Differential Educational Achievement: “Must Try Harder?”
Explanations for differences in educational achievement based around concepts like class, gender, ethnicity and, for rather different reasons, age are well-known and generally covered comprehensively at High School and A-level, in relation to both “outside” and “inside” school factors. In terms of the former this includes a variety of material and / or cultural factors […]
Education, Achievement and Class
Another trawl through what I like to think is a carefully selected and curated trove of educational treasure – although some may see it more as a random collection of stuff I’ve picked-up from time to time “because it might be useful” and largely forgotten about – produces this rather large (and then some) PowerPoint […]
The Rules of the Game
How “predicted grades” and the “personal statement” contribute to the relative failure of high-performing disadvantaged kids in the “game” of university entrance. While a-level sociology students do a lot of work on education and differential achievement, the narrative in relation to social class tends to focus on “middle class success”, “working class failure” and the […]
School Climate: Narrowing the Gender Gap?
In a UK context, the relationship between gender and educational achievement – whereby girls consistently outperform boys at all levels of the education system – is both well-known and persistent. More-interestingly, perhaps, this situation is not, as Legewie and DiPrete (2012) note, confined to the UK, given that “boys generally underperform relative to girls in […]
DEA: Mythbusters
I’ve recently been looking at the idea of school climate and its possible relationship to the gender gap in educational achievement for a forthcoming blog post, a fact I mention for a couple of reasons: firstly, because I think the notion of school climate and its possible impact on educational achievement is an interesting idea, […]
Sociological Detectives: Theory Summary Sheet
If you’re using the Sociological Detectives sim you might find this simple Theory Summary sheet useful because it provides a couple of helpful things: A basic structure for students to follow when examining different theories of differential educational achievement. It allows them to record information in a simple, consistent, way. If you’re sharing information around […]
Sociology Stuff: DEA
If you’re sitting comfortably, I’ll tell you a story. A long, long, time ago, when the Internet was still young, there existed a web site, created by Mark Peace, called Sociology Stuff. This web site specialised in producing high quality sociology stuff (hence the name. Probably. I’m guessing) for a few years before Mark got […]
Mapping Differential Educational Achievement
Differences in UK educational achievement are normally categorised across three main dimensions – class, gender and ethnicity – of which the former is generally seen by sociologists of education as the primary determinant of achievement differences (as measured by exam grades), while gender and in some instances ethnicity is generally preferred by politicians and media […]
A Modest Proposal for Structured Sociology Teaching: Part 3
The previous post identified and briefly outlined the 5 categories that make-up the Structured Teaching scheme and in this post we can look at each category in a little more detail by way of a “worked example” based around Differential Educational Achievement. We can start with a visual example of what a mind-mapped structure might […]
Education and Class
A research snippet from the Sutton Trust (2014) that suggests inequalities in extra-curricular tuition and activities can have an impact on differential educational achievement.