Reflective Paper On Inequality In Education

Reflective Paper

After finishing this course, I find that the topics concerning structure and components of schooling, and inequality in education are impressive. This reflective paper will include some new insights that I have gained from this course regarding the concept of schooling and what kinds of students that I will need to take care of in the future.

A) Reflection on group discussions in class

Structure and components of schooling

At the very beginning of the course, we were encouraged to discuss and reflect on the importance of schooling, or in other words the importance of receiving education in schools, which I have never thought about. According to the lecture of “Structure and components of schooling”, and the guest lecture

The discussion raised in class helps me to reconsider the concept of equal and fair treatment within the scope of education. During the discussion with reference to equal educational opportunity in class, our group had considered the concept of equality and equity. The discuss question is how we will distribute our time and attention as a practice of “equal opportunity”. To start with, we thought we had to define what is “equal” before we finally went into the question. Does the “equal educational opportunity” refer to equality or equity in a classroom practice? In other words, does providing an “equal educational opportunity” mean teachers have to equally distribute their attention and time to each student? Or to help each student to acquire or comprehend similar amount of knowledge that teachers may selectively devote their attention and time to those less capable students in a way to compensate and help them to achieve the learning outcomes? We decided to agree with the latter one. Talking about education, we should not only focus on the process of knowledge output or the process of teaching regardless of the learning outcomes, but more importantly we have to look at how much the students have absorbed and learned. It is because the ultimate goal of education is to help students to acquire knowledge. Teachers have to provide extra assistance to students who

Currently, schools in Hong Kong are financed by various parties including the government, religious groups, non-profit organizations and so on. They can be generally categorized into government schools, government aided schools, private and independent schools, and Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools. Previously, my point of view concerning this issue is that schools should better be funded by government so that no one will be banned from entering some outstanding schools because of financial problems. However, I realize that private schools and direct subsidy scheme schools have their own merits, meanwhile, government funded schools also have some shortcomings. Privately funded schools are allowed to have relatively more autonomy and flexibilities on curriculum design, students intakes, teachers recruitments and so forth. Private schools and DSS schools can charge tutition fees from students which may imply more resources to be allocated to enhance the quality of education provided. The introduction of private schools and DSS schools also gives rise to a wider choice of schools for students. If education is intervened only by the government, certain problems may occur. The education quality may deteriorate and the education efficiency may drop due to lack of market competition and profit incentive. Besides, decision making in