Joining the Conversation: Step 2

Kiara Shuford

Megan Keaton

English 1102

10 April 2013

           

Joining the Conversation: Step 2

            When we read the “”in class it focused on the negative impact that low social class has on a student’s education. So for this paper I wanted to focus on how a student’s social class contributes to their education and how they can use education for social mobility.     

To begin you have to define social mobility and how it’s actually related to education. Zefang the author of the article, “” defines social mobility as,  “a phenomena in which enables, in the structure of social stratification an individual or group’s social status to move up or down their occupations to be transformed.” (Zefang610) Social mobility can be divided up into categories horizontal, vertical, intergenerational, and intra-generational, but for this question I only focused on intergenerational, which means in the same generation. So now how is social mobility related to education? The article “Social Mobility and Educational Selection” says that social class impacts the choices people make including education selection and what career people choose as well. This means that social class impacts choices such as classes and tests the student takes. But students that have a low socioeconomic status don’t have the resources than those students that belong to a higher class, so they tend to fall behind because of their lack of resources. “Education is a bridge to social mobility and can give underprivileged people the way to a more privileged life” (Zefang 611) and could be the only option for some students.

Three specific factors can contribute to the social mobility and education selections these students make according to the article. The first factor is your family's income; students are born into their social class and the income of their family’s impact them tremendously. So if other generations in your family have low incomes they most likely received a low education and this will ultimately be your fate as well. Another factor that contributes is your parents IQ; there is a direct relationship between your parents IQ and yours. The higher an IQ a student has the further they will go with their education. The last factor that contributes to social mobility and education you choose is what the author, Paul Attewell, calls high-mastery. The book describes high-mastery as “a sense that controls one’s own fate” (Attewell). These three things combine to predict how a student’s educational career will possibly turn out compared to their relationship. According to this research being in a low class will not keep you from going to college or higher education opportunities.

Not everyone thinks that being raised in a lower class actually hinders students educationally, the authors of the book Mobility and Inequality, they believe that underprivileged students have more drive to finish high school and to pursue higher education. Saying that “Wealth differences across families are interpreted more broadly, either as indicators of differential behavioral orientations correlated with savings behavior and lifetime success or reasons families to pursue alternative strategies for human capital investment in their offspring”.(Stanford University Press) And in the article, “Social Class in Family Therapy Education: Experiences of Low SES Students” they actually say that students from lower social classes are also targeted for things like graduate school and higher degree programs. They also believe that these students will be more inclined to work with students with low socioeconomic statuses’ in their career choices.

So, what can happen to give lower class students better resources and a better understanding of their curriculum? In the book A Notion at Risk, the authors give a few suggestions on how we as a country could do just that. The first thing they think would help is summer school or an extended year for these students. As you can imagine all students loose most of what they learn during the school year when they have summer break, so if summer school or an extended year was enforced this wouldn’t happen as much and these students can advance. They say “summer programs should provide poor children with the types of enriching experiences that middle-class children receive during the summer, as opposed to the traditional approach of reviewing curriculum taught during the year.”(Century Foundation), so not teaching the same subjects twice, but going more in depth with these subjects. The other thing they believe will give lower class students more of a chance for social mobility is increased funding in their schools. These funds wouldn’t be to just increase the resources students have at school, but to also help their families at home, so they have a better environment there as well. Money for things like food and housing would be given because they are conducive to a good learning environment and because the student would only have to worry about their studies.

After doing all this research and what I‘ve witnessed I’ve acquired an opinion on education and social mobility. For me I would say that I didn’t grow up as bad as the students that I’m writing about, but I know some people that did and have made, something out of their life with education. Having more resources than others can help, but it shouldn’t hold anyone back. People that work hard to overcome their shortcomings I believe deserve what they strive for and as a country if we can help give students more of a chance to overcome these short comings we should.

 

Works Cited

A Century Foundation Book. A Notion at Risk. New York: Richard D. Kahlenberg, 2000, Print.

