CHAPTER 9: EDUCATIONAL OUTCOME

Overview:

In this chapter, we shall cover

• The inequality in educational opportunities and outcomes

- concepts and issues

• Home and environmental factors affecting educational achievement

• Characteristics of schools which affect academic achievement

Key Terms

• Restrictive culture

• Compensatory education

• Social status

• Socialization

• Urban and rural location

• School culture

• Teacher’s expectation

• Effective schools

Suggested Activities

Further Reading

Banks, O. 1976. Sociology of Education. London: Batsford Ltd.
Calfee,R. 1986. Curriculum and Instruction: Reading. In B.I. Williams,P.A. Richmond, & Mason (Ed). Designs for compensatory education: Conference proceedings and papers. Washington,D.C. : Research Evaluation Associates, Inc.
Cheng, Y.C. 1993. Profiles of organizational culture and effective schools. In School effectiveness and school improvement 4, 2 : 85 –110.
Deal,T.E.1993. The culture of schools In Educational Leadership and school culture edited by Marshall Sashkin and Walberg,H.J. Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing.
Doyle, W. 1986. Vision and reality: A reaction to issues in curriculum and instruction for compensatory education. In B. I. Williams, P.A. Richmond & Mason (Ed)
Designs for compensatory education. Conference proceedings and papers. Washington, D.C.: Research Evaluation Associates, Inc.
Fraser,E. 1973. Home Environment and the school. London: University of London Press.
http://www2.moe.gov/~bpgEng.html
http://www2.moe.gov-my/~bpghlbestari_htm.

Suggested Input

1.0 Compensatory Education

1.1 Compensatory education programs has traditionally been informed by the belief that disadvantaged students can benefit most from a less challenging curriculum and limited achievement goals.

1.2 The purpose of compensatory education is to help the child make the progress that she or he would have made if an appropriate program had been available. The specific services provided must be tailored to the child’s needs. Compensatory education can mean extra instruction or related services provided during the school year.

1.3 It provides for learning opportunities in both cognitive and affective areas, in skills of learning how-to-learn and learning how to be a student. It emphasizes mastery learning techniques that may improve scores, but fail to help students learn how to work independently and develop coherent mental representations for school work in general.

1.4 Peterson (1986) concluded that low achieving students can successfully be taught a variety of cognitive strategies such as memory, elaboration, self-questioning, rehearsal, planning and goal setting, comprehension, problem-solving, hypothesis generating and study skills; and that compensatory education should give greater emphasis to their development.

2.0 Factors Affecting the Development of Educational Inequalities

2.1 Social Class

- Social class is a product of the distribution of valuable resources in society and not of a particular ethnic group’s historical experience. It is measured by the indexes of socioeconomic status (SES) These indexes are based on weighted combinations of parental education, occupational prestige and income.

- Students from more advantaged homes and neighborhoods are more likely to enter school with a base of knowledge and values that encourage school success; be surrounded by an atmosphere of parental support for and active involvement in schooling; have economic resources to purchase instructional materials and educational services that are available to students whose parents have less money.

2.2 Race and Ethnicity

- In countries like America, racial and ethical differences are always the most important basis of inequality. Why do race and ethnicity sometimes matter so much and sometimes so little in a group’s ability to take advantage of school opportunities? Sociologist argued that ethnic groups migrating voluntarily to a new land have strong incentives to assimilate to the culture of the new country. In the long run, the new group will be integrated into the host country.

- In contrast, racial and ethnic groups conquered by a technological superior power are unlikely to be assimilated as easily, both because the majority group is unlikely to fully accept those it has conquered and because the colonized rarely accept their conquerors.

- An important reason that ethnicity is properly characterized as the varying divider is that some immigrant groups become assimilated and move up the socioeconomic ladder faster than others. The success of fast-rising minorities is often attributed to their superior drive or intelligence. However, some minorities typically come to their new country with a host of advantages, not enjoyed by other groups, quite apart from their drive and intelligence.

2.3 Gender

- Countries with higher per capita incomes were more likely to have greater gender equality in schooling. Economic progress is strongly associated with conditions that make women’s lives less restricted. Countries with many ethnic groups generally had less gender equality, perhaps because it is politically difficult to extend educational opportunity when many ethnic groups are competing for preeminence.

- In the industrialized world, a great deal more equality exists between men and women. In secondary school and higher education enrolments, women are either equal to men or actually over represented compared with men.

- Although women now experience fewer disadvantages in educational access and educational attainments, they continue to experience many disadvantages in how they are treated in schools. Classroom interaction is one area of continuing unequal treatment.

- There are good reasons to believe that gender will become a less significant factor in the future, even in the area of jobs and salaries. One is that as women gain ground, men’s sensibilities change, however slowly and unevenly. Moreover, as the pool of career-oriented women increases, men have more difficulty hiring and promoting men on grounds other than demonstrated competence. Women’s organizations and women’s support networks contribute to equalization of opportunity by continuing to challenge discrimination in an active way.

3.0 Factors Affecting Educational Achievement

3.1 Home Factors

- The first five or six years are crucial foundation years, and even after starting at school the child continues to live with his parents and to be deeply influenced by their behavior and attitudes. The family shares in the socialization process alongside the school. and the family environment is likely to encourage a favorable response to school. The school has become the focal socializing agency

- The family background, for example working class children to perform less well in school. There is the relation ship between social class background and educational achievement.

- The tendency of the working classes to under-achieve is consistent. Parental interest may affect one kind of school system than in another whilst achievement motivation may count for more in one kind of teaching situation than in another.

