Sociology of Education: Teachers, Students, Schools

Posted on May 13, 2025 in Psychology and Sociology

Faculty: Teachers’ Role and Status

Origin and status of teachers:

  • Men: Class path via media.
  • Women: Platform to remain in the class of origin.

In the teachings of the 21st century: upper-middle class social position. Proletarianization. Position more prestigious than before.

Reasons for Choosing Teaching

  • Contact with young people
  • Job tenure
  • Salary

Rewards

  • Intrinsic (subjective, the most privileged)
  • Extrinsic (objective, tend to be denied and distributed equally)
  • Subordinated: holidays (have a deterrent function to the idea of abandonment)

Students: Inequalities and Schooling

The most influential educational inequalities: class, gender, and ethnicity.

Types of Inequalities

  • Social inequalities: Social domination (dominant, dominated), late entry.
  • Economic inequalities: Constant. Mainly concerned with secondary and university levels, despite the political unifying education curriculum (scholarships).

Teacher Perceptions and School Focus

  • Professors have “cognitive frames,” prejudices about working-class students are important.
  • Schools for discipline, professional exams/tests.
  • Schools enhance creativity, thinking.

Gender Inequalities in Education

Inequalities by sex. 1970: children separated. Must have an egalitarian educational model for both. Coeducation skills for boys/girls, mixed coeducation. 18th century secularism, 19th century war. After the civil war, prohibited separation, reunited with LOGSE.

Female students enter the world of work with better performance, repeat less, enroll more, and drop out less than men.

Family Strategies and Performance

Family strategies favoring performance (tasks). Problems include: lack of homes for immigrants, traditional gender roles (women as housewives).

Inequalities by Ethnic Origin

Inequalities by ethnic origin: Faculty (two ethnic cultures), School (one). Teachers. Image of immigrants projected in textbooks.

Challenges for the Gypsy Population

  • Prejudice
  • Contagion effect
  • Overburdened teachers
  • Different culture
  • Giving up their own identity
  • Rejected by their families

Sociology of Schools

Areas of Study

  1. Historical and social context.
  2. Climate.
  3. Organization.

Historical Context of Schools

  1. Emergence of Modern States (15th, 17th centuries): Social structure diversified into 3 estates: Aristocracy/Nobility (prince), Bourgeoisie (Collegiate), Common people (rogue). Education differed according to their expectations.
  2. Enlightenment and Liberal States (19th century): Bourgeoisie, illustration, science, and political power/rights. Two workers’ educational movements. Educational models: Jesuit Colleges, Colleges for the poor.
  3. Social Democratic States (late 19th century): Workers’ movements gaining strength = extension of democratic participation. Education rights as a right, educational facilities for all, universal, free.

Educational Laws: Three Stages

  1. Universal provision of free compulsory education.
  2. Education to eliminate social inequalities.
  3. Reform of methods and content (programs and pedagogies like LODE, LOGSE, LOCE, LOE/LOMCE).

Implications of Reform

Difficulty for new educational systems to accommodate Europe’s social, cultural, and economic changes. Increased student enrollment. University growth, with significant female participation.

School Climate and Pedagogical Conditions

Three factors intervene:

  1. School Culture: Cultural and social elements, school architecture, ceremonies, core values, ideology.
  2. Morphology of Actors: Teachers, students.
  3. Social Environment: District, family size, parental culture.