interactionalist perspective 5Ed Flashcards
(22 cards)
what does interactionalist look at
- process and relationships within the education system which result in different levels of achievement for social groups
- want to investigate how individuals interact with formal and informal organisations within schools
what is the formal organisation
- consists of things schools formally teach and the rules EG: uniform and punishment systems
what is informal organisation
- things that are not normally taught but are important aspects of schooling process EG: way pupils interact with each other, teacher labelling and subcultures
what is labelling
the process of attaching a definition or meaning to an individual group
Eg: girls are more hardworking than boys
what is the self fulfilling prophecy
- where a prediction is made about a person or group comes true simply because the prediction has been made
- teachers label pupils in a way that pupils come to beleive this to be true and that they ‘suit’ there given label
what is typing
where a person is considered to be a particular ‘type’
Eg: hard worker, trouble maker
what did Hargreves analyse
- the way pupils become classified or typed
- investigated the way teachers came to know their pupils and distinguished 3 stage sof classification
What does is the three steps to classification according to Hargreaves’s
Speculation - teacher forms an hypothesis of what sort of child each pupil is
Elaboration - the hypothesis is either confirmed or contradicted
Stabilisation - teacher feels they know they pupil and all pupils actions will be interpreted based on the “type” of pupil they are
What did Becker argue
- Teachers make immediate judgments about pupils, comparing them to their “ideal type”
- Found the evaluation was not made upon ability but on social class
what was Beckers findings from his Chicargo study
- evaluted students in terms of an ideal pupil
- ‘ideal’ was typically neat apperance, hardworking, well behaved, good attitude
- found that middle class pupils were closest to this ideal type
Cicourel and Kitsuse
- looked at effect of labelling
- social class of american highschool students was an important influence on the way students were evaluated by teachers
- ultimatley affected their grades
what does labelling theory say
typing leads to labels being attached to pupils, affects pupils chance of educational success
what did Rosenthal and Jacobson research
- experiement in amrican primary schools to investgate self fullfilling prophecy
- lied and said the IQ test identifed pupils who would spurt ahead of the others, this 20% was acc picked at random
- 1 year later they revisted the school and found all the ‘spurters’ to have made significant progress
- R&J beleived it was the teachers beleifs about the pupils that influenced they way they interacted with the pupils and their overall success
what is streaming
- sperating children into different ability groups of classes called ‘steams’
- each ability group is taught seperatly from others for all subjects
- studies show the self fulfilling prohecy is more likely to occur where streaming does
Ball
- beachside comprehensive school, examined internal organsiation of the school
- found children were’banded’ according to their ability with reference to other factors like social background
- when children entered they were keen and conformist, but this changed after they spent time with their ‘bands’
- teacher expections meant that pupils were taught in differnt ways and encouraged to follow differnt educational routes
Keddie
- claims that knowledge was evaluated and classfied in large schools
- theoretical knowledge was seen as superior to practical knowledge
- some knowledge was seen worthwile of only certain students. those who were defined as bright were given greater access to knowledge than others
- higher social class/ white collar jobs = A stream
- lower social class / unskilled manual work = C stream
- middle class pupils seen as ideal and given greater info
what do interactionsalsits say to support Keddies research
- pupils experience schools in different ways
- treated differntly by teachers, labelled, and streamed
- they attach differnt meanings to education based on their own experiences
Hargreves - subcultures
- pupils labelled as trouble makers were put into lower streams
- defined as failures
- these pupils tended to seek out each others componany and awarded each other for high status and school rule breaking
Woods
- pupils will react differntly to school life
- may accept or reject the aim of academic success and means of achieving it
- identified different responses to school in groups of pupils
- compliance - those who mainly got on with work
- retreatist - pupils who replaced school values with their own
Paul Willis
- study of the ‘lads’
- developed a counter school subculture which helped them cope with being labelled as trouble makers and failures
- resulted in their priorty in school to be having a ‘lagh’ rather than school work
- this spills into thier jobs , having a laugh to cope with boring nature of their jobs
advantages of interactionist approach
- based upon far more detailed evidence than functionalsit and marxist theories or role and purpose of education in society
- interactionist done real research in schools, observations
- has practical applications - lead to better teaching standards andd increased awarness of effects of labelling
disadvantages of interactionsit approach
- somestudies dont actually explain why labelling happens - blame teachers for laeblling pupils but dont explain why they do it
- determinsitic - assumes once a pupil has been labelled, they will automatically fulfill it
- explains differnce in acheivement based purley of what happens inside schools, ignoring wider social influences: family background etc
