Educational Achievement with Social Class

Question 1

How do schools work out the proportions of working-class or poverty-stricken backgrounds in schools

Answer 1

By seeing the percentage of Free School Meal children in the school - these FMS pupils tend to be in lower league table schools also

Question 2

What is the problem with using FSM to measure the proportions of working-class backgrounds

Answer 2

Not all working-class children qualify for FSM because their parents have jobs. Moreover, some parents may not claim FSM even though they qualify for it

Question 3

What did Willis and Corrigan find about university placements

Answer 3

That children with parents in professional jobs are three times more likely to attend a top university than working-class students, even when they achieve the same grades

Question 4

What did Willis and Corrigan find out about nursery

Answer 4

That working-class children are less likely to be found in nursery schools, are more likely to start school unable to read and are more likely to fall behind middle-class children in reading, writing and number skills in primary schools

Question 5

What is one of the main causes of lower educational attainment of working class children

Answer 5

Material deprivation caused by low incomes and poverty, especially those having FSM

Question 6

What do Smith and Noble point out

Answer 6

That lack of funds to pay for school uniform, books, computers and extra tuition can lead to children being bullied or falling behind their middle-class peers

Low incomes can also lead to poor nutrition, poor health and absenteeism from schools

Question 7

What does a poorer quality and over-crowding of the home result in

Answer 7

Children may lack the private quiet space in which they can do their homework and study

Question 8

What does the marketisation of schools mean for the working-class pupils

Answer 8

The children who live in deprived areas may have no choice but to attend unpopular and failing schools

Question 9

What does Taylor suggest

Answer 9

That material factor have more impact on some social groups more than others. If parents have high expectations there is evidence that material disadvantages can be overcome

Question 10

What is cultural deprivation

Answer 10

A lack of the norms, values and attitudes required to ensure success in education

Question 11

What is said about the working-class and cultural deprivation

Answer 11

That working-class underachievement is caused by deficiencies or weaknesses in working-class culture

Question 12

What did Feinstein find

Answer 12

That class differences in achievement were mainly the result of class differences in parental interest and support

Question 13

What Feinsteins study suggest

Answer 13

That working-class parents placed less value on the importance of education compared with middle-class parents and consequently have lower aspirations for their children.

These attitudes were passed onto their children during socialisation

Therefore working-class children weren’t adequately prepared for education

Question 14

What are the critics behind Feinsteins study

Answer 14

Parental interest was measured using teacher perceptions of parents. Such teachers may have stereotyped working-class parents and may have been biased in favour of middle-class parents who resembled themselves

Question 15

What did Gill Evans’ conclude

Answer 15

Found in the study that working-class parents had very positive attitudes towards education.
Evans’ rejects the idea of cultural deprivation and argues instead in favour of ‘social variation’ - working-class methods of bringing up children are not inferior just different

Question 16

What did Bernstein (1970) study suggest

Answer 16

His study of language has been used to suggest working-class children are linguistically deprived

Question 17

What did Bernstein argue about Middle-class children

Answer 17

He argued that middle-class parents socialise their children into elaborated codes of speech which involve the detailed and complex use of language - similar to the language in textbooks and exams

Question 18

What did Bernstein say about working-class children

Answer 18

Working-class parents fail to transmit such language skills to their children who come to school equipped with an inferior restricted code of speech which fails to fully convey detail and meaning

Question 19

How are the inferior restricted code of speed children disadvantaged

Answer 19

As their alleged linguistic deprivation means that they find it difficult to understand teacher instructions or exposition, as well as textbooks etc. As these are all written in the elaborated speech code

Question 20

What was the cultural deprivation theory influential of

Answer 20

Educational policies in the 1960s and 1970s

Question 21

What policies did the cultural deprivation theory make

Answer 21

The setting up of ‘educational priority areas’ in six deprived areas, which attempted to positively discriminate in favour of working-class pupils to compensate for the deficiencies in working-class culture

Question 22

What do Gaine and George criticise Bernstein about

Answer 22

They argue that he oversimplifies the difference between middle-class and working-class speech patterns

Question 23

What does Nell Keddie argue

Answer 23

That cultural deprivation theory is ethnocentric - sees the world through middle-class eyes and fails to recognise the richness and strength of working-class culture

Cultural deprivation theory distractions attention away from the real causes of educational failure - because of schools

Question 24

What type of sociologist is Pierre Bourdieu

Answer 24

Marxist

Question 25

What does Bourdieu argue

Answer 25

He rejects the idea of cultural deprivation and argues in contrast that the main role of the education system is cultural reproduction - ensuring that the culture of the dominant class is passed onto the next generation

Question 26

Why do the dominant class have an advantage in the education system

Answer 26

The knowledge of the dominant culture that Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’ - as the educational system is a bourgeois construction in which the organisation of teaching and learning values for bourgeois culture, more than the working-class culture

Question 27

What does Bourdieu claim middle-class education success to be

Answer 27

Depends on the passion of such cultural capital.

Working-class pupils who lack cultural capital are more likely to drop out of education as they see the education system as rigged against them

Question 28

What do some critics of cultural capital

Answer 28

That economic capital is more important as it can buy a place in a fee-paying school with smaller classes as well as extra tuition and educational support materials

Question 29

What does Interactionist theory focus on

Answer 29

What goes on in the classroom between teachers and pupils rather than social factors external to the school

Question 30

What do Interactionists argue

Answer 30

That individual pupils develop a self-concept or view of themselves based on how teachers react to them.

Question 31

What do Interactionists say about labelling

Answer 31

That the labels that teachers attach to pupils are often not based on objective criteria such as intelligence. They tend to be based on common-sense assumptions about what constitutes as ‘ideal pupil’

Question 32

What does Becker’s research suggest

Answer 32

That teachers see middle-class pupils as closet to the ‘ideal pupil’ in terms of performance, conduct, attitude and appearance, while working-class pupils are seen furthest from it

Question 33

What did Gillborn and Youdell find

Answer 33

That teachers generally labelled working-class pupils as disruptive, lacking in motivation and parental support and consequently of low ability.

This led to teachers having lower expectations of working-class pupils, which meant they were often allocated to lower ability groups

Question 34

What is self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 34

The pupil internalises the label and conforms to teacher expectations

Question 35

What does setting involve

Answer 35

Placing pupils in different ability groups for different subjects

Question 36

What do some educationalists prefer about sets

Answer 36

They prefer mixed ability sets because setting by ability can sometimes become to rigid and pupils can find it difficult to move up even if they demonstrate improvements in ability

Question 37

What did Gillborn and Yodel argue

Answer 37

That bright working-class pupils are often placed in lower ability sets because teachers subscribe to negative stereotypes about the attitudes and behaviour of working-class pupils.

Once placed in these groups, these bright working-class pupils live up to a self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 38

What do interactionalists argue about the bottom sets

Answer 38

The pupils in the bottom sets are more likely to experience low self-esteem and form anti-social or counter-pupil subcultures in which peers award status to one another for deviant behaviour that breaks school rules

Question 39

What did Willis find

Answer 39

His study of anti-school subcultures suggests it may not be necessarily be a response to teacher labelling. He found that the lads in his study rejected the idea of school and qualifications because they wanted jobs in the local factory. They saw school as ‘having a laugh’

Question 40

What did Woods observe

Answer 40

That working-class pupils could react to negative teacher labelling and setting in a variety of ways. He noted that pupils often moved between conformity and rebellion, which usually depended on the teacher or the lesson.