CLASS DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT INTERNAL FACTORS Flashcards
What is teacher labelling?
Studies show that teachers often attatch such labels regardless of the pupil’s actual ability or attitude. Instead, they label pupils based on stereotyped assumptions about their class background.
How does teacher labelling in secondary schools affect class differences in achievement?
Louise Gazeley -argued that ‘schools’ persistently produce working-class underachievement because of the labels and assumptions of teachers.’
How does teacher labelling in primary school affect class differences in achievement?
Ray Rists - teachers used information about a child’s home background and appearance to place them into separate groups, seating each group at a different table. The teachers would label middle-class students as fast workers and focus their attention on them.
What is the self-fulfilling prophecy?
A prediction that comes true simply by virtue of it having been made. Theres 3 steps:
- Teacher labels
- Treated accordingly
- Student internalises
How does teachers’ expectations affect class differences in achievement?
Studies of schools showed how the self-fulfilling prophecy worked. Teachers were told that a certain group of students would ‘spurt’ ahead, but they were just picked randomly. The teachers then put more effort into those students and those students achieved much greater than others.
What is streaming?
Involves separating children into different ability groups or classes called ‘streams’. Each ability group is then taught separately from the others for all subjects.
How does the educational triage affect class differences in achievement?
Gillborn and Youdell - pupils categorised into three types:
-Those who pass anyways
-Those with potential
-Those who will fail anyway
Teachers stereotype lower class students as the 3rd type of failing anyways.
What are pupil subcultures?
A group of students who share similar values and behaviour patterns. Pupil subcultures often emerge as a response to the way pupils have been labelled, and in particular as a reaction to streaming
What are Colin Lacey’s concepts about differentiation and polarisation?
Differentiation: process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and/or behaviour
Polarisation: process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of two opposite ‘poles’, or extremes
How do anti-school subcultures affect class differences in achievement?
Those placed in low streams suffer a lost of self-esteem and form anti-school subcultures to gain status among peers and other students. They gain this status by not doing homework, truanting, smoking, etc.
What does Stephen Ball say about abolishing streaming?
He found that when school abolished streaming, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed. However, differentiation continued.
What are the pupil responses to labelling and streaming accoring to Peter Woods?
Ingratiation: being the ‘teachers pet’
Ritualism: going through the motions and staying out of trouble
Retreatism: daydreaming and messing around
Rebellion: outright rejection of everything the school stands for
What are criticisms of labelling theory?
Labelling theory often assumes pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil their prophecy but Mary Fuller shows that this isn’t always true.
Marxists also argue that labelling ignores the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place.
How does ‘Habitus’ affect class differences in achievement?
It is the way that people perceive and respond to the social world they inhabit and the middle class has the power to define its habitus as superior and impose it on the education system. As a result, schools puts a higher value on middle-class tastes and preferences, causing lower classes to struggle.
How does symbolic capital and symbolic violence affect class differences in achievement?
Pupils who have been socialised in middle-class homes for their tastes, etc, gain ‘symbolic capital’, status and recognition from the school.
By contrast, the school devalues the working-class pupil’s tastes, etc.
Bourdieu calls this withholding of symbolic capital ‘symbolic violence’
How do ‘Nike Identities’ affect class differences in achievement?
Working class pupils were conscious that society were looking down on them. Wearing brands, like nike, was for them, a way of ‘being me’. This Nike Style plays a part in working-class pupils rejection of higher education as they see it as unrealistic and undesirable.
How does Class identity and self-exclusion affect class differences in achievement?
The clash between working class identity and the habitus of higher education is a barrier to success, partly due to self-exclusion. Sarah Evans studied a group of 21 working class girls and found they were reluctant to apply to elite universities over a fear of not fitting in and a sense of hidden barriers.
What is the relationship between internal and external factors?
- Working class pupils using restricted speech codes may be labelled by their teacher
- Poverty may lead to bullying and stigmatisation (disregard) within school
What is a summary of class differences in achievement? (internal)
Interactionists argue that schools actively create inequality through labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy, edcuational traige, streaming and polarisation.
Conflicts between the school’s habitus and pupil’s identities may lead to symbolic violence and self-exclusion
