social class Flashcards
patterns and trends
middle class children perform better - 80% of uni plays
Jerrim - most talented children being left behaviour if from lower class
high achieving boys from most advantaged family at two and a half years ahead by age 15
how do we measure social class
parents’ occupation
free school meals
income
external factors
material deprivation - lack of access to thinks money can buy eg study guides
material capital - having adequate funds to purchase the hidden costs of education
cultural deprivation - lacking the norms and values that might give advantage in education
cultural capital - norms and values that m/c parents pass down to children
internal factors
processes which go on in-school such as ethos of school, teacher labelling and pupil subcultures
marketisation - shape school policies
Material deprivation
Douglas - home and school
poor home conditions, poor diet and ill health, low income and part-time jobs
Cycle of deprivation
Gibson and Asthana
higher levels of sickness - more absences
low income - books and toys not bought - hidden costs
student loans and tuition fees - source of anxiety
part-time jobs - takes time from studying
Sutton Trust - 2010
private school students - 7% of population - 55 times more likely to get into Oxford or Cambridge and 22 times more likely to get into high ranked uni compared to state school student on free-school meals
evaluations of material deprivation
poverty causes poor educational performance is deterministic and only focuses on class aspect - children can succeed
cultural religious or political values create and sustain motivation despite poverty eg british chinese students
some sociologists - cultural failings of w/c parents
covid material deprivation studies
LLAKES centre - 4500 children study - disadvantaged children less likely to complete over 4 hours of schoolwork during lockdown
Education policy institute 2020 - disadvantaged gap has stopped closing for first time in a decade - 560 years for gap to close
3 main cultural factors
intellectual development
attitudes and values
linguistic deprivation
intellectual development
w/c deprived of books and toys
douglas - w/c parents less likely to support children’s intellectual development at home - reading
philips - the neets - family disorder - broken families - disrupted socialisation
intellectual development criticisms
Maternal deprivation more important
Victim blaming
Generalisation
Deterministic
Classist
Scapegoating
Marxism
attitudes and values
douglas - parents’ attitudes to education - m/c students have more interest and more likely to encourage further education
immediate and deferred gratification
types of gratification
immediate gratification - seeking enjoyment of the moment and sacrificing future reward
deferred gratification - putting off enjoyment in the short term and working hard in long term for future benefits
immediate gratification - sugarman
sugarman - m/c more likely to have deferred gratification
w/c foster attitude of immediate gratification
concept of fatalism - working class class accept their economic situation
linguistic deprivation
bernstein - restricted and elaborated codes
ability to use language is key to succeed in school
elaboration code puts m/c children at an advantage in schools
criticisms of linguistic deprivation
labov - language used by w/c is imply different and not inferior - equally capable of dealing with abstract and complex ideas
troyna and williams - problem is not language but school’s attitudes - teachers have speech hierarchy
cultural deprivation evaluation
blackstone and mortimore - w/c parents interested in education - have longer work hours - put off my school’s m/c atmosphere
marxism - victim-blaming explanation - lets social inequality and education system off the hook - society as a whole is to blame not w/c
influence of cultural deprivation
influential in shaping government policy - conpensaory studies
however - state attempting to impose m/c values on w/c and many of policies have been cancelled by coalition
cultural capital
bourdieu - m/c have particular habitus - tastes, culture and values that help them in education eg extracurricular
reay - m/c involved in children’s education with cultural capital to an advantage - educational capital so could help more
gewirtz -
privileged-skilled choosers - m/c who had high levels of economic and cultural capital
disconnected local choosers - w/c restricted by economic and cultural capital
semi-skilled choosers - ambitious w/c - frustrated about not getting child into school of choice
cultural capital evaluation
+ w/c are culturally different rather than deficient
+ marxists - evidence that w/c better of in education due to cultural and material factors - transmitting dominant ideology
- lacks empirical support - different to operationalise concept
deterministic
internal explanations
school ethos
school subcultures
teacher labelling
streaming
marketisation
school ethos
top private schools - given privileged access to oxford and cambridge through university guidance councillors
best state schools - ethos that university is the norm
average state school - choice
worst schools - anti-school subculture
evaluating school ethos
- too deterministic to suggest that type of school will affect achievement
- government implemented education policies to compensate for schools lacking resources to help materially deprived but talented students
subcultures
lacey - polarisation - streaming - high performance students improve and poor deteriorate and develop anti-school subculture for status - self-fulfilling prophecy
woods - not all students respond to negative labelling - ingration (teachers pet), ritualism (staying out of trouble), retreatism (daydreaming) and rebellion
evaluating subcultures
willis - learning to labour - 12 working class lads formed anti-school subcultures to resist
mac an ghail - study - subcultures disappearing - crisis of masculinity - w/c now becoming young entrepreneurs
labelling
becker - m/c have idea of ideal pupil - w/c seen negatively - ideal pupil most likely to be white, m/c female - self-fulfilling prophecy
hempel-jorgensen - ideal pupil varies between schools - w/c primary school - quiet, passive and obedient, m/c middle class - personality based
pygmalion in the classroom
self-fulfilling prophecy
those labelled positively had more of a chance of improving
- deterministic
- iq not representative
evaluating labelling theory
fails to explain expectations of teachers - why label
marxists - expectations stem from teachers work in system that reproduces class inequality
deterministic - some students can succeed with negative label
streaming and setting
gillborn and youdell
w/c and black students seen as less likely to achieve higher grades - lower sets
creates educational triage
impact of marketisation
douglas - children placed in lower stream at 8 had a lower iq score by 11, while higher stream improved by 11
marketisation
bartlett - pressures between schools
worse schools get funding cut
cream-skimming - selecting the higher ability students to get best results and cost less to teach
silt-sifting - off-loading pupils with difficulties who are expensive to teach
