Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts of Education - Essay Example

Research Methodoligies There are three research backbones used for this paper. The first one, is social theory or the utilization of theoretical frameworks. This is used to examine and analyze social phenomena (immigration) pertaining to a particular school of thought. Since the research primarily adheres to post-positivistic paradigms, the school of thoughts such as pragmatism and constructivism. Post-positivism is a theoretical framework in itself. According to (Philips and Burbules), "inphilosophyandmodels of scientific inquiry,post-positivismis ametatheoreticalstance followingpositivism". "Post-positivistsbelieve that human knowledge is not based on unchallengeable, rock-solid foundations; rather it is conjectural" (2000). By conjectural, it is believed that human knowledge is speculative and is based on a variety of notions. This is a clear precedence of the positivist theory wherein knowledge is empirical and based on sensorial experience. The premise of post-positivism is that its grounds, orwarrants, for asserting these ideals or conjectures, can be verified through auxiliary analysis. Based on the results of our studies, we may learn that our theory doesn't fit the facts well and so we need to revise our theory to better predict reality. The other methodologies, supplied with statistics include qualitative research, interpretative methodology and qualitative method of ethnography. The World is A Classroom The juxtaposition of globalization and education is as innovative as it is complex. The nature of globalization and its impact upon education proliferates a flowerbed of issues that deflect the diverse cultural landscape set aside for the growth of education in the globalized context. The undertaking of systems that are linked to globalization, in the economical or social context, has a great impact on the formal and informal education people are. This great sceptre of influence has captured the essence of education and learning, the mere motivation of doing so and the processes that go along with it. The establishment of education as a market system has been consolidated by the troughs of education. of the market in many education systems. Schools have to compete for students in order to sustain and extend their funding. This, in turn, has meant that they have had to market their activities and to develop their own 'brands'. They have had to sell 'the learning experience' and the particular qualities of their institution. To do this complex processes have to be reduced to easily identified packages; philosophies to sound bites; and students and their parents become consumers. The result has been a drive towards to the achievement of specified outcomes and the adoption of standardized teaching models. The emphasis is less on community and equity, and rather more on individual advancement and the need to satisfy investors and influential consumers. Education has come to resemble a private, rather than public, good. The question we are facing now is, to what extent is the educational endeavor affected by processes of globalization that are threatening the autonomy of national educational systems and the sovereignty of the nation-state as the ultimate ruler in democratic societies At the same time, how is globalization changing the fundamental conditions of an educational system premised on fitting into a community, a community characterized by proximity and familiarity (Burbules and Torres 2000) In other words, the impact of globalization is less about the direct way in which specific policy choices are made, as the shaping and reshaping of social relations within all countries. Educational Exodus Globalization is the very main reason with which the problem of immigration and migration are deeply rooted out. More so, in a more specified spectrum, globalization greatly affects immigrant children entering foreign schools (i.e Hispanics entering United States Schhol) in umprecendented globalization is the reason that immigrant children are entering U.S. schools in unparalleled numbers. It is, according to Suarez-Orozco, that a critical but understudied area of recent scholarship on globalization is the experiences of children (2001). These scholarly issues include the scope of school and learning environments. The vitality of this issue to this research is that through the understanding of certain issues included under immigration, we ling the acute impact of schooling in shaping the growth and the proficiency of children, especially in a Globalized era. Schooling is the means by which students develop skills they need to be competent with the globalized landscape, and schooling it could either make or break, teach properly or poorly the projected roles of the student, their statuses and their contribution to the global landscape. The hasty growth of information dissemination and knowledge intensive region of the global economy subsists in preparing and molding these children to take part in the unbarred global playing field. According