Internal Factors of Social Class and Educational Achievement: Teacher and Pupil Attitudes Flashcards
Define the ‘labeling theory’.
When someone is given a specific label that highlights them either following or deviating from the social norms.
Define ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.
A prediction that directly causes itself to become true.
What did Becker (1971) find in regards to teachers giving pupils labels?
He found that the most common image of the ‘ideal type’ of student was someone who was intelligent and well behaved. And so pupils who went against their ideal type were given negative labels.
What did Becker (1971) find in regards to the self-fulfilling prophecy?
Teachers giving pupils labels such as high and low achievers through sets causes them to treat them this way causing their behaviour to eventually conform to these labels due to internalising them.
What did Rist (1970) find in regards to labeling and positioning in class?
Those who were labelled as more intelligent would be put in groups and sat closer to the teacher in a room and so more attention would be given to them, increasing their achievement.
What did Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) find in regards to labeling and the self-fulfilling prophecy?
They found that when they told teachers that a randomly selected group of children were labelled ‘spurters’ the teachers then developed higher expectations of them. After revisiting the school they found that those randomly selected students had significantly increased their ability.
Define ‘master status’.
When someone is labelled by the most obvious characteristic about them, controlling how we are identified in public.
Give and example of master status.
Being a woman.
How are these processes related to social class?
Having a master status of working class would generate a negative label from a middle class teacher as they would not fit the ‘ideal type’ of pupil due to not having as many resources to motivate themselves to achieve higher education.
Define ‘setting’.
When children are put into sets on the basis of their ability.
What did Stephen Ball (1981) find in regards to setting?
Middle class students dominated the top sets whilst working class students were seen as poor learners and so were put in lower sets.
Define ‘warmed up’ and ‘cooled down’.
Warmed up = having high aspirations
Cooled down = having lower aspirations
What did Ball (1981) claim about top band pupils compared to middle band pupils?
What students in the top band were much more ‘warmed up’ than students in lower bands who were more ‘cooled down’.
In what way does education today provide higher status and lower status knowledge in certain subjects?
Using higher tier and foundation papers with multiple sets.
How might being put in lower sets increase academic success?
Students may feel bad about being in a lower set and so will be motivated to work harder to get higher.
How are these processes related to social class?
Those of lower classes have lower aspirations and so are ‘cooled down’ because they want to get a job as soon as possible and so don’t focus on higher education.
Define ‘subculture’.
A cultural group within a larger cultural group having norms and values at variance with those of the larger cultural group.
What did Hargreaves (1967) find in regards to the effects of labeling and setting?
Students labelled as ‘troublemakers’ were usually placed in lower sets, regardless of their ability. He found that they sought out each others company and often broke the school rules - hence a self-fulfilling prophecy occurred.
What did Lacey (1970) find in regards to the social class of boys in lower sets.
That they were from working class backgrounds and suffered from low self-esteem and began to reject the values of the school creating further problems for themselves.
What did Paul Willis (1977) find in regards to the underachievement of working class boys.
Working class boys rejected school and created anti-school subcultures where they would refuse to learn and behave, leading to the decrease in their educational achievement.
Give 2 weaknesses of the labeling theory.
1) Hard to establish cause and effect between a teacher’s label and the student educational achievement
2) Not reliable as you can’t predict how a pupil will respond to a label
