pupils class identities and the school - textbook topic 2 Flashcards
What did Archer et al focus on?
The interaction between w/c pupils identities and school - how this produces underachievement.
What is habitus?
The disposition or learned, taken-for-granted ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a social class.
How is a groups habits formed?
As a response to to its position in the class structure.
What does Bourdieu call symbolic violence?
Withholding symbolic capital - defining w/c and their tastes and lifestyles as inferior, symbolic violence reproduces the class structure and keeps the lower class ‘ in their place.’
What did Archer find w/c pupils felt they had to do to be educationally successful?
Change the way they talked and presented themselves.
How is w/c educational achievement experienced?
Through a process of ‘losing yourself.’
What did symbolic lead pupils to do?
See alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and value by constructing meaningful class indented investing in ‘styles’ through consuming branded clothing e.g. Nike.
What did wearing brands create?
A way of ‘being me’ without which the pupil would feel inauthentic.
What is an example of how pupils identities became strongly gendered?
Girls adopted a hyper-heterosexual feminine style.
What was it called when pupils didnt conform to style performances?
‘Social suicide.’
What did the right appearance earn?
Symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and safety from bullying.
What did style performance cause conflict between?
Schools dress codes - reflecting m/c habitus teachers opposed ‘street’ styles as showing bas taste/ a threat.
What happened to pupils who adopted street styles?
At risk of being labelled as rebels.
What does Archer argue m/c habitus stigmatises?
W/c pupils identities.
What did Nike styles play a part in?
W/c rejection of higher education seeing it as unrealistic and undesirable.
Why did w/c see higher education as unrealistic?
They felt like it wasn’t for them but for richer, posher and smarter people and they wouldn’t fit in - seen as unaffordable and risky investment.
Why did w/c find higher education to be undesirable?
It wouldn’t suit their preferred lifestyle/ habitus e.g. they didnt want to live on a student loan because they wouldn’t be able to afford the street styles that gave them their identity.
According to Archer et al what is w/c investment in Nike identities?
A cause of their educational marginalisation by school and expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle as a result w/c may choose self-elimination pr self-exclusion from education.
What does Archers study deal with?
Relationships between w/c identity and educational failure.
What did Ingram’s study of 2 groups of w/c boys from the same highly deprived neighbourhood in Belfast find?
Having a w/c identity was inseparable from belonging to a w/c locality.
What does Ingram note w/c communities place emphasis on?
Conformity.
What did Evans find?
A group of w/c girls studying for a-levels were reluctant to apply to elite universities and that the few who did felt a sense of hidden barriers and not fitting in.
According to Bordieu how do many w/c people think of places like Oxbridge?
Not for them which comes from their habitus including beliefs about what opportunities exist for them and whether they would fit in - this thinking becomes part of their identity and leads them to exclude themselves form elite universities.
What might w/c pupils habitus and identities formed outside school conflict with?
The schools m/c habitus resulting in symbolic violence of pupils feeling tht education isn’t for them.
What did Dunne and Gazeley show?
What teasers believe about w/c pupils home backgrounds produces underachievement.
