The Role of Social Class and Social Status in Teaching and Learning

The Role of Social Class and Social Status in Teaching and Learning Chapter 13

Differences between Rural and Urban Poverty • Both are equally devastating, but urban poverty usually gets more attention. • Residents of rural areas are often the keepers of important American history and traditions. • Rural residents are often more isolated than their urban cousins. • This often results in lack of access to health care and jobs that pay well.

Pedagogies: Old and New • It’s important not to “dumb down” the curriculum, but the same old pedagogical methods are often self-defeating. • Pedagogical methods should not assume a deficit model, but should take into account the culture of the people. • Teaching should remain respectful, exciting, engaging, and challenging.

Roles: Old and New • Teachers also come from varied social class backgrounds and often bring their class-based knowledge, attitudes, and values with them into the profession just as students do. • Class attitudes toward teaching differ: • Middle-class teachers tend to think about being sure to do a good job; • Lower-class teachers often are more concerned with “conscientiously putting in required hours.”

When teachers—regardless of their own class backgrounds—are consciously prepared to be aware of, to think, and act in multicultural ways, they are more likely to be effective in teaching students from diverse backgrounds, including students from various social class backgrounds. cont.

Place of Content Knowledge: Old and New • Studies reveal a differentiation of actual content by social class along several dimensions: • Emphasis on “advanced” versus “basic” skills • Emphasis on conceptual understanding • Emphasis on range and variety of academic tasks • Degree of repetition • Extent of topic coverage • Attention to “practical” or vocational knowledge cont.

By the time students reach high school, placement in various “tracks,” (e.g., college-bound, vocational, commercial, etc.) can be found to be fundamentally related to social class patterns. • As a result, students from different social classes quite often leave school with very different educations.

Assessment: Old and New • Assessments for wide social class variation should measure student growth across time. • Assessments themselves should be varied in order to effectively analyze a number of hard-to-get-at skills, such as: • The ability to identify, analyze, plan, and allocate resources • The ability to work effectively with others • The ability to understand complex interrelationships • The ability to work with a variety of technologies

Perspectives on Social Class and Social Status • Most Americans believe they live in a classless, egalitarian society. • Upward mobility is clearly possible through hard work. • Nevertheless, we know there are variations in economic standards of living, in status of different occupations, and in expectations or life chances among American citizens.

Definitions of Social Class • Social class is one kind of stratification system that “layers” the population in terms of worth or value. • “Assignment” to one social class or another is often done by outside observers of the population. cont.

Traditional social class markers include: • Family income • Prestige of one’s father’s occupation • Prestige of the neighborhood one lives in • The power one has to achieve one’s ends in times of conflict • The level of schooling achieved by the family’s head cont.

For purposes of analysis, American society can be divided into five social classes: • A very small upper class or social elite, consisting of people who have generally inherited social privilege from others • A somewhat larger upper middle class—professionals, corporate managers, or leading scientists • A large middle class—white-collar workers, small business owners, teachers, social workers, nurses, sales, clerical workers, bank tellers, etc. cont.

A somewhat smaller working class—blue-collar workers, employees in low-paid service occupations, temporary employees, and those whose income level means relatively constant struggle • A lower class—sometimes called the working poor—those who work at low-paying jobs, as well as those who may not work at all; the latter are sometimes called the underclass

Social Class and Child-Rearing Practices • People who share similar socioeconomic status also often share similar cultural knowledge, attitudes, and values. • Parents from different class backgrounds emphasize different values when raising their children. • Social class does not necessarily determine success in school (or in life); but, in general, there needs to be some other influence that strengthens a child’s will to succeed and expectation of success.

Definitions of Social Status • Social status refers to a hierarchical position in society (or one’s social group) determined not so much by one’s wealth (or lack of it), but by the prestige, social esteem, and/or honor accorded with one within one’s own social milieu. • One’s status may differ from the viewpoints of different observers; star athletes, for example, may be accorded different status by students and teachers.

The Importance of Teacher Expectations • Teacher expectation refers to the attributions that teachers make about the future behavior or academic achievement of their students, based on what they presently know about them. • When a teacher expects a student to do poorly (or well), and the student does in fact live up to that expectation, it is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Culturally Responsive Teacher • For culturally responsive teachers, any aspect of a student’s social context—e.g. class, race, ethnicity, gender, language, etc.—is important to note and take into consideration when planning instruction as well as assessment.

Characteristics of a Culturally Responsive Teacher • Culturally Responsive Teachers: • understand how their learners construct knowledge; • learn about their students’ lives; • are socioculturally conscious; • hold affirming views about diversity; • use appropriate instructional strategies; and • are advocates for all students.

Social Class and School Funding • A number of court cases have been filed disputing the property tax as an equitable way of funding schools. • Serrano v. Priest (1971, 1976)—California Supreme Court found that dependence on property tax violated equal protection principles in the state constitution. • San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973)—U.S. Supreme Court found that dependence on property tax did not violate the 14th Amendment.

Rose v. Council for Better Education (1989)—Kentucky • The Kentucky Supreme Court found that the system of school financing provided for by the General Assembly is inadequate; it places too much emphasis on local school board resources, and results in inadequacies, inequities and inequalities throughout the state as to result in an inefficient system of common school education in violation of Sections 1, 3, and 183 of the Kentucky Constitution and the equal protection clause and the due process law clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Rationale for Broadened Definitions of Assessment • Since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, the debate about how well our children are learning has become both ubiquitous and emotional. • This is the case despite the fact that the assessment of student progress has always been of central importance to educators.

