Class- External Factors🤹🏻♀️ Flashcards
How many students do private schools account for and how many end up in Cambridge/Oxford?
7% of students go to private schools but half of all students at Cambridge/Oxford are privately educated
What are external factors?
Factors outside the education system, such as influence from home, family and society.
What did the Centre for longitudinal studies find about child development?
By the age of 3, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are already up to. Year behind privileged children.
What are the three main aspects of cultural deprivation?
Language, parents’ education and working class subculture.
What did Feinstein find? (Language)
Educated parents are more likely to use praise. This encourages their children to develop a sense of competence.
Who distinguishes the different types of speech codes?
Basil Bernstein 1975
What is the restricted code?
Typically used by the working class. It has a limited vocabulary and is based on short, grammatically simple sentences. May involve a single word or gesture. It is descriptive not analytic. It is context-bound: the speaker assumes the listener shares the same set of experiences
What is the elaborated code?
Typically used by middle class. It has a wider vocabulary and is based on longer, complex sentences. It is context free.
Why does the elaborated code put students m/c students at an advantage?
It is the language used by teachers, textbooks and exams. Not only is it taken as the ‘correct’ way to speak, Bernstein believes it is an effective tool for reasoning and expressing thoughts clearly- vital in education.
How does early socialisation into the elaborated code put m/c at an advantage?
They are already fluent users in it when they start school. They feel at home and therefore are more likely to succeed. Whereas those who lack the code feel excluded in school and are more likely to fail.
Criticisms of Bernstein
Describes w/c speech as inadequate
What did Douglas find about parents with less education?
They placed less value on education-
Less ambitious for their children, gave less encouragement, took less interest, visited schools less often and didn’t discuss their child’s progress with teachers = lower levels of motivation and achievement
How does parenting style affect achievement?
Educated parents- consistent discipline and high expectations. Encourages active learning and exploration.
Less educated parents- harsher and inconsistent discipline that emphasises ‘doing what you’re told’. Prevents the child from learning independence and self control = poor motivation and problems interacting with teachers
How do educated parents assist their children’s educational process?
Reading to their children, teaching them letters, numbers, songs, rhymes. Expert advice on child rearing, good relationships with teachers. Museum visits.
What did Bernstein and Young find about middle class mothers income?
They spent more money educational toys, books and activities that stimulate intellectual development. W/c mothers were unable to provide there children with these things= w/c children start school without the intellectual skills needed to progress
How can nutrition be considered cultural deprivation?
Educated parents have a better of nutrition and what helps child development
What is a w/c subculture?
According to cultural deprivation theorists, large sections of the w/c have different goals, beliefs, attitudes and values from the rest of society and this is why they fail at school.
What does Barry Sugarman say are the four key features that act as a barrier to educational achievement?
Fatalism
Collectivism
Immediate gratification
Present time orientation
What is fatalism?
There is nothing you can do to change your status. Differs from m/c view of working hard to achieve.
What is collectivism?
Valuing being part of a group more than succeeding as an individual. Differs from m/c individualism.
What is immediate gratification?
Seeking pleasure now. Differs from m/c deferred gratification
What is present time orientation?
Seeing the present as more important than the future and so not having any goals.
Why does Barry Sugarman think the differences in values exist?
Middle class jobs are secure, offering prospects for individual advancement. This encourages ambition and long term planning in school. Working class jobs are less secure and have no career structure. These values are passed onto their children.
How has compensatory education tried to tackle the problem of cultural deprivation?
Operation Head Start in US in the 1960s- ‘planned enrichment’- improving parenting skills, instilled achievements motivation etc
Sesame Street- part of Head Start
Educational Priority Areas, Education Action Zones and Sure Start
