Are there advantages to a sociological perspective?

We discussed four reasons as to why having a sociological perspective as an educator would be advantageous.

This included, the sociological perspective:

• Looks at the big picture by placing one’s classroom within a larger social context
• Counteracts ideology meaning the over emphasis on the individual when analyzing social phenomenon
• Helps you question ‘reforms’ meaning seeing beyond immediate consequences of policy decision to question their unintended consequences
• Helps you be proactive meaning anticipating trends and to formulate a response before the issue comes crashing down.
  

I think these are absolutely great perspectives to have as an educator. If you aren’t looking at the big picture, looking at patterns instead of what is happening individually, looking at all the possible consequences to changing a certain policy before going through with it, or looking ahead to see what will potentially be a problem in your classroom, the world of education would be a huge mess. It absolutely astonished me that sociology of education has been almost completely wiped out of universities. Without it many teachers will probably be or are very close-minded and only look at themselves, their classrooms, and the here and now and not what they should be looking at (the things mentioned above).


For example, what if one science teacher, year after year finds that his or her students are not doing as well as they should be. The teacher thinks, maybe I’m becoming a worse teacher. Maybe the teacher of the grade below me is not a good teacher. Maybe the students are getting dumber as the years go on. But as a matter of fact, this is happening everywhere and it was really a problem with the curriculum, and the curriculum should have been changed years ago. If you’re not looking at the big picture, if you’re putting the emphasis on yourself, this is something that could really happen. Therefore I believe one hundred percent that it is advantageous to have a sociological perspective.