This study interrogates the relationship between social class and academic achievement. It examines the ways in which social class and the new accountability policy influence teachers’ and students’ co-production of knowledge in the elementary school classroom. The study analyzes student and teacher talk in two elementary school reading classrooms in a mid-Atlantic state….
Contents
Chapter I: Reversing the Wastage of Working Class
Educational Potential Through Standards
The accountability movement
Before The New Accountability
The Rise of the accountability movement
Accountability: The First Wave
Restructuring: The Second Wave
Lay Decision-making: The Third Wave and emergence of the new accountability
Federalization of the new accountability: 2002-present
Accountability: Associated Terms
Old accountability and new accountability
Educational and fiscal accountability
External and internal accountability
Process accountability and outcomes accountability
Hierarchical and lateral accountability
Key concepts in the study
New accountability defined
Challenges facing the new accountability
Issues of understandability
Issues of fairness
Issues of focus
Issues of state capacity
Issues of political stability
Theory of change
Accountability and the construction of learning opportunities in classroom
Knowledge production defined
Social class defined
Embedded notions: social class, accountability,
and knowledge production
The Study
Research Purposes
Practical Purpose
Rationale
Research Question
Organization of Dissertation
Chapter II: Explication of the Analytical Framework and Assessment of the Related Literature
Social and cultural capital theory frameworks
The long arm of the job shapes parents’ management of children’s lives
Theory of Symbolic Control
Language as a model system
Boundary: Foundational construct
Strong/closed and weak/open boundaries
Frames: Strong/closed and weak/open boundaries in the teaching
message system
Theory of codes
Models of pedagogic practice
Visible Pedagogies
Invisible pedagogies
The rules
Hierarchical rules
Pacing and selection rules
Criterial rules
Explicit and implicit rules
Rules of hierarchy: Explicit and implicit
Rules of sequencing and pacing: Strong and weak
Criterial rules: Explicit and diffuse
The theory of educational stratification
Visible pedagogies
Differential access to the underlying code
Falling behind
Lexical and syntactical codes
Development of early reading
Sites of learning
Intersection of social class, race, and gender
Invisible Pedagogies
Remediation
Teachers and policy reform
Basil Bernstein: Contradictions, Controversy, Appreciation
Chapter III: Case Study Research Design and Discourse Analysis
Research Traditions
Study design: Collective case study
Data collection
Archival analysis
Allendale County
Sunnyside Elementary School MSA 2004
Fairweather Elementary School MSA 2004
Sunnyside Elementary School: Family-school relations
Fairweather Elementary School: Family-school relations
Classroom observation
Observation Guide
Classroom artifacts
Dataset for classrooms
Fairweather Elementary Schools
Negotiating Access
Limitations
Data analysis
Organization of data
Discourse Analytic Procedures
Coding
Single-Case Analysis
Analysis of Boundary-Related Codes
Emergent propositions that answer “how” and “why” questions
Cross-Case Analysis
Lines of evidence
Validity
Chapter IV: Invisible Practice Within A Visible Practice and A Pure Visible Practice
Sunnyside Elementary School
Implementation of MSA
Visible Pedagogic Practice
Hierarchy
Teacher easily identified: central authority
Power Undisguised: Power unmasked
Rules of Social Order, Conduct, and Rewards
Homogenous Grouping
Summary: Hierarchical rules
Sequencing And Pacing
Organized temporally: Time, a scarce resource
Vary by age: Content that is increasingly abstract
Progression Is Public
Rituals of Transition
Summary: Sequencing and pacing rules
Criterial Rules
Focus on Product/Performance
Read For What Is Lacking
Learning is private, individual, and competitive
Difference within Students
Summary: Criterial rules
Social class assumptions
Access to the code
Middle class advantage: Keeping up with the pacing rules
Ability to read
Sequencing and pacing rules based on reading
Middle class advantage: Meeting rules, organizing discourse
Middle class advantage: Exploring new realities
Two sites of acquisition
Knowledge of vocabulary and analogies under visible pedagogy
Academic knowledge subject to unequal distribution
through home and school
Invisible pedagogy
Hierarchical Rules
Sequencing
Criterial rules
Summary
Invisible pedagogies
Fairweather Elementary School
Connection between enacted and planned curricula
Model of pedagogic practice
Hierarchy
Teacher easily identified
Power Undisguised
Rules of Social Order, Conduct, and Reward
Sequencing And Pacing Rules
Progression is public
Organized temporally
Rituals of transition
Criterial Rules
Focus on product/performance
Read for what is lacking
Learning is private, individual, and competitive
Social assumptions of visible practice
Differentiated access to the code
Fall behind on pacing rules
Ability to read
Failure to organize own discourse
Possibility of organizing own discourse
Two sites of acquisition
Academic knowledge
Single exposure: Reliance on school for educational knowledge
Pacing: Lexical text
Summary
Chapter V: Curriculum As Trojan Horse
New accountability promotes visibility
Effects of the new accountability: Standardization
Teachers’ beliefs
Organizational factors
Efforts to engage parents in curriculum
Teaching styles
Effects of social class: Differentiation
Local knowledge of student context
Social class assumptions of pedagogic practice
Differential access to the underlying code
Sequencing rules
Pacing rules
Ability to read
Sequencing and pacing rules based on reading
Middle class advantage: Meeting rules, organizing discourse
Middle class advantage: Exploring new realities
Two sites of acquisition
Knowledge of vocabulary and analogies under visible pedagogy
Academic knowledge subject to unequal distribution through
home and school
Single exposure: Reliance on school for educational knowledge
Invisible pedagogies
Different experiences of classrooms
Discussion: Theory goals
Model
Discourse analysis
Policy analysis
Political analysis
Testing
Dialectics
Theory of social class
Education and cultural reproduction
Production and reproduction
Implications for practice
Teacher knowledge
Accountability
Teacher practice
Language of critique and language of possibility
Practice: Language and structures
Teachers’ classroom practice
Policy
References
Author: Aaron, Philbert
Source: University of Maryland
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