to Surez-Orozco, globalization defines the post-Cold War order of nations. He sees three pillars of globalization, which are: The first pillar is the creation of new information and communication technologies, which have the promise of freeing people from "the tyranny of space and time." These new technologies are rapidly and irrevocably changing the nature of work, thought, and the interpersonal patterning of social relations.The next pillar is the emergence of global markets and post-national, knowledge-intensive economies, which are bypassing traditional national borders. Under the regime of global capitalism, the production of goods and services is completely internationalized. Lastly, unprecedented levels of immigration and displacement. Globalization is about deterritorialization, Surez-Orozco writes, not only of markets, information, and symbols, but also of large and growing numbers of people. Large-scale immigration is a world issue that is transforming Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. (2001) Imported Information We delve deeper into this issue by looking into the wave of immigration, and its effects on competency levels, as well as affective filters of students particularly in the United States. The most recent wave of immigration in the United States is very much different from previous waves. The post-1965 wave of immigration is characterized by its intensity - the immigrant population grew by over 30 percent in the 1990s - and by the radical shift in the sources of the immigration - over 50 percent of all immigrants are from Latin America and over 25 percent are from Asia. (Ruiz- De Velasco, Fix and Clewell, 2000) According to (Ruiz- De Velasco, Fix and Clewell), the recent studies that examine the adaptation of immigrant children in schools are regarded as the status of immigrant children fitting the mode of what we call a trimodal pattern of school adaptation (2000). This pattern considers the performance of children in public schools that have three learning outcomes: some immigrant children do quite well in school, surpassing U.S.-born children in grades, standardized test scores, and attitudes toward education; other immigrant children tend to overlap with U.S.-born children, and yet others tend to achieve below their U.S.-born peers. Demographically speaking, medium of instruction is clearly the biggest problem of immigrant students, considering language barriers, grasp of the language and delivery of instruction. Between 1990 and 1997 the number of U.S. residents who were not born in the United States increased by 30 percent, from 19.8 million to 25.8 million, to reach the largest total in the nation's history (U.S. Census Bureau, 1999:2). Many in this population may be fluent English speakers, and many born in the United States may not be; nevertheless these numbers illustrate a significant challenge facing our public schools. The biggest detrimental problem of public schools around the country with the wave of immigration has been the responsible pacing of the fast-pace shift of a large number of students whose native language is not English, therefore the need of schools to prepare them academically with the demands of an English based curriculum is a big issue in itself. Immigration and Demographic Trends Immigration flow has reflected the drift among immigrant students. From 1970 to 1995, the number of immigrant children ages 5 to 20 living in the United States more than doubled, from 3.5 to 8.6 million (See table 1); 40 percent of this growth took place after 1990. By 1995, there were 500,000 more immigrants from 1970 (8.5 versus 8.0 million). The rise of immigrant children ratio grew with regards to representing students in school showing 16 percent in 1995 and 19 percent in 1997. This rise owes to two phenomena. First, the number of immigrant children in grades K-12 rose from 3.1 to 7.9 million (+154 percent) Second, the number of children of U.S. natives in schools fell from 45.7 to 41.4 million (-9 percent). Hispanic and Asian students-and especially LEP students within these groups-are far more likely to go to schools where LEP students are concentrated. Nearly half of all LEP students attend schools that areat least 31 percent LEP (figure 8, table 16). The segregation of LEP from other students is particularly pronounced in elementary schools; 53.3 percent of LEP primary school students versus 31.3 percent of LEP secondary school students attend schools in which 30 percent or more of the students are LEP. These findings suggest that many immigrant children are attending schools that are not just ethnically segregated but linguistically isolated. (Ruiz- De Velasco, Fix and Clewell,2000) Performance of Immigrant Children. The biggest indicator of the effect of this wave of immigration to education is in educational performance. Regrettably, United States data in the matter with regards to achievement, school, grade completion and college attendance are of utilized restrictedly. A good indicator or provision in matters of curricular and systematic adjustment is