This type of socialization is accomplished through teachers emphasizing the desirability of certain virtues, such as hard work, equity, being nice, and so on. There are many agents of socialization within the school environment, as indicated by Brints (1998) zones of socialization. Agents of socialization are the social structures in which socialization occurs. It is not surprising that some teachers interactions with disruptive students can be hostile and critical. For example, in 2007 British Columbia passed a law require all schools to have codes of conduct and a zero tolerance policy toward bullying. Characteristics of the school, teachers, and the peer group all influence the socialization of children within school settings. What were the characteristics of unpopular students. The second dimension of socialization is moral conformity, which refers to the process of a student internalizing the preferred understanding of what is right and wrong. Look on the internet for official curriculum documents about moral education in Canada. Child victims also report having recurring memories of the abuse (Sharp 1995) and being afraid to seek help (Slee 1994; Smith and Myron- Wilson 1998). Even when accounting for numerous childhood risk factors such as social class of origin, gender, and antisocial behaviour, having been verbally abused by a teacher in early childhood was associated with behavioural problems in adulthood. Gender stereotypes, however, do exist in perceived competence and ability in subjects, with girls consistently indicating less confidence in their ability in science and math (see Simpkins, Davis-Deane, and Eccles 2006 for an overview). Alberta Education. Meanness also includes such behaviours as name-calling, ridicule, sarcasm, and giving other girls the silent treatment. Research on girls meanness has found that middle-class girls more frequently participate in this type of aggression because it is within this social class that the rules of femininity are the least flexible. However, Brendgen, Wanner, and Vitaro (2006) found that teacher verbal abuse actually contributed to future adolescent delinquent behaviour in their 17-year cohort study in Quebec, which tracked children from kindergarten to age 23. The staff keep track of who is earning the bears, and perhaps more importantly, who is not. Brint (1998) identifies three major dimensions of socialization as it pertains to schooling, which are illustrated in Figure 6.1. She notes that personal style is very much at the heart of social identities and how a girl presents her body is akin to her social skin. While Pomerantz was collecting her data between 2002 and 2003, there were two particular uniforms for girls at East Side Highthe Britney look and the JLo look, named after pop music icons Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez, respectively. The socialization of students through the use of school rules, including dress codes and uniforms, was also addressed. Peer-rejected children often display social skills that make them undesirable playmates and friends to other children. Streaming not only serves to increase the efficiency of teaching and classroom management, but also results in social groupings of students that have significant social meaning within and outside of the school. From an early age until adulthood, school is a place where children spend a large portion of their daysand, indeed, their lives. Bully victims often report experiencing headaches, extreme sadness, insomnia, stomachaches, and suicidal thoughts (Kaltiala-Heino, Rimpel, Marttunen, Rimpel, and Rantanen 1999). Explain how relationships with teachers and the social climate of the school impact upon socialization. Public schools tend to focus more on the testing side of the education because that is where they obtain their funding and a child might be offered a chance to be introduced to diversity, whereas private school has more time and the means to explore socialization in many other forms like field trips and such. A teacher, for example, is largely in charge of the student, but the relationship that a child has with a teacher is far less intimate than the relationship a child shares with his or her parents; A student must also adapt to spending a significant amount of time in large groups; A child must learn to be independent to achieve the academic goals of school; A child must also learn to form bonds and develop social bonds with other children in school; and. He or she may have to raise a hand to ask questions. Children that act in an aggressive or disruptive manner account for about one-third of children rejected by their peers (Crick and Dodge 1996). The peer groupconsists of individuals of a similar age and social identity. Furthermore, socialization can be divided into two types: primary socialization and secondary socialization. As he works through arguments on the playground or resolves disagreements at his lunch table, his negotiation skills, problem-solving abilities and self-control develop, reports the Scholastic website. Other agents of socialization within the school were also discussed. Elsewhere in Canada, zero tolerance policies are likely to be in place around specific actions. Alberta Education explains that this. It is explained that students voices are important and that individual voices are to be developed within the boundaries of the community, which upholds the three rules. A possible reason for this is that teachers may talk in staff meetings about students whom they perceive as problematic, which may influence future teachers interactions with those students. Some schools encourage active citizenship wherein students participate in creating and modifying schools codes of conduct, and other aspects of their schooling, including course content. Character education is part of the official curriculum in some parts of the country. In Canada, research using data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth has found that the social climate within schools and classrooms has important effects on children who display early signs of behavioural problems. School board rules also prohibit vandalism, aggression, and racist, homophobic, sexual, and gender-biased speech. Peer victimization and rejection have been found to be associated with psychological distress that carries over into adulthood (Ambert 1994; Bagwell, Newcomb, and Bukowski 1998; Roff 1990; Roth, Coles, and Heimberg 2002). 