Intelligence testing & Influences on the curriculum (Week 4)

Question 1

What are 5 types of intelligance?

Gardener

Answer 1

1. Conventional linguistic
2. Mathematical
3. Spatial abilties
4. Musical intelligence
5. Interpersonal/emotional intelligence - extent of empathy

Question 2

What is an IQ test?

Answer 2

• Intelligence Quotient
• measure of individual intelligence
• score 100 is average
• Conventionally based on tests of mathematical, verbal and spatial skills
• most common test of intelligence
• Its purpose varies around the world
• In the Uk - was used to separate children into different schools at age 11, during 1950-1970s.

Question 3

What is the 11 Plus?

Answer 3

• Standardised test similar to the IQ test
• Measures intelligence based on math and literature skills
• Passed = grammer schools (academic curriculum)
• Failed = secondary modern school (vocational curriculum)

Question 4

What are some strengths of IQ tests?

Answer 4

• They claim to be objective tests of natural/innate intelligence.
• Claim to reliably/validly measure intelligence
• Not influenced by class, gender, ethnicity
• Reveal natural variations in intelligence between different individuals and populations
• Based on theory that people are born with a certain level of intelligence, inherited from their parents, which doesn’t very greatly through their lifetime.

Question 5

Critisms of IQ tests

Flynn

Answer 5

• claim to be ‘culture free’, however they are not.
• Students who practice do better
• Don’t account for differences in common knowledge between different ethnicitys/cultures
• Flynn(1987) aruges that they only measure linguistic and logical mathematical intelligence but not other types

Question 6

What factors does Kaplan say influences how well a person does on a IQ test?

Answer 6

1) education
2) Reading habits
3) Experience/attitude taking tests
4) Cultural upbringing
5) Mental and physical health

Question 7

How do Powerful groups impact IQ testing?

Answer 7

• IQ testing is part of cultural reproduction
• Intelligence is defined in ways that reflect interests of powerful groups.
• Children of the upper/middle classes are seen as achieving more not because they are ‘more intelligent’
• IQ tests are ideological state apparatus > convincing people that their natural intelligence can be objectively measured in a powerful form of social control.

Question 8

What is the Agonistic explanation for the Relationship between intelligence & achievement?

Answer 8

• We don’t know if there is a real relationship between intelligence and achievment
• There is no generally agreed definition of intelligence - don’t know what is measured

Question 9

What is the Positive explanation of the Relationship between intelligence & achievement?

Answer 9

• assume IQ tests measure significant aspects of intelligence in the form of cognitive skills.
• skills are similar to those valued in education and workplace so it makes sense to test the relationship between intelligence and achievement this way.

Question 10

What is the Negative explanation of the Relationship between intelligence & achievement?

Answer 10

• Educational achievement is not related to intelligence
• Educational achievement is related to a range of cultural factors
• some students to do well but limiting ability of others to do the same.
• This achievement is validated by higher measured levels of IQ

Question 11

What is Saunders view of the Relationship between intelligence & achievement?

Answer 11

• intelligence is not determined at birth but differs between social classes
• Social/developmental factors - middle class peers are more intelligent than their working class peers.
• Social selection - those who are most academically able rise to the top of class structure.
• Working-class children who are educationally successful rise into middle class.
• Middle class children who fail - fall back into working class.

Question 12

Influences on curriculum

How is knowledge a Social construction?

Weber

Answer 12

• all societies develop beliefs about what ‘is worthy of being known’
• Knowledge is not something ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered, it is soically constructed

Question 13

What is the Marxist Perspecitve of factors influencing the curriculum?

Althusser

Answer 13

• Schools are places where particular relationships of power and control flow
• Althusser - cultural reproduction involves ability of ruling class to pass on it’s political/economic domination from one generation to the next.
• Education is an ISA
• Teachers are agents of ideological control who ‘transform pupil consciousness’
• Education is an instrument of class oppression
• Access to knowledge is restricted through control of the curriculum
• higher an individual goes in education, the greater their access to knowledge
• Academic knowledge has more value than practical knowledge - it’s more useful to the professional middle classes
• Commodification - knowledge must have economic value so it can be bought and sold. This is achieved through educational qualifications.

Question 14

How is Knowledge validated and categorised? - Young (1971)

Answer 14

• Knowledge can be categorised into ‘subjects’ one subject is not relevent to another.
• Knowledge can be categorised into subject content - control over what is learnt, how it’s learnt, how students demonstrate their learning.
• Knowledge is protected by gatekeepers
• Teaching is a process of gradual revelation
• Teachers choose which students recieve certain knowledge
• Knowledge is validated through examinations
• ‘Credentialism’ – knowledge is only valid if it can be quantified in the form of qualifications

Question 15

Factors influencing the curriculum

How is Knowledge Selected & Stratified?

