topic 3 - internal factors Flashcards
What does institutional racism mean?
discrimination that is built into the everyday workings of institutions such as schools and colleges. This discrimination maybe unconscious rather than deliberate, but is a deeply ingrained, taken-for-granted part of the institution’s culture.
one local education authority- black children
What did Gillborn and Mirza find?
In one local education authority:
Black children were the highest achievers on entry to primary school (20% above the local average).
Yet by the time it came to GCSEs they had the worst results of any ethnic groups (21% below average).
What is the critical race theory?
sees racism as a deep-seated feature of society resulting not only from the attitudes of individuals but from institutional racism. CRT identifies several ways in which the educational system is institutionally racist, including selection, the ethnocentric curriculum and assessment. CRT argues that racism cannot be removed just by passing laws against it but needs direct action by oppressed groups
national cohort 530000+ , 7-11 year olds
What did strands find?
of the entire national cohort of over 530,000 7-11 yr olds shows how quickly black pupils fall behind after starting school. He found that black Caribbean boys not entitled to FSM and the more abled pupils made less progress than their white peers.
Gillborn and Mirza, and strand
What do these studies suggest?
- CD theorists are wrong that black children enter school unprepared.
- Instead, internal school factors may be playing a major part in producing ethnic differences in achievement (e.g. labelling, teacher racism, pupil identities, pupil responses and subcultures).
Labelling and teacher racism
- what is to label someome?
- what do interactionalists study?
2a. what do interactionalists study specifically when looking at ethnicity and achievement?
2b. What do their studies show?
2c. How does this effect EM students?
- to attach a meaning or definition to them
2.study face to face interactions which include labelling
2a. on the different labels teachers give to children from different ethnic backgrounds.
2b. teachers often see black and Asian pupils as far from being the ‘ideal pupil’. For example, black pupils are often seen as disruptive and Asian as passive.
2c. Negative labels may lead teachers to treat EM pupils differently – this disadvantages them and may lead to failure.
black pupils and discipline
What did Gillborn and Youdell’s study find?
teachers were quicker to disciple black pupils than others for the same behaviour.
* They argue that this is the result of teachers ‘racialised expectations.’
* They found that teachers expected black pupils to present more discipline problems and misinterpreted their behaviour as threatening or as a challenge to authority.
* When teachers acted on this misinterpretation, pupils responded negatively, and further conflict resulted – black pupils felt they were being underestimated on their ability and picked on by their teachers.
black pupils and discipline
What did Gillborn and Youdell conclude?
conflict between white teachers and black pupils stem from racial stereotypes teachers hold, rather than their actual behaviour
What else can Gillborn and Youdells findings help explain?
- What did Bourne find?
- What did Osler find?
higher levels of exclusions from school of black boys.
- schools tend to see black boys as a threat and to label them negatively, leading to eventual exclusion.
Exclusions affect achievement: only one in five excluded pupils achieves five GCSEs. - along with higher official exclusions, black pupils are also more likely to suffer from unrecorded unofficial exclusions and from ‘internal exclusions’ (reintegration) where they are sent out of class.
* They are also more likely to be placed in pupil referral units (PRUs) that exclude them from access to the mainstream curriculum
black pupils and streaming
What was Gillborn and Youdells findings on the ‘A to C economy and education triage’?
teachers focus on students who they believed are most likely to achieve a grade C at GCSE – what they called education triage
Black pupils and streaming
What can happen to black students based on negative sterotypes?
Because, of negative stereotypes about black pupils’ ability that some teachers have - it means they are more likely to be placed lower streams or sets
Black pupils and streaming
What did Foster find?
what can streaming black students based on behaviour lead to?
teachers stereotypes of black students as badly behaved could lead to them being put in lower streams or sets than other students of the same ability.
SFP of underachievement
Asian Pupils
What did Wright’s study show?
Asian pupils can also be the victims of teacher labelling.
What did Wright find from researching the schools? 5 points
- despite the school’s apparent commitment to equal opportunities, teachers held ethnocentric views. This is, they took for granted that British culture and Standard English were superior.
- This affected how they related to Asian students. For example, teachers assumed they would have a poor grasp of English and left them out of class discussions or used simplistic, childish language when speaking to them.
- Asian people also felt isolated when teachers showed disapproval of their customs or mispronounced their names.
- Generally, teachers did not see them as a threat but rather a problem they could ignore.
- This resulted in Asian pupils especially the girls to being marginalised and pushed to the edges and prevented them from participating fully.
