class and achievement- internal factors

Question 1

LABELLING

Answer 1

is the process of attaching meanings to individuals or groups.- based on stereotypes of person’s class, gender and ethinicity

Question 2

Internal Factors

Answer 2

factors within schools affecting the educational achievement of pupils such as influence of interactions between pupils and teachers

Question 3

Interactionism

Answer 3

• sociological perspective that developed labelling theory.
• study based on interactions between individuals, how they label and how the label affects the behaviour of labelled individuals.

Question 4

Becker

Answer 4

• interviewed 60 high school teachers in chicago.
• teachers have image of ‘an ideal pupil’ and they judge pupils on how closely they fit the ideal.
• m/c students tend to be the closest to teachers’ image of an idea pupil, w/c pupils are seen as badly behaved putting them further away from the ideal image.

Question 5

CRITICISM of Becker- Hempel-Jorgensen

Answer 5

studies by hempel-jorgensen shows that teachers have different notions of an ideal pupil and is not always linked to class background of the pupil e.g in mainly w/c school which had lot of behavioural problems, teachers saw the ideal pupil as quiet and obedient.

Question 6

Dunne and Gazeley

Answer 6

• studied 9 state schools in England and found that teacher labelling leads to underachievement of w/c students
• teachers ‘normalise’ the underachievement of w/c a and are unconcerned about it and feel they can’t do anything about it- because they believe that w/c home background is major factor holding back their progress
• leads to different treatment of underachieving m/c and w/c students

Question 7

Rist

Answer 7

• studied US kindergartens
• the judgement about where to place the students on table was made by teachers based on the information the teacher had about their background and also based on children’s appearance
• m/c children and those of neat appearance (‘tigers’) were seated in front near the teacher and received the most attention and encouragement
• w/c children sat at the back and were given low level reading books (‘clowns’)

Question 8

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 8

is a prediction that comes true simply because it was made- labelling leads to self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 9

Rosenthal & Jacobson

Answer 9

• carried out study of labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy in a primary school
• was a covert study in which they told the teachers they had a test which would identify the students with highest potential (spurt).however the test were just standard IQ tests
• students were tested and R&J chose 20% of them randomly and told teachers that they were ‘spurters’
• a year later R&J found out that from the 20%, 47% had made significant progress.

Question 10

CRITICISM of R&J

Answer 10

however it can be argued that the study had ethical issues as it was covert and R&J deceived the students and teachers. also due to the experiment the students who didn’t randomly get chosen were put into disadvantage even if they would had the potential.