the sociological imagination,” When individuals examine the world this way, they see how their present-day experiences and personal biographies sit within the trajectory of history.
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Why do we need sociological perspective in education?

Learning Objectives –

1. List the major functions of education.
2. Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
3. Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009). Table 16.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these approaches say. Table 16.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical perspective	Major assumptions
Functionalism	Education serves several functions for society. These include (a) socialization, (b) social integration, (c) social placement, and (d) social and cultural innovation. Latent functions include child care, the establishment of peer relationships, and lowering unemployment by keeping high school students out of the full-time labor force.
Conflict theory	Education promotes social inequality through the use of tracking and standardized testing and the impact of its “hidden curriculum.” Schools differ widely in their funding and learning conditions, and this type of inequality leads to learning disparities that reinforce social inequality.
Symbolic interactionism	This perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues. Specific research finds that social interaction in schools affects the development of gender roles and that teachers’ expectations of pupils’ intellectual abilities affect how much pupils learn.

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What are the 3 sociological perspectives on school?

Learning Objectives –

1. List the major functions of education.
2. Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
3. Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009). Table 16.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these approaches say. Table 16.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical perspective	Major assumptions
Functionalism	Education serves several functions for society. These include (a) socialization, (b) social integration, (c) social placement, and (d) social and cultural innovation. Latent functions include child care, the establishment of peer relationships, and lowering unemployment by keeping high school students out of the full-time labor force.
Conflict theory	Education promotes social inequality through the use of tracking and standardized testing and the impact of its “hidden curriculum.” Schools differ widely in their funding and learning conditions, and this type of inequality leads to learning disparities that reinforce social inequality.
Symbolic interactionism	This perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues. Specific research finds that social interaction in schools affects the development of gender roles and that teachers’ expectations of pupils’ intellectual abilities affect how much pupils learn.

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How do you write a sociological perspective?

In a sociological argument, you must: be clear in stating your thesis. form explanations and draw conclusions that are grounded in appropriate evidence (see below). Depending on the type of writing assignment, sometimes this evidence is textual and sometimes this evidence is empirical (observed and collected).
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What are the main elements of sociology of education?

1.3 Sociology of Education: It is concerned with educational aims, methods, institutions, administration and curricula in relation to the economic, political, religious, social and cultural forces of the society in which they function.
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What are the characteristics of sociology of education?

Abstract – Educational sociology focuses attention on the social factors that both cause and are caused by education. It includes the study of factors relating to education, such as gender, social class, race and ethnicity, and rural–urban residence. Educational sociology has developed a range of sociological theories to explain and guide research into the various levels and types of education, and it has also contributed to the development of methodological and statistical techniques.
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What are the three 3 main types of perspectives?

The Digital Matte Painting Handbook Get full access to The Digital Matte Painting Handbook and 60K+ other titles, with free 10-day trial of O’Reilly. There’s also live online events, interactive content, certification prep materials, and more. The Three Types of Perspective The three types of perspective—linear, color, and atmospheric—can be used alone or in combination to establish depth in a picture.

1. Linear perspective requires the most study.
2. The other two are easily learned, and can add enormous depth to any picture, so let’s start with them.
3. Atmospheric Perspective Atmospheric perspective, also known as value perspective, is based on the variation of dark and light values from the foreground to the background.

The darkest and brightest values are almost always closest to the viewer. As objects move away from you toward the horizon, the difference between dark and light values decreases. Objects farthest away from you have the least detail and are often just silhouettes.
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What are the 4 types of sociology?

What Are Society and Culture? – Sociologists study all aspects and levels of society. A society is a group of people whose members interact, reside in a definable area, and share a culture. A culture includes the group’s shared practices, values, beliefs, norms and artifacts.

1. One sociologist might analyze video of people from different societies as they carry on everyday conversations to study the rules of polite conversation from different world cultures.
2. Another sociologist might interview a representative sample of people to see how email and instant messaging have changed the way organizations are run.