2 pupil identities
What did Archer say?
teachers’ dominant discourse (way of seeing something) sees ethnic minority pupils’ identities as not having the favoured identity of the ‘ideal pupil’.
2 pupil identities
Archer describes how the dominant discourse constructs three different pupil identites - what are they? 3 pupil identities
- The ideal pupil identity: a white, middle class, masculinised identity, with normal sexuality. This pupil is seen as achieving in the ‘right’ way, through natural ability and initiative.
- The pathologized pupil identity: An Asian, ‘deserving poor’, feminised identity, either asexual or with an oppressed sexuality. This pupil achieves through hard work not natural ability and is a culture bound overachiever.
- The demonised pupil identity: A black/white WC hyper-sexualised identity. This pupil is seen as unintelligent, peer led and culturally deprived underachiever.
2 pupil identities
According to Archer, how are EN more likely to be labelled?
What did archer find after her interviews and research?
demonised or pathologized pupils.
black students were demonised as loud, challenging, excessively sexual and with ‘unaspirational’ home cultures. and teachers stereotyped Asian girls as quiet and passive.
A03 to Archer
What did Shain find?
Asian girls challenge this stereotype by misbehaving, they are often dealt with more severely than other pupils
Chinese pupils
- Who according to Archer can still be labelled as pathologized?
1a. Describe Archers example - How did Archer and Francis sum things up?
- minority pupils achieve good grades in education can still be pathologized
1a. Chinese students were praised and yet viewed negatively by their teachers and Chinese students were seen as achieving success in the ‘wrong way’ (through hard work and passively conforming rather than natural ability). This means they can never have the identity of the ‘ideal pupil’. - Archer and Francis summed up teachers view of them as ‘negative positive stereotype’.
chinese pupils
How were girl’s supposed passivity explained by teachers?
what sterotype of chinese pupils do teachers generally hold?
Teachers stereotyped Chinese families as ‘tight’ and ‘close’ and used this to explain the girl’s supposed passivity.
Them being M/C
Chinese pupils
what is the result of these distinctions Archer identifies?
even the success of EM (and female) pupils will only be seen as over-achievement since ‘proper’ achievement is seen as the natural preserve of the privileged, white, MC ideal pupil.
Rejecting negative labels
What was Mac and Ghaill’s study ?
4 points
How are the findings of this study similar to Fullers?
- Studied black and Asian students in sixth form & came to the same conclusions.
- Students who believed teachers had labelled them negatively did not accept their labels.
- How they responded depended on their ethnic group and gender and the nature of their former school.
- For example, some girls felt that coming from an all-girls school gave the, a greater academic commitment that helped overcome negative labels in school
Labels DON’T inevitabily lead to SFP
Failed strategies for avoiding racism
What was Mirza’s study?
What did she find?
Give an example/
What was the three main types of teacher racism, Mirza identified?
- ambitious black girls who faced racism
- racist teachers discouraged black pupils from being ambitious through the kind of advice they gave about career and option choices
- teacher discouraged them from aspiring to professional careers
1.* The colour blind: teachers who believe all pupils are equal but in practice allow racism to go unchallenged.
2. *The liberal chauvinists: teachers who believe black pupils are culturally deprived and have low expectations of them.
3. The overt racists: teachers who believe black students are inferior and actively discriminate against them
2. Failed strategies for avoiding racism
What did Mirza find girls were doing because of racism in the school?
what strategies did the girls use?
How did their strategies fail?
- girls spent a lot of time at school avoiding the effects of teachers’ negative attitudes
- : being selective about which staff to ask for help, getting on with their own work in class rather than getting involved in other options & opportunities to avoid teachers with racist attitudes.
- Although the girls had high self-esteem these strategies put them at a disadvantage by restricting their opportunities.
The variety of boys’ responses
What does sewell focus on?
- He focused on the absence of fathers & street culture to explain black boys’ underachievement
- He also looked at their responses to schooling and teacher racism and how it impacted achievement
sewell
What are the four pupil responses to teacher racism identified by Sewell?
- The rebels
- The conformist
- The retreatists
- The innovators
Sewell : most influential, black macho lad, superiority
What do ‘The rebels’ do?
- The most influential group but only a small minority of black pupils who often were excluded.
- Expressed their opposition through conforming to the anti-authority, anti-school ‘black macho lad’.