that numerous LEP students are excused from taking standardized achievement tests, such as those administered by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), because of their limited English language skills. Those who do take the tests, thus, represent a selected group of LEP students. Before 1995, for example, about 50 percent of all students identified as LEP were excluded from the NAEP assessments, usually because they could not be meaningfully tested in English (NCES, 1997). Thus, not only have large numbers of LEP students been excluded from national tests, but those weakest in English have been disproportionately excluded.The SASS and the Census do, however, provide information on school attendance and completion for a representative sample of immigrant children, and achievement test scores have recently become available for other sources. The SASS data suggest that both foreign born and LEP students have better attendance rates than U.S.-born children. (Ruiz- De Velasco, Fix and Clewell) Such data reflects the current and numerous trends and indicators of the challenges facing schools in the United states, especially those in an urban setting, as well as other countries who have a high rate of immigrant students. Such trends include the fast rate in the growth of the number of immigrant children (particularly among Mexicans) that puts an imbalance to growht growth in the number of children of natives. Another indicator is in socio-econmic factors wherein poverty levels begin to increase and deviate from non-Hispanic white children of natives. A third indicator is the increase in percentage of LEP students, particularly among U.S.-born immigrant children. There is also an evident growth among foreign-born and recently arrived foreign-born students ,most notably in middle and high schools. Fifth, there is an increase in levels of ethnic and linguistic school-level segregation showing a wide variation by national origin regarding achievement and school completion rates. In the non-native English speaker race, based on performance, Asians place first while Caucasians lag among white non- Hispanic natives. Overall, immigrant children's needs exceed current institutional support. A number of specific policy concerns emerge from our analysis that were addressed directly by the immigrant education reform projects. Perhaps most striking is the mismatch between the number and needs of immigrant middle and high school students and the limited resources targeted to them. A second policy concern is the low academic achievement and school completion rates of some immigrant students, including some second- and even third generation children of immigrants, who have been promoted through U.S. schools but remain LEP. More research is necessary to determine the factors that have led to both the growth and the high dropout rates of this population. A third policy concern-one that goes beyond the scope of the demonstration programs-is the new ethnic and linguistic concentration of immigrant children. More research in this area is necessary, both because the degree of such concentration is unlikely to be reduced by current trends in school segregation and because its effects on immigrant children remain largely unknown. (Ruiz- De Velasco, Fix and Clewell, 2000) Provisions and Promulgation of Curricular Modifications The plight of immigrant students alter the educational and curricular system of the United States, with the considerable increase and high continuing levels of immigration. The biggest casualty of such flight, in an institutional level, is no other tha American Public Schools. Because public schools allow for more access and acceptance rate, no set of American institutions is arguably more critical to the future success of immigrant integration than such institution. Based on this research, there are two subpopulations of immigrant children that pose special challenges to public schools but have received little attention. The first subpopulation are the immigrant teens who have just arrived in the United States, have cultural anxiety with the United States school system and have significant gaps in their schooling. Many of these children are not fully literate in their native language, much less in English and will have a very hard time following the instructional process. The second subpopulation is students from language minority homes who have been in U.S. schools longer, but have yet to master basic language and literacy skills. While these students may be orally proficient in English, their reading and writing skills lag those of their student counterparts. We refer to these students here as long-term LEPs. There should be amendments to focuses on strengthening education programs for immigrant children. The first challenge was the limited capacity of school staff to instruct these learners. These staff should also be available for remedial, if not, modification of classroom procedures or curricular goals for immigrant students. The biggest imposition for an immigrant student is the affective filter. The