Young

Answer 15

Selected – decisions about which subjects appear on the curriculum and content of each
Stratified – division between vocational and academic subjects

Question 16

What are Steiner Schools?

Answer 16

• The curriculum reflects the needs of the child at each stage of their development
• Children enter classes according to their age rather than academic ability
• Subject material is presented in an individual way
• Children are encouraged to discover and learn for themselves
• Learning involves the development of ‘practical, emotional and thinking capacities.

Question 17

Factors Influencing the curriculum

What is Functionalists view of influences on the curriculum?

Answer 17

• demands of the economy influence content of curriculum
• Education has a role of producing the right number of trained/qualified workers that economy needs
• As economy demands change - curriculum changes.

Question 18

Factors that influence the curriculum

How Gender Influences the Curriculum

Answer 18

• Different subjects are associated with males and females > this influences the choices students make
• Vocational subjects - strongly gendered often taught in single sex classrooms
• Teachers tend to teach different material if they teaching boys or girls or both.

Question 19

Factors that influence the curriculum

The gendered Curriculum - Self and Zealey (2007)

Answer 19

• Differences in subject choice at school level translate into differences at undergraduate level
• More women than men studied subjects linked to medicine (nursing).
• More men than women studied business and administrative services. (engineering, technology subjects, computer sciences)

Question 20

Factors that influence the curriculum

How does Gender stereotyping influence education?

Equal opportunities commision / Warrington & Younger

Answer 20

The Equal Opportunities Commision: girls outperform boys at all levels in education.
* this is not always helping women into well paid jobs.
* boys and girls have different educational and occupational aptitudes
* Warrington & Younger - male and female career aspirations often reflect traditional gender stereotypes. e.g. nursing and childcare for girls and computing and accountancy for boys.

Question 21

Factors Influencing the curriculum

Textbooks & Gender Stereotyping

Best

Answer 21

• Males appear more frequently in textbooks and are more likely to be shown in ‘active rather than ‘passive’ roles.
• Best (1992) - Pre-school texts have sexist assumptions and stereotypes.

Question 22

Factors influencing the curriculum

What is the Ethnocentric curriculum?

Answer 22

Definition: School curriculum based on the cultural norms, values, beliefs and history of a single ethnic group.
* In a multicultural society, an ethnocentric curriculum is likely to favour the majority ethnicity.
* Students from minority groups experience curriculum not relevant to them.
* Students from minority background find the content of lessons don’t include their own history
* formal subject content may clash with the learned experiences of minority students.

Question 23

Factors influencing the curriculum

What is the Hidden Curriculum?

Jackson and Skelton

Answer 23

• Jackson - the things children learn from the experience of attending a school.
• Skelton - informal education involves a ‘set of implicit messages relating to knowledge, values, norms of behaviour and attitudes that learners’ experiences in and through educational processes.’
  These messages have two dimensions:
  1) Intended consequences - the things teachers do such as encouraging certain values (politeness) while discouraging others (questioning authority, lack of effort)
  2) Unintended consequences - messages that students receive through the teaching and learning process

Question 24

Factors influencing the curriculum

What are Socialisation Messages?

Answer 24

• what is required from students to succeed in education.
• about conformity
• recognising informal rules
• not questioning what is being taught.
  Individualism - Learning is a process that should not be shared.
  Competition - goal is to show you are better than your peers through testing
• Assessment - part of the hidden curriculum
  Knowledge - To pass exams, student must conform to what the teacher presents as valid knowledge

Question 25

# Factors influencing the curriculum What are Status messages?

Answer 25

* Relate to ideas students develop about their ‘worth’ * Type of school a child attends influences the individual’s self-image and sense of self-worth. * private, fee-paying schools = highest social status * Schools are given a status as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on their exam results * Segregating children in different streams, bands and sets affect student self-perceptions * academic and vocational subjects have different statuses * lower status to groups. (working-class children, mentally and physically disabled).

Question 26

# Factors influencing the curriculum How does cultural capital influence the Curriculum? | Otsuka

Answer 26

* Cultural capital - refers to different advantages and disadvantages granted by people’s cultural histories. * range of non-economic factors that help or hinder individual life chances. * **Otsuka ** - found that Indo-Fijian culture place a high value on education as ‘the only way to success’. parent's help and encourage their children to achieve qualifications. Ethnic Fijian culture has a greater communal orientation > Parents think it's more important to encourage children to become ‘good members of their community. * Indo-Fijian students become better educational performers.

Question 27

What is Habitus? | Bourdieu

Answer 27

**Definition:** A set of ways of thinking and acting that people are socialised into. * **Bourdieu **believed that schools are the ‘natural habitat’ of the middle/upper classes. * working-class child entering a middle-class institution is immediately disadvantaged - their interests, beliefs, values and norms are different -> failure in academic terms, failure appears to be own fault * Middle class children are immediately advantage - cultural beliefs, norms and values are similar to teachers and the school.