Relationships And Processes In School Flashcards
Mirza (evaluation to labelling theory)
Mirza argued that labelling did not have a negative effect on the black girls she studied. In fact, if anything it made them more determined to succeed (although this could be seen as a self-refuting prophecy ans interactionists would acknowledge this was a possible outcome from labelling). What is interesting of course, and labelling theory does not help us with this, is why some pupils would internalise a label and others seek to reject it and whether certain social groups would be more likely to react one way or another and why.
Rosenthal and Jacobson (labelling)
Rosenthal and Jacobson - Pygmalion in the classroom (1965)
The study took place in elementary school in the USA. The pupils were given an IQ test at the begging and end of the process. Teaches were given the results showing pupils who were identified as ‘spurters’. Actually, the results were completely random. Along with those pupils labelled as having great academic potential, there was a ‘control’ group of pupils who had not ben so labelled, whose progress could be compared with those who had. At the end of the process the pupils who had been (randomly) identified as ‘sputers’ had developed much more than those who had not. The experiment has been repeated many times with similar results, demonstrating a degree of reliability. From a research methods perspective, there are potential ethical issues with experimenting on children and interfering with their duration in this way. Their fundings supported the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby if teachers labelled pupils as high-flyers or unusually gifted, their attainment came to reflect that label (and theoretically, the opposite would also be true, with negative labels)
Paul Willis (pupil identities and subcultures)
Paul Willis - learning to labour (1977)
Paul Willis conduced a famous case study, where he analysed a group of working class schoolboys (the lads) with a particular focus on their attitude to study and school. Willis came to the topic from a Marxist perspective and was interested in why the children of working class parents tented to go on to do working class jobs and to consider alternative explanations for why the education system tended to reproduce class inequalities from those offered by fellow Marxists such as Bowles and Gintis. Willis ‘lads’ subverted the values of the school: for them academic success was frowned upon while ‘mucking about’ was rewarded. They identified themselves in opposition to the ear’oles (those who conformed to the school’s expectations who might be considered a pro-school subculture). ‘The lads’ did not see school as really being for them, it was for the middle class kids. They just had to get through it as best they could until they could leave and get a job. They got through it by ‘having a laff’, truancy, pushing all boundaries and generally being the opposite of the school’s image of an ideal pupil
Evaluation
~ For Willis, studying subcultures was not just about the processes and interactions at school but how these intersect with lie outside school and the structures of society. For Willis, the important point was that these were working class boys who would not get good qualifications and would therefore go on to do jobs not dissimilar to those their fathers did. It was all about how the education system reproduced itself. Most interactionist sociologists would think that the subculture formation and the relationship between the pupils and the teachers was an interesting enough phenomenon in its own right, without applying it to the structural divisions in society
Mac an Ghaill (subcultures)
Mac an Ghaill (1994) - the pro-school subculture
Pro-school subcultures are those which accept the valus and ethos of the school and willingly conform to its rules. They tend to be those students in higher sets who aspire tough academic achievement and are prepared to work hard, and work with the teachers’ to achieve these goals. Pro-school subcultures are typically comprised of children from middle class backgrounds, although not in all cases. Mac an Ghaill (1994) found examples of two different types of pro-school subculture in his participant observation study: the academic achievers who were manly middle class and pursing success through traditional A-level subjects, and the new enterprisers who were mainly from working class backgrounds and pursuing success through vocational subjects such as Business Studies.
The academic achievers
These had been put in top sets y teachers and were well regarded by them as they were positive about school, the subjects they were studying. There were mostly from skilled manual working class backgrounds and sought to achieve academic success by focusing on traditional academic subjects such as English, ash’s and the sciences. They were positive about their perspectives of being upwardly socially mobile
The new enterprisers
These were typically form working class backgrounds are rejected the traditional academic curriculum, which they saw as a waste of time, but were motivated to study subjects such as business ad opting and were able to achieve upward mobility by exploiting school industry links to their advantage
Bauman and Maffesoli (evaluation of pupil subcultures)
Post modernists, like Bauman and Maffesoli, would tend to see subcultures today more in terms of cultural identity rather than the product of labels or has having clear links to differential achievement or attitudes to school. Subcultures in school are more likely to be defined by music and fashion preferences than by social class or pro or anti school
Ball (1981)
Streaming
Ball (1981) found that grouping by ability leads to greater social class inequalities. His study of Beachside Comprehensive found that students were placed in bands on the basis of information supplied by their primary schools. The first band contained the most able students and the third the least able. Non academic factors had influenced where children were placed. He fond that working class students were disproportionately placed in bottom streams and that they experienced this as demeaning. They had low self esteem, were apathetic about education, and were often disruptive in and out of class
Keddie (1971)
Streaming
Keddie (1971) examined the effects of streaming in a London comprehensive. She was interested in the ways streaming affected how teachers transmitted subject knowledge to students. She found that highly valued abstract knowledge was conveyed to those in the top stream because teachers regarded then as ‘bright’ enough to handle it. The dame knowledge was denied to those in the bottom stream because less was exited of students on terms of ability. Keddie observed that the very real commonsensical street knowledge and experience of students in the bottom stream was often dismissed as ‘irrelevant’ by teachers
Ray Rist (1970)
Streaming
Ridt studied a US primary school class. He found that the teache used information gleaned from from the children’s home background to segregate than by placing them on particular tables
~ tigers were neat and tidy middle class kids, regarded as ‘fast students’ by the teacher who seated the closest to her desk. They wear frequently praised for their efforts
~ cardinals were mainly working class children of middling ability
~ clowns were working class children whom the teacher defined as those who would not and could not learn. They were placed n a table furthest from the teacher and were expected to be ‘troublesome’
These labels became fixed as the children moved into their second year of schooling
Gilborn and Youdell
Gilborn and Odell argue that schools perform a triage (like nurses at A and E) categorising pupils into those who will achieve anyway (and therefore don’t require too much input), hopeless cases (who would be a waste of effort) and borderline cases who require attention and input to get their 5 Cs at GSCE. They linked this with the pressure on schools to maintain their postion on league ables and the published A*-C rate. Therefore, this old be seen as a connection between education policy (e.g. marketisation policies like league tables) and processes within schools,such as labelling. It is a very direct way in which labelling might impact pupils experience of education and outcomes from education
— Safe (non urgent cases) Pupils (patients) — triage — Under achievers (suitable cases for) (treatment)
— Without hope (hopeless cases)
