With a sociological approach for education, a teacher is able maintain a holistic view of their role as a teacher and the connections between the classroom and their participants. This theory can be learned, then similar to the learning of morals, cannot be unlearned. For the teacher’s lens, sociology acts the zoom mechanism for macro to micro perspectives of the influences on the classroom. While applying this theory teacher are able to adjust and adapt culturally responsive teaching with an increased understanding of their teacher identity, a more informed understanding of their community, and a critical perspective of curriculum. The concepts of sociology can be applied with the sociological imagination to teacher identity and historical …show more content…
Teachers can use the sociological imagination to build upon their teacher identity. C. Wright Mills (1959) defined the sociological imagination as the “vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society”. In chapter two of Teaching for Success, Olson (2010) explains the interactions between the individual and their navigation through world around them (CITATION 33). With these concepts combined, the teacher would ideally be up self- aware of their inherent characteristics as an individual—e.g. skin color, ethnicity, socio-economic background—that can’t be controlled, and how they are placed within society. These factors influence the teacher’s background, environment, and lens thus affecting their ability to present curriculum to the class. In chapter six of Teaching for Success, Olson (2010) defines teacher identity as “both the active mechanism that organizes your prior and current experiences into coherent understandings of and for yourself as an educator and the actual, resulting bundle of …show more content…
Geneva Gay (2002) combines these two concepts of sociocultural consciousness and culturally responsive teaching in Restructuring Attitudes and Beliefs. Gay refers to culturally responsive teaching as a way of addressing “universal marginality, powerlessness, and disadvantages” within the classroom by taking a critical view of the curriculum (p.1). Culturally responsive teaching starts with the teacher’s identity and an awareness of their own ideologies and theories that influence how they act as a median between the student and curriculum. Similar to understanding their own identity, the sociocultural consciousness is how the teacher views the students’ identities in their community. Gay explains these relationship by saying, ”teachers’ instructional behaviors are strongly influenced by their attitudes and beliefs about various dimensions of student diversity” (p.3). The historical context of the community allows the teacher to use their individual students’ background as resources for scaffolding entire class’s curriculum and help meet the needs of the individual students. Assuming the role of public education is to act as an equalizer, culturally responsive teaching is a means of creating
Gloria Ladson-Billings supports this idea in her essay titled “’Yes, But How Do We Do it?’ Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” and also expands upon its importance by adding the insight of how teachers think about the social contexts, the students, the curriculum, and about instruction, all impact the students because how teachers regards these contexts get woven into their pedagogy, which create the very classrooms for learning.
This essay will be explaining the definition of sociology, the sociological factors of obesity using Symbolic Interactionism Theory and the Functionalism Theory and a description of the medical condition obesity and how it may affect individuals suffering from it.
Diversity includes not only the student’s abilities, but also their learning styles and cultural backgrounds. In addition, the teacher’s educational philosophy, which is comprised of their own values, beliefs, cultural and socioeconomic background, are factors in how the diversity of the classroom is perceived and addressed. Research by Khan, Lindstrom, & Murray, stated that, “teachers’ beliefs about diversity and their varying levels of cultural competence can positively or negatively influence their ability to effectively work with culturally diverse students” (2014, p.55). When educators are aware of these differences, they are able to appropriately plan, modify and conduct meaningful
“ It's Not the Culture of Poverty, It's the Poverty of Culture: The Problem with Teacher Education” by Ladson-Billings (2006). The Self-Esteem Problem is one of the problem in American culture. Usually, preservice teachers are having narrow foundation courses in psychological aspect. The author asked preservice teachers to choose one children from their field experiences that is hard to handle while one were choosing a African American. The author critized preservice teachers that they are choosing based on their race, gender and ethnic that was different from them. Those teachers tend to blam on student’s misbehavior instead of understand their socioeconomic problems. In addition, the problem of cultural capital in America is that dominant
One of the sociological theories is conflict theory. The conflict theory deals with people's level on wealth, or class. The conflict theory says that social change is beneficial, contrary to focuses on social order. In the story of the woman and her children, the conflict theory plays a big role on the situation. Police of higher class are threatening the homeless woman. The conflict theory is a constant struggle of people of higher class over powering people of lower class, or the weaker. The police are trying to over power the woman by telling her to leave. Even though the woman and her children were doing nothing wrong, the police used their power to tell her to leave. Also the people of the area showed their conflict theory by telling the police officers to come. They must have felt embarrassed to have a woman of such lower class to be around them. They used their power of class to have the woman removed from their community. The woman wants to be there because she has no home and it is a good community to be in, but the people look at it as an embarrassment to them because it makes their area look bad for someone of such lower class to be around them. The conflict theory is unique to all other theories because it separates people into categories determined by their wealth and standards. Their status is the element that categorizes them, weather it is class, race, or gender. The conflict theory do not always use class, race, and gender all at once. In this situation race and gender is not a main issue, although gender could be a reason, but it would fall under the feminist theory. This story is mainly dealing with class. Through all this conflict the woman feels over powered and domina...