Attewell, Paul and David E. Lavin. Passing the Torch. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. Print.

Dong Zefang, Wang Yanbin, Chen Wenijiao. “Social Mobility and Educational Selection.” Educational Research and Experiment vol. 1 (2009): 13-18. Electronic.

Stanford University Press. Mobility and Inequality. Stanford, California: Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford, 2006. Print.

Teresa McDowell, Andrae’ L. Brown, Nicole Cullen, and April Duyn. “Social Class in Family Therapy Education: Experiences of Low SES Students” Journal of Marital and Family Therapy Vol. 39 (2013): 72-__. Electronic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Questions about comments on Annotated Bibliography

1. The most helpful piece of advice I received was the fact that I put some of the analysis parts and summary parts in the wrong parts of the my bibliography, so maybe I could clean up my paper a bit.
2. The least helpful piece of advice was the fact that I used all the print sources. Two of my sources were online academic articles, so they were electronic.
3. I don't have any questions, the comments were pretty straight forward and I now know how to revise.
4. I plan to clean up my annotated bibliography and place things where they need to be. Also add a little more explanation to my "how I'll use it" part of the bibliography.

workshop reflection: Joining the Conversation step1

1. Brian: It didn't feel like a conversation felt more like an academic paper. Needs to have a background story or more of a setting.
Leaslie: Feels the same close to the annotated bibliography. List of characters could use for academic paper.
Isai: Thinks you did a perfect job, not a conversation, just random talking. Make it flow more, felt like it should be more creative, think of a setting. Didn't understand third page second dialogue was confusing reword it.
Ashley: To forced doesn't feel like dialogue. Needs to have more of a interaction between characters. Too direct shouldn't tell us exactly whats going on. Can add a little dry humor.
2. I had a concern that my paper wasn't much of a dialogue, and everyone told me that my paper didn't really follow the assignment.
3. Everyone pretty much said the same thing and how I could change it, so I don't think any advice was least helpful.
4. I tend to put more conversation into my paper and give more of a background story and character list.

Joining the Conversation: Step 1

Kiara Shuford

Megan Keaton

English 1102

2 April 2013

My sources are on an education board, they are discussing research they found on how education helps low SES students with social mobility. All of my sources are meeting at a local high school to go over what they came up with and are trying to gather solutions to fix the problem of getting low socioeconomic status students better education. I’m in the audience listening to their ideas.

ME: To get the audience fully engaged in the discussion the sources begin by giving their definition of social mobility.

ZEFANG: “Social mobility is a phenomenon in which enables, in the structure of social stratification, an individual or group’s social status to move up or down and their occupations to be transformed.” It can be divided up into horizontal and vertical and intra-generational and intergenerational.

ME: For this discussion the sources were only focusing on intra-generational mobility, which is defined as an individual’s change in social class.

CENTURY FOUNDATION: Students of low economic status don’t have the same resources as the students of higher social classes and tend to fall behind because of their lack of resources.

MCDOWELL: We believe that social class impacts the choices people make including career choices, education selections, values, and expectations. Education is a bride for social mobility and could be the only option some students have for social mobility.

ZEFANG: Social mobility, can also affect your education selection.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: We performed research that compared a student’s entry to college to their parent’s income. And that many students that are low SES situations haven’t picked college just because they don’t have the means to afford it.

ATTEWELL: We’ve also done research that compared students and the other generations in their family. It describes the maternal grandparents and mothers with low education and low income raise children that are less likely to go to college. Another factor that could contribute to if a student goes to college is a mother’s IQ.

ME: This was surprising to me because I feel like as students we need to have choices in our education selection, be able to choose what we want and not have to deal with what we are given just because of the social class we were born into.

ATTEWELL: These factors combine in favor or against these students, but some can outweigh or even balance another factor. This just means that even if you’re born into one of these unfortunate situations doesn’t mean you’ll never go to college because you can have another factors working in your favor. It’s not “one strike and you’re out.”

