Ethnicity and achievement

Question 1

Ethnic group

Answer 1

a group with shared history, culture and identity, including language cuisine and religion.

Question 2

Who are the biggest underachievers

Answer 2

white w/c boys

Question 3

What are the different types of cultural deprivation

Answer 3

intellectual and language skills
attitudes and values
family structure
subculture

Question 4

Cultural deprivation

[intellectual and language skills]

Answer 4

Beriter and Englemen
- argue that children from black e/m backgrounds lack intellectual stimulation + enriching experiences needed for educational success.
As a result, they don’t develop reasoning and problem solving skills.
They use the restricted code when speaking - holds them back.
may e/m families don’t speak english as their first language.

Question 5

Criticisms of Beriter & Englemen

- cultural deprivation

Answer 5

Many Indian British children speak an additional language but still do well

Question 6

Cultural deprivation

[attitudes and values]

Answer 6

New Right - black e/m children are socialised into subculture values which promote fatalistic attitudes that don’t value education.

These children are therefore not encouraged to work hard at school which holds back their progress

Scruton - some e/m fail to integrate into the mainstream British culture which causes their children’s underachievement

Question 7

Criticisms of cultural deprivation

[attitudes and values]

Answer 7

racist - assumes black culture + values are inferior and different to mainstream culture

Question 8

Cultural deprivation

[family structure]

Answer 8

SEWELL - many students do better in education than black students because they are brought up in a supportive and clone-knit families which put a high value on education and have an Asian work ethic

LUPTON - Asian families support the schools behaviour policies which are similar to their expectations of their children’s behaviour

MOYNIHAN - many black children are being brought up in LPF’s in which they are deprived of adequate care because the mother struggles financially in the absence of a male role model

MURRAY - lack of positive male role model cause the underachievement of those children, especially boys.
- they also see deprivation as a cycle whereby poorly socialised children grow up to become inadequate parents themselves.

Question 9

Criticisms of cultural deprivation - family structure

Answer 9

They can be criticised for ignoring the white nuclear families who fail to socialise their children properly.

McCullock - argues white w/c families have low aspirations for their children who don’t encourage their children to pursue education so they underachieve

Lupton - compare 4 schools [2 white, 1 Pakistani, 1 mixed] and the found that the white school had fewer children of FSM, but behaviour was worse.
- shows that achievement is affected by parental attitudes to education

Question 10

Cultural deprivation

[subcultures]

Answer 10

SEWELL - argues that black fathers aren’t absent, but it is the black fathers ‘tough love’ that causes black boys to struggle to overcome emotional difficulties.

They then turn to music + gangs for male role models - anti-school subculture - underachieve

therefore the biggest cause of underachievement is peer pressure

Question 11

Criticisms of cultural deprivation

Answer 11

Driver - argues ethnicity can have a positive effect on achievement

Lawrence - argues that black boys underachieve because of racism at school

Kedie - e/m are culturally different and underachieve because schools are ethnocentric

Question 12

Material deprivation

Answer 12

e/m are more likely to be w/c which causes them to face material deprivation and live in poverty

PALMER - e/m such as Pakistani and Bangladeshi tend to be among the poorest in the UK

• live in areas of high unemployment
• traditional attitudes: women tend not to work
• lack of english skills - difficult to find a high paid job

Question 13

Racism in wider society

Answer 13

The poverty e/m experience is caused by racism in society

MASON - discrimination is a persistent feature in the lives of e/m in the UK

REX - shows how this happens in housing where e/m are forced into substandard accommodation by councils

WOOD ET AL - found the same in employment. He sent 3 identical job applications for the same job, each application having a name associated with a ethnic group
- he found that applicants with english sounding names where more likely to…

Question 14

Internal factors

[labelling and teacher racism]

Answer 14

G+Y - teachers hold racialised expectations - expect black students to present behavioural problems and misinterpret their behaviour as challenging to their authority, therefore teachers are more likely to discipline black boys even for minor offences for which white boys weren’t disciplined.
- pupils react negatively to this - further conflict

WRIGHT - studied a multi-ethnic primary school through observation of interactions of teachers and students. She found that teachers hold ethnocentric views.
Leads them to label Asian students as lacking English skills

Question 15

Pupil identities

Answer 15

Archer - argues that teachers dominant discourse exclude e/m students from the image of the ‘ideal pupil’. these teacher attitudes created 3 different types of pupil identities:
[1] THE IDEAL PUPIL
- white m/c masculinised identity, pupils are seen as achieving as a result of natural ability

[2] THE PATHOLOGICAL PUPIL
- asian, deserving poor, feminised identity, oppressed sexuality. These pupils are seen as conformists + culture-bound achiever who has to work hard to succeed.