5. What are peer groups and what does social identity mean? Brint (1998) notes that young children, for example, may be assigned reading material that warns of the consequences of not having such virtues. The social learning that children undergo when they enter other social institutions, such as school. The OHRC also found that racial minority students were also disproportionately represented among those who had been disciplined with suspensions and expulsions under the act. In addition to social class distinctions in streaming, racial minority students are also overrepresented in the bottom groups of streaming ability (Oakes 2005). In other words, boys need to be in places where traditional expressions of masculinities can be fostered and nurtured because the current organization of school does not allow this. The Safe Schools Act changed the policy to one of mandatory suspensions and expulsions and police involvement for particular rule infractions, provided that mitigating factors were taken into account. The process of a student internalizing the preferred understanding of what is right and wrong; accomplished through teachers emphasizing the desirability of certain virtues, such as hard work, equity, being nice, and so on. In a study of secondary students responses to dress codes, Raby (2010) found that many girls regarded specific aspects of dress codes overly restrictive (such as the prohibition of tank tops with spaghetti straps) but were often quick to condemn girls who wore revealing clothing as sluts. While wanting to challenge gender inequalities, they were also active participants in reproducing them. Students may not touch other students. As well, previous research has shown that, like bully victims, rejected children report being lonely (Asher, Hymel, and Renshaw 1984) and are more likely to be depressed (Vosk, Forehand, Parker, and Rickard 1982) than integrated peers. However, as Greig (2003) points out, this approach assumes that all boys like a particular type of book and that there is a standardized masculine identity that should be cultivated. Describe how they all impact on student socialization. In other words, inherent to such arguments are notions that only men can teach to male students and that the loss of males from the profession and the subsequent lowering of boys scores relative to girls is evidence of how feminization of the school is harming boys (Froese-Germain 2006). The popular girls self-described their sense of fashion and interest in their appearance and popular culture. Use Google to find home schooling advocacy groups in Canada. Concept in social psychology in which preconceived ideas about how someone will act cause that person to act in such a way, even if the belief about that person was initially This is particularly striking because these differences in self-concept about abilities in math and science exist in studies even when there is no difference between the grades of males and females. Many codes of conduct in Canadian schools specify attire that is deemed unacceptable for wearing to school. Sociology of Education in Canada by Dr. Karen L. Robson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. A child must develop skills that allow him or her to function socially, emotionally, and intellectually within the school environment. WebExamples of Socialization 1. As well, in such discussions, the impact that this would have on female students is rarely considered (Greig 2003). As more schools are trying to instill healthy eating habits and becoming more environmentally conscious, many have adopted rules that prohibit the bringing of certain products to school. 2007). Moral education extends into areas beyond the display of particular virtues. In fact, mile Durkheim (1973) proposed a protracted role for educators in socializing children into morality. Racialized students and those who have had previous conduct problems within schools are much more likely to drop out of school. Currie and Kelly (2006) found that the popular girls in their study tended to be slim, dress in a sexy manner, and wear lots of makeup, according to non-popular girls. In Alberta, applied English language arts are designated the course abbreviation of ELA 10-2 (Grade 10), 20-2 (Grade 11), and 30-2 (Grade 12). Apple (2000) argues that home schoolers not only remove children from school, but also have gone so far as to isolate themselves into separate factions. The main thrust of this argument is that teaching staff are disproportionately comprised of females who value certain behaviours (like passivity and obedience, which tend to be found more in girls) and subject matter (like reading, which does not appeal to males as much), and that to improve boys performance, more males must be brought into the profession (Skelton 2002; Titus 2004). Respondents did, however, report some negative aspects of home schooling, which included the social stigma attached to being home schooled, social challenges of not being around other children regularly, the limits of the curriculum covered in their schooling, and the challenges of integrating into classroom settings later in life.12, 6.3 