Essays
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Curriculum as a Site of Political and Cultural Conflict - Rojas, Fabio
Schools are both political and academic institutions. This essay explains the different ways that schools generate conflict because people dispute the content of the school curriculum. This essay begins by noting that schools require the approval of political elites and the public. Without such support, schools can't operate. Also, schools lend legitimacy to particular ideas, which means that people will fight over the content of classroom instruction. The essay then discusses how social movements target schools and the factors contribute to successful curricular challenges in schools. -
Does the Winner Take it All? Increasing Inequality in Scientific Authorship - Rauhut, Heiko
Scientific authorship has become a hot topic in the social sciences. We present three avenues addressing this topic from different perspectives to illustrate in which direction research on inequalities in the context of scientific authorship and academic publications may move. We draw on data from the Web of Science focusing on the field of sociology. We demonstrate that (i) the alphabetical order of co‐authors' names sends out an ambiguous signal about the actual contributions of each team member, (ii) attention is increasingly paid to a few contributions that are widely cited, and (iii) well‐connected authors tend to work together. In short, this essay suggests a rise in authorship inequalities regarding the attention authors and their articles receive. Sociology and related social sciences are arguably developing into academic winner‐take‐all markets. -
Early Childhood Education and Care Services and Child Development: Economic Perspectives for Universal Approaches - Spiess, C. Katharina
This essay analyses universal early childhood education and care (ECEC) services from an economic perspective focusing on universal ECEC approaches. First, it examines the effectiveness of ECEC expansions, reviewing research using quasi‐experimental approaches. It then discusses the possible mechanisms underlying the measured effects. These are related to both direct effects from ECEC services on children and indirect ones occurring via maternal employment and well‐being. When ECEC‐positive effects are detected, they mostly pertain to children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This raises the question as to whether this group of children is reached by universal ECEC services. The second part of the essay focuses on this issue, describing differences in ECEC attendance by socioeconomic background, distinguishing between different age groups and different aspects of ECEC attendance. The challenges for future research are summarized at the end. -
Economics of Early Education - Steven Barnett, W.
Economic research has established that public investments in early childhood programs providing education can yield high rates of return. A substantial portion of these returns are spillover effects that benefit society generally but not the child and family creating a classic instance of market failure. Benefits include improvements in school progress and achievement, health and health behaviors, social behavior, and employment and earnings for children and improvements in maternal employment and career paths. The weight of the evidence indicates that disadvantaged children benefit more than others. While programs can produce benefits from increased maternal employment (child care function) as well as from improved child development (education function), child development benefits look to be the larger part of the potential gain. Studies of large‐scale public policies and programs find much smaller benefits indicating that there may be substantial government failure in putting this knowledge into practice. One point that is immediately obvious is that public programs often fail to replicate the successful programs from research because government funds them inadequately. However, this is not the only problem as the costs and benefits of programs depend on the details of policy and program design and implementation. These details are not all well understood. Recent research has provided some insights, but has by no means answered all the key questions definitively. Key issues for further research include the advantages and disadvantages of means‐tested v. universal programs, and the nature and size of investments that are most productive at each age. -
Education in an Open Informational World - Scardamalia, Marlene
