INTERNAL FACTORS AFFECTING SOCIAL CLASS ACHIEVEMENT

Question 1

Howard Becker (Labelling)

Answer 1

• Studies show how teacher often attach labels to pupil’s regardless of their ability or attitude.
• Instead they label pupils based on stereotypes and assumptions about their class background, such as how working-class pupils are often labelled as negatively, and middle-class as positively.
• A number of studies of labelling have been carries out by interactionist sociologists. Interactionists study small-scale, face-to-face interactions between individuals, such as in the classroom or playground. They are interested in how people attach labels to one another, and the effects that this has on those who are labelled.
• Becker carried out an important interactionist study of labelling. Based on interviews with 60 Chicago high school teachers, he found that 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’ judgements.
• The teachers saw children from middle-class backgrounds as the closest to the idea.
• working-class children as the furthest away because they regarded them as badly behaved.
• This leads to pupils often being placed in lower streams, which ‘locks’ them in their teachers low expectations of them.
• Children in these sets usually ‘get the message’ that their teachers have written them off as no-hopers.

Question 2

Eval (Mary Fuller)

Answer 2

• Labelling theory has been accused of deterministic.
• That is, it assumes that pupils that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy and will inevitably fail, but the girls in Fuller’s study show how individuals can reject labels and still succeed.

Question 3

Robert Rosenthal and Leonora Jacobson (The self-fulfilling prophecy)

Answer 3

• A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true simply by virtue of It having been made.
• Interactionists argue labelling can affect pupils’ achievement by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• The teacher labels a pupil, and on the basis of that label makes predictions about them. The teacher then treats the pupil accordingly, acting as if the prediction is already true. The pupil then internalises the teacher’s expectation, which becomes part of themselves self-concept or self-image, so they become what the teacher perceives them as.
• In their study of Oak community school, a California primary school, they found evidence of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
• They told the school that they had a new test specially designed to identify those pupils who would ‘spurt’ ahead. This was untrue, because the test was simply an IQ test; the teachers believed the results were true however.
• The researchers tested all the pupils, but picked 20% at random and told the school, again falsely, that the test had identified these children as ‘spurters’.
• On returning to the school a year later, they found that almost half (47%) of those identified as spurters had indeed made significant progress, and that this effect was greater on younger children. The self-fulfilling prophecy can also help produce underachievement; if teachers have low expectations of certain children and communicate these expectations in their interaction, these children may develop a negative self-concept, they see themselves as failures.

Question 4

Eval (Basil Bernstein and Douglas Young)

Answer 4

• Argued this is mainly as a result of parent use of income- middle-class mothers are more likely to buy educational toys, books and activities that encourage reasoning skills and
• stimulate intellectual development, which aid their educational development and cause these pre-conceived notions.

Question 5

David Gillborn and Deborah Youdell (Steaming and the A-C economy)

Answer 5

• They studied two London secondary schools, and found that stereotypical notions of ‘ability’ to stream pupils.
• They found that teachers are less likely to see working-class (and black) pupils as having ability. As a result, these pupils are more likely to be placed in lower streams and entered for lower-tier GCSEs.
• This denies the, the knowledge and opportunity needed to gain good grades, and widens the class gap in achievement.
• They also linked **streaming to the policy of publishing league tables; **these rank each school according to its exam performance, with, for example, in terms of the percentage of pupils gaining five or more GCSE grades A-C. Schools now need to achieve a good league table position if they are to attract pupils and funding (marketisation).
• Publishing these league tables creates an ‘A-to-C economy’ in schools.
• This is a system in which schools focus their time, effort and resources on those pupil they see as **having the potential to get five grade Cs and so boost the school’s league table position. **
• This process is called the ‘educational triage’ (sorting). They argue the A-to-C economy produces the educational triage, which categorises pupils into three types: those who will pass anyway and can be left to get on with it, those with potential who will be helped to get a C gradeor above, and hopeless cases who are doomed to fail.
• Teachers do this using a stereotypical view of working-class (and black) pupils as lacking ability, and ‘hopeless cases’, who are ‘warehoused’ in bottom sets, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy and therefore failure.

Question 6

Eval (Marxists)

Answer 6

• They argue that this isn’t a result of teachers’ individual prejudices forcing individuals into streams, but stems from the fact that teachers work in a system that reproduces class divisions.

Question 7

Lacey (Pupil subcultures) - streaming

Answer 7

• A pupil subculture is a group of pupils who share similar values and behaviour patterns. Pupil subcultures often emerge as a response to the way pupils have been labelled, and in particular as a reaction to streaming.
• Lacey identified that pupils experienced both differentiation = (the process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude or behaviour, e.g. streaming is a form of this as it categorises pupils into separate classes; those the school deems ‘more able’ are given high status by being placed in a high stream, and those the school deems as ‘less able’ are placed in lower streams and given an inferior status),
• polarisation = (the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of two opposite ‘poles’ or extremes- his study of Hightown boys’ grammar school, Lacey found that streaming polarised boys into a pro-school and anti-school subculture).
• Lacey identified two subcultures. The pro-school subculture comes from pupils being placed in high streams and how they tend to remain committed to the values of the school.
• They gain their status in the approved manner, through academic success, and their values are that of the school.
• The anti-school subculture comes from pupils being placed in low streams, who tend to suffer from a loss of self-esteem as the school had undermined their self-worth by placing them in a position of inferior status. The label of failure pushes them to search for alternative ways of gaining status, and usually this involves inverting the school’s values of hard work, obedience and punctuality.
• Joining an anti-school subculture is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of educational failure.

Question 8

Eval (Stephen Ball)

Answer 8

• Found that when the school abolished banding, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of the anti-school subculture declined.
• Neverless, although pupil polarisation all but disappeared, differentiation continued.
• Teachers continued to categorise pupils differently and were more likely to label middle-class pupils as cooperative and able.

Question 9

Louise Archer et al (Nike identities)

Answer 9

• Louise argued that the school’s middle-class habitus stigmatises working-class pupils’ identities.
• Many pupils were conscious that society and school looked down on them, this symbolic violence led them to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and value.
• The pupils’ performances of style are a struggle for recognition; while the middle-class see their ‘Nike’ identities as tasteless, to the young people they are a means of generating symbolic capital and self-worth.
• Style performances were heavily policed by peer groups and not conforming was ‘social suicide’, they right appearance earned symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying.
• However, this did lead to conflict with the schools dress code which gave it a bad rep and applied labels to those who wore it (typically working class).
• Nike styles also play a part in working-class pupils’ rejection of higher education, which they see as both unrealistic (as it was not for ‘people like us’, but for richer, posher, cleverer people, and they would not fit in; it was also seen as a risky investment and unaffordable) and undesirable (as it would not ‘suit’ their preferred lifestyle or habitus, for example, they did not want to live on a student loans because they would be unable to afford the street styles that gave them their identity).
• According to Archer, working-class pupils’ investment in ‘Nike’ identities is not only a cause of their educational marginalisation by the school; it also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle.
• As a result, working-class pupils may choose **self-elimination **or self-exclusion from education. In other words, not only do they ‘get the message’ education is not for the likes of them, but they actively choose to reject it because it does not fit in with their identity or way of life.

Question 10

Eval (Barry Sugarman)

Answer 10

• This is actually a result of the working-class internalising the beliefs and values of their subculture through socialisation, causing them to embody fatalism, collectivism, immediate gratification and present-time orientation.