Education: Ethnic Differences in Achievement

Question 1

What is Smith and Noble’s study about?

Answer 1

-SOCIAL CLASS: MATERIAL DEPRIVATION
-material factors, such as a family income, have a huge impact upon the achievement of working class pupils. A poverty-penalty exists to prevent working class pupils from fulfilling their potential. Working-class pupils therefore face huge ‘barriers to learning’.

Question 2

What are the two examples for external factors (home) explaining social class differences in educational achievement?

Answer 2

1) Material Deprivation
2) Cultural Deprivation

Question 3

What are two evaluation points for Smith and Noble and one contemporary example?

Answer 3

-they overly generalise. They have been accused of presenting a deterministic view of the relationship between material deprivation and underachievement.
-measures are now in place to tackle material disadvantages. e.g. pupil premium, schools receive around £1000 for every eligible pupil.
-a contemporary example is children from middle class homes will have averaged an additional 7 days a month studying at home, compared to their poorer peers.

Question 4

What is Callender and Jackson’s study about?

Answer 4

-SOCIAL CLASS: MATERIAL DEPRIVATION
-did analysis of questionnaire responses. Found that working class students are 5x less likely to apply for university. Fear of debt was the most significant reason given.
-they argue that higher education is a privilege for the elite.

Question 5

What is an evaluation point for Callender and Jackson’s study?

Answer 5

-Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party pledged to scrap tuition fees in the run-up to the 2019 General Election, partly due to the fact that they disadvantage low-income, working class students from studying at university.
-THIS SHOWS THAT THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT ISSUE

Question 6

What is Barry Sugarman’s study about?

Answer 6

-SOCIAL CLASS: CULTURAL DEPRIVATION
-there is a lower class subculture in society that working class pupils are often born into and become a part of. These result in a self-imposed barrier to success.
-these involve fatalistic values (wc students feeling they lack control over their future), immediate gratification (seeking immediate pleasures and rewards), collectivism (prioritising friendships and socialising).

Question 7

What is an evaluation for Barry Sugarman’s study?

Answer 7

-Sugarman is accused of imperialism. He is accused of making value-judgments about working class people.

Question 8

What is Bernstein’s study about and what is one evaluation point for this?

Answer 8

-SOCIAL CLASS: CULTURAL DEPRIVATION
-he examined a specific component of cultural deprivation, speech and language use. He identified the two main types of ‘speech code’.
-restricted speech code: informal, short, simple (WC)
-elaborated speech code: formal, good vocab (MC)

-government policy provides support for Bernstein’s views, schools are encouraged to promote oracy skills and literacy across curriculum.

Question 9

What is Pierre Bourdieu’s study about and what is one evaluation point for this?

Answer 9

-SOCIAL CLASS: CULTURAL DEPRIVATION
-he researched what middle class parents and their children possess/have. It is the cultural capital (knowledge of the education systems) of middle class parents that help their children to succeed in school. He uses the concept habitus in referring to the typical ‘ways of doing things’. Middle class habitus includes a healthy, pro-education socialisation from an early age.
-determining a person’s cultural capital is very subjective, it is a difficult concept to operationalise (simplify).

Question 10

What is Gill Evans study about and what is an evaluation point for this? (EVALUATES CULTURAL DEPRIVATION ARGUMENT)

Answer 10

-spent 1.5 years conducting field work on a working class council estate, Found that in most cases, parents did care about their child’s education. They just weren’t as skilled in knowing how to help their children at home.
-perhaps the parents Evans spoke to told her what she wanted to hear, so that they looked good in her eyes, social desirability effect.

Question 11

What is Bathmaker et Al’s study about and what is an evaluation point for this?

Answer 11

-SOCIAL CLASS: SOCIAL,CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC CAPITAL
-based on the findings from a longitudinal study, involving a group of working class students at Bristol’s two universities, they looked at the relationship between cultural, social and economic capital.
-they found clear evidence that middle class students go to university ‘better equipped’ for success, but importantly they built upon their advantages while studying their courses.
-he found that middle class students recognise how to use their social capital to organise and arrange relevant work experience to ‘add value’ to their degree.
-rather than university providing a means to ‘balance up’ the unequal playing field between working class and middle class students, it helped to widen social class differences in achievement.
-a sample of students from Bristol in south-west England may not be entirely representative of students across the rest of the country

Question 12

What are examples of internal factors explaining social class differences in educational achievement?

