ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT INTERNAL FACTORS Flashcards
How does labelling and teacher racism affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Studies show that teachers often see black and asian pupils as far from the ‘ideal pupil.’ Negative labels may lead to teachers treating students from ethnic minority backgrounds differently.
How does the way Black pupils are disciplined affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Gillborn and Youdell - found that teachers were quicker to discipline black students than others for the same behaviour. This is due to ‘racialised expectations’ as teachers were found to expect problems from black pupils and often misinterpreted their behaviour.
How does the way Black pupils are streamed affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Peter Foster - found that teachers’ stereotypes of black pupils as badly behave could result in them being placed in lower sets. Essentially streaming pupils based on negative stereotypes and causing them to underachieve.
How do pupil identities affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Teachers often define students as having stereotypical ethnic identities.
Archer - teachers’ dominant way of seeing something defines minority ethnic group pupils as lacking the favoured identity of the ideal pupil.
What does Cecile Wright say about asian pupils and ethnic difference in achievement?
Can be the victims of teacher labelling - teachers held ethnocentric views, they essentially viewed that British Culture and language was superior. Asian pupils would often have a poor grasp of English and were often left out of class discussions.
What is the argument about chinese pupils and ethnic difference in achievement?
Archer - even those who perform succesfully can be seen as ‘abnormal’. Chinese students are often praised and viewed negatively . Sometimes seen as achieving success the ‘wrong way’ - through hardworking passive conformism rather than individual ability.
How do pupil responses and subcultures affect ethnic difference in achievement?
May respond by becoming disruptive or withdraw themselves, causing underachievement. Alternatively, some may reject the label and work hard to prove it wrong.
How does rejecting negative labels affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Fuller - a group of black girls channelled their anger about being labelled into the pursuit of educational success. They did not seek the approval of teachers and often just got on with their work.
What does Sewell say about the variety of boys’ responses?
He says there are four responses:
- Rebels
- Conformists
- Retreatists
- Innovators
What is an evaluation of labelling and pupil responses?
Rather than blaming the child’s home background, labelling theory shows how teachers’ stereotypes can be a cause of failure.
However, these stereotypes could just be a teachers individual prejudice rather than racism in the education system.
What is the critical race theory?
Racism is an ingrained feature of society. Involves not just the intentional actions of individuals but, more importantly, institutional racism.
What is locked-in inequality and how does it affect ethnic difference in achievement?
The scale of historical discrimination is so large that there no longer needs to be any conscious intent to discriminate - the inequality becomes self-perpetuating.
Gillborn - ethnic inequality as ‘so deep rooted and so large that it is a practically inevitable feature of the education system’
How does marketisation and segregation affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Gillborn - marketisation gives schools more scope to select pupils. Allows negative stereotypes to influence decisions about school admissions.
Moore and Davenport - selections procedures lead to ethnic segregation
How does the ethnocentric curriculum affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Sociologists see this as a prime example of institutional racism due to it building racial bias into everyday workings of school.
Troyna and Williams - noticed lack of Asian languages being taught as opposed to European.
Ball - curriculum ignores ethnic diversity and promotes ‘little Englandism’
How does ‘assesment’ affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Gillborn - ‘the assesment game’ is rigged as to validate the dominant cultures superiority. If black students succeed as a group, ‘the rules will be changed to re-engineer failure’.
How does access to opportunities affect ethnic difference in achievement?
The ‘gifted and talented programme’ - aim of meeting the needs of more able pupils in inner-city schools. Gillborn points out white students are much more likely to be deemed gifted and talented than black students
Exam tiers - black pupils are more likely to be entered into lower exam tiers than white pupils
How does the model minority affect ethnic difference in achievement?
Some sociologists argue that there is ‘overachievement’ by ‘model minorities’ such as indian or chinese pupils, therefore institutional racism can’t exist.
However, Gillborn argues that it justifies the failure of other minorities such as black pupils and also ignores the fact that ‘model minorities’ still suffer from racism in school and can still struggle in school
What does Gillian Evans say about ethnicity, class and gender?
To full understand the relationship between ethnicity and achievement, we need to look at how ethnicity interacts with gender and class. She claims sociolgists tend to look at their culture and ethnicity, but often ignore their class.
What is a summary of ethnic differences in achievement?
There are achievement differences between ethnic groups. Many explain it through the effects of teachers’ racist labelling, the identities they ascribe to pupils and institutional racism through things like the ethnocentric curriculum.