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: But on the other hand we also believe that underprivileged students have more of a drive to finish college because of how they grew up.

ZEFANG: Education selection refers school system examinations, assessment, evaluation and classification. Because of the choices the different students make they become concerned about the types of school and professions available to them on graduating. American students in particular are focused on horizontal mobility because people now go to school based on what their interests.

MCDOWELL: Because education is a bridge to social mobility so many students that are from low social classes are more inclined to choose higher education, but they are also targeted for things like graduate school and higher degree programs.

ME: Now that the audience have gotten some background information on the issue and fully understand that issue the sources can now discuss what they intend to do to better the education of low SES students and how they can reach their goals of vertical social mobility. The first source begins with what they think the best solution is. That is to make the public education better for K-12 students.

CENTURY FOUNDATION: The best thing to make social mobility for underprivileged students accessible is to better the education in our public schools, grades K-12. We’ve seen in our research that the longer the school year and shorter the summer the more the students retain. So summer school to go more in depth with the material would be a part of the solutions we’ve come up with. The second part to our solution is increased funding for these public schools. Not only more money in the school system, but as far as individual classrooms.

ME: I can really relate to these students because I feel like I’ve never really had many resources in my school system, but I’ve made the most of my situation just like many other student in the same situation. So I liked to hear these ideas because it seemed like this source really wanted to help the underprivileged students of these areas.   

ALL SOURCES: The more the public is educated on the issues that are happening around them the faster the issue can get cleared up. Thanks for staying and listening to our presentation.

The sources leave believing that they educated their audience on the issue that they have focused their research on and hoping that the issue will get cleared up, not only for the greater good of the country, but the greater good of those less fortunate in our country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self Assesment

1. My goals for this bibliography was to understand and read all my sources to ultimately help myself write a good paper. I think I reached my goals because I now understand all of my sources.
2. I used my time by reading and understanding every source and then writing the annotation after
3. The workshop of the first three sources really helped by pointing out what I lacked in my bibliography, so with the next two sources I added more.
4. The active reading activities really helped me write the bibliography as well because it helped me understand the sources a lot more then if I would of just read it myself.
5. This was the first annotated bibliography the I've ever written, so I've learned that they aren't so scary and that I actually can write one.
6. The hardest part of the paper for me was writing a detailed "how you use it" part of the annotation.
7. The easiest part of the paper was finding usable quotes that I can actually use in my future papers.
8. The part of my paper that might need a little bit of work would be the "how you use it" part of the annotation. It might need to be added to, but I tried to add as much detail as I could.
9. My writing process was to first read my sources and get a good understanding of all of them, then to write the paragraphs of the annotation with as much detail as possible. Then write down the quotes that stood out to me as I read the source.

Annotated Bibliography 2nd Draft

Teresa McDowell, Andrae’ L. Brown, Nicole Cullen, and April Duyn. “Social Class in Family Therapy Education: Experiences of Low SES Students” Journal of Marital and Family Therapy Vol. 39 (2013): 72-__. Print.

 

In this article, the authors conduct research on low SES students and they’re higher education habits when they go into their career choice of Family Therapy. They first define how they view social class and what factors that they have found effect their definition of social class. Some of the factors they refer to are education level, income, and occupation prestige and then go on to further explain how these factors and how they are specifically affected. For my paper I only needed the education level part of the article which was very interesting in its own right. The authors of this article believe that pursuing higher education degrees and attending graduate school are directly related to social class.

In this article they lay some things out that I had suspicions were true.  They have done extensive research and surveyed many students, to get their results. The authors of this article believe that social class makes you who you are, and it has an influence on the education decisions you make. In the long run these authors believe that these students choose to pursue higher degrees and graduate school. They also believe that these people are more likely to work with people of low SES status after their own career is established.

In my paper I will use this article for the facts and it’s also very quotable. These things I can use to back up my own opinions about my inquiry question within my paper. It also begins to answer my inquiry question; with my other sources my question will eventually be answered.

