Education: Class differences in achievement (Internal factors) Flashcards
Labelling
To label someone is to attach a meaning or definition to them. For example, teachers may label a pupil as bright or thick, troublemaker or hardworking.
Studies show that teachers often attach such labels regardless of the pupil’s actual ability or attitude. Instead, they label pupils on the basis of stereotyped assumptions about their class background, labelling working-class pupils negatively and middle-class pupils positively.
Becker carried out an important interactionist study of labelling. Based on interviews with 60 Chicago high school teachers, he found that they judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the ‘ideal pupil’.
Pupil’s work, conduct and appearance were key factors influencing teacher’s judgements. The teachers saw children from middle-class backgrounds as the closest to the ideal, and working-class children as furthest away from it because they regarded them as badly behaved.
The self-fulfilling prophecy: info
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true simply by virtue of it having been made. Interactionists argue that labelling can affect pupils’ achievement by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
(Step 1) The teacher labels a pupil (e.g. as being very intelligent) and on the basis of this label, makes predictions about him (e.g. he will make outstanding academic progress).
(Step 2) The teacher treats the pupil accordingly, acting as if the prediction is already true (e.g. by giving him more attention and expecting a higher standard of work from him).
(Step 3) The pupil internalises the teacher’s expectation, which becomes part of his self-concept or self-image, so that he now actually becomes the kind of pupil the teacher believed him to be in the first place. He gains confidence, tries harder and is successful. The prediction is fulfilled.
Labelling: Teachers’ expectations
In their study of Oak community school, a California primary school, Rosenthal and Jacobson show the self-fulfilling prophecy at work. They told the school that they had a new test specially designed to identify those pupils who would ‘spurt’ ahead. This was untrue, because the test was in fact simply a standard IQ test. Importantly, the teachers believed what they had been told.
The researchers tested all the pupils, but then picked 20% of them purely at random and told the school, again falsely, that the test had identified these children as ‘spurters’. On returning to the school a year later, they found that almost half (47%) of those identified as spurters had indeed made significant progress. The effect was greater on younger children.
Rosenthal and Jacobson suggests that the teachers’ beliefs about the pupils had been influenced by the supposed test results. The teachers had then conveyed these beliefs to the pupils through the way they interacted with them- for example, through their body language and the amount of attention and encouragement they gave them.
This demonstrates the self-fulfilling prophecy: simply by accepting the prediction that some children would spurt ahead, the teachers brought it about. The fact that the children were selected at random strongly suggests that if teachers believe a pupil to be of a certain type, they can actually make him or her into that type.
Streaming: info
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. Studies show that the self-fulfilling prophecy is particularly likely to occur when children are streamed.
Teachers do not usually see working-class children as ideal pupils. They tend to see them as lacking ability and have low expectations of them. As a result, working-class children are more likely to find themselves put in a lower stream.
Once streamed, it is usually difficult to move up to a higher stream; children are more or less locked into their teachers’ low expectations of them. Children in the lower streams ‘get the message’ that their teachers have written them off as no-hopers.
This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the pupils live up to their teachers’ low expectations by underachieving.
By contrast, middle-class pupil tend to benefit from streaming. They are likely to be placed in higher streams, reflecting teachers’ view of them as ideal pupils. As a result, they develop a more positive self-concept, gain confidence, work harder and improve their grades.
Streaming- Streaming and the A-to-C economy
A study of two London secondary schools by Gillborn and Youdell shows how teachers use stereotypical notions of ‘ability’ to stream pupils. They found that teachers are less likely to see working-class (and black) pupils as having ability. As a result, these pupils are more likely to be placed in lower streams and entered for lower-tier GCSEs. This denies them the knowledge and opportunity needed to gain good grades and widens the class gap in achievement.
Gillborn and Youdell link streaming to the policy of publishing exam league tables. These rank each school according to its exam performance- for example, in terms of the percentage of pupils gaining 5 or more GCSE grades A* to C. Schools need to achieve a good league table position if they are to attract pupils and funding.
Publishing league tables creates what Gillborn and Youdell call an ‘A-to-C’ in schools. This is a system in which schools focus their time, effort and resources on those pupils they see as having the potential to get 5 grades Cs and so boost the school’s league table position.
Streaming- Streaming and the A-to-C economy: Educational triage
Gillborn and Youdell call this process ‘educational triage’. Triage literally means ‘sorting’. The term is normally used to describe the process on battlefields or in major disasters whereby medical stuff decide who is to be given scarce medical resources.
The authors argue that the A-to-C economy produces educational triage. Schools categorise pupils into 3 types:
-Those who will pass anyway and can be left to get on with it.
-Those with potential, who will be helped to get a grade C or better.
- Hopeless cases, who are doomed to fail.
Teachers do this using a stereotypical view of working-class (and black) pupils as lacking ability. As a result, they are likely to be labelled as ‘hopeless cases’ and simply ‘warehoused’ in the bottom sets. This produces a self-fulfilling prophecy and failure.
Thus, the need to gain a good league table position drives educational triage. This becomes the basis for streaming, where teachers’ beliefs about the lack of ability of working-class pupils are used to segregate them into lower streams or sets, where they receive less attention, support and resources. This results in lower levels of achievement for working-class pupils.
Pupil subcultures: info
A pupil subculture is a group of pupils 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.
