Internal Factors

Question 1

What are internal factors ?

Answer 1

Factors and processes within schools that cause educational differences

Question 2

What is labelling ?

Answer 2

• to attach a meaning or definition e.g. a bright student, a troublemaker
• studies show that labels are based on stereotypical assumptions
• interactionist sociologists study small scale, face to face interactions between individuals e.g. in the classroom

Question 3

Explain labelling in secondary schools?

Answer 3

Dunne and gazeley (2008) teachers normalise the underachievement of working class pupils, emphasises the role of pupils home background, underestimate potential and enter for easier exams

Question 4

Explain labelling in primary schools

Answer 4

• rist (2008) teachers used information about home background and appearance to group/separate students, working class students are given lower level books to read

Question 5

What is the self fulfilling prophecy ?

Answer 5

• a prediction that comes true by virtue of it having been made
• rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) simply by accepting the prediction that some children would spurt ahead the teachers brought it about. If teachers believe a pupil to be of a certain type, they can actually make him/her into that type
• interactionist principle- what people believe to be true will have real effects even if the belief was not true originally

Question 6

What is streaming?

Answer 6

• separating children into different ability groups (streams)
• the self fulfilling prophecy is particularly likely to occur when children are streamed
• Douglas= children placed in a lower stream at age 8 had suffered a decline in IQ by age 11 and vice versa for higher stream students

Question 7

what is the A-C economy?

Answer 7

Schools focus time and resources on those pupils who they see as having the potential to get 5 A-C grades

Question 8

What is the educational triangle (Youdell,2004.)

Answer 8

The A-C economy produces the educational triage
1. those who will pass anyway
2. those with potential but just need a little help
3. hopeless cases, doomed to fail
the need to gain a good league table position drives the educational triage

Question 9

What is pupil subcultures?

Answer 9

A group of pupils who share similar values and behaviour pattern, often emerge as a response to the way pupils have been labelled and as a reaction to streaming. Lacey (1970) differentiation (categorising pupils according to perceived ability and a form of streaming) leads to polarisation. Students move towards one or two opposite poles, e.g. pro school or anti school.

Question 10

What is pro school subculture?

Answer 10

largely middle class, committed to the values of school, status is gained through academic success, placement in high streams.

Question 11

What is the anti-school subculture?

Answer 11

working class, low self worth due to being placed in a position of inferior status, search for alternative ways of gaining status e.g. misbehaviour, becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of educational failure.

Question 12

What is abolishing streaming?

Answer 12

Ball (1981) abolishing banding removed the polarisation into subcultures, but inequality can still continue as a result of labelling without the effects of subcultures of streaming’s.

Question 13

What is the typical pupil responses to streaming?

Answer 13

Woods (1979)
- ingratiation (teachers pet)
- ritualism, going through the motions and staying out of trouble
- retreatism, daydreaming, mucking about
- rebellion, outright rejection
FURLONG (1984)
- student responses vary in different lessons with different teachers

Question 14

What is the criticism of labelling theory?

Answer 14

• schools are not neutral institutions and create social class inequalities (positive criticism supported by labelling theory)
• labelling theory is too deterministic, students do not necessarily have to fulfil the prophecy (negative criticism)
• Marxists argue that the theory ignores the role of powers as teachers are in a system that reproduces class division (negative criticism.)

Question 15

How do pupils’ class identities and the school

Answer 15

Pupils’ class identities that are formed outside of school interact with the school to produce success/failure.

Question 16

Bourdieu’s habitus (1984.)

Answer 16

• Habitus refers to the dispostions or learned taken for granted ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class
• A groups habitus is formed as a response to its position in the class subculture
• the middle c;ass has the power to define its habitus as superior and to impose it on the eduction system

Question 17

What is symbolic capital?

Answer 17

gaining in status and recognition from the schools because the middle class is deemed to have more worth/value whilst the working class habitus is worthless

Question 18

What is symbolic violence?

Answer 18

Working class pupils experience the world as unnatural e.g. university and professional careers “are not for the likes of us”, the withholding of symbolic capital (Bourdieu)

Question 19

What are “Nike” identities?

Answer 19

• symbolic violence leads to working class pupils seeking alternative ways of creating self worth e.g. investing in styles/brands such as Nike
• the right appearance earns symbolic capital and not conforming is “social suicide”
• schools label street styles as “rebels”
• Nike styles are linked to working class rejection of higher education
  1. unrealistic, not for people like us, unaffordable too
  2. undesirable, does not suit preferred lifestyle, would not be able to maintain a street style
• archer et al= working class pupils get the message that education is not for the likes of them and actively choose to reject it because it does not fit in with their identity or way of life

Question 20

What are working class identities and educational success?

Answer 20

• Some working class pupils do succeed in education
  -Ingram (2009) having a working class identity is inseparable from belonging to a working locality, pupils are forced to abandon their ‘worthless’ (from the schools POV) working class identity if they want to succeed

Question 21

What is class identity and self exclusion ?

Answer 21

• Reay et al (2005) self exclusion from elite universities narrows the options of many working class pupils which limits success
• working class pupils are often forced to choose between maintaining their working class identities or abandoning them to conform to the middle class habitus of education

Question 22

What is the relationship between internal and external factors?

Answer 22

• internal and external factors are interrelated
• working class habitus Vs schools middle-class habitus
  -working class restricted speech code Vs self fulfilling prophecy
• beliefs about working class home backgrounds Vs underachievement
• poverty Vs truancy and failure
• streaming Vs labelling