Relationships and Processes in School: Pupil Subcultures

Question 1

What is the Hidden Curriculum?

Answer 1

• Messages and ideas that aren’t taught but children learn that are part of the normal routines and procedures of the organisation.
• Features of school life → norms, values, beliefs and practices.

Question 2

What is the Functionalist view of the Hidden Curriculum?

Answer 2

Functionalists value the Hidden Curriculum → helps foster cooperation, competitions and meritocracy (meritocracy - how well you work = how well the outcome).

Question 3

What are the Marxists, Feminists and Anti-Racists’ views of the Hidden Curriculum?

Answer 3

• Marxists, Feminists and Anti-Racists are critical towards the way the school curriculum legitimates ruling class, male or white dominance, and helps to maintain and reproduce dominance by these groups
• Schools don’t make enough of an effort to promote equality - assemblies, posters, but not in the way they treat students.

Question 4

How is the Hidden Curriculum transmitted? (7 ways)

Answer 4

• Hierarchy of management (respecting hierarchy).
• Insistence on punctuality (timetables - a rigid pattern of the day).
• Uniform (imposes school’s identity over the individual).
• Sets and levels - defined by age and ability.
• Elements of the formal curriculum and pastoral system.
• Organisation of the classroom.
• Expectations of teachers regarding certain groups of students.

Question 5

What is an evaluation of the Hidden Curriculum from Giroux?

Answer 5

Giroux - schools are sites of ideological struggle. Despite the overall ethos of the school, individual teachers may have different views and give different informal messages about what’s important in education.

Question 6

What are subcultures?

Answer 6

• Groups within wider social groups.
• Attitudes, lifestyles and values are shared by subculture members and are very different from those in wider society.
• For example, different tastes in music, leisure activities and clothing or different attitudes towards groups in authority.
• These groups will share lots in common with others in wider society / culture, but they are sufficiently different to be seen by themselves and others to be a separate subculture.
• Subcultures are complex and cannot necessarily be simply seen as W.C. or M.C., pro or anti school.

Question 7

What did Woods construct?

Answer 7

A wide variety of ways of adapting to school, which links to crime and deviance topic - Merton’s adaptation to strain.

Question 8

What is Ingratiation?

Answer 8

Pupils who try hard to win the favour of teachers and have very favourable attitudes to the school.

Question 9

What is Compliance?

Answer 9

Pupils who accept the school rules and discipline and see the school as a useful way to achieve qualifications but who do not have wholly positive attitudes to the school. Typical of first year pupils.

Question 10

What is Opportunism?

Answer 10

Pupils who fluctuate between seeking approval from teachers and from their peer group. This may be a temporary adaptation before a more settled attitude develops.

Question 11

What is Ritualism?

Answer 11

Pupils who go through the motions of attending school but without great enthusiasm and without much concern for academic success or gaining teachers’ approval.

Question 12

What is Retreatism?

Answer 12

This is a deviant adaptation in which pupils reject the value of the school and ‘mess around’ at school but without wanting to directly challenge the teachers’ authority.

Question 13

What is Colonisation?

Answer 13

Common in later years of schooling, this adaptation involves trying to get away with as much as possible without getting into too much trouble.

Question 14

What is Intransigence?

Answer 14

This involves the rejection of academic success as being important and a rejection of accepted standards of behaviour at the school.

Question 15

What is Rebellion?

Answer 15

The schools’ goals are rejected and the pupils devote their efforts to achieving different goals (such as escaping schools, or attracting boyfriends/girlfriends.

Question 16

What do members gain through subcultures?

Answer 16

Members gain status, mutual support and a sense of belonging.

Question 17

What does Hargreaves state about anti-school W.C. subcultures in secondary schools?

Answer 17

• Anti-school W.C. subcultures are predominantly found in the bottom streams of secondary schools.
• Caused by the labelling of some pupils ‘low stream failures’.
• They can’t gain status from the mainstream values of the school so they substitute their own set of delinquent values, where they achieve success in the eyes of their peers.

Question 18

What is an evaluation of this?

Answer 18

• Supports research evidence for ‘habitus’.
• Shows how W.C. identity can lead to educational failure.

Question 19

To add to this evaluation, what did Nicola Ingram’s (2009) study show?

Answer 19

• She focused on boys from a deprived neighbourhood who were academically able and attended a selective grammar school (which had a strong M.C. habitus).
• She found that boys experienced a conflict between the M.C. school habitus and the habitus of their W.C. background.
• The W.C. boys were forced to reject aspects of the W.C. identity.
• For example, boys wearing tracksuits on non-uniform days were ridiculed and made to feel worthless by their friends and by the grammar school. (Feeling the need to abandon their W.C. identity to fit in = to succeed).

