Topic 3

Question 1

Bereiter and englemann- intellectual and linguistic skills

Answer 1

believe the language spoken by low income, black American families is inadequate for educational success.
A concern has also been that children who do not speak English at home may be held back.

Question 2

Gillborn and Mirza A03

Answer 2

reject bereiter and englemann as they found Indian pupils do very well despite often not having English as their first language.

Question 3

Moynihan (family structure and parental support)

Answer 3

Many black families are headed by a lone mother so children are deprived of adequate care and boys lack an adequate role model. Also sees cultural deprivation as a cycle

Question 4

Pryce - family structure and parental support

Answer 4

Black Caribbean culture is less cohesive and less resistant to racism, leading to low self-esteem and underachievement.
Slavery was culturally devastating to blacks as they lost their language, religion and family structure. By comparison Asian pupils do better because they haven’t been affected in the same way by Colonialism.

Question 5

Sewell- fathers, gangs and culture

Answer 5

believes it is not the absence of fathers, but a lack of fatherly nurturing or “tough love”(firm, fair, non-abusive discipline).
Instead other black, fatherless boys present boys with a media-inspired role model of anti- school black masculinity.
Many black boys are subject to anti-educational, peer group pressure. Speaking in Standard English and doing well at school was viewed as suspicious.
Black pupils do worse than Asian pupils because of cultural differences in socialisation and attitudes to education. Sewell believes black children (especially boys) need to have greater expectations put on them.

Question 6

Gillborn A03

Answer 6

argues towards Sewell as it is not peer pressure but institutional racism within the system which leads to the failure of black boys.

Question 7

Sewell (Asian families)

Answer 7

believes Asian and Chinese students benefit from supportive families, having an “Asian work ethic” and placing high emphasis on education.

Question 8

Lupton (Asian families)

Answer 8

found adult authority in Asian families is similar to the model used in schools. This meant parents were more likely to support the school’s behaviour policies

Question 9

McCulloch (white working-class families)

Answer 9

Ethnic minority pupils are more likely to aspire to go to university than white British pupils.

Question 10

Lupton (white working class families)

Answer 10

Ethnic minorities are more likely to see education as a “way up” in society.

Question 11

Evans- white working class families

Answer 11

argues white working class street culture can be brutal, as a result of this power games which are played on the street are replicated in school, bringing disruption and making it hard for pupils to succeed.

Question 12

Driver- critics of CD

Answer 12

CD ignores the positive effects ethnicity can have on achievement. Within black Caribbean families, girls are provided with positive roles models of strong independent women.

Question 13

Lawrence- Critics of CD

Answer 13

Black pupils underachieve not because of low self-esteem, but because of racism.

Question 14

Keddie- critics of CD

Answer 14

Ethnic minorities are not culturally deprived but culturally different. They under- achieve because schools are ethnocentric (favour white culture and against minorities).

Question 15

Palmer (material deprivation)

Answer 15

Almost half ethnic minority children live in low income households, against a quarter of white children.
Almost half of Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers earn under £7 an hour compared to only a quarter of whites
Ethnic minorities are x3 more likely to be homeless
Ethnic minorities are x2 as likely to be unemployed compared with whites

Question 16

Palmer (material deprivation)

Answer 16

Why?
Many live in economically depressed areas, with high unemployment and low wages
Cultural factors can prevent women from going out to work (e.g. the tradition of Niqab in Muslim households)
A lack of language skills or foreign qualifications which UK employers don’t recognise.
Asylum seekers may not be allowed to work
Racial discrimination in labour market and housing market

Question 17

Madood- intersectionality

Answer 17

found while children from low income families generally did less well, the effects of low income were mush less for other ethnic groups than whites.

Question 18

Wood et al (racism in wider society)

Answer 18

sent three closely matched job applications to 1000 job vacancies. These applicants had names associated with particular ethnic groups (1 application appeared to come from a white person, 2 from members of ethnic minority groups.) Wood et al found only 1 in 16 ethnic minority applications received an interview, compared to 1 in 9 “white” applications.

