Education - Class Differences In Achievement

Question 0

What is an external factor?

Answer 0

Factors outside the education system, such as the influence of home, family background and wider society.

Question 1

What are the two different groups of factors/explanations of class differences in educational achievement?

Answer 1

• Internal

* External

Question 2

What are the external factors which affect pupils educational achievement?

Answer 2

• cultural deprivation
• material deprivation
• cultural capital

Question 3

According to cultural deprivation theorists how do we learn the values, attitudes and skills needed for educational success?

Answer 3

We learn it through primary socialisation in the family. The basic cultural equipment includes things such as language, self discipline and reasoning skills.

Question 4

What are the three main aspects of cultural deprivation?

Answer 4

• intellectual development
• language
• attitudes and values

Question 5

What is intellectual development?

Answer 5

It refers to the development and reasoning skills such as the ability to solve problems and use ideas and concepts.

Question 6

Why do working class children start school without having developed the intellectual skills needed to progress?

Answer 6

Working class homes lack the books, educational toys and activities that help stimulate intellectual development.

Question 7

Intellectual development study by J.W.B Douglas (1964)?

Answer 7

J.W.B Douglas found that working class children scored lower than middle class children on tests of ability.
He argued that it's because working class parents are less likely to read with their children or give them educational toys and activities.

Question 8

What did Basil Bernstein and Douglas Young’s study find?

Answer 8

Found that the way mothers think about and choose toys has an influence on a child intellectual development.
Middle class mothers are more likely to chose toys that encourage thinking and reasoning skills unlike working class mothers.

Question 9

What do Carl Bereiter and Sirgfried Engelmann (1966) claim about language?

Answer 9

• Language in the working class/lower class homes is deficient.
• They describe lower class families as communicating by gestures, single words and disjointed phrases.
• Their children fail to develop the necessary language skills and therefore grow up incapable of abstract thinking and unable to use language to explain, describe,enquire or compare.
• They are unable to take advantage of the opportunities that school offers due to this.

Question 10

What two differences did Basil Bernstein (1795) identify between working class and middle class language that influence achievement?

Answer 10

Two types of speech codes:

• The restricted code
• The elaborated code

Question 11

What is the restricted code?

Answer 11

• Typically used by the working class
• Consists of limited vocabulary
• Speech predictable
• Speech may just involve a single word and/or gesture
• Descriptive not analytic
• Context bound

Question 12

What is the elaborated code?

Answer 12

• Typically used by the middle class
• Wider vocabulary
• Longer, grammatically more complex sentences
• Speech is more varied and communication involved abstract ideas
• Context free

Question 13

What did Douglas say about working class parents’ attitudes and values?

Answer 13

• Less value on education
• Less ambitious for children
• Give less encouragement
• Take less interest in their children’s education
• Unlikely to discuss progress with teachers which results in children having lower levels of achievement and motivation.

Question 14

What did Leon Feinstein (1998) find in his study?

Answer 14

• Working class parents lack of infered was the main reason for their children’s underachievement.
• More important than financial hardships or in school factors
• Middle class children are more successful because their parents provide motivation, discipline and support.

Question 15

What does the lack of parental interest in a child’s education reflect?

Answer 15

The subcultural values of the working class.

Question 16

What is a subculture?

Answer 16

A subculture is a group whose attitudes and values differ from those of the mainstream culture.

Question 17

What does Herbert Hymen (1976) argue about working class values and beliefs?

Answer 17

The values and beliefs of the lower class subculture are self imposed barriers to educational and career success.

They believe they have less opportunity for individual advancement and place little value on achieving high status jobs so they see no point in education.

Less willing to make sacrifices in staying on at school and leave early to do manual work.

Subcultural beliefs ensure they neither want educational success not know how to get it.

Question 18

Barry sugar man (1970) argues that working class subculture has four key fairy red that act as a barrier to educational achievement. What are they?

Answer 18

Fatalism
Collectivism
Immediate gratification
Present time orientation

Question 19

What is fatalism?

Answer 19

A Belief in fate - “whatever will be, will be” and that there is nothing you can do to change your status.

Question 20

What is collectivism?

Answer 20

Valuing being part of a group more than succeeding as an individual

Question 21

What is immediate gratification?

Answer 21

Seeking pleasure now rather than making sacrifices in order to get rewards in the future. By contrast, middle-class values emphasised deferred gratification, making sacrifices now for greater later.

Question 22

What is present time orientation?

Answer 22

Seeing the present as more important than the future so not having long-term goals or plans. By contrast, middle class culture as a future time orientation sees planning for the future as important.