Class Differences In Acheivement

Question 1

Labelling theory
Howard Becker

Answer 1

Carried out an important interaction study of labelling based on interviews with 60 Chicago, high school teachers. He found that they judge peoples according to how closely they fitted an image of the ideal people.

Question 2

Amelia Hempel Jorgensen
Labelling theory

Answer 2

Found the notations of ideal people, very according to social class make up of the School. In the w/c school, the ideal pupil was defined as quiet, passive and obedient. In the m/c school, the ideal people was defined as being non-misbehaving and having academic ability.

Question 3

Labelling in secondary schools
Máiréad Dunne and Louise Gazeley.

Answer 3

School persistently produce w/c under achievement because of labels and assumptions. They found in nine English states secondary schools. the teachers normalise the underachievement of working class pupils.

Question 4

Labelling in secondary schools

Answer 4

The major reason for normalising under achievement, was because the teachers’ belief in the role of pupils home backgrounds. They labelled w/c Parents as uninterested in their children’s education, and m/c parents as supportive.

Question 5

Labelling in secondary school
Result in teachers labelling

Answer 5

This led to class differences and how teachers dealt with pupils they perceived as unachieving. they extended work for underachieving middle-class but entered working class pupils for easier exams.

Question 6

Labelling in primary schools
Ray Rist

Answer 6

He found that the teacher used information about children’s home background and appearance to place them in separate groups. Those the teachers with learners tended to be middle-class and sat them closer to her and showed them greater encouragement.

Question 7

Self fullfilling prophecy

Answer 7

Self fulfilling prophecy works by the teacher labelling pupil then the teacher treating the pupil accordingly to the label and the pupil internalising the teachers expectation.

Question 8

Teachers’ expectations
Robert rosenthal and leonora Jacobson

Answer 8

They told the school teachers the pupils who would “spurt”, except the pupils were chosen randomly. They found that the “spurters” had made significance progress due to encouragement of teachers.

Question 9

Self fulfilling prophecy and teacher expectations

Answer 9

Self-fulfilling privacy can produce under achievement. if teachers have low expectations or certain children, the children may developed a negative self-concept, and may come to see themselves as failures.

Question 10

Streaming
Howard Becker

Answer 10

Becker shows that teachers don’t see working-class children as ideal pupils and put them as lacking ability and are more likely to find themselves in lower streams, which is more difficult to move up from. Creating a self fulfilling prophecy of unacheivement.

Question 11

Streaming and the A-C economy
Gillborn and Youdell

Answer 11

they link steaming to the policy of publishing exam league tables. According to exam performance publishing league tables creates an A-C economy. This is a system in which school focus the time effort and resources on those peoples they is having potential

Question 12

Educational triage
Gillborn and Youdell

Answer 12

Triage is the term used for sorting. Schools categories peoples into three types thought who pass, those who have potential and those who are hopeless. They are sorted. Using a stereotypical view of working class and black peoples as lacking ability.

Question 13

Pupil subcultures
Colin Lacey on polarisation and differentiation

Answer 13

Differentiation is the process of teachers categorising pupils, according to how they perceive their ability. Polarisation is the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of two opposite poles.

Question 14

Pro school subculture

Answer 14

Pupils in high streams tend to remain committed to values of School. They gain that status in the approved manner through academic success. These students are largely middle-class.

Question 15

Anti school subculture

Answer 15

Close placed in low extremes suffer a lot of self-esteem. The school has undermine their self-worth by placing them in a position of the status. The students tend to be working class.

Question 16

David hargreaves
Anti school subculture

Answer 16

Found a response to labelling and streaming in a secondary modern school from the point of view of education system. Boys in lowest streams were triple failures, they failed that 11+ exam were in lower streams and had been labelled worthless.

Question 17

Abolishing streaming
Stephen ball

Answer 17

Ball found that when schools abolish banding, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of School subcultured declined. However, teachers continued to treat and categorise peoples differently.