Question 19

Gillborn and mizra- labelling, identities and responses

Answer 19

Found in one educational authority black children were the highest achievers on entry to primary school, but by GCSE they had the worst results of any ethnic group

Question 20

Gillborn and Youdell- black pupils and discipline

Answer 20

teachers are quicker to discipline black pupils.
This is a result of teacher’s “racialized expectations” - they expected black pupils to present more behaviour problems and often misinterpreted their behaviour as a challenge to authority. This resulted in teacher-pupil conflict.
Gillborn and Youdell concluded the conflict was a result of racial stereotypes, rather than actual behaviour.

Question 21

Gillborn and Youdell - black pupils and streaming

Answer 21

As a result of the “A-C Economy” and “educational triage” negative stereotypes about black pupil’s ability can mean they are placed in lower sets - this can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy and under-achievement.

Question 22

Wright- Asian pupils

Answer 22

WRIGHT found teachers held ethnocentric views (they took for granted that British culture and
language were superior).
Teachers assumed Asian pupils would have a poor grasp of English and left them out of group discussions, they also felt isolated when teachers disapproved of their customs or mispronounced names.
Unlike black pupils they were not seen as a threat but a problem to ignore.

Question 23

Archer (pupil identities)

Answer 23

Ideal pupil: a white, middles class masculinised identity with a normal sexuality. Achieves in the “right” way, through ability and initiative.
Pathologised pupil: Asian “deserving poor”, feminised identity, either asexual or with an oppressed sexuality. A conformist and culture bound “over- achiever” - succeeds through hard work. Often still ‘othered’ by teachers.
Demonised pupil: A black or white working class, hypersexualised identity. They’re unintelligent, peer led, culturally deprived and anunder-achiever.

Question 24

Shain- Asian girls

Answer 24

Shain (2003) found if Asian girls challenge this they’re often dealt with more severely.

Question 25

Archer - Chinese Pupils

Answer 25

found Chinese pupils were seen to have achieved success in the wrong way - through hard work conformism, not natural ability.
A result of this is that successes of ethnic minority pupils is seen as “over-achievement”, as “proper” achievement is seen to be that natural preserve of the privileged, white, middle class ideal pupil.

Question 26

Fuller A03- pupil responses

Answer 26

studied a group of year 11 black girls, who were untypical because they were high achievers in a school where most black girls were placed in low streams.
Instead of accepting negative stereotypes they channelled their anger into achieving educational success, but they did not seek approval of the teachers who they regarded as racist and instead relied on impartiality of external exams.
Fuller’s study highlights 2 important things - Firstly, pupils may still succeed when they don’t conform. Secondly, negative labelling doesn’t always lead to failure. The girls rejected the labels, therefore there was no self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 27

Mac an Ghaill - Pupil responses

Answer 27

found similar results. Their study looked at black and Asian A-Level pupils and found they didn’t always accept the label they felt the teacher had placed on them.
In a similar way to Fuller this shows a label doesn’t necessarily produce a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 28

Sewell- variety of boys responses

Answer 28

The rebels only a small minority, rejected goals and rules of the school and expressed this though peer group membership. They conformed to the stereotype of anti-authority, anti- school “black macho lad”.
The conformists Boys were keen to succeed, accepted goals of the school.
The retreatists tiny minority, disconnected from both school and black subcultures, they
were despised by the rebels.
The innovators pro education, but anti school, valued success but didn’t seek teachers’ approval.
Sewell found teachers tended to view all black boys as “rebels” which then impacted on their achievement, whatever their attitude to school.

Question 29

Troyna and Williams- institutional racism

Answer 29

Troyna and Williams make a distinction between: Individual racism: results from prejudiced views of individual teachers and Institutional racism: discrimination that is built into the way institutions work.

Question 30

Gillborn (critical race theory)

Answer 30

Gillborn (2008) - ethnic inequality is “so deep rooted and so large that it is a
practically inevitable feature of the education system”.

Question 31

Gillborn (marketisation and segregation)

Answer 31

Gillborn (1997) Marketisation allows negative stereotypes to influence school admissions.