Firstly, the authors introduce the theme of the article—social context. Social context refers to, “patterns of human relationships and intersections that characterize social life.” (Hall et al., 2014, p. 100) For example, the economic class of a student directly impacts them. Furthermore, kids with higher social class receive a better education. In contrast, students with a lower social class receive poorer education and the opportunities for them to improve are significantly low. Throughout the text, the authors instruct the reader about the social issues challenging educators, and illustrates the relationship between curriculum and teachers, communities, and politics. Finally, the authors shed light on nonacademic challenges faced by students.
1 Most sociologists interpret social life from one of three major theoretical frameworks or theories: symbolic interactionism, functional analysis, or conflict theory. Describe the major points and key concepts of each framework. List at least one sociologist who is identified with each of these three frameworks.
The inclusion of multiculturalism into schools has become an increasingly hot topic as of late. Being a future teacher I have taken a natural interest in the topic as well. It seems that most of the push to incorporate the multicultural issue into the school system has been a reaction to the thought that the American “melting-pot” metaphor is on the decline. Knowing that the demographics of the United States is changing continuously, the main issue about the inclusion of multiculturalism is not whether to place it into the schools, but rather how to position this controversial topic into the curriculum. Many people think that the incorporation of multiculturalism must begin with the teacher education students while they are still in college. Advocates claim that college curricula must institute multicultural studies because as of now there are no requirements of students to seriously study the culturally diverse societies in which they will be teaching. Throughout the paper I will mainly discuss the responsibility of the school systems to include the multicultural aspect into their various curricula. I will also show how teachers must change and continue to change as the student demographics vary. Finally, I will give evidence of how racism is a large problem in schools when discussing everything from the racial percentages of educators to the segregation of students in various ways.
Therefore, teachers teach the whole child since they maintain cultural identity of a student not only do they emphasize on the importance of academic achievement. Consequently, when promoting academic community for students, teachers play a role in responding effectively to the learners needs (Gay, 2000).
...'s Children, is an important tool in the education of teachers to help them to see teaching is not a politic-free practice that has little to do with social justice. Through reading multicultural theorists like Delpit, teachers are better prepared to deal with the issues like injustice and "remove the blinders built of stereotypes, mono-cultural instructional methodologies, ignorance, social distance biased research and racism" in the classrooms (Delpit, 1995, pg.69).
Sociological concepts can be applied to many parts of one’s life. The concepts that surround both consuming and gender are both exceedingly relevant in our society today, with our consumption being an integral part of our life and gender becoming more freely explored as our society becomes more comfortable with the idea that there are more than two categories of gender. In this socioautobiography I will analyse how sociological concepts surrounding consumption and gender have shaped my life. I will focus on commodity fetishism, how I learnt gender roles through socialisation, and ‘doing’ gender as I was growing up. Using a sociological imagination, I will interpret my life through a historical and structural lens in relation to consumption
Sadker, D.M., Sadker, M.P., and Zittleman, K.R.,(2008) Teachers, Students, and Society (8th ed.).New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
What inspired me to teach was moulded by my own experiences of school life. I was fortunate to have teachers who were driven by helping me to achieve and prepare me for wider society. I thoroughly enjoyed my education and thrived in every opportunity that was presented to me from being a Team Leader for younger students, to completing my Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award, to being awarded Head Girl. I have gained leadership skills and been a positive role model. This has further enhanced my ambition to pursue my vocation of teaching. My dedication to Sociology has led me to develop an understanding that is complex and curious of the world; this knowledge I feel can be shared with students so that they too can see society from other perspectives. Through work experience and observations, I realise that teaching can be challenging because of its physical and emotional demands. I want to increase my student’s sociological awareness and trigger the same passion I feel from this subject. The aspects I enjoy most within sociology are psychological and criminological theories, and studies whic...
When it comes to comprehending or understanding any concept to why individuals may do some of the things they do, there are social theories out there to help better explain those actions. Sociological theories help to focus more on the aspect of social life, as well as explain behaviors that can be driven by passion, tradition, self-interest, religion, and the laws we have set out today in stone. “Unlike scientific theories, social theories tend to be more evaluative and critical than the theories in the natural sciences” (Appelrouth A. S.; Edles D. L 2012) Today, an analytical frame is used to help guide the comparing and contrasting of the several theoretical perspectives and traditions. In simpler terms, this four way frame is basically used to help compare and contrast theorist better. There are four main cells that make up this analytical frame which include, individual-rational, individual-nonrational, collective-rational, and collective-nonrational. Also included into this basic theoretical orientation or framework, are the core classical theorists. Those influential theorists included into the framework are Mead, who falls into the individual-nonrational side, Durkheim whom falls into the collective-nonrational side, Weber whom falls into the collective-rational side, and Marx who is also included into the collective-rational side.
“Culturally sensitive teachers…have a deep sense of connectedness with their own beliefs, attitudes, knowledge and understandings about themselves”, (Gibbs, 2006, p.180). How do we know where we are going if we don’t know where we have been? Every decision we make and everything we go through makes us who we are today