teacher and the educational system should make sure to lessen anxiety at all costs for maximum learning experience. The second are the resource materials made accessible for these students. Thirdly, teaching strategies or effective language/ communication classes (those that are updated and suitable for student needs) should be implemented in the school. Apart from academic implications, psychosocial support must also be given to these students. An integrated or modified curriculum Review of Related Issues Because of the broad spectrum of the research, we can allow the interdependence of other issues such as that of meritocracy, stratification and decentralization, for further research. According to Best, meritocracyis a system of a government or other organization where inappointmentsare made and responsibilities assigned to individuals based upon demonstrated talent andability(merit).In a meritocracy,societyrewards (via wealth, position, and social status) those who show talent and competence as demonstrated by past actions or bycompetition. Evaluation systems, such asformal education, are closely linked to notions of meritocracy (2005). This is the part of research wherein it can be interjected to further clarify the social impact of the study. Stratification, also, is pertinent in education. It is practice of using testing and tracking to group students based on a variety of factors.Stratification, more evident in segregation, is a conventional routine in American schools. The instructional practice and the content of the curriculum in schools that track students by their ability have an incredible effect on students in the school system.Lastly, by looking at decentralization and its situational contexts which include of education includes linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and political factors, as well as conditions, such as students' personal characteristics, family support, and quality of instruction, we can further understand a variety of issues interrelated with the research, All of these factors influence the learning of students, individually, and academically, and proliferates into a broader spectrum, once again, to the impact of education to societies, and to globalization. Bibliography Books Best, Shaun. (2005).Understand Social Divisions.Manchester: SAGE. Burbules, N.C. and Philips, D.C. (2000):Postpositivism and Educational Research.Maryland:Lanham & Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Crandall, J. (1997). Language Teaching Approaches for School-Aged Learners in Second LanguageContexts. Encyclopediaof Language and Education: Volume 4: Second Language Education (pp. 75-84). Dordrecht,The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Green, A. (1997)Education, Globalization and the Nation State, London: Macmillan. Hakuta, K., Y.G. Butler, and D. Witt (1999)How Long Does It Take English-Language Learners to Attain ProficiencyUnpublished manuscript. California: Stanford University. Ruiz- De Velasco, J., Fix, M. & Clewell, B.C. (2005). Overlooked and Underserved: Immigrant Students in Secondary Schools. Washington D.C: The Urban Institute. Suarez-Orozco, C. (2001). Children of Immigration, Developing Child. Harvard Press: Massachusetts. Journals/ Newsletters Crandall, J. (1998). A Delicate Balance: Theory and Practice in TESOL Teacher Education." Teacher Education Interest Section Newsletter 13 (2): 3-4. Bernachee, C. Crandall, J. and Prager, S. (1998). New Frontiers in Educational Policy and Program Development: The Challenge ofthe Underschooled Immigrant Secondary School Student.Educational Policy 12 (6): 719-34. Online Publications Burbules, N. C. and Torres, C. A. (2000)Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives, London: Routledge. The introduction available on the web:http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/ncb/papers/global.html Appendix Table 1. Population Ages 5-20 by Nativity/Parentage, 1970 -1995 Number in Thousands Change Growth % 1970 1980 1990 1995 1970-1995 1990-1995 1970-1995 1990-1995 Immigrant Children 3,527 5,158 6,510 8,575 5,049 2,065 143 32 Foreign-Born 952 1819 2,237 2,703 1750 466 184 21 U.S.-Born 2.575 3,348 4,273 5,873 3,298 5,600 128 37 Children of Natives 51,833 45,477 39,691 44,060 7,773 4,369 15 11 African-American 7,472 7,333 6,615 7,954 482 1,339 6 20 Non-Hisp. White 41,988 35,409 30,058 32,759 9,229 2,701 22 9 Other 2,373 2,735 3,018 3,347 974 329 41 11 TOTAL 55,360 50,635 46,201 52,635 2,725 6, 434 5 14 NUMBER ENROLLED (in thousands) Immigrant Children 3,104 4,674 5,744 7,897 4,793 2,153 154 37 Foreign- 770 1,506 1,817 2,307 1,537 490 200 207 U.S.-Born 2,334 3,169 3,926 5,590 3,256 1,664 140 42 Children of Natives 45,676 41,621 35,523 41,451 4,225 5,928 9 17 African-American 6,160 6,614 5,814 7,465 1,305 1,651 21 28 Non-Hisp. White 37,535 32,642 27,095 30,955 6, 580 3,860 18 14 Other 1,981 2,365 2,614 3,031 1,050 417 53 16 TOTAL 48,779 46,295 41,267 49,348 569 8,081 1 20 Sources: 1970, 1980, and 1990 1% PUMS, 1995 October CPS. a. Includes those not living with a parent; excludes Puerto Ricans. Read More