Introduction: social problems, human cognition, and behaviour

Many, if not most, societal problems are rooted in behaviour or human cognitions. For example, integration problems may result from conflicts between groups and the inherent human tendency to favour one's own group, and traffic accidents are to a large extent caused by unsafe driving styles and the unrealistic perception that one is a better driver than most others. Moreover, health problems are related to unhealthy eating habits and a sense of not being able to control one's appetite, and environmental problems result in part from growing consumption levels and a tendency to prioritize one's immediate self interests above collective interests. Consequently, solutions and prevention of such problems require changes in attitudes, values, norms, behaviour, and lifestyles (Zimbardo, 2002). Social psychologists can play an important role in this respect, by applying their theories, methods, and interventions to these problems.

Social psychology is the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of human behaviour and thought in social situations, and the motivations, cognitions, and emotions related to such behaviours. This includes behaviour and thoughts related to helping, attraction, conflict, prejudice, self-esteem, group processes, and social exclusion (Baron and Byrne, 2004). Box 1.1 illustrates how social psychologists may help resolve social problems by encouraging behaviour changes, and highlights several issues that enhance the social utility of applied social psychological studies. First, in order to design effective solutions for social problems, we have to understand which behaviour causes the given problem. Applied scientists can best focus on behaviour that significantly contributes to a social problem and where interventions would have the most impact in resolving these problems. In our example, speeding by moped riders was studied because moped riders are relatively often involved in traffic accidents, while, in turn, these traffic accidents appeared to be strongly related to speeding. Second, it is important to examine which factors influence the particular behaviour. Behaviour-change programmes will be more effective when they target important antecedents of behaviour. Thus, we need to understand which factors cause behaviour. Third, it is important to understand which intervention techniques are available to change behaviour, taking into account which behavioural antecedents are typically targeted by various intervention techniques.

This chapter argues that educators need to have a good grasp of all the various forms of pre-adulthood we take for granted, such as ‘the child’ and ‘the youth’. These categories are the focus of a range of different disciplines, most of which found their explanatory models in nature itself. As such, the behaviour of children and youth may be deemed to require explanation, but not the very existence of the categories themselves. The issues raised in this chapter concern the degree to which childhood and youth are actually socially constructed categories, categories serving particular social functions. Of greatest interest here are the ways in which childhood and youth are both artefacts of, and vehicles for, social governance.

Making the move from modern to postmodern forms of social analysis is not the only option open to those unhappy with the shortcomings of the traditional social class/gender/race approach. It is possible to step out of this paradigm, and to address mass education, and society in general, from another direction altogether. Part II will explore the possibilities associated with this alternative direction. Not only does this alternative approach ask different questions, it also asks them about largely different elements of the social fabric, and it underpins its ideas within entirely different domain assumptions.

The theories outlined in Part I – even those more clearly postmodern in orientation – tend to ask questions about who has what, and who is exercising power over whom, while focusing primarily upon issues of disadvantage and inequality. This model is built upon a coercive understanding of power, one that describes struggles over resources and access, one which notes who wins and who loses, and one which positions mass education as ground zero in the ongoing battles between classes, genders and races,

The approach taken in Part II is very different. Largely based upon the work of Foucault, the questions it asks focus more upon the ways in which institution like the school produce particular kinds of individuals, both as objects of knowledge, and as objects of governance. Power is no longer regarded as necessarily coercive; rather it is usually productive; it brings new ways of understanding, and new identities, into being. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, governance is about how categories of difference are created and managed; it is about the strategies through which particular populations are normalised; it is about ‘the conduct of conduct’. According to this logic, mass education is not principally about the social reproduction of advantage and disadvantage; it is about distributing and classifying individuals for the purposes of social administration.

Chapter 4 – Governance – addresses the central premise of the part, that mass education has a crucial role to play in managing the conduct of the population. It questions the common-sense assertions that individuality is the same now as it was 300 years ago; that schools have nothing to do with social administration, being there solely for educational purposes; and that the internal structure of the school – its organisation of space and time – isn't really that relevant.

Introduction

Jessica got to work on time today, but just barely. After driving down the freeway from the suburban community of Carlsbad to the city of San Diego at rush hour, she was personally aware of the congested roadways. But unlike most of us who endure traffic delays, she gets to think about it all day at her job. Jessica works for the Metropolitan Transit System in San Diego, California. Her office oversees the bus, trolley, and rail services throughout the city. Her job is to work out ways to decrease road congestion and increase use of the public transport systems. The problem is fairly clear – too many people (including Jessica!) take private cars to work. The existing streets and roadways cannot accommodate the 1.2 million residents that make use of them, and, especially during morning and evening hours when people are commuting to and from work, traffic is a major problem.