- Relationship between social-class background and educational achievement. The influence of different social class milieu of the school affecting the level of educational and occupational aspirations and academic achievement of children from different social backgrounds have been found.

- Home conditions – pride, confidence, affection and interest of parents in their children, as shown in instances in which parents read to their children, play with them or attend school functions with them appear to affect the achievement of the children. On the part of plus achievers, there is a general tendency to respect their parents, to take them into their confidence, and to return the love their parents show. Minus achievers do not appear to be so much exchange of affection or mutual respect, or desire to measure up to expectations. The climate of affection within the home for a particular child and its various manifestations appear to be related definitely to school achievement.

- Motivational aspect of the home environment whereby parents who are well educated and provide the child with favorable environment are likely to motivate him to study well. They will take an interest on their children’s school work.


- Emotional aspects such as emotional stress, insecurity and anxiety are factors which will affect the child’s achievement. Thus a child from a well to do home with good cultural background may have high innate ability and high intelligence test scores but because of an unsettling home environment may do relatively poorly in school.

3.2 Material Environment

- The effect on school performance of extreme poverty. Malnutrition and poor living conditions are bound to have an influence on the health of the child, and so directly or indirectly on his ability to learn.

- Pre-natal damage may occur to the child as a result of inadequate pre-natal care. Poverty can also influence indirectly, by limiting the family’s ability to forego adolescent earnings.

- Poor housing and overcrowding can impede the child’s homework and his opportunity for reading or constructive play. Poverty, poor housing, overcrowding and other slum conditions affect a large number of children in ways which are likely to depress their educational performances.

- There is a close relationship between material deprivation and the whole way of life of the family. Poverty can make a parent less willing to keep a child at school; can make it difficult for him to afford books and toys, or expeditions which help a child to learn; can enforce housing conditions which make the whole family strained and unhappy or deprive the parent-child play or talk together. Thus school achievement should be related not so to isolate factors in the environment but to family life as a whole.

4.0 Characteristics of school that affect educational achievement

4.1 The Social milieu of School

- School factors in terms of the quality of teaching, grouping and differential prestige and status attached to the schools have exerted great influence on the aspirations, expectations and achievement of students.

- A variety of school conditions in terms of physical facilities, school size, quality of teachers, geographical isolation, medium of instruction, financial resources and social class milieu affect the achievement of students.

4.2 School Culture

- It is defined as the historically transmitted patterns of meaning that include the norms, values, beliefs, ceremonies, rituals, traditions and myths understood, maybe in varying degrees, by members of the school community.

- It has been found that healthy and sound school cultures correlate strongly with increased student achievement and motivation and with teacher productivity and satisfaction.

- Recent studies found support that students are more motivated to learn in schools with strong cultures. Implementation of a clear mission statement, shared vision and school wide goals promote increased student achievement.

- School culture also correlates with teachers’ attitudes towards their work. It was found that strong school cultures had better motivated teachers. In an environment with strong organizational ideology, shared participation, charismatic leadership and intimacy. Teachers experienced higher job satisfaction and increased productivity.

4.3 Teachers’ expectation

- Teachers’ expectation of the students’ ability had a significant influence on their performance. The teachers who had high expectations for certain students, somehow communicated this message to them in the classroom. The expectations of the higher intellectual performance could have been communicated to the group by the teacher in the classroom by giving them more attention, encouraging them more, demanding more of them and treating them more pleasantly. The students whom the teachers expected to do well, performed better, although their ability was similar to that of the unselected group.

- The Drop-out Study (1973) found that if the students perceived that their teachers’ academic expectations of them are high, then a higher percentage of the students were enrolled in school compared with those who perceived the teachers’ expectations to be low.

5.0 Effective Schools

5.1 Effective schools are distinguished from inefficient ones by the frequency and extent to which teachers learn together, plan together, test ideas together, discuss practices together, reflect together, grapple together with the fundamental vision and focus of developing students to fullest capacity.

5.2 Effective schools are a learning community, a place where teachers and administrators study, work and learn together with the mission of improving student achievement.

5.3 All efficient school has a culture and it is the information one gets from a culture that sends a message to the student that they will be productive and successful. The effective teacher thinks, reflects and implements. The efficient teacher models what is expected from the students- the ability to think and solve problems on their own. Effective teachers use their cumulative knowledge to solve problems.

5.4 All effective classrooms start on time. Students know the classroom procedures. Teachers understand how to teach for mastery. Teachers have high expectations for student success. All effective classrooms are managed by effective teachers.

6.0 Smart School

6.1 Apart from the role of education to fulfill national development goals and aspirations, the project also meant to address various educational needs :


- to prepare school leavers from the information Age

- to bring about a systemic change in education, from an exam-dominated culture to a thinking and creative knowledge culture

- to re-emphasize science and technology education with a focus on creativity and innovation

- to equip students with IT competence

- to inculcate Malaysia values among the students and produce a generation of caring, peace-loving and environmentally concerned citizens


6.2 The smart school uses technology to support and enhance teaching-learning. With the aid of multi-media technology, self-accessed, self-paced and self-directed learning can be practiced. This will allow students to develop their strengths to a level of excellence and breed a generation of inventors and innovators.

Curriculum for smart school emphases through 4 subject areas that is science, Mathematics, Bahasa Malaysia and English Language. The emphases are knowledge acquisition, analytical creative thinking and the ability to make decisions and solve problems, IT competency proficiency in an international language, inculcation of values towards the development of the good person.