The ecology of education: a social and psychological approach to inequality

Sidorenko, Ewa (2011) The ecology of education: a social and psychological approach to inequality. International Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education (IJCDSE), 2 (2). pp. 355-363. ISSN 2042-6364 (Online)

Abstract

In many discussions about persistent structural inequalities of educational outcomes in UK two important aspects are left out from analysis: the dominant philosophy of education (culture of learning), and psychological insight into educational ‘failure’. The paradox is that without a nuanced approach to analyzing differential outcomes, conventionally, sociology of education has tended to treat learners as subject to structural processes of
socialization in which they themselves had no agency. What the persistence of patterned educational ‘failure’ suggests, is that there are indeed processes at work generating such outcomes but these may be more complex than those underpinning ideas which claim that particular groups are ‘failed by the educational system’. This paper argues for a complexity perspective approach which conceptualizes the school as a social ecology in which learners, as agency, are significant constituent elements in a dynamic
relationship with the institutional framework of the
school which includes both structural and cultural factors. This paper argues that we need to move the entire debate around failure away from the reductive focus on the ‘school’ or the ‘system’ without proper attention given to the complexity of the school ecology.

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