Discuss the Theories Concerning & Childhood Education (Coursework Sample)

Theory and Childhood Education
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Section 1:
Teaching is actually a balancing act between knowledge and performance. The concept of a good teacher includes the ability to connect with students, to encourage inquiry and to project a caring attitude while maintaining discipline. Communication pedagogy being a transactional process in which educators and learners create a joint communication climate which should alternate from moment to moment as the conversation unfolds and the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors of both parties influence each other in some way.
According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), the education systems of industrialized societies function in such a way as to legitimate class inequalities. Success in the education system is facilitated by the possession of cultural capital and of higher class habitus.
Bourdieu affirms that, since the education system presupposes the possession of cultural capital, which few students in fact possess, there is a great deal of inefficiency in pedagogic transmission. This is because students simply do not understand what their teachers are trying to get across. For Bourdieu, this is particularly apparent in the universities, where students, afraid of revealing the extent of their illiteracy.
Heller, M (2005) came up with the term parallel monolingualism, in which "each variety must conform to certain prescriptive norms" (Heller, 1999, p.271). Heller argued that students learn to become bilingual in particular ways (and therefore not others) and that these constructions of bilingualism advantage particular groups of students. She also displays language as playing a central role in the globalized new economy
Further, C. (2008) used the term "separate bilingualism" to describe language learning classroom contexts in complementary schools where teachers insist on the use of the target language only.
Section 2
Marxist feminists advocate that women's oppression is tied primarily to the operations of the capitalist system. This perspective upholds that women's oppression and inequality in society are primarily linked to their economic dependence on men as a result of their unpaid role in the home, as well as their lack of access to well-paid, full-time employment in the workforce. Thus, the family is generally viewed as an oppressive institution for women. Equality for women, according to Marxist feminists, will only be achieved through the elimination of capitalism.
However, Socialist feminists argue that the lives of women in non-capitalist systems are not substantially different or transformed from those under capitalism; that is, they are still oppressed by patriarchy. Thus, socialist feminists uphold that women's liberation must not be analyzed solely in terms of capitalism, but must include an analysis of patriarchy, a system of male dominance and power, and how both systems simultaneously oppress women. The patriarchal nuclear family is considered central to the perpetuation of gender and class inequalities.
Section 3 & Section 4
Around the world, discourses of childhood and childhood innocence have been successfully employed to foster moral panic for political gains by social and moral conservatives. Moral panic operates to maintain the social order in societies and, in the context of childhood; it has especially been mobilized to perpetuate the control of heternormative narratives. Started through media and political discourses, moral panic focused on stranger danger reinforces myths and stereotypes about children's public vulnerabilities, often eclipsing children's private vulnerabilities in the privileged white middle-class nuclear family. Discourses of childhood innocence and protection, which have largely rendered children's sexual subjectivities invisible, have often been the rationale for denying children access to relevant and important knowledge about sexuality and relationships.
As a result, children’s daily lives are subjected to strict surveillance and regulation as a result of the heightened concern, or moral panic, around their potential vulnerability to sexual environments.
However, moral panic social reaction is misplaced or displaced towards a target that is not the ‘real’ problem. As has been evident, moral panic has used as a political strategy by individuals and governments to manipulate social reaction in favour of their own conservative political agendas. Media angers redirect social reaction away from critical issues that warrant public debate, such as human rights and citizenship, towards manufactured ‘folk devils’ that become the focus of public scaremongering.
Section 5:
Curriculum theory is the theory of the development and enactment of curriculum. Within the broad field of curriculum studies, it is both a historical analysis of curriculum and a way of viewing current educational curriculum and policy decisions. One of the common criticisms of curriculum of curriculum theory is that it lays more emphasis on mental discipline and education.
There are four curriculum groups also known as humanist;
Social meliorism Social Meliorists believe that education is a tool to reform society and create change of the better. This socialization goal was based on the power of the individual's intelligence, and the ability to improve on intelligence through education. An individual’s future was not predetermined by gender, race, socio-economic status, heredity or any other factors. "The corruption and vice in the cities, the inequalities of race and gender, and the abuse of privilege and power could all be addressed by a curriculum that focused directly on those very issues, thereby raising a new generation equipped to deal effectively with those abuses”. Some critics view this group as having goals that are difficult to measure and are a product that has slow results.
John Dewey's curriculum theory John Dewey felt that the curriculum should ultimately produce students who would be able to deal effectively with the modern world. Therefore, curriculum should not be presented as finished abstractions, but should include the child’s preconceptions and should incorporate how the child views his or her own world. Dewey uses four instincts, or impulses, to describe how to characterize children’s behavior. The four instincts according to Dewey are social, constructive, expressive, and artistic. Curriculum should build an orderly sense of the world where the child lives.
Social efficiency educators "Social efficiency educators" such as theorists Ross, Bobbitt, Gilbreth, Taylor, and Thorndike were aiming to design a curriculum that would optimize the "social utility" of each individual in a society. By using education as an efficiency tool, these theorists believed that society could be controlled. Students would be scientifically evaluated (such as IQ tests), and educated towards their predicted role in society. This involved the introduction of vocational and junior high schools to address the curriculum designed around specific life activities that correlate with each student’s societal future. The Critics believe this model has too much emphasis on testing and separating students based on the results of that testing.
Developmentalism Developmentalists focus attention to the development of children's emotional and behavioral qualities. One part of this view is using the characteristics of children and youth as the source of the curriculum. Some critics claim this model is at the expense of other relevant factors.
Section 6
Another theory of childhood education is the Connectivism theory, a hypothesis of learning which emphasizes the role of social and cultural context. Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.
Connectivism is built on the following principles;
* Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
* Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
* Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
* Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
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