Yet another sociologist might study how migration determined the way in which language spread and changed over time. A fourth sociologist might study the history of international agencies like the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund to examine how the globe became divided into a First World and a Third World after the end of the colonial era.

These examples illustrate the ways society and culture can be studied at different levels of analysis, from the detailed study of face-to-face interactions to the examination of large-scale historical processes affecting entire civilizations. It is common to divide these levels of analysis into different gradations based on the scale of interaction involved.

As discussed in later chapters, sociologists break the study of society down into four separate levels of analysis: micro, meso, macro, and global. The basic distinction, however, is between micro-sociology and macro-sociology, The study of cultural rules of politeness in conversation is an example of micro-sociology.

At the micro- level of analysis, the focus is on the social dynamics of intimate, face-to-face interactions. Research is conducted with a specific set of individuals such as conversational partners, family members, work associates, or friendship groups. In the conversation study example, sociologists might try to determine how people from different cultures interpret each other’s behaviour to see how different rules of politeness lead to misunderstandings.

If the same misunderstandings occur consistently in a number of different interactions, the sociologists may be able to propose some generalizations about rules of politeness that would be helpful in reducing tensions in mixed-group dynamics (e.g., during staff meetings or international negotiations).

• Other examples of micro-level research include seeing how informal networks become a key source of support and advancement in formal bureaucracies or how loyalty to criminal gangs is established.
• Macro -sociology focuses on the properties of large-scale, society-wide social interactions: the dynamics of institutions, classes, or whole societies.

The example above of the influence of migration on changing patterns of language usage is a macro-level phenomenon because it refers to structures or processes of social interaction that occur outside or beyond the intimate circle of individual social acquaintances.

These include the economic and other circumstances that lead to migration; the educational, media, and other communication structures that help or hinder the spread of speech patterns; the class, racial, or ethnic divisions that create different slangs or cultures of language use; the relative isolation or integration of different communities within a population; and so on.

Other examples of macro-level research include examining why women are far less likely than men to reach positions of power in society or why fundamentalist Christian religious movements play a more prominent role in American politics than they do in Canadian politics.

• In each case, the site of the analysis shifts away from the nuances and detail of micro-level interpersonal life to the broader, macro-level systematic patterns that structure social change and social cohesion in society.
• The relationship between the micro and the macro remains one of the key problems confronting sociology.

The German sociologist Georg Simmel pointed out that macro-level processes are in fact nothing more than the sum of all the unique interactions between specific individuals at any one time (1908), yet they have properties of their own which would be missed if sociologists only focused on the interactions of specific individuals.

1. Émile Durkheim’s classic study of suicide (1897) is a case in point.
2. While suicide is one of the most personal, individual, and intimate acts imaginable, Durkheim demonstrated that rates of suicide differed between religious communities—Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—in a way that could not be explained by the individual factors involved in each specific case.

The different rates of suicide had to be explained by macro-level variables associated with the different religious beliefs and practices of the faith communities. We will return to this example in more detail later. On the other hand, macro-level phenomena like class structures, institutional organizations, legal systems, gender stereotypes, and urban ways of life provide the shared context for everyday life but do not explain its nuances and micro-variations very well.
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What are the main perspectives in sociology?

Major Sociological Theories – The three major sociological theories that new students learn about are the interactionist perspective, the conflict perspective, and the functionalist perspective. And each has its own distinct way of explaining various aspects of society and the human behavior within it. Taking a moment to compare and contrast sociological theories can provide further context.
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What are the perspectives of education?

5.3 Philosophical Perspective of Education There are four philosophical perspectives currently used in educational settings: essentialism, perennialism, progressivism, and social reconstructionism/critical pedagogy. Unlike the more abstract ontology and axiology, these four perspectives focus primarily on what should be taught and how it should be taught, i.e. the curriculum.
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What are the four perspectives of curriculum?

Four curriculum orientations, intellectual traditionalist, social behaviourist, experientialist and critical reconstructionist, are proposed (Schubert 1986.
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