As with all of the social problems discussed throughout this book, human behaviour is the cause. Consequently, solving the problem will require a change in behaviour. But changing human behaviour can be challenging, and our chances of success can be greatly increased by incorporating a social-psychological perspective. We can begin with some basic psychological questions: What motivates a person to drive, rather than take the bus? Can we motivate and encourage residents to drive less by encouraging use of the public transport, a car-pool, or a bicycle? How do we know if our efforts to motivate behavioural change were successful? These questions reflect the primary functions of theory in applied social psychology – understanding (U), solution (S), and evaluation (E). See Figure 2.1.

For more than a hundred years, social psychologists have used the scientific method to understand the ways in which individuals think about, relate to, and are influenced by others. The discipline has amassed a large volume of theories about human behaviour, and these theories provide a foundation for understanding and solving many social problems, such as the issue of traffic congestion we just described. In this chapter, we discuss the role of theory in the field of applied social psychology, provide a broad overview of the types of theories discussed throughout this book, and conclude with some of the challenges that arise when using theory to solve social problems.

It will be argued here that the modern school isn't just about ‘education’ in some abstract, humanist sort of way. Rather, it will be contended that schools have an essential role to play in how we govern our society. It is tempting to think that the process of teaching children has always been pretty much the same, and that mass schooling emerged as a result of greater concern for the well-being of the young. The evidence paints a somewhat different picture, a picture wherein mass schooling formed a crucial component of a new form of social regulation, one based upon an increasing focus on individuality, one where the school subtly conforms to the requirements of the State, and one where the disciplinary management of the population is made possible through continual surveillance, and through the close regulation of space, time and conduct.

This book set out with some very specific goals in mind, even if it has not necessarily achieved them all. The first is to address the issue of mass education in ways that have something to offer a range of different readers. This book is not aimed specifically at undergraduates, anymore than it is at practising teachers, or university academics. Each chapter has been organised with a progressive layering of complexity and density, such that readers with differing levels of knowledge and expertise should still be able to get something out of it. This has not been written as a textbook, with bite-sized pieces tailor-made for tutorial digestion. The book was put together for a range of reasons: it is a summary of the current state of play within contemporary theories of education; it is a resource book for those interesting in assessing the weight of different conceptual approaches to mass schooling; it is an analysis of various issues within modern society, as they relate to education; it is a (relatively) gentle critique of reductionist analyses of our schooling institutions and their outcomes; and it is a call for us not to forget the value of philosophy within the broader play of the social sciences.

Second, the intention has been to use a language that is as inclusive as possible. This has not been done with the intention, in any way, of dumbing down the content – far from it. Simple language, carefully used, can still convey all the nuances required from a text dealing with complex ideas. The goal was simply to write a book in a more conversational manner – in part because it is often more enjoyable to read, but also because it's certainly more enjoyable to write. This style has also not been adopted as a veiled criticism of books that maintain a rigorously academic voice throughout; both styles have their place. However, if a book is intended for a broad audience, it surely needs to be written in a broadly accessible manner.

Third, the book has been written with the intention of addressing a wide range of issues and ideas as they relate to mass schooling, without descending into some sort of a scattergun approach, one giving five pages to every unit in the education faculty curriculum.

Some might suggest that information and communication technologies (ICTs) aren't really that important a subject; certainly they don't deserve their own chapter in a book on the sociology and philosophy of education. We don't need to discuss technologies such as tables and chairs, so why the fuss over computers and smart phones – they all just make teaching a bit easier. It will be argued here that the situation is significantly more complex than that.

More often than not, the advent of contemporary information and communication technologies is presented as one of the great success stories of contemporary schooling, and while it has the potential to be a transformative force within education, the issues are complicated and the outcomes far from certain. The field is often divided into those who grew up with such technologies – digital natives/students – and those who have come to these technologies at a later date – digital immigrants/teachers. This binary articulates a central problem within a power relation where teachers are normally expected to know more than those they teach. Furthermore, such new technologies do not simply represent mechanisms for accessing more information, more quickly, and in more interesting ways. By stepping outside the domain of traditional linear texts, traditional understandings of literacy start to lose their meaning. New digital technologies necessitate the adoption of the notion of ‘multiliteracies’, a plural understanding of literacy that encompasses a range of other modes of contemporary meaning-making – hypertext, audio, video, and so on – modes integral to the digital universe.

