social class and achievement Flashcards
patterns and trends
m/c perform better
80% of university places
gap starts as early as three years old
Jerrim - most talented children left behind if from w/c
high achieving boys from most advantaged family background 2.5 years head their counterparts from less advantageous household by age 15
how to measure social class
parents occupation
FSM - income of less than 17k - poorest 1/6th
m/c - parents in non-manual/professional occupations
external factors summary
material deprivation - lack of access that money can buy eg heating, study guides
material capital - having adequate funds for hidden costs of education eg stationary, expensive uniform
cultural deprivation - lacking norms and values
cultural capital - norms and values passed on
material deprivation - home and school
douglas - home and school
- poor housing conditions eg overcrowding
- poor diet and ill health eg tiredness, absences
- low income eg lack of books, computer, toys
part-time jobs eg conflict with study and work
material deprivation - cycle of deprivation
Gibson and Asthana
higher levels of sickness so falling behind
low income
student loans and tuition fees - anxiety and deterrence
schools may suffer - sink schools - 90% of failing schools located in deprived areas
part-time jobs
material deprivation - supporting studies
flaherty - fear of stigmatisation - 20% entitled to FSM - didnt take them as they didnt want to be stigmatised
sutton trust - private school 22 times more likely to get into high ranked uni, 55 oxbridge
evaluation of material deprivation
too deterministic - only focusing on class - poor people can succeed
feminism - girls suffer disproportionate amounts - not just due to class
cultural, religious or political values may create and sustain motivation - poor british chinese students doing just as well as rich british chinese students
material capital
middle class materially advantages
eg extra curricular, tutors, private schools
how important is material deprivation in affecting educational achievement
1 in 3 children grow up poor
£5 a day - child benefits
Poorest 1/5th - only 2% of city’s income
Circumstances eg abuse/divorce can cause poverty
Debt - anxiety, stress
Basic needs eg heating
cultural deprivation - main factors
intellectual development
attitudes and values
linguistic deprivation
intellectual development
douglas - w/c less likely to support children at home eg reading
bernstein and young - m/c mothers more likely to choose toys that encourage thinking
Melanie Philips - the neets
- new right journalistic, w/c lack intellectual development due to family disorder
- broken families, socialisation disrupted
intellectual development criticisms
Maternal deprivation more important
Victim blaming
Generalisation
Deterministic
Classist
Scapegoating
Marxism
attitudes and values
douglas - degree of parental interest and encouragement in children’s education was single most important factor
- m/c more likely to show interest eg helping with homework
Values = high ambition
= take advantage of opportunities
= education background
= teaching perspective
attitudes and values - gratification
Sugarman
immediate gratification - w/c - fatalism - working class accept their economic situation rather than trying to change it
deferred gratification - m/c put off enjoyment in order for benefit in the future
linguistic deprivation
bernstein - restricted and elaborated codes
if skills not fully developed in family - disadvanatged in school
schools use elaborated code - m/c at an advantage
eg in textbooks, essays
linguistic deprivation eval
wide differences in usage of language - difficult to generalise
Labov - the language used by w/c children is simply different not inferior - equally capable of dealing with abstract and complex ideas
troyna and williams - problem is not language but school’s attitude towards it - speech hierarchy
cultural deprivation strengths
Goodman and Grieg for Joseph Rowntree foundation
- number of ways this impacts w/c students
reading parents, attitudes, value of education, negative behaviour eg truancy
cultural values were primary cause of class inequality but material deprivation plays role in shaping achievement
- influential for government policies - compensatory education eg sure start and ema
cultural deprivation eval
keddie - victim-blaming - w/c culturally different not culturally deprived
education dominated by m/c values - marxism
blackstone and mortimore
- harder to be involved due to long working hours and m/c atmosphere
marxists - victim-blaming - lets social inequality and education system off the hook - real cause is material deprivation
cultural capital
bourdieu - marxism
- both are interrelated - cultural and material
more material deprivation the more cultural deprivation
catchment areas - selection by mortgage
symbolic violence
middle class have a particular habitus - certain culture and tastes eg instruments, sport
cultural capital - supporting studies
stephen ball - middle class are skilled choosers, working class are disconnected choosers
gewirtz - difference in parental choice of secondary schools
- privileged-skilled choosers - m/c with economic and cultural capital
- disconnected local choosers - w/c - deprivation
- semi-skilled choosers - w/c but ambitious - frustrated at education market and choice
cultural capital strengths
recognises w/c children culturally different rather than deficient
appreciates that education system is not response to range of cultural backgrounds
marxists - support theory as evidence that middle class are better off in education due to cultural and material factors - m/c transmitting dominant ideology
cultural capital limitations
difficult to operationalise the concept - how can instruments cause high gcse grades
determinist - w/c can break away and have high level of cultural capital
interrelationship of external factors
bourdieu
the more material deprivation a family suffers from, the more likely they are to be culturally deprived