Answer 12

-1) Teacher labelling
-2) setting and streaming
-3) pupil subcultures

Question 13

What is Dunne and Gazeley’s study (Labelling process) about?

Answer 13

-negative teacher labelling is the single most important cause of working class pupils’ underachievement. Teachers were found to normalise working class underachievement. A self-fulfilling prophecy of underachievement often results, where working class pupils internalise negative labels attached to them. Middle class pupils are seen to be hard-working and committed to their studies acting as a ‘halo effect’ and they are considered ‘ideal pupils’
-LABELLING PROCESS:
-labelling takes place, based upon stereotypes.
-a Master Status forms, as some labels stick.
-The label is internalised, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
-pupil subcultures form, as pupils who are labelled gravitate to each other.

Question 14

What are two evaluation points for Dunne and Gazeley?

Answer 14

-only used nine secondary schools in England, sample was relatively small, may not have been a representative sample.
-could be seen as deterministic and many of the evidence used is based on judgements, rather than hard evidence.

Question 15

What does setting and streaming and what is a contemporary example that shows this?

Answer 15

-‘setting’ refers to where pupils are grouped according to their ability in a particular subject.
-‘streaming’ is where pupils are put into broadly similar ability groups across all their subjects.
-evidence suggests that decisions about which set/stream a pupil is put into can be influenced by social class stereotypes that teachers hold.
-a contemporary example is a BBC news article in 2017 drew attention to the controversy surrounding the grouping of children by ability from Reception at primary school.

Question 16

What is Jo Boaler’s study about?

Answer 16

SOCIAL CLASS: SETTING AND STREAMING (internal)
- Boaler conducted a study of students aged 13-16 in maths in two secondary schools.
-School A was taught in mixed ability classes. No particular social class differences in achievement were found.
-School B involved use of setting. Students felt that the set they were in determined how teachers regarded their ability.
-one student from ‘School B’ felt as if it was a ‘psychological prison’

Question 17

What is pupil subcultures?

Answer 17

-negatively labelling pupils can lead to the formation of deviant pupil subcultures.

Question 18

What is Paul Willis’ study about?

Answer 18

-SOCIAL CLASS: PUPIL SUBCULTURES
-Willis studied 12 working-class boys- the ‘lads’ during their last year and a half of school and six months at work.
-he found that the lads rejected the very idea of educational qualification, their negative anti-school behaviour demonstrated the counter-school values that they held. inevitably, they underachieved and pursued low-paid, low-status jobs and the counter-school culture was transferred to a shop-floor culture.

Question 19

What is an evaluation point for Willis’ study?

Answer 19

-Willis’ sample is inadequate as a basis for generalisation, it is not representative of the experiences of working class pupils as a whole.
-Furthermore, his regular observations of their behaviour in lessons overlooks the impact that the Hawthorne effect may have had in encouraging the ‘lads’ to ‘act up’. Any exaggeration of their behaviour because of Willis’ presence damages validity.

Question 20

What is Martin Mac an Ghaill’s study about?

Answer 20

-SOCIAL CLASS: PUPIL SUBCULTURES
-Martin developed Willis’ research into pupil subcultures and found that they were more complicated than Willis assumed, heavily influenced by social class.
-‘macho lads’- they were in the bottom two sets for all their subjects, they were academic failures and treated as such by their teachers, they rejected school values.
-‘academic achievers’-saw hard work and educational qualifications as a route to success, they were in top sets and received preferential treatment from the school and teachers.

Question 21

What is an evaluation point for Martin Mac an Ghaill’s study?

Answer 21

-Stephen Ball: Beach side Comprehensive
-In his study of a school in California USA, Stephen Ball looked at how the removal of streaming led to a decline in anti-school subculture among working class pupils. However, Ball found that despite the removal of streaming, teachers continued to differentiate pupils on who was more/less able.

Question 22

What is Louis Archer et al’s study about?

Answer 22

-SOCIAL CLASS: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS
-Archer et Al’s research looked at how pupils home background may interact with in-school processes to explain why working class pupils underachieve. They claim that certain values, behaviours are associated with a particular social class (HABITUS). Since schools operate with a middle class habitus, working class identity is de-valued and considered to be undesirable. The way that teachers and schools fail to recognise working class identity in a positive way is referred to as symbolic violence.
-one way of overcoming these feelings is by exaggerating the characteristics of working-class identity. Styles of clothing are often embraced as a ‘selling point’ which is why, often, consumer brands like ‘Nike’ are used. These ‘Nike’ identities allow working class pupils to gain a sense of self-worth in an otherwise, ‘hostile’ school environment.