Introduction

The societal burden of unhealthy behaviours

When a baby is born, we can estimate the expected number of years the new individual will live. This life expectancy is calculated based on statistics regarding how long people in a given population usually live and is considered an important indicator of health and illness in populations. During the past 40 years, life expectancy has increased all over the world (Table 10.1), although more in some regions than in others. Besides the number of years people live, one can calculate the number of healthy years in a person's life. The at-birth expected number of healthy years of life ranges from about 40 years in African countries to about 70 years in developed countries (Mathers et al., 2004).

Although the increase in life expectancy is a good sign, many factors continue to threaten health and life expectancy. In developing and in developed countries, different factors threaten life expectancy. In developing countries (e.g., African countries, Afghanistan, Haiti, Philippines) the relatively low life expectancy is largely determined by a high child mortality rate, often related to infectious diseases, poor housing, and malnutrition. Most of the factors that underlie the high child mortality rate are more strongly determined by structural factors such as economic policy and the quality of the healthcare system than by individual behaviour. In developed countries (e.g., European countries, Canada, USA, Australia), life expectancy is largely related to lifestyle factors, such as smoking tobacco and dietary choices, as these are important causes of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Thus, as countries become more developed, the lower their child mortality rate, and the more life expectancy is determined by individual behaviours.

Smoking tobacco is one of the greatest behavioural threats to human health. It is related to several types of cancers, to heart disease, and to chronic lung disease. One in two smokers will die from smoking. On average smokers live 7 years less than non-smokers and also they live more unhealthy years. Worldwide, about 1.1 billion people smoke, representing about one-third of the population aged 15 years and older. About 3 million smokers die each year from smoking.

Introduction

The physical, mental, cognitive, and health benefits of regular physical activity, exercise and sport participation are today well documented. Regular exercise positively influences most of our physiological systems and helps in protecting against, and rehabilitation of, several chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, numerous cancers, diabetes, stroke, and metabolic disorders (e.g., obesity). It also builds muscle and strengthens bones, preventing osteoporosis. In the elderly, it helps in maintaining balance, thereby reducing the risk of falls and maintaining independent living. This is particularly important as falls and related injuries are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in people aged 65 years and older. Exercise also helps to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression and buffers against stress. Moreover, there is good evidence to suggest that regular exercise maintains brain integrity and improves cognitive functioning across the lifespan. It has been suggested that, if exercise could be packed into a pill, it would be the single most widely prescribed and beneficial medicine. Regular exercise appears to be a ‘magic bullet’ for human health and well-being.

Physical inactivity or sedentary behaviour, on the other hand, is also an important cause of health problems in Western societies. The amount of sedentary behaviour we engage in on a daily basis (e.g., watching television, surfing the internet, reading, or playing videogames), independent of how much physical activity or exercise we do, predicts ill health. For instance, a large longitudinal Canadian study showed that those who sat a very long time in one block had a 50 per cent increase in mortality in comparison to those who sat for shorter periods in one block. This study showed a dose–response relationship (positive correlation) between sitting time (duration of blocks) and ill health, which was independent of the amount of physical activity people engaged in (Katzmarzyk, Church, Craig, and Bouchard, 2009). This suggests that the time we spend sitting and its distribution across the day is related to morbidity and mortality, independent of being less or more physically active. This is why many governments across the globe have developed campaigns to promote physical activity, exercise, and sports. In this chapter, we will demonstrate that social psychologists can contribute in important ways to reach these goals.

This chapter makes the case for the importance of philosophy, as a discipline in its own right, as a subject area vital to the better understanding of education, and as a set of self-reflective practices that can make us better teachers. Philosophy is largely concerned with those areas of study and speculation beyond the reach of empirical analysis, addressing problems about how we construct knowledge, how we produce a just society, and how we determine ‘right’ from ‘wrong’. Its central research methodology is simply to think with clarity. The significance of this discipline has not been limited to answering abstract questions about the human condition; philosophy has been instrumental both in making us into rational and reflexive citizens, and also in framing the ideas behind our entire system of mass schooling.