Question 20

What did Hollingworth and Williams state about male subcultures?

Answer 20

W.C. peer groups with anti-school subcultures still exist (‘chavs’ instead of ‘lads’). Larger variety of M.C. subcultures.

Question 21

What are the 5 male subcultures Mac an Ghaill explains?

Answer 21

1. ‘Macho lads’.
2. Academic achievers.
3. New enterprisers.
4. Real englishmen.
5. Gay students.

Question 22

1. Who are ‘Macho lads’?

Answer 22

• A group hostile to school authority and learning, not unlike the ‘lads’ in Wills’ study.
  Wills argued that work, especially physical work, was essential to develop a sense of identity.
• By the mid-1980s, a lot of this kind of work was gone.
• Instead, a spell in youth training, often followed by unemployment, became the norm for many W.C. boys.

Question 23

2. Who are the academic achievers?

Answer 23

• A group who were from mostly skilled manual W.C. backgrounds.
• Adopted a more traditional upwardly mobile route via academic success.
• However, they had to develop ways of coping with the stereotyping and accusations of effeminacy from the ‘macho lads’.

Question 24

3. Who are the ‘new enterprisers’?

Answer 24

• This group was identified as a new successful pro-school subculture, who embraced the ‘new vocationalism’ of the 1980s and 1990s.
• They rejected the traditional academic curriculum, which they saw as a waste of time, but accepted the new vocational ethos, with the help and support of the new breed of teachers and their industrial contacts.
• In studying subjects such as Business Studies and Computing, they were able to achieve upward mobility and employment by exploiting school-industry links to their advantage.

Question 25

4. Who are ‘Real Englishmen’?

Answer 25

• A small group of M.C. pupils, usually from a liberal professional background.
• They rejected what teachers had to offer, seeing their own culture and knowledge as superior.
• Saw the motivations of the ‘achievers’ and the ‘enterprisers’ as shallow.
• While their own values didn’t fit with doing well at school, they did aspire to university and a professional career.
• They resolved this dilemma by achieving academic success in a way that appeared effortless (whether it was or not).

Question 26

5. Who are Gay students?

Answer 26

• Mac an Ghaill looked at the experience of a group neglected entirely by most writers - gay students.
• These students commented on the heterosexist and homophobic nature of schools, which took for granted the naturalness of heterosexual relationships and the two-parent nuclear family.

Question 27

What are female subcultures? (Mac an Ghaill)

Answer 27

• Mac an Ghaill refers to the remasculinization of the vocational curriculum.
• By this, he means the higher-status vocational subjects such as Business Studies, Technology and Computing, which have come to be dominated by males.
• Girls are more often on lower-level courses, doing stereotypical work experience in retail or community placements.
• In Mac an Ghaill’s study, although girls disliked the masculinity of the ‘macho males’, most sought boyfriends.
• W.C. girls, in particular, even saw work as a potential marriage market.
• More upwardly mobile girls saw careers more in terms of independence and achievement.

Question 28

What was Griffin’s (1985) study and what was found?

(and 3 possible routes for the girls)

Answer 28

Griffin (1985) - studied young White W.C. women during their first 2 years in employment.
- Rather than forming a large anti-authority grouping, they created small friendship groups. Their deviance was defined by sexual behaviour rather than ‘trouble-making’.
- Most importantly, there wasn’t the same continuity between the school’s culture and that of their future workplace as there had been for the lads in Willis’ study.
- Instead, there were 3 possible routes for the girls, which they could follow all at the same time:
1. The labour market → securing a job.
2. The marriage market → acquiring a permanent male partner.
3. The sexual market → having sexual relationships, while at the same time maintaining their reputation so as to not damage their prospects of finding a suitable husband.

Question 29

What were those 3 possible routes for the girls?

Answer 29

1. The labour market → securing a job.
2. The marriage market → acquiring a permanent male partner.
3. The sexual market → having sexual relationships, while at the same time maintaining their reputation so as to not damage their prospects of finding a suitable husband.

Question 30

However, many female pupils have positive attitudes towards schools and their subcultural affiliations reflect this. What is an example of this? (Heidi Mirza 1992)

Answer 30

In a study of 62 Black women ages 15-19 in 2 secondary schools found that they had positive attitudes towards achieving success although many thought that some teachers were racist.
- Therefore, they sometimes formed subcultures based on their ethnicity which valued education but had less respect for schools as an institution.