Question 18

Abolishing streams and the educational reform act in 1988

Answer 18

After this act, there had been trends towards more streaming, and towards a variety of types of school, some of which have been more academic curriculum than others. This created more opportunities for schools and teachers do differentiate pupils.

Question 19

The variety of pupil responses
Peter woods

Answer 19

Pupil responses
Ingratiation- “teachers pet”
Ritualism- staying out of trouble
Retreatism- daydreaming, muck about
Rebellion- objection all school values

Question 20

Variety of pupil responses
John furlong

Answer 20

During his observation, he found that many students are not committed permanently to any one response that may move between different types of responses, depending on lesson and teacher

Question 21

Criticism of labelling theory
Mary fuller (1984)

Answer 21

Argues that pupils have a choice to not fulfil the prophecy, and will not always inevitably fail.

Question 22

Criticism of labelling theory
Marxist

Answer 22

Marxist criticise the labelling theory for ignoring the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place. they argue that labels are not merely the result of teachers individual prejudices, but from that teaches work in the system that produces class divisions.

Question 23

Pupils class identities and the school
Habitus

Answer 23

Middle-class has the power to define its habitus as superior, and to impose it on the education system. As the School places a higher value on middle-class, tastes and preferences. This links to bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital.

Question 24

Symbolic capital and symbolic violence
Pupils’ class indentities and the school

Answer 24

Middle-class, peoples gain symbolic capital and recognition for their habitus and have worth. By defining the working class lifestyles as inferior symbolic violence, reproduces the class structure, and keeps the lower classes “in their place”.

Question 25

Archer and symbolic capital and violence

Answer 25

Found that working class peoples felt that to be educationally successful, they would have to change how they talked and present themselves.

Question 26

Nike identities

Answer 26

Many peoples were conscious that society in School look down on them. This symbolic violence led to them to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth. They did this by construction meaningful class identities for themselves with heavy styles.

Question 27

Archer and Nike identities

Answer 27

Archer argues that the School, middle-class habitus stigmatises working class pupils identities. middle-class, see the Nike identities is tasteless, to young people this means they are of generating symbolic capital and self-worth.

Question 28

The Unrealistic and undesirable reasons for rejecting higher education Nike identities

Answer 28

Unrealistic- not for people like us, but for the richer, clever people they would not fit in, and it is an affordable and risky investment.
undesirable- wouldn’t suit their preferred lifestyle and don’t want to live on a student loan.

Question 29

Result of Nike identities
Archer

Answer 29

Archer found that Nike identities led to working class pupils choosing to self eliminate or self exclude from education as they express their positive preference for a particular lifestyle, in that education would not fit with their identity.

Question 30

Working class identity and educational success
Nichola Ingram study of w/c catholic school boys from the same area but different schools.

Answer 30

One group had passed their 11+ exam and gone to grammar school while the other group had failed and gone to a local secondary school. She found that a working class identity was inseparable from belonging to a working class locality.

Question 31

Ingram and working class conformity
Working class identity and educational success.

Answer 31

Ingram notes how working class communities place, great emphasis on conformity, the grammar school boys experienced a tension between the habitus of working class neighbourhood, and their middle-class school.

Question 32

Class identity and self exclusion
Sarah Evans

Answer 32

She studied a group of 21 working class girls from a comprehensive studying for their A-levels, and found that they were reluctant to apply to elite universities, and those who did apply felt a sense of hidden barriers for not fitting in.

Question 33

Class identity and self exclusion
Bourdieu

Answer 33

Found that working class people think of places like Oxbridge as “not for the likes of us”. This feeling comes from their habitus and the beliefs about what opportunities really exist for them.

Question 34

Class identity and self exclusion
Archer, Ingram and Evans

Answer 34

Found that girls had a strong attachments their locality They show a consistent pattern of a middle-class education system that values, the experiences of working class people, and the working class people are often forced to choose between maintaining their identities or abandoning them.