the more economic capital, the more likely it is to have cultural capital
interrelationship of external and internal factors
evidence that external factors are important in class and achievement - before student start school
interactionists - internal factors more important - increasing gap in achievement as children progress through the education system
most likely two work together
interrelationship of class, gender and ethnicity
external factors linked to class - impact on education outcome
ethnicity and gender also influence outcomes - not external theories of class alone
internal factors summary
type of school & school ethos
school subcultures
teacher labelling
streaming, banding and setting
marketisation
school ethos
wealthy background - access to elite unis and university guidance councillors - half of cohort from westminster school go to oxbridge
best state and grammar schools - socialised into university ethos
other state schools - uni is a choice
supporting evidence for school ethos
Exclusions normalised
Isolations
Uniform policy
Lower expectations
evaluating school ethos
too deterministic - most students at so-called deprived schools may work harder to beat the odds
governments have implemented many education policies to compensate for schools lacking the resources necessary to help materially deprived but talented students and compensatory policies
subcultures
lacey - pro and anti school subcultures
- streaming - polarisation of high performance and poor performance - connected to class
- self-fulfilling prophecy
hargreaves - triple failures - 11+, high streams and failed altogethor
wood - eight modes of adaptation to school eg ingratiation (teacher’s pet), retreatism (daydreaming)
paul willis
learning to labour - 12 working class lads in his study formed an anti-school subculture to resist the school values that they saw as being too middle class
limitation to subcultures
mac an ghail
- distinct class subcultures are disappearing
studied school in london - observation and unstructured interviews
different subcultures
- w/c anti-school subculture
- crisis of masculinity - not same level of opportunity in manual career as they used to
- young entrepreneurs - saw school positively
labelling
becker
m/c teachers have ideal pupil - positive label
w/c students achieve negative label
labels from manners, speech and presentation
study based on interview with 60 american high school teachers
ideal - white, m/c and female
supporting evidence for labelling
dunne and gazeley
interviews with teachers from 9 state schools
teachers normalised w/c underachievement - felt they could do little about it - believe they could m/c underachievement
external factors very important
how does labelling impact students
rist - american kindergarten - placed children in groups depending background and appearance
- w/c more likely to place in lower-level group
becker - self-fulfilling prophecy
pygmalion
rosenthal and jacobson
- test all students - 20% chosen by random and expected to be academic bloomers - test did not influence who was chosen
self-fulfilling prophecy - increases in IQ of academic bloomers - better performances by people when greater expectations
pygmalion study eval
Valid - interpretivist - natural setting
Covert investigation - no chance of hawthorne effect
High external validity - ecological validity
Only used one school, cannot be generalised to other schools
Dated - long time ago
Deterministic, doesn’t take other factors into account, doesn’t explain why
Not very - IQ not representative for everyone and how they learn
Hasn’t been repeated
Deception, disadvantaging children, long term impact
labelling eval
fail to explain the expectations of teachers - why do teachers label w/c students
marxists - expectations stem from fact teachers work in a system that reproduces class inequality
deterministic - assume too readily that self-fulfilling prophecy occurs after negative labels
streaming, banding
gillborn and youdell
w/c and black pupils - lower sets
educational triage - students put into 1 of 3 categories - likely to achieve, average and no-hopers
douglas - placed in lower stream at 8 had lower Iq by 11
placed in higher at 8 improved iq by 11
streaming strength
functionalism - standardised - allows for meritocracy and role allocation
woods - different types of students responding to labels - shows not passive - can rise in streaming
streaming limitations
hargreaves - triad
gillborn and youdell
marxism
marketisation
gillborn and youdell - a-c economy - educational triage
students organised into 3 areas
bartlett - pressures between good/bad schools - worse schools get their funding cut and less able to screen out difficult pupils
cream-skimming
overall strength internal factors
interactionist-based explanations offer fresh counter-balance to structural explanations - provide useful insight into the social construction of educational success and failure - show how interactions within schools actively create class inequalities - school not neutral institutions
explanations have highlighted important implications for way teachers should be trained
empirical studies of high validity according to those who follow the interpretivist approach
overall limitations of internal factors
lack quantitative data - much of research is highly subjective from positivist pov
labelling - deterministic - however students shown to reject
marxists - ignores wider structural power within these interactions - why teachers label on class basis
interrelation of external and internal factors
focusing on internal factors might blame the education system unfairly
external factors - class divide starts before school
however - increasing gap in achievement in school
interrelation of class, gender and ethnicity for internal
not all ethnic groups perform same within each social class - girls outperform boys in all ethnic groups and social classes
however
Gillborn and Mirza
- Youth Cohort Studies - class has twice the educational impact compared to gender and five times the impact compared to ethnicity
