Class and acievement Class identities and the school- Internal

Question 1

Class identity and the school

Answer 1

Archer et al argues pupils form their class identities outside school, but these interact with the values promoted by the school which can affect the pupils’ achievement.   
Habitus refer to learned, taken for granted ways of thinking, being + acting shared by a particular social class. Includes their tastes + preferences about lifestyle + consumption. 
M/C have power in society to define habitus as superior and to impose it onto the education system. As a result, the education system promotes middle class values as the norm. 
This then puts middle class pupils at an advantage within the education system as they posses the middle class habitus promoted by the school.

Question 2

Symbolic capital and symbolic violence

Answer 2

Middle class students have the middle class habitus as they have been socialised into it at home. As a result, at school they gain symbolic capital (status) from the school as having worth.  
By contrast, working class students are seen as tasteless and worthless and are denied symbolic capital. Instead, they receive symbolic violence which then leads to educational failure and reproduction of class inequality. So it is no surprise that working class students see the school as an unnatural and alien environment. For example, Archer et al found that working class students thought they would have to change in order to be successful in education.

Question 3

Explain ‘Nike Identities’

Answer 3

Working class students thought that society and school looked down on them.
This symbolic violence let them to look for alternative ways to create self-worth and status.
They did so by creating class identities for themselves by investing in styles through consuming branded clothing such as Nike.
Therefore, wearing brands was a way of creating identity.
These identities were also heavily gendered, for example, girls adopted a hyper-heterosexual feminine style.
Style performances are heavily policed among the working class peers and good performance lead to symbolic capital, while not conforming was ‘social suicide’.

Question 4

Explain Working Class identities and achievement

Answer 4

However, not all working class students underachieve so Ingram wanted to study the relationship between class identity and educational success. 
Ingram studied two groups of working class Catholic boys from the same Belfast neighbourhood. 
She found that the boys’ working class identity was linked to living in a working class locality which was based on a close network of friends and family. This gave the boys a strong working class habitus and, similarly to Archer’s study, it was linked to branded sportswear. 
One group had passed their 11+ exam and went to grammar school, while the other didn’t.
The grammar school had a strong middle class habitus of promoting educational achievement, while the secondary school didn’t. 
As a result, the working class boys who went to the grammar school experienced tension between their working class habitus and the middle class habitus of the school.

Question 5

What is class identitiy and self exclusion

Answer 5

Evans studied a group of 21 working class girls from a south London comprehensive who were studying for their A Levels.
The girls were reluctant to apply to Oxbridge and the few who did apply felt a sense of not fitting in.
This is because the working class habitus makes them believe top universities are not for them as they will not fit in. As the habitus is part of their identity, it leads working class students to exclude themselves from elite universities.
Like Archer and Ingram, Evans also found that the girls had a strong attachment to their locality, e.g. only 4 had plans to move away from the area.