A lot has been written recently about the emergence of a ‘global society’, one in which economies, cultures and political systems of different nations have started to coalesce. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these commentaries have often taken the form of binary debates – globalisation is all-encompassing vs globalisation is pretty irrelevant; globalisation is the glorious road to the future vs globalisation is the road to hell; globalisation is a fundamentally economic issue vs globalisation is really about cultural homogenisation. Generally speaking, these binaries aren't helpful, and the phenomenon of globalisation deserves a less reductive, more thoughtful, analysis, as it increasingly affects us all, particularly within the sphere of education.

In the previous chapter we discussed general causal frameworks, the building blocks of a causal explanation. In this chapter, we focus on specific hypotheses, where one factor is thought to generate change in another factor.

We begin by clarifying the concept of causality. In the next section, we discuss the criteria of a good (well-constructed) causal hypothesis. The rest of the chapter is devoted to causal analysis. First, we outline the criteria that all causal research designs seek to achieve. Next, we discuss the problem of reaching causal inference.

This chapter is fairly complex. A number of new terms are introduced, some of which may be unfamiliar to the reader and some of which are used in slightly different ways in different disciplines. Although the vocabulary may seem bewildering at first, try to familiarize yourself with these concepts – which you are likely to encounter in your reading and in your future work. The topics covered here are critical for understanding how evidence is used to infer causality in social-science settings. Whether you are primarily a consumer or a producer of social science the following chapters bear a close read and a good think.

Causality

A causal hypothesis involves at least two elements: a cause and an outcome. A cause may be referred to variously as a condition, covariate, exogenous variable, explanatory variable, explanans, independent variable, input, intervention, parent, predictor, right-side variable, treatment, or simply “X.” An outcome may be referred to as a dependent variable, descendant, effect, endogenous variable, explanandum, left-side variable, output, response, or “Y.”

Whatever the terminology, to say that a factor, X, is a cause of an outcome, Y, is to say that a change in X generates a change in Y relative to what Y would otherwise be (the counterfactual condition), given certain background conditions (ceteris paribus assumptions) and scope-conditions (the population of the inference).

Now, let's unpack things a bit. As an example, we shall focus on the causal role of a worker-training program. A reasonable hypothesis is that participation in the program (X) will enhance an unemployed person's subsequent earnings (Y). If the relationship is causal, her earnings should be higher than they would be if she had never participated in the program. Let us represent the treatment, X, as a binary (dichotomous) variable, which takes one of two values.

The previous chapters have presented a largely non-mathematical approach to methodology. This follows our belief that most methodological issues are better communicated through prose than through math, at least at introductory levels. When methodology is conflated with statistics, as it is in some textbooks, the treatment leaves many questions unaddressed. Worse, it may cause the reader to ignore fundamental problems of inference—confusing p-values with a demonstration of causality or with social relevance, for instance.

Having laid a foundation for social science methodology we turn now to a mathematical consideration of some of these same issues. Issues introduced fleetingly in the previous pages such as sampling, statistical significance, and confidence intervals will now be given a more complete treatment. Moreover, understanding the math behind a concept makes it more apprehensible, less mysterious. Additionally, we present practical tools for analyzing data, covering both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The purpose of this section of the book is thus to enrich your understanding of social science and to expand your toolbox of techniques.

Because statistics is hardly separate from methodology (at large) readers will note lots of overlap between this section and previous sections of the book. Even so, there is a mathematical logic to statistics and for this reason the material is best presented in a tightly sequenced manner, separate from previous sections. The reason that we present statistics last, and not first, is that we view statistics as a handmaiden of social science methodology—not the other way around. Researchers should begin with concepts, theories, and research designs and then start discussing samples and the varying utility of different statistical models.

Some might take the view that statistics is such a vast subject that it cannot be summarized in a few short chapters. We agree that this is a non-trivial task. Others may have no need for statistics at this early stage of their social science education; and thus may set aside Part IV for later. For those who read on, however, what follows is intended to serve as a step-by-step introduction to the most commonly applied statistics in the social sciences, a mere jumping-off point for further study and other works. Ultimately, understanding the techniques and topics introduced below is a prerequisite to successfully designing quantitative research in the social sciences.

We are now in the era of Big Data and standardised testing. It will be argued here that, as a consequence of this, the possibilities of social governance are currently in the process of increasing exponentially. Contemporary governance has always been about the management of data, whether this involves making particular populations intelligible through continual assessment, or constructing ever-increasing categories of difference. However, the recently developed ability to instantly correlate almost unfathomable amounts of data means that we are no longer subject to ‘an avalanche of printed numbers’, as in the early nineteenth century, but rather a worldwide tsunami. The potential of governance is consequently moving far beyond that envisaged within earlier iterations of individuation–differentiation–normalisation outlined in Chapter 4. As such, the possibilities of correlation, differentiation and intervention are now almost limitless.