Education now functions in an open informational world in which there are essentially no boundaries constraining the information that may be brought to bear on any topic, question, or activity. Changes in the form and connectedness of information are giving rise to new issues concerning coherence, sustained work with ideas, and complexity. In place of the extended text of a well‐crafted book, with its carefully developed line of thought, information on the web is frequently presented as hypertext—relatively small packets of information complexly interlinked. It is now up to the reader to construct a connecting line of thought. The ability to produce coherent knowledge out of such fragmentary information now has a name: transliteracy. Transliteracy requires not only skill in using new information media but ability to carry on sustained integrative work with ideas—an ability traditionally the mark of a skilled teacher but now increasingly the shared capacity of a knowledge‐building community. Whereas traditionally the skilled teacher has smoothed the way to learning by simplifying complex content and problems, functioning in the open informational world requires that learners be able and willing to work with complexity and with problems that have not been structured for them. A current trend is to bring these requirements together in a focus on the “big ideas” of the disciplines. A number of “constructivist” educational approaches engage students in creative knowledge work and problem solving but neglect the sine qua non of contemporary knowledge building: students taking collective responsibility for idea development and improvement. -
Educational Testing: Measuring and Remedying Achievement Gaps - Lee, Jaekyung
Achievement gaps, as measured by standardized tests, are inextricably related to educational goals, standards, norms, and benchmarks for student learning outcomes. I revisit conventional approaches to educational testing to measure achievement gaps—norm‐referenced, criterion‐referenced, and potential‐referenced tests. I explore and discuss a paradigm shift from “passive” tests to “responsive” tests that promotes the diagnosis and remediation of achievement gaps. Particularly, I propose an environment‐referenced approach to testing with the specification of desired learning opportunities and environment conditions that enable students to meet upgraded achievement norms, standards, and benchmarks. -
Evaluating and Rewarding Teachers - Hart, Cassandra
Policymakers and researchers alike debate the optimal structure of teacher evaluation and compensation systems. This article reviews research in both fields, with a concentration on one increasingly policy‐relevant topic in each domain. Within the evaluation domain, particular attention is given to value‐added measures, which are increasingly being used to incorporate information about student test performance into teacher evaluations. While these measures allow evaluators to make quantitative estimates of teachers' contributions to student learning, critics argue that the measures suffer from a number of problems, including lack of stability, bias, and misattribution of teacher contributions. Within the realm of compensation, I devote particular attention to recent efforts to implement merit pay schemes, which aim to reward teachers, or teams of teachers, that are especially successful at boosting student achievement. Given that states and districts are increasingly requiring the use of value‐added measures in evaluations and experimenting with merit pay plans, both areas are ripe for future research into the benefits and costs of these policies. Suggestions for future directions for research in both fields are offered. -
Higher Education and the Exponential Rise of Science: Competition and Collaboration - Powell, Justin J.W.
How we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges of our age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well‐being. Interdependent, the institutions of education and science have dramatically expanded. Today, scientists in nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores of knowledge, with research universities the driving force behind unexpected pure exponential growth in scientific production. Competition—regional, national, organizational, and individual—has become more potent—with performance measures, comparative indicators, and formal evaluations continuously generated and used in decision‐making. Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of discovery and produces the most influential science. Competition and collaboration at the nexus of higher education and science demand enhanced attention as they shape the future of scientific innovation and production, with its understudied yet increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and societies. -
Higher Education: A Field in Ferment - Scott, W. Richard
Higher education in the United States is in the throes of change as existing institutions are being challenged and new forms and modes of educational delivery are appearing. To understand and examine these changes, three versions of the “organization field” perspectives are employed. The first emphasizes the forces that have created and perpetuated the existing configuration of colleges and universities. The second stresses the ways in which colleges compete for scarce resources and engage in strategic behavior to survive and gain advantage in a highly competitive and contested arena. And the third focuses attention on consumers (students) rather than providers (colleges), noting alternatives that are emerging to offer training and education outside of the conventional providers. In combination, these perspectives identify varying players and processes that collectively are shaping the future of higher education. -
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes - van de Werfhorst, Herman G.
