Educational Studies Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The keyed answer is democracy as a compromise between persuasion and permission. A healthy classroom atmosphere is democratic, with the teacher guiding by persuasion while allowing pupils freedom, and this is the middle between control and unrestricted freedom. Laissez-faire alone leaves pupils without guidance. The first option, a compromise between laissez-faire and autocracy, is the form in which this idea is more usually stated, and the plain word democracy is also acceptable, so a reviewer may wish to check this key.

Answer: D

The keyed answer is III and IV. In calling the school a community in miniature, a micro society, the word society signifies equality of educational and job opportunities and also control, since a society keeps order through rules and sanctions. The statements that community signifies freedom or equal treatment of all are not both accepted in the key, so only the pair III and IV is the correct combination.

Answer: A

Individual differences are given the least importance in idealism, which is concerned with the universal and eternal truths and ideals that all pupils should reach, and so treats the pupils alike. Naturalism and pragmatism give much importance to individual differences, in the child's interests and experience, and realism also respects differences of ability, though less strongly. So the keyed answer is idealism.

Answer: B

The basic criterion of social class is status, meaning the standing a person has in society as judged by wealth, education, prestige and way of life. Occupation, religion and the place of residence may contribute to status but are not the basic criterion, since a class is a group of people sharing a similar status. Status can be seen in a person's wealth, the education received, the work done and the respect that others give, and members of a class feel they belong together because their status is similar. For this reason sociologists treat status as the main basis of class and other factors as aids to it.

Answer: B

Education is an agent of positive social change, as it develops knowledge, skills and values that lead people to improve social conditions. Power and money can cause change but not necessarily in a positive direction, and a calamity brings change by destruction. So education is the keyed answer. Education changes attitudes and builds skills, so it prepares people to remove superstition, inequality and poverty. Social change by power or by money may be good or bad depending on how they are used, and a calamity, such as a flood or war, brings change without any plan or purpose.

Answer: A

Culture is defined as a complex whole that includes virtually everything acquired by man as a member of society, following Tylor's definition of knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and other capabilities and habits. The other options describe fashion, technology use or social display, which are only parts of the lifestyle of some people, and not the meaning of culture. Edward Tylor gave this definition in 1871, and it is still the most quoted. It stresses that culture is learnt, shared and passed on, and that it includes ideas, customs and skills, in contrast with the narrow popular sense of fashionable living in the other options.

Answer: D

The stages of a comprehensive guidance programme run accepting the individual, appreciating the problem, considering the problem, taking action, referral, option (D).

The counsellor first accepts the person as he or she is, then appreciates what the problem is, considers it with the person, takes action on it, and finally refers the case to a specialist if it is beyond the programme.

Options (A), (B) and (C) place action or referral before the problem has been appreciated or considered, which is not how a guidance programme proceeds.

Answer: A

Guidance is described correctly by I and II, option (A).

Guidance is the systematic help given to a person to overcome difficulties and to understand himself or herself, his or her needs and the environment, so that he or she can make wise choices.

III, helping a boy to score more marks by going out of the way, is unfair help and not guidance. IV, giving an electric shock to a disturbed person, is a medical treatment and has nothing to do with guidance. So (B), (C) and (D), which contain III or IV, are wrong.

Answer: C

The broadest in scope of treatment is social foundations of education.

Social foundations of education is a wide field that draws on sociology, anthropology, history, economics and political science to study how education and society affect each other, so it takes in the others in the list.

The school as a social organisation is only one institution. Educational sociology and the sociology of education are narrower, being the application of sociology to educational problems and the sociological study of education.

Answer: C

The nature of truth is basically a problem for epistemology.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge, and what makes a belief true is one of its central problems.

Law deals with rules of conduct, ethics with right and wrong, and axiology with the theory of values such as the good and the beautiful.