This chapter argues that, even though we all have a pretty good idea what is meant by the term ‘social class’, it is far from being a straightforward matter. After all, there is only tenuous agreement about exactly what it is, how prevalent it is, how it organises the life opportunities of our citizens, and how best to study it. To make it more difficult still, this is a subject that many feel uncomfortable discussing, let alone applying to themselves or anyone else.

In attempting to better understand the relationship between social class and education, this chapter will ask questions about just how equal British society actually is, how schooling success might be more likely for some than others, and why money isn't everything. In doing so, it will trace important changes in the way that the social sciences have tried to explain this phenomenon. Most notably, these changes involve a shift away from a focus on economic and structural aspects of social class, to a greater emphasis on issues of cultural practice.

In the previous three parts of this book, the main tools of analysis have been primarily sociological and historical. Addressing issues of class, gender and race has always been the central prerogative of sociology; likewise, the chapters on the relationship between education and various elements of contemporary culture are also largely investigated through sociological reasoning. Alternatively, understanding the scope and impact of social governance, in all its forms, has principally been the result of detailed historical analysis. However, these are not the only options open to us; some of the most useful and far-reaching methods of inquiry belong to the discipline of philosophy.

If the intention is to look at mass education with a fresh pair of eyes, then philosophy can provide the necessary critical tools to do precisely that. As a discipline based upon clear thinking and cogent argument, philosophy is useful not only for the production of thoughtful future citizens, it is also a valuable skill set for anyone interested in studying our education system. Furthermore, mass education is also an ethically complex domain, with important dilemmas continuing over issues such as social inclusion and disability – a fact that the philosophical study of ethics can help us address with greater clarity and fairness. Finally, if we are seeking the ‘truth’ of mass education, philosophy can help us at least understand what we might mean by that, as well as better understand the relationship between truth and the school curriculum.

Chapter 12 – Philosophy – examines the value of this discipline within education. It questions the assertions that we no longer need non-job-producing subjects like philosophy in our school curriculum, the suggestion being that it's too abstract, too esoteric, and no longer relevant to the digital generation. It questions the notion that education is fundamentally self-evident, and by invoking the need for philosophy to study it, we are making it more complicated than it really is. It also examines the ways in which we can shape a personal philosophy of education, and why this is an important component of doing the job properly.

Chapter 13 – Ethics, Disability and the Law – investigates the importance of the philosophical study of ethics, and its relation to education.

Introduction

Behaviour always occurs in a physical environment. In many cases, the physical environment is crucially important to our thoughts, feelings, performance, behaviour, and well-being. For example, many people feel uncomfortable in the heat, and are more easily annoyed by others when temperatures are high. Traffic noise may result in stress and cardiovascular diseases, while the presence of nature improves people's health and well-being. The availability of recycling facilities increases recycling rates, and people tend to litter more in a littered environment. On the other hand, human behaviour has an impact on the environment. For example, the use of fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, urbanization reduces farmland and natural landscapes, and some species of animals become extinct by human activity.

Environmental psychologists study such interactions between humans and their physical environments. Traditionally, environmental psychologists focused on how the physical environment (e.g., buildings, noise, pollution, and the weather) affects us. More recently, much research is directed at explaining behaviour that affects the quality of the environment, for example, through energy use, water use, vehicle use, and land use. These two research directions are closely connected: individuals continuously change the environment, and, in turn, their cognitions, feelings, behaviour, and well-being are changed by the environment. Our behaviour may affect environmental conditions that are crucial for our well-being. For example, car use increases local air pollution, which can result in health problems.

Why is the relationship between humans and their environment of concern to social psychologists? The reason is that many of the topics studied by environmental psychologists have social psychological aspects. For example, to be able to design human-friendly buildings, we need to know how people perceive and value various construction designs, and how they interact and perform in different physical settings. Similarly, to promote pro-environmental behaviour, we need to know which factors influence various types of environmental behaviour, and understand which interventions may encourage pro-environmental behaviour. Not surprisingly, various social-psychological theories, research methods, and intervention techniques have been applied to the understanding and improvement of the relationship between humans and the environment.

This chapter offers a brief overview of how social psychology can be applied towards better understanding and management of human–environment relationships.