Education and Methods - Glossary

Social solidarity: a sense of belonging, commitment and loyalty to a social group.

Value consensus: functionalist term referring to shared/agreed vales (e.g. punctuality in school)

Meritocracy: a society in which peoples positions for example their jobs are determined on merit.

Capitalism:   a society in which people are employed for wage and businesses are set up with the aim of making profit.

Hidden curriculum: the hidden, informal messages and lessons outside the formal curriculum that comes from the way schooling is organized.

Anti-school subculture: subculture opposed to the dominant values of school.

social policy: the actions, plans and programmes of government bodies and agencies that aim to deal with a problem or achieve a goal.

Marketisation: introducing competition into education along with formula funding so that educational institutions start to act like a business.

Tri-partite system: the system of secondary state education set up in Britain in 1944 in which children went to grammar, secondary modern and technical schools.

11+: an exam taken at the start of school to measure the ability of the student.

Grammar schools: secondary schools in which admission is granted on the basis of ability.

Secondary modern: schools attended by students who had failed to get into selective grammar schools. focus on vocational rather than academic education.

Comprehensive: a type of school attended by all children regardless of ability or aptitude.

Curriculum 2000: the formal content of what is taught in schools and other educational institutions.

New vocationalism: the idea that education should be primarily about meeting the needs of the economy, especially by equipping young people with the skills needed to prepare them for work.

Cultural deprivation: lacking in the attitudes, values, knowledge, linguistic ability or lifestyles necessary to succeed in the education system.

Material deprivation: factors to do with money and other resources, which might effect performances in education.

Cultural capital: non-material assets such as classical knowledge and lifestyle, which are valued by society and can be helpful in achieving educational success.

Elaborated code: a type of speech where the meanings are filled in and made explicit, sentences tend to be longer and more complex.

Restricted code: a type of shorthand speech where meanings are not made fully explicit, it uses short simple and often unfinished sentences.

Labelling: the qualities or the identity conferred on a person or social group through the expressed opinion of others.

Self-fulfilling prophecy: something that occurs because somebody has predicted that it will happen.

Institutional racism: the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and proffessional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin.

Ethnocentric curriculum: seeing or judging things in a biased way from the viewpoint of one particular culture (e.g. national curriculum has been described as ethnocentric since it tends to value white culture)

Swann report: found that english language was not a major cause of underachievement.

Correspondance principle: The tendency of schools to promote the values expected of individuals in each social class and to prepare students for the types of jobs typically held by members of their class.

Immediate gratification: "living for the day", is all about setting short term aims and wanting the rewards straight away rather than waiting to receive them in the future. This is common with the working classes. Upper classes are taught to defer gratification which means setting long term goals and receiving the benefits at a later date.