The paper should run about 8 to 10 pages (MAX) in length.

 

You should include a works cited page. It can be included outside the page limit.  Don’t forget to number your pages, note the section you are in, and post the paper up at bspace.

 

Your paper represents the culmination of your work all semester looking at topics in our field in relation to a specific teaching and learning situation, which you have learned about first hand, that is linked to the development of skills, knowledge, aspirations, and educational strategies among different groups of students.  These in turn are likely to affect their sociologically significant attainments.

PROMPT

In a well-documented, clearly organized paper of no more than 8-to-10 double-spaced pages in length, draw on your semester-long observations and interviews about a specific venue of teaching and learning  to show the social character of forms of schooling, and some of their consequences and effects for particular groups of learners.

Note first how specific features of schooling you have studied (forms of pedagogy, curriculum, organization or other) reflect or have been influenced by specific features of the social and institutional context of education in the US, including the legal and policy environment, the social and economic characteristics of the community in which an educational program is located,  educational philosophies shaping the program, or specific goals a program has for the development of learners, in general or specific groups of learners.  Note whether your focus in your study site was on conventional features of schooling (the standard model) or on interventions or modifications of the standard model intended to address the needs of students often overlooked by the standard model.

Second discuss how selected features of the schooling you observed appear to affect the learning and development of students, especially in ways likely to influence their progress through the educational system, their ultimate educational attainments, and their positions in social and occupational hierarchies in the future.  Consider how the schooling you have observed appears to affect learners’ engagement with education, their identities as learners and achievers, their academic growth and development, their acquisition of new knowledge and specific academic or social skills, their identities as members of sociologically significant social categories, and their strategies for achieving goals for education, either their own or those assumed by society or the school itself.

Your paper should clearly show how the elements of your analysis of schooling, its effects on students, and how they produce these effects all are rooted in your observations, your interviews, and your interpretations of your data.

Throughout your paper show in appropriate ways how course readings (and sometimes course media and lectures) inspired your research, guided your data gathering, and assisted you in interpreting your observations about the social nature of schooling, and in recognizing its sociological significance for the groups of learners you are studying.

EXTRA TIPS

1. Be careful to appropriately HEDGE or qualify your claims about the social effects of the schooling you have been observing, taking into account the limited time you have spent in the field, the limitations on the kind of data you have been able to gather, the size of your interview samples and caution about the representativeness of your particular study site.

 

2. The work you have completed on Field Report 3 and Field Report 4 should have taken you to within striking distance of a final paper. You have your data, a thesis claim at some stage of completeness, and a grasp of the analytical writings in the field.

 

3. The scholarly writings show us what to look for and consider in studying the production of sociologically significant educational outcomes – attainments, strategies, levels of achievement, etc., through individuals’ involvement in teaching and learning activities in a specific social setting. Your paper ties all the strands of your work together.

 

 

STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF THE PAPER

 

The model of a paper presentation below is not intended to be a formula that class members must follow.  It describes the components of a paper that we will be looking for.

 

There are many ways to structure a paper and present an analysis with supporting data.  Deciding how to present your work is part of learning to write in your own voice. Each student author will include some versions of these features in a paper with personal elaborations that reflect the experience of the author defining a project, conducting research in a specific study site, and formulating and supporting an analysis

 

The major features of the paper are a thesis statement, evidence, and a conclusion.

 

They can be lodged and developed in FIVE SECTIONS:

 

Introduction;

Study Design, Study Site and Procedures;

Findings;

Discussion, Analysis, Interpretation;

Conclusions.

1. INTRODUCTION: ORIGINS AND OVERVIEW OF THE PAPER.  (About 1 page)

 

What is this paper about?  What was the puzzle that motivated you to undertake the research? The achievement gap?  How to create educational opportunity? Why is this topic interesting or important?  To whom do you think it is interesting and important?

 

Move from a general perspective on some issues concerning the embeddedness of schooling in some larger system of social organization or power to a brief description of the specific features of schooling for the specific social groups you are studying.

 

Include the thesis statement you have been working on since FR 3.

 

Note the social contexts of your investigation of how schooling has social consequences:  the importance of the Social Location of the School; its appropriateness for students with specific social background characteristics;

 

Signal your focus on Consequential Features of Curriculum, Social Organization, Pedagogy

 

Note the educational effects or outcomes you have been able to observe.

 

Suggest why they are significant in the short term and the long term, and how they contribute to the maintenance, reproduction, or modification of patterns of attainment and inequality in US life.

 

What is known or assumed about this topic in some of the following contexts:

 

scholarly findings,

“common sense,”

public opinion,

conventional wisdom

 

And among whom is this knowledge or are these assumptions found?

 

scholars; media; members of specific social groups; organizations and institutions; political leaders; corporate leaders in marketing, production and design?

 

Why are you addressing the topic now?  Consider some of these reasons

 

To take issue with what is “known or assumed’ about the topic;

You have new information or analytical perspectives to apply to a familiar topic

You are excited by some observations and claims about the topic or by debates about the topic and want to test the accuracy or validity of some notions about ways features of social contexts influence the thinking, action and identities of individuals and groups in the social world.

 

There is a hot debate about the topic and careful scrutiny of the issues is necessary

 

What is known or assumed about a given topic may not be pertinent to the experience of all groups in the society or in all societies.