In the field of stratification sociology, one of the most important developments of the past two decades has been an improved understanding of cross‐national variations with regard to the role of education in society. The structure of educational systems differs in important respects between countries, affecting patterns of inequality. The central issue that will be addressed in this essay is to what extent educational institutional characteristics are related to the level of inequality of educational opportunity (IEO) in a country. IEO refers to the association between background variables, most notably social class origin and race/ethnicity, and schooling outcomes of children. These outcomes include the highest attained educational level, school continuation decisions during the educational career, and student test scores. Institutional characteristics that are discussed include early tracking, forms of standardization, the vocational orientation, and private schooling. -
Rationalization of Higher Education - Cottom, Tressie McMillan
Since roughly 1980, the rationalization of higher education has been escalating. That is, means‐end schema and bureaucratic organization have become ever more dominant as the authority over academic matters has been shifting from the professoriate to managers who in the mid‐twentieth century had been mainly responsible for economic affairs and “making things run.” At many research universities today, the administrative sector has grown so large that the budget devoted to administrative salaries and benefits exceeds the monies reserved for faculty. -
Returns to Education in Different Labor Market Contexts - SchöEmann, Klaus
Labor market contexts shape the returns to education to a great deal. Beyond the known positive effects of higher education to yield higher returns to education, there is ample evidence that supports the view that labor market institutions shape the returns as well as cohort and period effects. Additional returns to education consist in faster career progression and less frequent early retirement for higher educated employees. Part of the positive returns is the close link of higher education and continuous participation in further education and training, which tends to widen the differences between high investors in education and persons with few qualifications. Occupational and industry sector contexts largely shape such differential learning and work trajectories. Temporary high demand for specific professions such as engineers, medical doctors, or care personnel create cycles of exceptionally high returns to special fields of education, but as soon as the wider economic, demographic, or institutional factors vanish, returns shrink again. Context specific skill mismatches allow above average returns for some professions, whereas they can make fields of education also obsolete. Nonmonetary returns to education such as increases in happiness, subjective well‐being, job security, or health have gained more attention in recent work. Differential returns due to labor market contexts encourage labor market agents to switch between contexts to increase returns. Job mobility, further training, and migration appear to be common strategies to ensure above average monetary and nonmonetary returns to education. -
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course - Pallas, Aaron M.
The modern life course is characterized by three major trends: (i) schooling has increased worldwide and penetrates virtually all phases of life; (ii) the globalization of the economy has rendered work, and the features of modern life that stem from it, less predictable; and (iii) new technologies and the ongoing institutionalization of the self allow for participation in an ever‐increasing number of communities. These shifts open up new ways of thinking about the life course, moving from the traditional framing of the life course as a sequence of role transitions to a view that highlights competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice, particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure. This shift also entails moving from schooling as credentials and human capital to understanding what is learned in school that is relevant to being a competent adult. Theories of how what is learned in school might transfer to adult life continue to outstrip the prevailing technologies for assessment of that learning. -
Shadow Education - Byun, Soo‐Yong
Over the past few decades shadow education has expanded worldwide and become a multi‐billion dollar global service‐industry offering many different and costly tutoring services from after‐school classes to a host of on‐line options. While much remains to be explored as to why this transformation is occurring, the worldwide expansion of shadow education is now a substantial topic in the sociology of education. This essay briefly describes the foundational research on shadow education; outlines the cutting‐edge research on shadow education effects; and discusses key issues for future research. This essay concludes that shadow education becomes more normative to the point of being a partner institution to formal education itself and as an educational phenomenon it will continue to be a topic of study and policy analysis. -
Teacher Judgments and their Role in the Educational Process - Artelt, Cordula
Teacher judgments matter for students: They have an impact not only on students' academic self‐concepts and for their theories about themselves as learners but also on educational pathways through grades and school leaving certificates. However, do teachers have the expertise for such judgments? Is there such a thing as a professional ability to judge (diagnostic competence)? The essay provides an overview on research related to teacher judgment accuracy and bias and specifies conditions under which accurate teacher judgments can (and cannot) be expected. It is argued that in research as well as in teacher training, causes of judgment and judgment demands need to be taken into account and that the role of knowledge components in controlled and automatic decision‐making after intensive experience on the job needs to be better understood. -
The Organization of Schools and Classrooms - Diehl, David
Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more than just the delivery of academic content. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important school outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers. Standard approaches, however; tend to treat the organizational structures of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers teach and students learn. In contrast, we present the beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex and dynamic social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations and defined at numerous levels. In this essay, we summarize existing research in order to elaborate such a view. To that end the essay is divided into four sections: major role relationships in the school; organizational levels of the school; current socio‐cultural changes shaping schools as organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.