Relationships and processes in schools Flashcards
Cotton, Winter and Bailey
Cotton, Winter and Bailey (2013) argue that the hidden curriculum in contemporary education places the highest value on efficiency and value for money rather than the promotion of greater equality and opportunity. Educational institutions may make only token attempts to promote equality, while the endlessly repeated messages and continual emphasis on the importance of hard work, discipline and being successful reveal the real underlying messages of education. Many of these messages emphasise inequality and hierarchy.
Giroux
Henry Giroux (1984) argues that schools are sites of ideological struggle. That is, they are places where different political and moral views may co-exist and be in competition. Thus, whatever the overall ethos of the school, individual teachers may have different views and give informal messages about what is important in education. For example, some teachers may value punctuality and conformity less than others, some may place more emphasis on equal opportunities than competition and some may even criticise or flout school rules.
Woods
Some researchers, such as Peter Woods, believe there can be a wide variety of ways of adapting to school, leading to the formation of varied subcultures.
> Ingratiation - Pupils who try hard to win the favour of teachers and have very favourable attitudes to the school.
> Compliance - Pupils who accept 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.
> Opportunism - 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.
> Ritualism - Pupils who go through the motions of attending school but without great enthusiasm and without much concern for academic success or gaining the approval of teachers.
> Retreatism - This is a deviant adaptation in which pupils reject the values of school and ‘mess around’ at school but without wanting to directly challenge the authority of teachers.
> Rebellion - The goals of the school are rejected and pupils devote their efforts to achieving different goals (for example, escaping school, or attracting boyfriends / girlfriends).
Hargreaves
According to Hargreaves (1967), anti-school working-class subcultures are predominantly found in the bottom streams of secondary schools. In fact, he argued, they are caused by the labelling of some pupils as ‘low-stream failures’. Unable to achieve status in terms of the mainstream values of the school, these pupils substitute their own set of delinquent values, by which they can achieve success in the eyes of their peers. They do this by, for example, not respecting teachers, messing about, arriving late, having fights, building up a reputation with the opposite sex and so on,
Hollingworth and Williams
Research by Hollingworth and Williams (2009) suggests that working-class peer groups with anti-school attitudes still exist, though they are now seen as ‘chavs’ rather than ‘lads’. The research also suggests that there is a greater variety of middle-class subcultures within schools, based upon different types of consumption and leisure. Middle-class groups included ‘skaters’, ‘hippies’, ‘emos’ and ‘goths’.
Mac an Ghaill - school subcultures
Mac an Ghaill (1994) illustrated the complexity of subcultural responses by examining the relationship between schooling, work, masculinity and sexuality. He identified the following range of school subcultures:
> The ‘macho lads’ - This group was hostile to school authority and learning, not unlike the ‘lads’ in Willis’ study. Willis had argued that work - especially physical work - was essential to the development of a sense of identity. By the mid-1980s, much of this kind of work was gone. Instead, a spell in youth training, followed very often by unemployment, became the norm for many working-class boys.
> The academic achievers - This group, who were from mostly skilled manual working-class 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’.
> The ‘new enterprisers’ - 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 vocationalism 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.
> ‘Real Englishmen’ - These were a small group of middle-class pupils, usually from a liberal professional background. They rejected what teachers had to offer, seeing their own culture and knowledge as superior. They also saw the motivations of the ‘achievers’ and ‘enterprisers’ as shallow. While their own values did not 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).
> Gay students - Finally, 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.
Mac an Ghaill - female students
Mac an Ghaill refers to the remasculinisation 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, for example. In Mac an Ghaill’s study, although girls disliked the masculinity of the ‘macho males’, most sought boyfriends. Lower-class girls, in particular, even saw work as a potential marriage market. More upwardly mobile girls saw careers more in terms of independence and achievement.
Griffin
Griffin (1985) studied young White working-class women during their first two years in employment. Rather than forming a large anti-authority grouping, they created small friendship groups. Their deviance was defined by their sexual behaviour rather than ‘trouble-making’.
Mirza
Heidi Mirza (1992) in a study of 62 Black women aged 15-19 in two secondary schools found that they had very positive attitudes towards achieving success although many thought that some teachers were racist. They sometimes therefore formed subcultures based on their ethnicity which valued education but had less respect for schools as an institution.
Archer
Louise Archer (2003) found that Muslim boys in four schools in North West England sometimes drew upon African American ‘gangsta’ culture, which valued talking tough and having a macho identity. However, they were also affected by ideas on masculinity which emphasised the importance of the breadwinner role within families. Therefore, even though they sometimes felt that they were victimised and even subject to racism by some teachers, they were generally still keen to achieve academic success.
Gillborn and Youdell
Gillborn and Youdell (1999) suggest that teachers systematically discriminate against working-class pupils by failing to recognise their intelligence because they do not exhibit it in the right way. Instead, they use their blinkered judgements to allocate working-class pupils to lower sets and foundation-tier examinations. Such pupils may respond with resentment, perceiving their treatment to be unfair. This may cause hostility, discipline problems and reduced motivation, impacting negatively on achievement and their relationship with their teachers.
Sorhagen
Nicole Sorhagen’s (2013) review found that innacurate teacher expectations (where they thought pupils were more, or less, able than they were) did lead to long-term effects and a self-fulfilling prophecy for many children. The effects were greater for children from low-income families than those from high-income families, and greater with respect to maths than reading.
Young
Young conducted a survey of 22 Scottish schools. Pupils were asked about a range of youth styles, such as whether they read books, though schools were a waste of time, liked hip hop music, skipped school, hung around on streets or drank Buckfast (a fortified wine). They were also asked about family life, the social class of their parents or guardians, and where they lived. Young found that those with ‘Ned’ characteristics were more likely to be boys and to come from deprived areas. However, this was not always the case: a significant number were girls and were from more affluent backgrounds. Some pupils seemed to be choosing the ‘Ned’ identity even though they did not come from the typical background because being a ‘Ned’ was thought by some respondents to earn you ‘respect’ from your peer group and was considered, at least to some extent, to be ‘cool’. Therefore Young concluded that while structural factors were important, some pupils actively chose a ‘Ned’ identity. This affected the peer groups they associated with and their relationships inside and outside education.