Question 23

What are some facts about ethnic differences in educational achievement?

Answer 23

-girls from Chinese and Indian heritage consistently achieve the best GCSE grades.
-boys from Black African and Black Caribbean heritage do less well.
-White British boys are the greatest concern, they achieve the lowest scores.

Question 24

What are three home background explanations to explain differences in ethnic differences in educational achievement?

Answer 24

-cultural deprivation
-material deprivation
-racism in wider society

Question 25

What is Haleema Khanum’s study about?

Answer 25

-“they did well, but not Asian well” -Khanum found clear evidence that education ambitions are massively shaped by family and community life. -High levels of cultural capital combined with low levels of cultural deprivation were especially found among Indian students. Students spoke of parents having high aspirations for their children regarding subjects to be studied, grades to be achieved and careers to be ambitious for. -Khanum’s research shows that the positive, pro-education values held across many British-Asian families explains generally high levels of achievement.

Question 26

What is Tony Sewell’s study about? (ethnicity- cultural deprivation)

Answer 26

**ETHNICITY: CULTURAL DEPRIVATION** -Sewell’s interviews with black boys living in more deprived communities in London found clear evidence of cultural deprivation. -Sewell believes that it is home-background life that results in underachievement of black boys, rather than in-school factors. -he points that 60% of Black-Caribbean families in the UK are lone-parent, compared to around 25% of white families. -the absence of a positive , male role-model at home can mean that young, black boys are less disciplined. Street gangs are an easy temptation and include values that reject education and academic success. They provide what Sewell calls a **“perverse form of loyalty and love”** that the boys substitute for their turbulent home lives. -Media images of black-ghetto style “gangsters” does not help matters, since this creates the impression that to be a black boy must mean being “tough” and avoid **“selling out to the white establishment”**

Question 27

What are ways to evaluate cultural deprivation theories in regards to ethnic differences in achievement?

Answer 27

-studies often ignore how the strong, nurturing that black women provide for their children is more than an adequate substitution for the lack of a male father in lone-parent families, especially due to the strong **matrifocal socialisation** these women received themselves growing up. -some sociologists object to the very use of the term “cultural deprivation” and point out that it is hard to be deprived of the very culture society is built upon.

Question 28

What are the facts about material deprivation within ethnic groups ?

Answer 28

-ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience material deprivation in comparison to white groups, especially since they live in poorer areas. -Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage people are over three times more likely than white people to be in the poorest fifth of the population. -Unemployment is 3x higher for Black African, Bangladeshi and Pakistani “heritage” people than for white people.

Question 29

What is Mike Noon’s study about? (racism in wider society)

Answer 29

-In his study, he sent identical pairs of letters to enquire about future employment opportunities to top 100 UK companies, signed by fictitious applicants called “Evans” and “Patel”. Both had the same qualifications. -he found that companies were more encouraging of the white candidates. -this may increase unemployment for ethnic minority groups, resulting in higher material deprivation.

Question 30

What is a contemporary example to explain racism in wider society (+ an evaluation) for this?

Answer 30

-In 2016, the BBC highlighted how black women continue to earn less than their white colleagues. Differences in pay amount is around 23% -however, there is anti-discrimination laws, equal opportunities policies has had some impact on tackling racism and discrimination.

Question 31

What are internal factors explaining ethnic differences in educational achievement?

Answer 31

-labelling and teacher racism -pupil subcultures -ethnocentric schooling -institutional racism

Question 32

What was Gillborn and Youdell’s study about and an evaluation for this?

Answer 32

-in their study, they found that teachers are more likely to have negative expectations of black pupils. -they were quicker to discipline them in comparison to pupils from other ethnic backgrounds. Teachers held racialised stereotypes. -This may explain why black pupils have the highest exclusion rate when compared to other ethnic groups. -**Evaluation:** It is unclear why teachers would have racialised stereotypes of black pupils, but not pupils from other ethnic minority groups. E.g. the exclusion rate for Black Caribbean boys is much higher than it is for Black African boys.