Question 31

What are ethnic subcultures?

Answer 31

• Ethnicity combines with other social categories, such as gender and social class.
• Subcultural responses → used to enable students to cope with and encounter the negative experiences they suffer.
• Some Black boys may reject school and education in favour of more street credibility and status. Some Black girls may strive to achieve in alternative ways to reject teachers’ low expectations of them.
• Evidence that teachers do respond to groups of students differently.
• Sewell - Conformists, Innovators, Retreatists.

Question 32

What is an evaluation of ethnic subcultures?

(1. Peter Wood - W.C. and M.C.
2. W.C. subcultures).

Answer 32

• 1. Too simplistic: Peter Wood (1983) disagrees (with Willis and Hargreaves) that schools essentially have either pro-school subcultures.
• He argues W.C. and M.C. pupils will differ in different school situations.
• 2. W.C. subcultures are not always deviant.
• Mac an Ghaill’s analysis of the different school subcultures shows that the ‘new enterpriser’ subculture demonstrates that not all W.C. pupils are prone to deviate into anti-school subcultures, suggesting that W.C. pupils can form pro-school subcultures and aspire to successful careers.

Question 33

Labelling and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy: What is the outcome of placing pupils in different classes and schools based on ability?

Answer 33

• Change in focus - 1970/1980s, educationalists acknowledge placing pupils in different classes or schools based on ability could cause damage.
• 1990s - less priority placed on this as the focus has been high grades and league table positions.

Question 34

What is the impact of teacher pupil relationships?

Answer 34

• Teacher interactions and perceptions have a huge impact on pupils’ educational experiences.
• The ‘ideal pupil’.

Question 35

What did Gillborn and Youdell say about the impact of teacher pupil relationships on W.C. pupils?
Also, what about ethnic minority students?

Answer 35

• Teachers discriminate against W.C. pupils.
• Different engagement and treatment towards ethnic minority students.

Question 36

What are factors of teaching groups?

Answer 36

• Mixed ability.
• Streaming.
• Setting.
• Class grouping.
• Labelling.

Lots of research on academic, social and personal outcomes of growing pupils, little has been done to look at organisation of teaching and learning from a pupil perspective.

Question 37

What was Hallem’s et al (2004) small scale study and what did it show?

Answer 37

• Shows the impact of ability grouping as pupils perceive it.
• 6 pupils, of high, moderate or low ability, mixed in gender, in each Key Stage 2 class were interviewed in each of 6 primary schools adopting different combinations of grouping practices, including streaming, setting, within-class ability and mixed-ability grouping.

Question 38

Robert Young (2012) conducted a study of ‘Neds’. What are ‘Neds’?

Answer 38

‘Ned’ = short for Non-Educated Delinquent and is used in Scotland as a word that has similar connotations to a ‘chav’.

Question 39

There were 2 categories that Robert Young found which ‘Chavs’ and ‘Neds’ fell into. What are they and what is an explanation for each of them?

Answer 39

• Structural accounts emphasise the importance of social structures, such as class structures, for explaining the existence of these groups. This suggests social changes, such as the decline in unskilled and semi-skilled work, are largely responsible for the contemporary male W.C. subcultures that reject the value of school and wider society.
• Agency-based theories emphasise the active choices made by individuals as they form social groups and develop their own subcultures and identities. This suggests identities are more creative and individual.

Question 40

What were those 2 categories?

Answer 40

• Structural accounts.
• Agency-based theories.

Question 41

What else did Young conduct?

(Hint = a survey)

Answer 41

• Young conducted a survey of 22 Scottish schools to examine which of these approaches was more plausible.
• Pupils were asked about a range of youth styles (do they read, are schools a waste of time, types of music they listen to, skipped school, etc.) and family life (social class of parents or guardians, where they lived, etc.).

Question 42

What did Young find from this? (About those with ‘Ned’ characteristics)

Answer 42

• Young found those with ‘Ned’ characteristics were most likely to be boys and come from deprived areas.
• However, not always the case → many were girls and from an affluent background.

Question 43

What is an evaluation of this?

(1. Labels used by teachers
2. Outside factors and interactionists)

Answer 43

• Too many teachers mean labels cannot be used consistently. A negative label from one teacher doesn’t mean it will be passed on to other subject teachers.
• Ignores outside factors - interactionists have been criticised for placing too much emphasis on what goes on in school and ignoring outside factors, such as home background, which might have a huge influence.