Topic 3 - Educational Achievement Flashcards
What is class?
A system to define social inequality in society
Why does class matter?
The social class you belong to strongly predicts your experience of life
How does class compare in terms of educational achievement?
Lower reading ability at the start of school
Less well in SATs
Less likely to go to a good state school
Lower sets
Poor exam results
What is the Cultural Deprivation Theory?
CDT is the idea that the reason why low-income groups under-perform educationally is because the culture in low-income groups is deficient
Examples of culture deficiency in low-income groups
Attitudes and values - Less interested in education show less support (Douglas, Feinstein)
Language skillsC
Criticism of Culture deprivation theory?
Unfair generalisation as there is a diverse range of individuals in low-income groups
What is material deprivation?
The inability to afford basic resources, which can impact a pupils educational achievement
What did Waldfogel and Washbrook find about poverty affecting students?
Cognitive development of children in poverty when they started school was nearly a year behind that of middle-income children
Why does material deprivation impact education achievement?
Poorer areas generally have worse schools
Can’t afford holidays so can’t experience new cultures
What did Smith and Noble find low income leads to?
Bullying and isolation due to lack of resources and stigmatisation
Ill-health - days of school
Lack of space and resources at home to do schoolwork
What does Bourdieu argue about capital in education?
Middle class cultural capital allows them to do well in schools as schools share the same cultural capital and the school has a m/c habitus
How does cultural capital and habitus work inside the school?
M/C students present their work, speak in a certain way and are interested about specific things
MC have a habitus which values school but WC do not
What did Becker find that teachers have?
An ‘ideal pupil’ and it is the standard by which they judge the quality of pupils
Becker also found that teachers stereotyped students based on their conduct and appearance. MC were the closest stereotype to the ideal pupil
What was Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s study on the ‘Spurters’?
R and J told a school that they had an ability based test that could be used to identify if a student would ‘spurt’
R and J randomly selected 20% of them and identified them as Spurters
The students labelled as Spurters then made greater progress that other groups
What is setting?
Placing student in ability groups for a particular subject