·         It is also striking given the emphasis on recruiting and retaining diverse students(including students from lower- and working-class families) in graduate programs.(pg.72)

 

·         Career and occupational development including the possibility of attending graduate school and the range of choices relative to pursuing higher degrees, is directly influenced by social class.(pg.73)

 

·         We expected our research to contribute a corrective agenda; that bringing the collective thoughts, ideas, and experiences of students from lower- and working-class families to the forefront is a way to promote more inclusive and just family therapy programs.(pg.74)

 

Dong Zefang, Wang Yanbin, Chen Wenijiao. “Social Mobility and Educational Selection.” Educational Research and Experiment vol. 1 (2009): 13-18. Print.

            This article goes more in depth with the relationship of social mobility and education selection. To begin they also define their definition of social mobility and the different types of social mobility, whether it would be vertical or horizontal. I can also be divided into inter-and intra- generational mobility. The authors then go on to say that these types of social mobility can happen to different people based on their social class. To tie in the education aspect the authors of this article say that social mobility is joined with social choice and education selection is a part of social choice. They define education selection as the quality of assessments, examinations, and assignation of students to different levels and types of educational unit.  This is the two things that are closely related and interact according to these authors.

            The authors of this article believe that education is a bridge to social mobility and can give underprivileged people they way to a more privileged life. They also believe that in a more traditional since of social mobility is closed and educational selection can only be carried out within the ruling class, but now that we live in a modern  society it’s more open and educational selection can be more geared to the needs of different people.

            Like in the article “Social Class in Family Therapy Education: Experiences of Low SES Students” this article makes very good points. It also has good definitions that I feel are necessary to make my points again with my own opinions in my inquiry paper.

·         On one side, the character, direction, speed, level, methods and trends of social mobility affect the aims, goals, functions, scope, strategy, content and methods of choice in education.(pg.610)

 

·         The function of social mobility in education is achieved by training and selecting members of society, enabling them to transform into members of different occupations, thus generating a degree of social stratification.(pg.611)

 

·         Especially in modern society, education has become the basis of social mobility and irrational social mobility and a bridge leading to the ideal career.(pg.612)

 

A Century Foundation Book. A Notion at Risk. New York: Richard D. Kahlenberg, 2000, Print.

In this book I used 2 different sections that I think would be helpful in my inquiry paper, “Making K-12 Public Education an Engine for Social Mobility” and “Equalizing Education Resources on Behalf of Disadvantaged Children.” In the first section the author describes what he believes will make public education an engine for social mobility. He focuses on poor students and how to raise their education level to middle class or even private school levels. Summer school and increased funding for education within these underprivileged areas are what the author believes will give these students an even playing ground later on in life.

That’s exactly what the author of this book wants to change, the fact that underprivileged students are getting the same or even a similar education as even middle-class students. The book proposes that summer school or an extended school year would be good for these students to further explain the curriculum. It also proposes increased funding and not just in school systems, but it goes all the way to individual classrooms. I liked these ideas because it seems like the author of this book really wants to help these underprivileged students to better them and only them.

Using this book will be simple because it has great ideas to change the problem that has arisen in the United States. To actually put in my paper, this paper gives me solutions for my inquiry question.

·         Summer programs should provide poor children with the types of enriching experiences that middle-class children receive during the summer, as opposed to the traditional approach of reviewing curriculum taught during the year.

 

·         Rothstein also provides guidance on addressing other forms of school spending inequality, and he urges that more resources be provided to improve the social capital of disadvantage families outside of schools through programs that improve nutrition and housing.

 

·         Americans are at once deeply committed to the institution of public education and fairly pessimistic about the current state of public schools—suggesting the time is ripe for public school reform.

 

Stanford University Press. Mobility and Inequality. Stanford, California: Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford, 2006. Print.

