Internal factors: Social class and education

Question 1

What do studies show about labelling?

Answer 1

Show that teachers attach labels based more on class rather on actual ability and attach negative labels to working class and positive to middle class

Question 2

What study did Becker conduct?

Answer 2

Interviewed 60 high school teachers he found that they judged pupils according to how closely they fit the image of an ‘ideal pupil’
> Teachers often saw middle class students as the closest to ideal and working class children as furthest way

Question 3

What study did Rist conduct?

Answer 3

• Observation on pre set groups in schools
• Study on primary school teachers and found teachers used students backgrounds to place in separate groups

Question 4

What does Rist’s study show?

Answer 4

• Shows how labelling can put working class students at a disadvantage as labels lower their self esteem and reduce the help received by teachers

Question 5

What was the study Rosenthal and Jacobsen conducted?

Answer 5

Pygmalion in the classroom
- Field experiment
- Told a school they had a new test (standard IQ test) designed to identify spurters
- Selected 20% of students at random and told teachers these were the future spurters
- When they returned to the school a year later, 47% of the spurters show significant progress

Question 6

What’s a critique of negative labelling?

Answer 6

can sometimes have the opposite effect
- Margaret Fuller’s research on black girls in London comprehensive school found that they were labelled as low achievers
- response: was to study hard to prove their teachers and the school wrong

Question 7

What is streaming?

Answer 7

Involves separating children into different ability groups called streams
- Each group is taught separating based on their ability

Question 8

How does streaming affect social class and education?

Answer 8

Likely to have an effect on working class students achievement as teachers see them as less able and poorly behaved = placed in lower stream

Question 9

What are pupil subcultures?

Answer 9

Refer to a group of pupils who share similar goals and behavior patterns (often emerge as a response to labels and streams)

Question 10

What pupil subcultures are there?

Answer 10

Pro school subculture: tend to have a positive attitude to school and respect school values

Anti school subculture: tend to be those placed in low streams and blame school for their low self esteem

Question 11

How is marketisation a factor?

Answer 11

Funding and publishing league tables put schools under pressure to compete
- Popular outstanding schools can select which students they enroll

Question 12

How is marketisation relevant to social class?

Answer 12

Popular schools often choose middle class students for stronger exam results
- Schools also tend to use covert selection policies such as selection by mortgage (high mortgage = selection, link to catchment areas)
and pushing working class children out of schools due to high resource costs

Question 13

Who conducted marketing research?

Answer 13

Gillborn and Youdell

Question 14

What did G&Y argue?

Answer 14

Publishing league tables leads to A-C economy
(system which schools ration their time and effort on pupils seen as having potential to get A-C’s at GCSE = boosted league table position)

Question 15

What are the 3 types of students identified by G&Y

Answer 15

1) students that are going to fail regardless
2) students that need work but have potential
3) students that are going to excel and need less attention

Question 16

What does marketisation explain?

Answer 16

Popular schools under pressure = selective, choose more able middle class pupils over working class = help the school achieve higher rankings on the league tables with results
- Unpopular schools have no choice but to take underachieving badly behaved students who have been rejected from popular schools

Question 17

What evidence is there about marketisation?

Answer 17

Evidence that it produced a polarized education system with popular well funded schools having only middle class and deprived failing schools with only working class (extreme)

Question 18

How is the evidence about marketisation relevant to HE?

Answer 18

• Top highly elective sixth forms attract middle class students and provide academic courses leading to uni and professional careers

Question 19

What were the 2 groups in Rist’s study?

Answer 19

• Those seen as fast learners were labelled as “tigers” and tended to be middle class
• Those seen as less able were placed on tables towards the back and labelled “clowns” and received less teacher attention (tended to be working class)

Question 20

How were the 2 groups in Rists study taught?

Answer 20

• tigers = language taught was more abstract and theoretical
• clowns (working class mainly) = use low status language (descriptive and common sense)
• Reduces lower class students access to elaborated core = putting them at a disadvantage

Question 21

What does R&J’s study suggest?

Answer 21

• Suggests that when a teacher believes a child is able they show motivation to help them achieve and demonstrates the impact of self fulfilling prophecy

Question 22

How did the streams affect the 2 classes?

Answer 22

• Within lower streams, achieving high grades is difficult due to no access to higher exam papers
• Middle class placed in high sets = greater self esteem and motivation to succeed

Question 23

How were students labelled according to G&Y?

Answer 23

• Labelled by teachers through ability, class and ethnicity and working class tend to be labelled as unable (hopeless cases) = self fulfilling prophecy and failure