Sociological Perspectives on Values in Education

Hello, everybody.

My name is Sean Best,

and I am a senior lecturer in education studies at the University of Winchester.

And in my presentation, I'm going to talk about British values

Since 2015,

there has been a legal obligation on schools and

colleges to promote British values within their curriculum.

The Office for Standards in Education, off stead

in their common inspection framework, identify the British values as democracy,

the rule of law, individual liberty,

mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

Now what constitutes Britishness

and what constitutes British values?

It is contentious.

There are competing understandings of the function of Britishness, and indeed,

of the British identity.

However,

the role of British values is the promotion of social cohesion.

But what do sociologists understand by a value?

Well, the value is defined by most people as being a set of attitudes of values,

beliefs, etcetera that underpin standards of behaviour

and British values

is meant to be a set of common values

that British people share that makes Britishness distinctive.

So the sharing of values, common values

is thought to be central to sustaining both social cohesion and indeed,

social solidarity.

And what you find

is that across a broad range of sociological perspectives,

that underpinning assumption of common values

providing social cohesion is found.

So, for instance, I'm going to mention in in a little bit more detail

Emil Durkin's notion of the social fact.

But it could easily have talked about Talcott Parsons in the common value system.

Okay, so

Talcott Parsons in these big 1951 book The Social System

Talcott Parsons makes it crystal clear that underpinning the

social system is a set of commonly shared values,

attitudes and beliefs that people are socialised in

that provides solidarity to the social system.

I could easily have talked about marks and the concept of dominant ideology in the

way in which people are socialist into the dominant ideas of the ruling class,

or a feminist perspective where people are socialist into patriarchy,

common ways in which men and women are expected to relate to each other

in terms of the action perspectives I

could have talked about symbolic interaction is,

and the notion of the definition of the situation

again common ways of behaving within this time,

small groups,

phenomenology ists have a similar idea called

the Libyans felt the world lived experience

again. This is where people are socialised into common ways of thinking.

Common ways of behaving within within a common culture

after the methodology ists have a similar notion of members methods again

similar ways of behaving and acting within any given situation.

Okay, let's start by having a look at the work of Emile Dirk. I'm

Emil Durkin wrote.

Very informative and influential text called

The Rules of the Sociological Method,

and the first chapter of The Rules of

the Sociological Method is about the social fact.

Durkin tries to explain to his readers what he understands by a social fact,

and indeed, what brings the social fact into being.

According to Dirk, I'm

individual people make expectations of each other's behaviour.

So in their everyday lives, they talk to each other. How are you today?

I'm fine, thank you, et cetera. So there's common ways of behaving.

And according to Dirk,

I'm when those expectations echoes a common

ways of thinking common ways of behaving.

Then what happens is is that they form a social fact,

and what he means is common values.

Those expectations come together.

They form a common value system external to the individual

and these these external constraints are experienced by

individual people as a set of common values.

So the collective expectations impose their self

upon people and people feel the need

to confirm

one of dark times. Lesser known books is a book called Moral Education,

and this book tries to address the role of education within the modern world

and according to a milder camp in the modern world,

individual people have very specialist tasks to perform,

so the world of work is divided up into a very strict,

rigid but specialist division of labour.

The role of the school is to try to provide people with a degree of solidarity.

So on the one hand,

what the education system does is to

provide people with skills and abilities so that

they can take their place in the labour market in the specialist division of Labour.

At the same time,

the role of the education system is too

socialist into the common value system within society,