[3] THE DEMONISED PUPIL
- Black, white w/c, hyper-sexualised identity. These pupils are seen as unintelligent, peer-led, culturally deprived underachievers.

e/m pupils, even those who are high achievers are either seen as pathologised/demonised pupil. Archer calls this a positive-negative stereotype.

Question 16

Pupil subcultures

Answer 16

Mirza - studied the strategies adopted by ambitious black girls for avoiding racism.
- racist teachers restricted the aspiration of black female students through the subject and career choices they suggested.
Students tried to avoid racist teachers by choosing different subjects or by not asking questions
- thus, the girls underachieved

Sewell - teachers had a stereotypical view of black machismo
[expect black boys to be rebellious + anti-school]
Boys responded in 4 ways:
1. Rebels - opposed to schools rules, often excluded, formed anti-school subcultures.
2. Conformists - respected school rules, aimed for success
3. Retreatists - isolated from school and the rebels
4. Innovators - pro-education, but anti-school.
However, even the conformists faced teacher labelling from their peers.

Mac an Ghail – studied Asian and black A Level students and found that students can reject the negative labels applied to them by teachers.

Fuller – studied yr 11 high achieving black girls.
Findings:
- black girls rejected -ve labels applied to them and turned anger at being labelled into pursuit of educational success, but the girls didn’t conform by seeking the approval of teachers and were friends w/low achieving girls.
This shows that the self-fulfilling prophecy doesn’t always happen.

Question 17

Ethnocentric curriculum

Answer 17

Ethnocentric – describes an attitude or policy that gives priority to the culture and viewpoint of one particular ethinic group while disregarding others.

Troyna + Williams - British curriculum gives priority to British culture and language , it ignores non-European languages, music and literature.

Coard - lack of black literature, history, music and role models in the curriculum. May create low self-esteem among black students and lead to failure

+C: Indian and Chinese students’ achievement is high so little evidence that the ethnocentric curriculum has any effect on achievement.

Question 18

Assessment

Answer 18

Gillborn - e/m pupils underachieve especially when the assessments are based on teacher judgement’s, rather than externally marked tests.

e.g. before 2003, P.S students used to be tested at the start of reception - baseline test [e/m did better than white students]

However, in 2003 the system was replaced w/foundation stage profiles, these are entirely based on teacher’s judgement of students. Since this system was introduced, e/m students have been underachieving.
This shows that teachers’ stereotyping of pupils achievement.

Question 19

Access to opportunities

Answer 19

Gillborn - G+T program was created to meet the needs of more able students in inner city areas, but Gillborn argues it discriminates against e/m.
- because it is based on teacher judgement’s - white students more likely to be placed on G+T rather than e/m.

Tickly - found that e/m pupils are more likely to be entered for foundation tier exams and placed into low sets.

Gillborn calls these false assumptions about pupils’ potential the new IQism.

Question 20

Institutional racism

Answer 20

refers to discrimination that is built into the way organisations such as schools work.

The Critical race theory sees the education system as institutionally racist.

Gillborn – refers to institutional racism as locked-in-equality whereby the scale of discrimination is so large that there is no longer any conscious intent to discriminate as discrimination is fully built into the ways schools operate.

Question 21

Marketisation, selection and segregation policies

Answer 21

Gilborn - MOE has allowed schools to select students
- puts e/m at a disadvantage as -ve stereotypes can affect admission decisions.

Moore & Davenport - e/m pupils fail to get into top schools because these schools use P.S reports to ‘screen out’ ‘problem’ students. Also, Non-English speaking parents may not understand the application process - puts e/m students at a disadvantage

+C: possible that parents send their children to schools where most of the other students are of the same ethnic background as a way of protecting their children from racism - causes ethnic segregation between schools.

Question 22

Policies to help tackle the underachievement of some e/m students [1970s - 90s]

Answer 22

Assimilation
- 1960s + 70s - the focus was on integrating e/m children into mainstream British culture to help improve their achievement

Social inclusion:
- 1990s onwards - monitoring the achievement of e/m pupils + amending the race relation act to make schools legally responsible for providing equality

Multicultural education

• 1960s + 90s - idea was to create a broad spectrum which would value all cultures
• results would improve