Labelling - Textbook Topic 2 Flashcards
What is the definition of labelling?
Attaching a meaning or definition to someone.
What do studies show about teachers applying labels?
They do this regardless of the pupils actual ability or attitude and instead on the basis of stereotyped assumptions about class, background.
How o teachers label w/c and m/c children?
W/c = negative
M/c = positive
What are interactionists interested in?
How people attach labels and the effects this has on those who are labelled.
What did Becker find based on his interviews with 60 Chicago high school teachers?
They judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the ‘ideal pupil’.
What were key factors that influenced teachers judgments?
Pupils work, conduct and appearance.
M/c backgrounds seen as the closest to ideal and w/c background furthest away because they were regarded as badly behaved.
What did Hempel-Jorgensen find?
Notions varied widely according to the social class makeup of the school.
In the largely w/c school Aspen what did staff say was a major problem and how was the ideal pupil defined?
Major problem of discipline/
Ideal student = quiet, passive and obedient.
Children defined in terms of behaviour not ability.
What did the mainly m/c Rowan school find?
Few discipline problems.
Ideal pupil defined in terms of personality and academic ability.
What do Dunne and Glazeley argue schools persistently produce?
W/c underachievement because of the labels and assumptions of teachers.
What did Dunne and Gazeley find in their interviews with 9 English state secondary schools?
Teachers normalised underachievement of w/c and seemed unconcerned by it feeling there was little/ nothing they could do about it whereas they believed they could overcome underachievement of m/c pupils.
What was a major reason for teachers difference in Dunne and Glazeley’s interviews? and what did this lead to?
Teachers belief in the role of pupils home background.
W/c parents = uninterested in children’s education.
M/c parents = supportive.
Led to class differences in how teachers dealt with pupils.
What did Dunne and Glazeley conclude?
The way teachers explained and dealt with underachievement itself constructed with class differences in level of attainment.
What did Rists study of an American kindrgarten show?
Teachers used information about children’s home background and appearance to place the in separate groups.
Tigers = m/c, neat appearance and sat the closest to the teacher.
Cardinals and clowns = seated further away, more likely to be w/c, given lower level books and had fewer chances to show their abilities.
