Using material from item a and elsewhere,asses sociological explanations of ethnic differences in educational achievement (20 marks)- plan from my essay which scored 18/20
Intro- explain one on the reasons of differences in educational achievement i.e. cultural differences
Use statistics who does better and why?
Criticism, ethnicity is not the only factor affecting achievement
Para 1: Talk about cultural factors i.e. language differences in home
Use a case study
Criticism: Some people aren't affected by this... ethnicity which are still achieving regardless??
Para 2: A pupils family background
An example of an ethnicity how it affects education..?
Cricism: Asian families still achieving
Para 3: Different economic background
Ethnicity example of lower background and underachievement
Para 4: Interactionist sociologists- internal factors interaction = affects achievement
1.Curriculam- ethnocentric
For example....
Case study
2.Racism in schools
For example...
Case study
Para 5: Two reasons why theories can be criticised
1.Ethic differences not so important in producing such differences in achievement- indian student tend to do well rather than disadvantaged by it
2.They ignore other factos such as class and gender example of a gender difference between girls and boys which is ethnicity linked i.e. black girls/white working boys
Conclulsion: There are sociological explanations for differences in educational achievement HOWEVER, not all ethnic minorities underachieve.
Also to your question on don't you ned functionalism to critisie marxism, i only used functionalist in around one paragraph for my essays on marxism, so you don't really need in. In your criticisms you can use Willis, and then briefly say like the functionalist perspective on their opposing view (not really necessary to use case study) Most of the time people make the mistake of writing too much for criticisms for theories, when you can get away with shortly outlining it and scoring high marks!!!! hope this helped