Accountability and the Educational Standards Movement • Emerged as a result of a large number of studies of schooling in the 1980s • President George H. W. Bush convened a national governors conference in 1989. • This group produced a document they called Goals 2000, with suggestions for improving America’s schools in eight specific areas. cont.

The National Council on Education Standards and Testing, convened by Congress in 1992, concluded that creating national standards and assessments was both feasible and highly desirable. • In1994, the goals from Goals 2000 were written into legislation, the Educate America Act, which awarded states additional money for education and gave them considerable flexibility in how the money could be spent. cont.

The No Child Left Behind Act (2001) • The most far-reaching, controversial, and potentially expensive effort to reform public education, which includes: • Accountability provisions, mainly accomplished through repeated testing of all students, especially in reading and math • Uniform standards in all major content areas such that accountability measures can be effective cont.

The No Child Left Behind Act (2001) • Highly Qualified Teachers • Must hold a bachelor’s degree • Be certified or licensed by their states on the basis of rigorous tests in subject matter pedagogy • Veteran teachers or teachers who have been teaching prior to when the mandate went into effect (the 2005-2009 school year) must demonstrate, in ways determined by each state, their competence in the subjects they teach. cont.

The No Child Left Behind Act (2001) • Annual Yearly Progress • By 2014, all American students will be proficient in all subjects. • Defined by each state in such a way that states can measure progressive achievements of schools and districts over time, and then report results on an annual basis to school districts and the public. • Schools that do not meet AYP for 95% of their students or for 95% of students in specified sub-groups for two consecutive years begin receiving a series of increasingly severe sanctions.

Central to the whole idea were several beliefs: • States and local districts should set high standards for achievement. • Testing should be conducted to see how well students were achieving. • Schools, teachers, and students should be held accountable for results.

The Case forStandardized Testing • Based on the belief that American students are not competing well with students from other industrialized nations. • One argument for why this is so is that American schools are too child-centered and have too much variety in curriculum. • A second argument is that poor, immigrant, and minority students are not being served well by American schools; testing is perceived as a means to improve that service. cont.

The appeal of objective and standardized tests is strong among business and government leaders. • The belief in standardized tests rests on a conviction that they actually measure learning. • Requirements for the reporting of standardized test scores now include reporting scores by race and income. • Reports are also required to indicate gaps between, and progress of, various subgroups.

The Case againstStandardized Testing • Concerned educators and some well-informed politicians question the benefits of standardized tests based on: • A gap between the stated purpose of a test and what it actually measures • A possibility of cultural bias in the questions on a given test • Questionable uses of standardized tests • The narrow approach and application of tests cont.

Critics also argue that standardized tests cannot measure complex thinking skills; that they often neglect the context in which knowledge and skills can be used; and that they cannot measure the ability to connect one idea to another. • Two results are common: • Students often don’t recognize out-of-context questions, and • Students’ thinking skills, ability to solve problems, and ability to synthesize are not well tested.

The Case for Multiple Forms of Assessment • Three ideas are central to the argument for multiple forms of assessment: • Students must leave schools with more than low-level basic knowledge. • Young people must learn the skills of cooperation and collaboration for life in an interdependent world. • Greater accuracy in assessment across cultural groups must be achieved. cont.

Proponents argue that teachers are most often the best judges of student performance. • Teachers, however, must develop the skills necessary to make informed and accurate judgments in a variety of contexts and across a variety of groups. • Comprehensive approaches and methods of assessment must be developed.

Perspectives on Multiple Forms of Assessment: Demand vs. Support • Alfie Kohn suggests that certain classroom orientations distinguish between what we expect (demand) students to do, and what we as educators can do to help (support) student learning. cont.

In the demand model: • Students are perceived as workers who are obliged to do a better job. • Students who do not succeed are said to have chosen not to study or not to have earned a given grade. • Responsibility is removed from the teacher and attention is deflected away from the curriculum and the context in which learning is supposed to occur.

In the support model: • The assumption is that students are active contributors to the learning process. • Teachers are responsible for guiding and stimulating students’ natural curiosity and desire to learn. • Teaching and learning become child- or student-centered. • The goal is to help students build on their desire to make sense of and become competent in their world.

Ethical Issues • The school, as a middle-class institution, has a responsibility to provide access to middle-class knowledge, attitudes, and values to all children; when it fails to do so, it fails part of its responsibility in a democracy. • Poverty rates are measurably higher among minority populations, especially African American and Latino. cont.

Efforts to improve public schooling make the need to provide affordable higher education also imperative. • Social class differences require that attention be paid to subtle and often relatively invisible beliefs and values.

Ethical Issues • All assessment is inherently subjective, which may not be an entirely bad thing. • When subjectivity becomes biased, however, ethical issues emerge. • Labeling of children for special education services, for example, may be necessary but can also result in overrepresentation of ethnic and language minority students. • Standardized testing often results in the assignment of inaccurate labels. cont.

Attributions made on the basis of any kind of assessment may be flawed by prejudice, just like attributions made in order to categorize anyone because of culture, or language, or disability. • Any assessment should take into consideration the fact that children develop at different rates. • Assessments made too quickly on insufficient data can also be inaccurate, misleading, and damaging.

Something to Think About Because the United States professes to be a fairly classless society doesn’t make it so; indeed, the combination of ethnicity and social class may, in the end, give us our most perplexing and important problems. In many ways, an individual’s cultural experiences (defined broadly) determine the kinds of abilities that are important and are therefore learned as well as the context and strategies in which they are expressed.

The Role of Social Class and Social Status in Teaching and Learning