Internal Factors Affecting Class Achievement Flashcards
What is labelling within the education system?
- Teachers often attach labels regardless of the pupil’s actual ability or attitude
- Label pupils based on the basis of stereotyped assumptions about their class background
What happened in Becker’s study of labelling?
- Based on interviews with high school teachers, he found they judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the ‘ideal pupil’
- Pupils work, conduct and appearance were key factors influencing teachers judgement
- MC was the closest to the ‘ideal pupil’
What happened in Hempel-Jorgensen study in 2 primary schools?
- The WC school where staff said discipline was a major problem, the ideal pupil was defined as quiet, passive and obedient
- The MC school which had few discipline problems the ideal pupil was defined in terms of personality and academic ability
What did Dunne and Gazeley argue in labelling in secondary schools?
- Found schools produce WC underachievement because of teachers labels and assumptions
- Found the teachers ‘normalised’ underachievement of WC and underestimated their ability compared to MC - based the assumption on their home backgrounds and the support received from their parents
How did Rist’s study support Dunne and Gazeley’s idea that teachers base their assumptions on children’s home background?
- Those the teacher decided were fast learners were sat in the front and labelled the ‘tigers’ were mostly MC and received greatest encouragement
- The other 2 groups were labelled the ‘cardinals’ and ‘clowns’ were seated further away and tended to be WC
What is the self fulfilling prophecy and how does it take place within an education system?
A prediction that comes true simply by virtue of it having been made
1. The teacher labels a pupil and makes predictions about him
2. The teacher treats the pupil accordingly acting as if the prediction is true
3. The pupil internalises the teacher’s expectation which becomes part of his self concept/self-image
What was Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study on the self-fulfilling prophecy?
- They told the school they had a new test designed to identify those pupils who would ‘spurt’ but it was a standard IQ test
- The researchers picked 20% randomly and told the school falsely these children would ‘spurt’
- On return to the school a year later 47% of those identified as spurters made significant progress
What was the conclusion of Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study?
- It demonstrates that what people believe to be true will have real effects even if the belief was not true originally
How can a self-fulfilling prophecy be made in terms of streaming?
Streaming involves separating children into different ability groups
- Once streamed it is difficult to move up to a higher stream, children are more or less locked into their teachers’ low expectations
How did Douglas support the concept that streaming creates a self-fulfilling prophecy?
He found that children placed in a lower stream at age 8 suffered a decline in their IQ score by age 11
How does Gillborn and Youdell link streaming to the policy of publishing exam league?
- Publishing league tables is what they call an ‘A-to-C’ economy, this is where schools focus their time, effort and resources on those pupils they see as having the potential
- Schools need to achieve good league table position if they are to attract pupils and funding
What is an ‘educational triage’ highlighted by Gillborn and Youdell?
- Term used to describe the process whereby medical staff decide who is to be given scarce medical resources
- It is split into 1. those who will survive who can be ignored 2. those who will die anyway who also will be ignored 3. those with a chance of survival who are given treatment
What are pupil subcultures?
A group of pupils who share similar values and behaviour patterns, often emerge as a result to the way pupils have been labelled
How can we use Lacey’s concepts of differentiation and polarisation to explain how pupils subcultures develop?
- Differentiation: the process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability (e.g, streaming)
- Polarisation: the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of the two opposite ‘poles’
What is the pro-school subculture?
- Pupils placed in high streams tend to remain committed to school’s values
- Gain their status in the approved manner, through academic success
What is the anti-school subculture?
- Those placed in low streams suffer a loss of self-esteem, the school has undermined their self-worth
- This label of failure pushes them to search for alternative ways of gaining status through inverting the school’s values
How did Hargreaves label boys who negatively responded to labelling and streaming?
’ Triple failures’ - they had failed 11+ exam, placed in lower streams and had been labelled ‘worthless louts’
- A solution for this was through creating delinquent subcultures as a way to seek status
What did Ball’s study on abolishing streaming suggest?
- When schools abolishes banding, the basis for pupils to polarise to subcultures was largely removed as a result there were better exam results
- However, differentiation continued
What other pupil responses to labelling and streaming did Woods identify?
- Ingratiation - being the ‘teachers pet’
- Ritualism - going through the motions and staying out of trouble
- Retreatism - daydreaming and mucking about
- Rebellion - outright rejection to the school
What did Furlong conclude on the variety of pupil responses?
Many pupils are not committed permanently to any response, but move between different types of response
What are 2 criticisms of the labelling theory?
- Accused of being too deterministic - they assume pupils who have been labelled will fulfil the prophecy and inevitably fail
- Marxists criticise the labelling theory and blames it not on the teachers prejudices but how it stems from working in a system that reproduces class divisions
What is habitus developed by Bourdieu?
Refers to the norms, values, attitudes, and behaviours of a particular social group
Why does schools place a higher value on MC tastes, preferences and so on?
- The MC has the power to define their habitus as superior and to impose it on the education system
- This is linked to the concept of cultural capital, because the school has a MC habitus, this gives the MC an advantage
What is symbolic capital?
- Because schools have a MC habitus, pupils who have been socialised at home into MC tastes and preferences gain ‘symbolic capital’ or status and recognition
What is symbolic violence defined by Bourdieu?
- The school devalues the WC habitus by defining their tastes as inferior
- There is a clash between WC and MC habitus as a result WC may experience the world of education as alien and unnatural
How does Archer describe WC achieving educational success as a process of ‘losing yourself’?
- WC pupils felt that to be educationally successful they would have to change how they talked and presented themselves
Why was the idea of gaining ‘nike identities’ introduced?
- Symbolic violence led them to seek alternative ways of creating self worth, status and value
- Constructed meaningful class identities for themselves by investing heavily in ‘styles’
What did Archer argue regarding how MC viewed WC pupil ‘nike identities’?
- Schools MC habitus stigmatised WC pupil identities
- Led to conflict with the school’s dress code
What are the 2 ways that nike styles play in WC pupils’ rejection of higher education?
Seen as unrealistic and undesirable
How does Archer et al conclude that WC pupil investment in ‘nike identities’ is not only a cause of marginalisation?
- Also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle
- WC may choose self-elimination or self-exclusion
What do studies such as Evans, Ingram and Archer show?
- Show a consistent pattern of a MC education system that devalues the experiences and choices of WC people
- As a result WC are often forced to choose between maintaining their identities or abandoning them and conforming to MC habitus in order to succeed
What did Evans and Bourdieu study on class identity and self-exclusion show?
- WC girls were reluctant to apply to elite universities because of ‘not fitting in’
- The girls had a strong attachment to locality, this limits their success