Question 32

Moore and davenport- marketisation and segregation

Answer 32

Selection procedures can lead to ethnic segregation, with minority groups failing to get into better secondary schools and favoring white pupils (for example application process difficult for non-English speaking parents to understand).
This leads to an ethnically stratified education system.

Question 33

The commission for racial equality 1993

Answer 33

racism in school admissions means ethnic
minorities are more likely to end up in unpopular schools due to:
• Reports from primary schools stereotyping minority pupils
• Bias in interviews for school places
• Lack of information/application forms in minority languages
• Parents unaware of how the waiting list system works

Question 34

DAVID - Ethnocentric curriculum.

Answer 34

the National Curriculum is a “specifically British” curriculum which ignores non-European languages, literature and music.

Question 35

Ball - Ethnocentric curriculum

Answer 35

the National Curriculum over looks ethnic diversity, promoting an attitude of “Little Englandism”, ignoring the history of black and Asian people.

Question 36

Coard (ethnocentric curriculum)

Answer 36

the ethnocentric curriculum can produce underachievement, teaching how the British brought civilisation to the “primitive people” they colonised. This can lead to low self-esteem amongst black children.

Question 37

Gillborn- assessment

Answer 37

Assessment is fixed to maintain dominant culture’s superiority, if black
children do succeed assessment will be changed to “re-engineer” failure.
For example primary school previously used “baseline assessments” (before they started school) to measure ability however in 2003 these were replaced by the Foundation Stage Profile (FSP). This resulted in black pupils now appearing to do worse.
According to Gillborn this is the result of two factors:
• FSP based on teacher’s judgements (the baseline assessments were based on written tests too)
• The change in timing: the FSP is done at the end of reception, whereas baseline assessments were done before they started school.

Question 38

Gillborn (The gifted and talented programme)

Answer 38

whites are over twice as likely as Black Caribbean’s, and five times more likely than Black Africans, to be identified as gifted and talented.

Question 39

Tikley et al- exam tiers

Answer 39

The “Aiming High” initiative was introduced to raise black Caribbean achievement, despite this blacks were more likely to be entered for lower tier GCSE exams (often because they were in lower sets).

Question 40

Gillborn

Answer 40

Gillborn argues theories around natural ‘intelligence’ have now been discredited, however Gillborn argues there is the existence of the new IQism where teachers make false assumptions about the nature of pupil’s “ability” or “potential”. They believe potential can be fixed and measured and use this to put pupils into the right set.
Gillborn however argues there is no genuine measure of “potential” - all a test does is measure what someone has learnt so far, not what they may be able to do in the future.

Question 41

A03 of Gillborn - Sewell

Answer 41

Sewell would reject the view underachievement is down to internal factors, instead we should focus on external factors such as boys’ anti school attitudes, peer groups and nurturing role of the father. Sewell rejects the idea racism in schools is powerful enough to prevent individuals from succeeding.

Question 42

A03 model monitories- Gillborn

Answer 42

Gillborn (2008) responds to this arguing the image of Indian and Chinese pupils as “model minorities” is an ideology, which hides the institutional racism. This ideology suggests:
• The system is meritocratic - Indian and Chinese succeed because of effort.
• Justifies failure of other groups - Unable or unwilling to make the effort
• Ignores that “model minorities” still suffer racism in schools, despite their success. For example Chinese students report similar levels of harassment to Black Caribbeans.

Question 43

Evans- intersectionality

Answer 43

we need to look at how ethnicity interacts with class and gender.

Question 44

Connolly - Intersectionality

Answer 44

studied 5 and 6 year olds in a multi-ethnic inner-city primary school.
Teachers saw black boys as disruptive under-achievers and controlled them by punishing them more often. Asian boys were seen as passive, conformist, keen and academic, when they did misbehave teachers saw this as immaturity, not a threat. Teachers and pupils both saw Asian boys as more “feminine” and need protection frombullying.
Studies such as Evans and Connolly show we cannot consider ethnicity in isolation from gender and class.