Class Differences in Education

Question 1

What are the external factors of class differences?

Answer 1

1. Cultural Deprivation - deficiencies in the home and family background
2. Material Deprivation - the inability to afford basic recourses.

Question 2

Who are the 3 cultural deprivation sociologists? (external)

Answer 2

1. Bernstein - speech codes
2. Douglas - parents education
3. Sugarman - w/c subcultures

Question 3

Who is the sociologists who believes middle class are better equipped as they can convert cultural capital to economic capital? (external)

Answer 3

Bourdieu - e.g. send their children to private school

Question 4

What did Bernstein believe? (external)

Answer 4

Working class are put at a disadvantage as they use restrictive speech code and middle class use elaborated speech code

Question 5

What did Douglas believe? (external)

Answer 5

Working class parents put less value on educational achievement and give less encouragement to participate in educational activities

Question 6

What did Douglas believe? (external)

Answer 6

Working class parents put less value on educational achievement and give less encouragement to participate in educational activities

Question 7

What does Sugarman believe? (external)

Answer 7

4 Key Acts as a barrier:
1. Fatalism - cannot change their status
2. Collectivism - value being part of a group rather than individual
3. Immediate gratification
4. Present time Orientation - don’t have long time goals and see the present more important than the future

Question 8

What are the 2 key points of Material Deprivation? (external)

Answer 8

1. Housing
2. Diet & Health

Question 9

What are the problems with housing? (external)

Answer 9

1. Overcrowding - may lead to disturbed sleep or insufficient space to study
2. Temp Housing - moving frequently affects educational achievment

Question 10

What are the problems with Diet and Health? (external)

Answer 10

working class children are more likely to have a lower intake in energy, vitamins and minerals leading to a weak immune system which could mean more absences from school

Question 11

What are the 5 Internal Influences?

Answer 11

1. Subcultures
2. Teacher Evaluations
3. Stereotyping
4. The self fulfilling prophecy
5. Streaming and Labelling

Question 12

(internal) What did Ball find out about the educational achievement?

Answer 12

Ball believes there is a strong correlation between the stream students were placed in and there parents occupation.
Parents with middle-class occupations children were more likely to be put in higher streams than if the parents were to have working-class occupation.
Ball linked this with teacher labelling, teachers having higher expectations of children in higher streams leading to a self fulfilling prophecy.

Question 13

(internal) What are the 3 subcultures Woods found?

Answer 13

1. Ingratiation - to ingratiate themselves with their teachers as much as possible
2. Compliance - reflects some form of conformity
3. Rebellion - anti-school subculture / reject the goals of school

Question 14

(internal) What was Keddie’s findings of educational achievement?

Answer 14

Keddie applied the idea of labelling when looking at streaming.
Teachers labelled the middle-class students as the ‘ideal pupil’ and treated more favourably.
Working-class students were more likely to be in lower streams therefore due to lower expectations, higher level knowledge is withheld .

Question 15

What did Hasley’s findings show? (external)

Answer 15

That working class children were more likely to fail in the education system.

Middle class students are more likely to stay in post compulsory education.