 

It’s usually a good idea to revisit and finalize the intro AFTER writing the paper.

 

USE OF LITERATURES/READINGS IN THIS SECTION:  Which readings helped define the shape of your thesis, importance of your topic and your approach to exploring the influence of social the social and institutional order on the goals of education, the organization of schooling, instructional methods, and the content of the curriculum.

 

1. STUDY DESIGN AND PROCEDURES: What did you do in your study? Where did you conduct the study? (About 1 page)

 

Present hard, sociological information on the study site – the school and community

 

What are the major characteristics of your educational venue, its social location (geographically and sociologically)?  What is the composition of the student body or the classroom, and the characteristics of the teachers, etc.  If relevant, what do we know about the governance, sponsorship, and financing of this program?  What role do parents play?  What is the mission of the school or program?  What are the goals of parents and students?

 

Note the key features of schooling which are the sources of influence over the learning and development of students and where you observed them.

 

Why did you select this site?  Why is it an appropriate venue for your topic?

 

What features of social structure or macro social conditions (race relations, gender dynamics, the class structure, political and policy debates, economic issues, etc.)might be relevant to your topic and the study venue?  How have they influenced the structure and content of action in your study setting?

 

Are there any sociologically significant characteristics age, gender, social class, race) of the actors in your study site  relevant to their experience in school?   This may be a place to discuss the different forms of capital and their effects on the availability of schooling and the experience of learners in school

 

How did you gain access to your site or research subjects?

 

What difficulties did you have to overcome or what factors facilitated your access?

 

What did you do to gather data with interviews or from observations?

 

How did your observations and early discoveries affect your topic, project purposes, and research strategies?  How did you shift the focus of your topic and how did it evolve through your experience on site?

 

LITERATURES/READINGS IN THIS SECTION:  Which readings did you use to help design and carry out your observations?  What did they encourage you to do or caution you to avoid doing in your research?

 

III.  FINDINGS AND DEVELOPMENT OF A THESIS. (~ 3 pages)

 

The findings section is a description of what you saw and what people told you that enables you to create a descriptive picture of schooling routines in real time and their sociological effects and significance more conceptually.

 

Present your field data in strategic ways to illuminate characteristics of the schooling and educational opportunities that learners are exposed to in your study site, and how they affect the learning and development of the students.

 

This is the largest section of the paper. Report on the events you observed and the interviews you conducted that show the features of the social and policy context that affect specific features of schooling of interest to you.

 

Present evidence of the effects of the teaching and learning activities on your learners.

 

Build your presentation around FIVE (more or less) illustrative incidents or interview items through which you make a case about features schooling that influence (shape, cause, determine) the outcomes of the students you have been observing.

 

Organize the presentation of your data to carefully elaborate the major theme and sub-themes in your paper about how socially situated schooling influences the learning, achievement, aspirations, strategies, engagement, attainments, and identities of learners.

 

 

LITERATURE/READINGS:  How do your findings resemble, differ from or otherwise relate to perspectives on education found in theory or scholarship covered in the course?

 

1. DISCUSSION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF FINDINGS (~ 2 pages)

 

Discuss your data and what they contribute to a sociologically informed understanding of the social role and consequences of education. How does school work in particular kinds of societies particular, kinds of communities, and for different groups of students?

 

Select and present your data in ways that:

 

1. a) support, clinch, or illustrate an informed assertion about how schooling is embedded in the social order and how schooling and sociologically significant educational outcomes are linked to one another.

 

1. b) show us how you discovered and disentangled the issues and sociological factors at play in a particular incident, observation, conversation from your data.

 

How do the incidents you observed and report on and the interview material you cite shed light on  processes of education that appear to influence learning, behavior and achievement among individuals from particular populations?

 

How do your observations or interview data show that educational outcomes linked to specific social settings and specific kinds of settings are sociologically consequential?

 

Don’t just say “I saw X happen, and that shows how Factor A had Y effect on identity or learning.”  You need to make a logical case – an argument – why your interpretation of the features of the social setting and their effects should be persuasive to readers or observers interested in the emergence of educational effects and particular forms of sociologically significant outcomes.

 

LITERATURE /READINGS:  What have other authors and “conventional wisdom” thought about events or educational situations like those you have experienced, reported, and analyzed?

 

1. CONCLUSIONS (1 page)

 

The conclusion should mirror the introduction.

 

Tell us why this has been a worthwhile paper to write — summarize the main social factors that influence the schooling and effects you have studied.

 

Comment on positive ways, negative ways, or both, that schools, schooling or education shape learning, achievement and attainment outcomes based on your study?

 

Is this kind of influence praiseworthy or problematical? How should we regard the educational dynamics that you have analyzed for us?  Favorably?  As problems?  As something requiring careful attention or as nothing that we could do much about anyway?

 

Are your observations generalizable to other educational settings?

 

What do you think your discoveries and observations might mean for existing scholarship on schooling and educational attainment and educational disparities?

 

You can also talk about your personal experiences with this project. What was difficult?  What surprised you? What did you learn from the process of carrying out a field study of schooling and social and educational attainment?  How has this project showed you any benefits from thinking sociologically about education?

 

What should future investigators of this topic learn from your study and experience in conducting this research?  What would you do differently in investigating contexts of socially situated schooling ?