Education- Class (internal) Flashcards
Rist
An American Kindergarten teacher used info about children’s home, background and appearance to place them into 3 separate groups; Tigers, Cardinals and Clowns. Tigers were middle class, fast learners, and the Cardinals and Clowns were seated further away, given lower level books to read and fewer opportunities to show their ability.
Hempel-Jorgensen
In largely w/c schools, where discipline was a major problem, the ideal pupil was passive and obedient. In m/c schools the ideal pupil was defined in terms of personality and academic ability, rather than being a non-misbehaving pupil.
Dunne and Gazeley
Teachers normalised underachievement of working class pupils, and felt that w/c parents had little interest in their child’s education whereas m/c parents were labelled as interested and had the economic capital to pay for tutors. As a result, teachers gave extra work to m/c students and easier exams for w/c students.
Rosenthal and Jacobson
Told teachers they had identified pupils who are likely to “spurt” ahead and be “late bloomers”. They picked 20% of students at random but told teachers they had been identified as “late bloomers”. A year later, 47% of these students had made significant progress. The teachers beliefs about the pupils had influenced the way they interacted with them.
Harvey and Slatin
Each teacher was shown 18 photos of children from different social backgrounds and was asked to rate them on their performance, parental attitudes to education etc. They found that w/c children were rated less favourably, especially by more experienced teachers. Teachers based their ratings on similarities they perceived between the children they had taught and the children in the photos.
Ireson
Groupings/sets are not always based on ability but on behaviour, and it becomes a means of socially controlling particular groups of pupils. Bottom sets generally receive little challenge or stimulation so become disengaged.
Becker
Teachers are likely to percieve the ‘ideal pupil’ as one that conforms to middle class standards of behaviour. The ‘ideal pupil’ is likely to be placed in the top set, working class in middle or bottom set. Once put in a set, it can be hard to move up, so pupils get locked into their teachers expectations of them.
Keddie
Teachers who taught in higher sets had greater expectations of their students to behave better and do more work, and gave them different types of educational knowledge which gave them more opportunities to succeed. W/c children miss out on essential knowledge as the teacher only transmits the full info to higher ability sets.
Gillborn and Youdell
The A-C economy. When it is essential that a school achieves a good place in league tables, schools focus their time, effort and resources on pupils who are likely to get 5 grade C’s and above, which disregards pupils who are struggling or failing.
