PSYC 3310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Comprehensive High School, Progressive Education, Effective Schools
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
CHAPTER 6 SCHOOL AND WORK
School Systems and Educational Policy
Schooling and Secondary Education
• 19th century – focused on literature
• 20th century – more are going on to the post-secondary education
o Prepare adolescents for post-secondary school and vocational
o Academic skills
o Life skills – P.E., health, music, art, family life, antibullying programs,
sex education
• Comprehensive high school: a high school that tries to educate the whole
pool of adolescents by placing them in different tracks according to their
presumed abilities and future economic roles
o School offers a variety of courses and students can choose which
ones they want/need to take.
o Critics of this system pointed out that too often the real basis of
assignment was the wealth and status of a student’s parents.
• Progressive education: an approach that saw equality and democratic
citizenship as central goals of the educational system
o Views that students are not getting the same education if they choose
they’re own courses
o Provides the same education for all students of different racial,
ethnocultural, and economic backgrounds
• Canada’s standing on academic performance
o Within the first 5 in reading, math, science
o Higher than US
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Supersizing and Downsizing the Schools
• 400 to 900 students is the best size.
• One research data showed that schools with high populations of students
from disadvantaged backgrounds should not have more than about 600
students, and that schools whose students are all from similar or relatively
advantaged backgrounds should have no more than 1000.
Large schools
• Alienate the students, people are detached from each other
• As long as students don’t feel alienated (keep students closer together), they
do good in larger schools – more money, bigger diversity in courses taught,
more teachers, better equipment, cafeterias offer more option, more
resources from libraries, offer more extracurricular activities.
• Students feel less attached with teachers and the school
• The community can be involved in larger schools (e.g., use the school for
community activities).
• Because the school is large, there are also more students – some can’t
participate in the activities they want because there’s so many other students
participating.
Smaller schools
• Students get to play many roles – everyone gets to do everything.
• Students feel they are more valued and needed, and gain more confidence.
• Feel more connected with their teachers – teachers are more able to evaluate
the students and address problems
• Less violence
• Lower drop-out rate, better attendance, better academic performance
• Classmates are more likely to help each other out
• Schools have less amenities
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• Greater sense of community – parents are involved
o The sense of community gives students a feeling of control, influence,
and efficacy that leads them to tale greater personal responsibility for
their learning.
• Positive effect on achievement for ethnocultural minority students and those
from low-income families.
• Students are much more likely to take part in extracurricular activities.
Class size
• Members of the public, and some government officials, have focused their
attention on reducing class size.
• Classrooms that have less noise, less disruptive behaviours – student do
really well
• Smaller classes might make a difference, but only if they are small enough to
allow a different approach to teaching and learning.
• As long as students are getting individualized attention, students do well
(even when there are about 40 students in a class).
• Difference in teaching styles based on class size
o Smaller size – can do many different activities
• Researchers also point out that what might work well in one area or one
school district may not benefit or may even be detrimental to students in other
areas, and that a blanket adoption of class size requirements may not be the
best way to make sure every student is receiving a good education.
Moving from Grade to Grade
• 8-4 system: 8 years of primary schooling, followed by 4 years of secondary
education
• In the 1920s, educational theorists began pushing for separate schools based
on the special needs of young adolescents.
o Combining Grades 7, 8, and 9 to create a junior high school
Document Summary
Moving from grade to grade: 8-4 system: 8 years of primary schooling, followed by 4 years of secondary education. Interest in school does down and school-related anxiety goes up: canadian teens do not necessarily always show these same patterns, teens with insecure attachment to their mothers had more worries about the change to a middle school. 5: top-dog phenomena, at the end of the elementary school, they were the oldest, most skilled, when they enter middle school, they become at the lower tier, affects self-esteem in some students. High school: the average high school is, if anything, more bureaucratic, intimidating, and impersonal than middle school, especially for new students, students and teachers do not have many chances to get to know each other. 6: for those who were having difficulties before, the new added stresses may cause them to drop out. 8: mastery goals did not predict grades.