Major Forces of Socialization within Schools. Their role in guiding the moral development of children, however, is often not simply limited to setting a good example. Kelly, Pomerantz, and Currie (2005), for example, found that self-described skater girls (i.e., girls who associate with skateboard culture) were expressing their rejection of contemporary ideals of femininity. Lamb, Bigler, Riben, and Green (2009) have also found that if teachers teach children to confront and challenge sexist stereotypes, the results can decrease gender stereotyping behaviour, particularly in girls. As noted in an official Alberta Education document: Whether they are conscious of it or not, schools are involved in teaching cultural and societal mores and values and in shaping students ideas about what constitutes good behaviour (Alberta Education 2005:1). Internationally, girls have also been achieving higher standardized reading scores than males since the 1990s (see Box 6.5 for discussion). Social approval is obtained when children accept the sanctioned goals of the school setting and they are rewarded and reinforced on a consistent basis through social acceptance by teachers and other students (Wentzel and Looney 2006). Secondary socialization refers to the social learning that children undergo when they enter other social institutions, like school. The findings of research on the impact of school uniforms on school safety has, in general, not supported the premise of reduced behavioural problems in students (Han 2010) or school achievement (Yeung 2009). The media, in particular, have been quick to endorse a position that suggests that the main problem can be found in the ongoing feminization of schooling. What reasons have parents given for home schooling their children? What are some conflicts that arise around the topic of school rules? Education serves as an agent of socialization because it engages students in competition in academic success which helps create a social environment for students to interact in. The exceptions, of course, are private schools and many Catholic schools, where uniforms are traditional. WebFor example, a child whose parents value hard work may see a friends father sitting around watching television all day and begin to question the importance of work. As noted by Reinke and Herman (2002), schools tend to have personalities of their own. The self-fulfilling prophecyis a term coined by sociologist Robert Merton in 1948 and refers to situations in which preconceived ideas about how someone will act cause that person to act in such a way, even if the belief about that person was initially incorrect.11 Riley and Ungerleider (2008) found that pre-service Canadian teachers rated the student records of those they were led to believe were Aboriginal less favourably compared to identical student records of those identified as non-Aboriginal, suggesting that teachers do alter their perceptions of students based on fixed characteristics. The government also funds other programs that provide Such rules were routinely broken and created resentment among students for what they perceived as ridiculous rules that teachers spent far too much time enforcing, and were often seen to enforce in targeted and unegalitarian ways. Children gain an impression of how people perceive them as the 2000). 2007). Peer groups can also be thought of as a form of social capital (see Chapter 2). They have good self-esteem and are likely to display fewer behavior problems than do other children. Families and schools are major contributors to socialization, but there are other systems of socialization within ecological systems theory. Check Google News for recent news items of the underachievement of boys. Schools with the most severe discipline problems usually have the worst social climates as well. According to Cohen (1972), individuals (or groups of individuals), events, or conditions are perceived as jeopardizing wider societal values and interests. According to Simmons (2002), there are rules for how good girls act, and participating in overt acts of violence does not conform to this role. Single-sex schools have also been suggested as a solution to the boy problem. Greig (2003) argues that proponents of such arguments are engaged in a discussion that assumes that boys are in need of gender repair (Lingard and Douglas 1999). Such embedded practices are lining up, doing homework, taking tests, and being evaluated. 4. The structure of school and the structure of the family are obviously very different. In an overview of studies (Sussman et al. Below are the topics covered by both streams at grades 10, 11, & 12. Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices. Theories in the Sociology of Education, 3. At-risk children who display early aggression and signs of early offending can have these risks reduced if the school environment is a supportive one. During the process of cultural conformity, children learn about accepted perspectives and styles of expression. What role does school climate play in student socialization? The disadvantages experienced by Aboriginal children in Canadian schools may be at least partially driven by the self-fulfilling prophecy. If your child is stressed by harmful actions of a school bully or experiences frequent conflicts, his socialization experience can deteriorate quickly. 6. Students also learn their gender at school. They also tended to be popular. How did you perceive other groups? Students who exhibit higher academic aptitude are put with similar students into advanced courses where they will be challenged. The conflicts that students have with such rules were also highlighted. If activities and behaviours are gendered by teachers, this can have an impact on how children see appropriate female and male roles.