This book puts forth a lot of research to break the cycle of inequality and mobility not happening to those less fortunate. They gather their research and research of others to construct the section that I used for my paper, “Educational Attainment and the College Enrollment Decision”. In their research they first compare student’s entry to college with that student’s parent’s income. Then they look at how the amount of students that want to go to college has grown so much because of the fact that degrees can provide them with more of an opportunity to grow and of course more income themselves. Even though these numbers have grown the authors believe that it’s still low for such an advanced nation, like the United States, so they believe that we can do more to improve the numbers.

            Throughout their research the authors of this book have exposed a lot about social mobility and educational attainment. Their research tells us that, many low SES students and families haven’t picked college just because they don’t have the means to afford that option. They also believe that despite the income of a family, you can’t predict if someone’s family is very frugal and saves for their college tuition before they’re even born. They even say that underprivileged people can sometimes have more of a drive to go to college because of how they grew up. So, their research is accurate, but there are some exceptions.

This book lays everything out on the table, research wise and lets the reader know just how social mobility and educational attainment is laid out within the United States. We are growing as a nation and some of the things that couldn’t be attained by the some of the less fortunate. But we can do so much more than what we are already doing. I will use this extensive research in my paper to elaborate on ideas that others have from my other sources and also ideas that I have myself.

·         The customary practice of measuring family advantage with socioeconomic status was challenged by those who wished to focus more directly on the availability of resources.

 

·         Wealth differences across families are interpreted more broadly, either as indicators of differential behavioral orientations correlated with savings behavior and lifetime success or reasons families to pursue alternative strategies for human capital investment in their offspring.

 

·         In particular, increases in college enrollment should be smaller for prospective students from resources-poor families, as these students’ relative access to liquid funds to finance a college education has declined.

 

 

Attewell, Paul and David E. Lavin. Passing the Torch. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. Print.

This book brings up some very interesting points. The authors of this book describes the relationship between the maternal grandparents and mothers income and education level compared to what you can expect in that mothers child. It describes how studies have been done to show that grandparents with low education or have a low income, their grandchildren are less likely to go to college and the opposite for high of both situations, same for the mother in the same situations. Another factor to a child entering college is if their mother has a high or low IQ and something they call high-mastery. This is defined as, “a sense that one controls one’s own fate”.

The authors of this book are very meticulous with their research; they have very organized and thought out tables to explain this research. They believe that this is as close as you’re going to get when predicting what your child can achieve in life. Saying that high-mastery women raise high-mastery children is just some of the thought they put into their research.  They also say that these factors combine and something can outweigh or even balance another factor. So for someone with one factor can still achieve a lot in the education department because other factors outweigh that one less than complimentary factor It’s not “one strike and you’re out”.

Because the information in this book is so organized it will be very easy to understand and add to my paper. Because the authors explain that about everyone can go to college based on the information about their mother and grandparents, I will add that information to my paper to enhance the idea that even low SES students can go on to secondary education.

·         To what extent do social privilege and social disadvantage reach across the generations and affect the life prospects of grandchildren?

 

·         We find that the probability of a child’s educational success is substantially related to the resources of the maternal grandparents and mother, measured in most cases before the child was born.

 

 

·         This is partly because this psychological orientation is itself passed on from mother to child, so that high-mastery women bring up high-mastery children.

Annotated Bibliography Workshop Reflection

1. Ashley-Add more to my the last part of my source descriptions, "how you use it". She believed I ananlzyed the source well,  but didn't have enough in that part.
Leaslie-She liked that fact that my second source could be a potential conclusion for my paper, but I needed to say and explain that somewhere in that annotation.
Brian-Liked the quotes that I found for all of my sources and said they would be a great addition to my paper.
2. The most helpful piece of advice that I received was the fact that even though they could tell that I had understood my sources they didn't really understand how those sources were going to be used in my paper.
3. The least helpful amount of advice was the repetitive amount times saying that they liked one part of my bibliography, but I like the encouragement.
4. I plan to add more to my "how you use it" part of my paper. Just going more in dept on how that source is exactly going into my paper.