MT1 - Class and achievement Flashcards
What is material deprivation?
Living in poverty and lacking material necessities
Howard
Lower intake of vitamins and minerals which affects their energy levels and in turn performance at school
Tanner
Cant afford equipment/books. Bull calls this ‘cost of free schooling’ as hand me downs can lead to bullying and isolation
Bernstein
Restricted and elaborated code
Troyna and Williams
Criticise against this speech hierarchy proposed by Bernstein and argue that the problem is not the language itself but the schools attitude towards it.
Sugarman
Subcultural values such as fatalism, immediate gratification, present time orientation
Keddie
Cultural deprivation is a myth and w/c values are culturally different not inferior
Douglas
w/c lack interest, seen through less contact with teachers and visits to school and this lowers aspirations
Blackstone and Mortimore
parents cant attend due to shift patterns and some are put off because schools promote m/c values
Cultural Capital
refers to values, attitudes, knowledge, experiences
Economic Capital
Leech and Campos: m/c able to buy houses near good schools which increases chance of admission. ‘Selection by mortgage’ as this increases cost of houses near good schools
Educational Capital
refers to educational qualifications held by parents so they can help their children with school work.
Labelling
process of attaching meanings (judgements) to individuals or groups based on stereotypes.
Dunne and Gazeley
Teachers normalise the underachievement of w/c students which leads to different treatment as underachieving m/c students are given extra help whereas w/c students are entered into foundation tier exams
Becker
interviewed teachers and found that teachers have an image of an ‘ideal pupil’ and judge students based on how closely they fit this ideal. M/c students are closest to this ideal pupil and w/c students are seen as badly behaved.
Hempel-Jorgenson
Criticism of Becker’s ‘ideal pupil’ - teachers have different notions of an ‘ideal pupil’ and this is not always linked to class background as in primarily working class school, teachers saw the ideal pupil as quiet and obedient
Rosenthal and jacobson
Carried out a covert study of labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy in which they told teachers they would identify students with the most potential to succeed however they just chose 20% students at random and labelled them as ‘spurters’. After returning a year later they found that the students they had chosen had made significant progress.
C: deterministic as it assumes that if a child is labelled, the self-fulfilling prophecy is unavoidable. However, it is possible for pupils to not be affected by labels.
Setting/streaming
Setting: placing students into classes by ability in relation to each subject
Streaming: placing students into classes by ability and then students are taught in that same class for every subject.
Pupil subculture
Group of pupils who share similar values and behaviour patterns which are distinct to the mainstream culture, often emerged as a response to being labelled or setting and streaming
Lacey
developed two key concepts to explain why pupil subculture is formed - differentiation (when teachers categorise pupils based on what they perceive the students ability/behaviour is e.g. streaming) and polarisation (how pupils respond to streaming by moving to one of two extremes forming either a pro/anti-school subculture)
Woods
Woods identified that pupils can respond to labelling in streaming in 4 different ways not just two (anti/pro school) - criticises Lacey
Ingratiation – being the teacher’s pet.
Ritualism – going through the motions of attending lessons, doing the work, staying out of trouble.
Retreatism – daydreaming and messing around.
Rebellion – rejection of school’s values.
Furlong
agrees with Woods, however states that students are not committed to one response and could rebel in one class yet be a teacher’s pet in the next depending on how much they enjoy the subject they are learning.
Ball
Ball: studied a school that abolished streaming and now had mixed ability classes and found that it decreased polarisation/anti-school subcultures among students however w/c students still underachieved because of the continuation of teacher labelling and the self fulfilling prophecy.
Teachers continued to differentiate and label students so this shows even without the influence of setting/streaming and the class differences in achievement continue.
Marketisation of education
refers to running schools like businesses on the principles of free market economy - introduced to raise standards by eliminating all failing schools
Gilborn and Youdell
A-C economy (a system through which schools allocate time, resources and effort towards pupils who have the potential to get 5+ A*-C grades) - widens the gap in achievement between w/c and m/c so criticism of marketisation
Teachers carry out an educational triage in which they sort students into 3 categories and decide: A*-C students (don’t need help), students that will fail/ beyond saving (nothing they can do to help)and borderline C/D students (receive the most help because it would make the most impact on the schools league table position)
Bartlett
marketisation allows popular high-achieving schools to cream-skim (selecting high ability students from m/c backgrounds) and slit-shift (reject applications from (w/c) students with learning difficulties or behavioural problems) which allows them to make sure they pick students that will do well
Gewirtz
Attracting the ‘right sort of parents’ - schools attract m/c parents through the home school contracts which are particularly ‘wordy’ and demanding so w/c parents are likely to be put off and not apply to the school.
Symbolic capital/violence
symbolic capital: (staus) from the school as having worth
symbolic violence: being seen as tasteless/worthless and inferior which leads to educational failure and reproduction of class inequality.
‘Nike’ identities
W/c students believe society and school look down upon them after being a victim to symbolic violence so they look for alternative ways to create self-worth/ status which is done through creating class identities by investing in styles through branded clothing.
Girls develop a hyper-heterosexual feminine style.
which led w/c students into conflict as they were more likely to be labelled as rebels as this style in breach of the school’s uniform code.
Evans
studied a group of 21 high achieving working class girls from a south London high school who were studying for their A Levels.
The girls were reluctant to apply to Oxbridge and the few who did apply felt a sense of not fitting in because their working class habitus made them believe top universities are not for them as they will not fit in.
