Language Schools And Classrooms Rle Edu L Sociology Of Education

The role of language is central in education – but there is much debate about the exact relation between children’s language and their educational success. The author provides a clear guide to the basic issues in the debates over language deficit, standard English and classroom language, and in this edition he shows how work in sociolinguistics can give a better understanding of the place of language in education and society.

This is an introduction to interactionist work in education during the 1970s and 80s. The interactionist viewpoint concentrates on how people construct meanings in the ebb and flow of everyday life – what they think and do, how they react to one another – and has in recent years established itself as one of the leading approaches in education. It has generated illuminating research studies which, by being firmly based in the real world of teaching and dealing with the fine-grained details of school life, have helped to break down the barriers between teacher and researcher. This volume presents the results of this valuable work, within a coherent theoretical framework, by focusing on the major interactionist concepts of situation, perspectives, cultures, strategies, negotiation and careers. By bringing them together in this way, the author demonstrates their collective potential for the deeper understanding of school life and the possibilities for sociological theory. His book therefore offers both a summary of and a reflection on achievement in the area of interactionism as it relates to schools.

The acquisition and use of language are just as vital to children’s learning when the newer classroom methods are being employed as ever they were when the more traditional approaches were being used. Child centred learning has increasingly influenced language use and language work in the classroom – mainly in the primary sector, but also in the teaching of English, and indirectly in the teaching of other subject areas including the sciences. Interest in school learning and the special language it requires, compared with the language demands of everyday life, have recently developed in answer to the concern about allocation of the time available within the school timetable for each subject-based learning experience. In this volume the author focuses mainly on the language of subject learning in the secondary schools. She looks critically at some current notions concerned with language and learning and examines their translation into classroom practice. She then develops a picture of the language demands made by other subject areas using collected language material and finally, in the light of this evidence, she attempts to identify the range of language in everyday use in schools, goes on to draw conclusions and then makes recommendations.

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).

This volume examines the ways schools respond to cultural and linguistic diversity. A richness of accumulated experience is portrayed in this study of six Australian secondary schools; partial success, near success or instructive failure as the culture of the school itself was transformed in an attempt to meet the educational needs of its students. Set in the context of a general historical background to the development of multicultural education in Australia, a theoretical framework is developed with which to analyze the move from the traditional curriculum of cultural assimilation to the progressivist curriculum of cultural pluralism. The book analyzes the limitations of the progressivist model of multicultural education and suggests a new ‘post-progressivist’ model, in evidence already in an incipient and as yet tentative ‘self-corrective’ trend in the case-study schools.

The sociology of education has been at the forefront of new developments in sociological theory. This book examines and criticizes a number of these new developments and discusses some empirical work on issues of current concern. One of the few books that integrates radical and critical sociology into the field of education, it deals with the resultant difficulties. The topics covered include cultural deprivation, ideologies in education, classrooms, the teaching profession and the history of women’s education.

In industrialized societies the needs of people living in remote and sparsely populated areas are easily overlooked, whilst in developing countries the needs of the rural population are at once so obvious and so enormous that our practical concern is blunted. In this volume it is clearly demonstrated that the relationship between environment and schooling is no less pertinent in rural areas than urban areas, although most recent attention has been directed towards the latter. Roy Nash seeks to redress the balance and in this wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis he examines the educational needs of rural people both in the declining periphery of urban Europe and in the resource-starved areas of the developing world.