Question 33

What is Louis Archer’s study about and an evaluation for this?

Answer 33

-she identifies three main ways in which being in school shapes the identities of ethnic minority students. -**Ideal Pupil Identity:** refers to white,middle class students, high achieving -**Pathologised Pupil Identity:** asian girls who are oppressed by strict home life and work focused at such an extreme. -**Demonised Pupil Identity:** black/white working class pupils overly -sexualised, peer-led, culturally deprived underachievers. -the above classifications of pupils’ identify helps to encourage and reinforce the stereotypical behaviour of teachers towards pupils in their care. -the above classifications are somewhat simplistic, and it isn’t clear what hard evidence Archer used to make the three distinctions.

Question 34

How do pupil subcultures show ethnic differences in educational achievement?

Answer 34

-once a negative label has been applied to a pupil, a *master status* can hold, the label becomes a defining feature of a pupils identity and can lead to a *self-fulfilling prophecy.* -this can lead to *anti-school subcultures* forming as a result.

Question 35

What was Tony Sewell’s study on pupil subcultures about and an evaluation for this?

Answer 35

-Sewell examines the way in which black pupils coped with negative labelling and teacher racism. He found that teachers held a view of “black machoism” which sees all black boys as rebellious, anti-authority and anti-school. The boys in his study responded in four main ways: **THE REBELS:** rejected everything that school stood for **THE CONFORMISTS:** they continue to follow rules and work hard **THE RETREATISTS:** isolated individuals, who didn’t have many friends. **THE INNOVATORS:**pro-education, but anti-school -very few boys fell into the “black macho lad” image, yet teachers tended to see them all in this way. -research such as this can easily create the impression that all teachers negatively label black boys.

Question 36

What is Mary Fuller’s study about?

Answer 36

-her study shows how pupils reject negative labelling. -she studied a group of black girls in Year 11 and found that they were high achievers. -Instead of accepting the negative label, the girls in her study channelled their anger at being labelled into their work.

Question 37

What is the idea of an ethnocentric curriculum and what are some examples of schools being ethnocentric?

Answer 37

-this curriculum gives priority to the culture and viewpoint of one particular ethnic group and so ignoring cultural diversity and ways of helping to make everybody feel truly included. 1) the school year calendared around Christian festivals. 2) subject content focusing on White British experiences. 3) canteen food not catering for cultural tastes e.g. halal meat

Question 38

What is a modern example for schools being ethnocentric ?

Answer 38

-University of Leicester has found that black students often have to “work harder” than their peers to connect to assessment and curriculum content.

Question 39

What is an evaluation for an ethnocentric curriculum?

Answer 39

-it isn’t clear why some ethnic minority groups may be disadvantaged by an ethnocentric curriculum, while others appear totally resistant to it. If this factor really was a powerful influence over achievement, we would expect to see Indian and Chinese pupils underachieving too, but this is not the case.

Question 40

What does institutional racism mean?

Answer 40

-refers to discrimination that is built into the way institutions operate. -some research highlights that discrimination is so historically deep-rooted that it forms what is referred to as a 'locked-in inequality'

Question 41

What does 'new IQism' mean and what is a real-life example showing the effects of it?

Answer 41

-It has been increasingly clear that teachers' judgements and perceptions about ability are taken as the main factor in deciding how sets, streams, exam tiers to the 'gifted and talented programme' are made. -This is referred to as the 'new IQism'. -Traditional tests of intelligence are used, but added to these are teacher perceptions and judgments. -An analysis of exam entry tiers shows that black pupils are far more likely to be entered for foundation tier in papers which still use this system.

Question 42

What is a contemporary example for institutional racism?

Answer 42

-BBC News Article in 2018 featured a headline about Oxford University which referenced a Twitter post claiming the university was a 'bastion of white, middle-class, southern privilege'. The university admitted that it needs to do more in order to ensure that it represents true diversity in its student population.

Question 43

What is the idea of marketisation, selection and segregation and what is an evaluation for this?

Answer 43

-some sociologists claim that, with increasing marketisation of schools, there is much greater scope for schools to select pupils. -many black pupils are identified as 'problem pupils' which means that schools often try to resist offering them a place. -it would be very difficult for schools admissions departments to get away with selection by ethnicity in today's society. Much pro-equality legislation acts to help ensure that ethnic minority groups are not disadvantaged by admissions process.