Page 83 - Looking_after_school

3. Touchstones: pedagogical articulations

tiation (based on merit of achievement), and selection/allocation (of
human potential in function of the social needs) (Parsons, 1959). More
in general, and despite differences among authors, the sociological
approach of education views education as an institutionalised pro-
cess of socialisation which reproduces the social order through various
functions: qualification (granting access to the job market), selection
and allocation (allocating a status based on merit), and integration
and legitimisation (guarantee participation into society and legitimis-
ing it) (Peschar & Wesselingh, 1995). For the sake of completeness, we
should also mention the sociological approaches which contest the
social reproduction of the school and, implicitly or explicitly, under-
line the possible productive function of schools (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1970; Apple, 1979). These productive approaches, however, also define
the goal of the school from an outsider’s perspective. Here, the school
appears as a political instrument to produce a new and more just soci-
ety. Even though it is acknowledged that both the meaning and the role
of the school do not coincide with the prevailing expectations of soci-
ety, in these approaches the school is still understood as a function of
society. There is thus a limited attention for the school’s own ‘nature’.
Next to sociological approaches, there are also other approaches
which have this outsider perspective on the school. With the cultural
approach, the starting point is that young people are (and must be)
part of a cultural community that has particular values, habits, and
ways of life. The school is, above all, a matter of initiation, meant to
lead young people into a broader cultural community. The role and
meaning of school here is defined from the perspective of this culture.
There is also an economic approach, which understands the school
as the place for investing in human capital, an investment that has
both individual and social rates of return (Schultz, 1971; Becker, 1976).
Stated differently, school is the time and place into which parents or/
and the whole of society invest in knowledge and skills, in order to
gain (social-)economic return. The school is thus understood in terms
of investment and production of human capital, and as such is also
defined externally by contributions to the job market, rise of income,
and economic growth.
Another external approach is rooted in learning psychology and
understands what takes place at school in terms of processes of growth

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