We can use Lacey’s concepts of differentiation and polarisation to explain how pupil subcultures develop:
-Differentiation: is the process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and/or behaviour. Streaming is a form of differentiation, since it categorises pupils into separate classes. Those that the school deems ‘more able’ are given high status by being placed in a high stream, whereas those deemed ‘less able’ and placed in low streams are given an inferior status.
-Polarisation, on the other hand, is the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of two opposite ‘poles’ or extremes. In his study of Hightown boys’ grammar school, Lacey found that streaming polarised boys into a pro-school and anti-school subculture.
Pupil subcultures: The pro-school subculture
Pupils placed in high streams (who are largely middle-class) tend to remain committed to the values of the school. They gain their status in the approved manner, through academic success. Their values are those of the school: they tend to form a pro-school subculture.
Pupil subcultures: anti-school subculture
Those placed in low streams (who tend to be working-class) suffer a loss of self-esteem: the school has undermined their self-worth by placing them in a position of inferior status.
This label of failure pushes them to search for alternative ways of gaining status. Usually this involves inverting (turning upside down) the school’s values of hard work, obedience and punctuality.
Such pupils form an anti-school subculture as a means of gaining status among their peers, for example by not doing homework or smoking.
Unfortunately, however, although joining an anti-school subculture may solve the problem of lack of status, it creates further problems for such pupils. Joining an anti-school subculture is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of educational failure.
Pupil subcultures: Abolishing streaming
Ball takes the analysis a step further in his study of Beachside, a comprehensive that was in the process of abolishing banding
(a type of streaming) in favour of teaching mixed-ability groups.
Ball found that when the school abolished banding, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of the anti-school subculture declined.
Nevertheless, although pupil polarisation all but disappeared, differentiation continued. Teachers continued to categorise pupils differently and were more likely to label middle-class pupils as cooperative and able.
This positive labelling was reflected in their better exam results, suggesting that a self-fulfilling prophecy had occurred. Ball’s study shows that class inequalities can continue as a result of teachers’ labelling, even without the effect of subcultures or streaming.
Since Ball’s study, and especially since the Education Reform Act (1988), there has been a trend towards more streaming and towards a variety of types of school, some of which have a more academic curriculum than others.
This has created new opportunities for schools and teachers to differentiate between pupils on the basis of their class, ethnicity or gender and treat them unequally.
Pupil subcultures: The variety of pupil responses
Pro- or anti-school subcultures are two possible responses to labelling and streaming. However, Woods argues, other responses are also possible. These include:
-Ingratiation: being the ‘teacher’s pet)
-Ritualism: Going through the motions and staying out of trouble
-Retreatism: daydreaming and mucking about
-Rebellion: outright rejection of everything the school stands for.
Criticisms of labelling
-Marxists criticise labelling theory for ignoring the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place. Labelling theory tends to blame teachers for labelling pupils but fails to explain why they do so.
-Labelling theory has been accused of determinism. That is, it assumes that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy and will inevitably fail.
-Marxists argue that labels are not merely the result of teachers’ individual prejudices, but stem from the fact that teachers work in a system that reproduces class divisions.
Pupils’ class identities and the school- Habitus
Habitus refers to the ‘dispositions’ or learned, taken-for-granted ways of thinking , being and acting that are shared by a particular social class. It includes their tastes and preferences about lifestyles and consumption, their outlook on life and their expectations about what is normal or realistic for ‘people like us’. A group’s habitus is formed as a response to its position in the class structure.
Pupils’ class identities and the school- Symbolic capital and symbolic violence
Because schools have a middle-class habitus, pupils who have been socialised at home into middle-class tastes and preferences gain ‘symbolic capital’ or status and recognition from the school and are deemed to have worth or value.
By contrast, the school devalues the working-class habitus, so that working-class pupils’ tastes are deemed to be tasteless and worthless.
Bourdieu calls this withholding of symbolic capital ‘symbolic violence’. By defining the working class and their tastes and lifestyles as inferior, symbolic violence reproduces the class structure and keeps the lower classes ‘in their place’.
Thus there is a clash between working-class pupils’ habitus and the school’s middle-class habitus. As a result, working-class students may experience the world of education as alien and unnatural.
Pupils’ class identities and the school-Nike’ identities
Many pupils were conscious that society and school looked down on them. This symbolic violence led them to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and value. They did so by constructing meaningful class identities for themselves by investing heavily in ‘styles’, especially through consuming branded clothing such as Nike.
Style performances were heavily policed by peer groups and not conforming was ‘social suicide’. The right appearance earned a symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying.
Archer argues that the school’s middle-class habitus stigmatises working-class pupils’ identities. Seen in this light, the pupils’ performances of style are a struggle for recognition: while the middle-class see their ‘Nike’ identities as tasteless, to the young people they are a means of generating symbolic capital and self-worth.
Nike styles also play a part in working-class pupils’ rejection of higher education, which they saw as both unrealistic and undesirable:
-Unrealistic: because it was not for ‘people like us’, but for richer, posher, cleverer people, and they would not fit in. It was also seen as an unaffordable and risky investment.
-Undesirable: because it would not ‘suit’ their preferred lifestyles or habitus. For example, they did not want to live on a student loan because they would be unable to afford the street styles that gave them their identity.
According to Archer et al, working-class pupils’ investment in ‘Nike’ identities is not only a cause of their educational marginalisation by the school; it also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle. As a result, working-class pupils may choose self-elimination or self-exclusion from education. In other words, not only do they ‘get the message’ that education is not for the likes of them, but they actively choose to reject it because it does not fit in with their identity or way of life.
