SCHOOL PROCESSES - KEY PEOPLE

Question 1

Bourdieu

Answer 1

Came up with the idea of ‘cultural capital’.
This is everything that people have, like, or enjoy doing, that has some association with social class. For Bourdieu, class cannot just be reduced to wealth- there are poor upper class people, and wealthy working class people.

Question 2

Nick Gibb

Question 3

Douglas/Goodman and Gregg

Answer 3

Douglas first hypothesised this, but it has been backed up regularly, including by Goodman and Gregg. This argument suggests that middle-class parents value education more, so visit schools, understand exam processes, intend for their children to stay in education etc. This is because their cultural values include a positive attitude to education.

Question 4

Archer et al

Answer 4

Hypothesized that school and home are more similar for middle class children, whereas working class children will see more of a ‘culture clash’. MC children have the cultural capital to succeed, making them appear more intelligent to (mostly middle class) teachers. WC students lack this cultural capital, and so appear to be less intelligent.

Question 5

Robson

Answer 5

Argues that since middle-class activities are stuff like going to museums, exhibitions, the theatre and libraries etc, this will translate into educational success. Working class activities won’t.

Question 6

Hirsch

Answer 6

Argued that working class students underperform not because of material factors but because their home lives are not educational enough. He argued they lacked cultural literacy, as they did not understand key ideas, events, and phrases, that all American students should.

Question 7

Bernstein

Answer 7

A correlation between social class and the use of either elaborated or restricted code. He argues that in the working class you are likely to find the use of the restricted code, whereas in the middle class you find the use of both the restricted and elaborated codes.

Question 8

Keddie

Answer 8

Argues that this is not cultural deprivation, it’s just a different culture. Schools teach middle-class values but should adapt to teach students in a way that they understand.

Question 9

Sugarman

Answer 9

Found differences between middle-class and working-class values.
MC: future orientation (planning for the future), focussed on deferred gratification (putting off pleasures for future gains). Individual efforts are seen as key to success
WC: present-time orientation, instant gratification. Key to success is collectivism (working together, like in a trade union).

Question 10

Howard

Answer 10

Working class families tend to eat less healthily, leading to a lack of energy and nutrition in school. This will lead to underperformance.

Question 11

Flaherty

Answer 11

20% of those eligible for free school meals do not take up their entitlement

Question 12

Callender and Jackson

Answer 12

Working class students are 5 times less likely to apply to university due to fear of debt. University grants have been replaced with a larger loan for low income students since 2010.

Question 13

Waldfogel and Washbrook

Answer 13

Find a pattern between low quality housing and under-achieving in GCSE results

Question 14

Gillbourn and Youdell

Answer 14

They suggest that schools are only interested in students who are going to achieve grades between A(*) and C- so they disregard students who could be moved from lower grades to Ds and Es because they won’t really count for anything. Argue that schools are forced to prioritise different students, because they have limited resources.
This leads schools to dividing students into three groups, based on what Gillbourn and Youdell call “educational triage”.

Question 15

Ball

Question 16

Becker

Answer 16

Created the labelling theory:
Teacher- “moral entrepreneur”- creates a label, Student assumes the label to be true, Student acts as though label is true, Label becomes true- a “Self fulfilling prophecy”

Notes that this idea is based not just on intelligence and hard work but also on speech, dress, personality, relationship with other students, conformity, enthusiasm and relationships with other students.

Question 17

Harvey and Slatin

Answer 17

Showed photographs of children to 96 primary school teachers, and found that white, middle-class students were identified as more likely to succeed, whilst poorer and non-white pupils were expected to underperform.

Question 18

Rosenthal & Jacobsen

Answer 18

Rosenthal and Jacobsen gave elementary school children an IQ test and then informed their teachers which children were going to be average and which children were going to be ‘Bloomers,’ the twenty percent of students who showed “unusual potential for intellectual growth.” They found that the teachers did not expect too much from the average children and gave all their attention to the Bloomers. The teachers created a nicer environment for the Bloomers; they gave them more time and attention, called on them for answers more often, and gave them more detailed feedback when they got something wrong. results showed that Bloomers IQ scores had risen (experimental group) significantly higher than the average students (control group), even though these academic bloomers were chosen at random. The bloomers gained an average of two IQ points in verbal ability, seven points in reasoning and four points in over all IQ.

Question 19

Rist

Answer 19

found that teachers used information about their pupils’ home backgrounds (as well as judging their appearance) to place pupils in separate groups. Each group was asked to sit at different tables . The teacher labelling ‘the fast learners’ as ‘Tigers’ & seated them nearer to her & showed them more encouragement– these students tended to come from M/C backgrounds. The other 2 groups were named ‘Cardinals & ‘Clowns’. These were seated further away from the teacher, given lower level reading books & less attention – these were generally W/C pupils. This happens on the first day.

Question 20

Mirza

Answer 20

Studied a group of African Caribbean girls at schools in London; she found that teachers were widely racist in:
1. Challenging what they saw unfairly as ‘bad behaviour’
2. Racialised expectations, expecting less of the girls.
Whilst labelling theory suggests that these girls should take on this label, in reality, most of the girls were aware that they had been labelled but worked hard to reject it. Mirza argued that it wasn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy- if the girls achieved less highly it was only because they were offered less support.

Question 21

Lacey

Answer 21

Found that, after being placed into sets, students were ‘polarised’- those in high sets adopted the values of schooling, but those in low sets not only believed that they would not achieve highly, but also rejected the other values of schools, including behaving appropriately.

Question 22

Cohen

Answer 22

Claims that working class students start school with the wrong values to succeed. This leads to their inevitable failure, due to their homelife. Because of this, they suffer from status frustration- they cannot succeed, so they hate systems that prevent them from holding high status. Instead, they move towards subcultures where they may have high status, as they may be considered important to their peers.

Question 23

Mac an Ghaill

Answer 23

Found evidence of pro-school subcultures amongst two groups who would traditionally be expected to underperform. He found that white working class and Asian boys formed groups of “academic achievers”, who studied hard, and “new enterprisers” who committed to vocational education and technology, especially computing. Not only did these students subscribe to the values of schooling, they achieved better because of it. This is not because of teachers’ expectations/labelling, or home values, but because of the individual students’ values