- Believed in their superiority based on this black masculinity with sexual experience and virility & disrespectful towards white boys who they saw as dismissive of conformist black boys.
What do ____ do:
1. The conformist
2. The retreatists
3. The innovators
- Largest group – these boys were keen to succeed accepted school goals and had friends of different ethnic groups
- Tiny minority, isolated individuals, disconnected from school and black subcultures and were hated by the rebels
- 2nd largest group, pro-education, values success but not seeking teacher approval only cared about the schoolwork. This distance from the conformists meant they were able to maintain credibility with the rebels while doing well in school.
The variety of boys’ responses
What does sewell’s study prove?
small minority fit the stereotype (‘black macho lad’), teachers still label all black boys the same and this leads to many underachieving and lastly many boys’ negative attitudes is a response to racism
Sewell = variety of boys’ responses
What does Sewell argue is the main factors leading to black boy’s underacheivement?
outside of school such as the role of peer groups, street culture and lack of a nurturing father are more important in producing underachievement.
Evaluation of labelling and pupil responses
Rather than blaming the child home background (like CD) labelling theory does show how teachers’ stereotypes can be a cause of failure
* Danger of seeing these stereotypes as individual teacher prejudice rather than racism in the education system.
* Danger of assuming once labelled pupils automatically fall victim to SFP and fail.
Institutional racism
What do Troyner and Williams argue?
What are the two distinctions they’ve made?
argue, to explain ethnic differences in achievement we need to:
* Go beyond teacher racism
* Look at schools and colleges
* See how they routinely and unconsciously discriminate against EM
1.** Individual racism** – results from prejudicial views of individual teachers and others
2.** Institutional racism** – discrimination built into the institute such as schools
What is the critical race theory?
1. what does it see?
2. What does it indentify?
3. What does is argue?
CRT sees racism as a deep-seated feature of society resulting not only from the attitudes of individuals but from institutional racism.
CRT identifies several ways in which the educational system is institutionally racist, including selection, the ethnocentric curriculum and assessment.
CRT argues that racism cannot be removed just by-passing laws against it but needs direct action by oppressed groups.
Locked-in inequality
What does Roithmayr the critical race theorist argue?
Explain what Gillborn in 2008 said
institutional racism is a ‘locked-in inequality’ – the amount of historical discrimination there no longer needs to be a conscious intent to discriminate – the inequality becomes self-perpetuating (feeding on itself).
applies this concept of ‘locked-in inequality’ to education: ethnic inequality is so deep rooted that it is practically an inevitable feature of the education system.
marketisation and segregation
what is marketisation?
what did the 1988 Education reform act begin?
What does Gillborn say marketisation alllowed in schools?
the policy of introducing market forces of supply and demand into areas run by the state, such as education and the the National Health service.
the marketisation of education by encouraging competition between schools and choice for parents
more opportunity to select pupils, it allows negative stereotypes to influence decisions about school admissions.
marketisation and segregation
Explain Moore and Davenport’s research and conclusion
- how selection procedures led to ethnic segregation, with minority pupils failing to get into the better secondary schools due to discrimination.
- Primary school reports were used to screen out pupils with language difficulties & application process was difficult for parents who don’t speak English. - these procedure favoured white pupils.
- concluded that selection leads to an ethnic stratified education system.
The ethnocentric curriculum
What does ethnocentric mean?
What is an ethnocentric curriculum?
give e.g.
What do sociologists sat about the ethnocentric curriculum?
attitudes or policies give priority to the culture/viewpoint of one ethnic group while disregarding others.
when the curriculum reflects the culture of one ethnic group (usually the dominant culture)
e.g. Language, literauture and music, history
a prime example of institutional racism.
This is because the curriculum builds racial biases into everyday workings of school and colleges.
The ethnocentric curriculm
What did Troyna and Williams and David say about Language, literature and music?
T & W = note the limited opportunities to teach Asian languages as compared with European languages.
David = describes the National curriculum as a ‘specifically British’ curriculum that largely ignores non-European languages, literature and music
The ethnocentric curriculum
What did Ball say about History? They gave an example too
Ball 1994 – criticises the national curriculum for ignoring ethnic diversity and promoting an attitude of ‘little Englandism’
For example, the history curriculum tries to recreate a ‘mythical age of empire and past glories’, while ignoring the history of black and Asian people.
Ethnocentric curriculm
What did Coard explain?
They also gave an example
how the ethnocentric curriculum may cause underachievement.
For example – in history the British are shown as bringing civilisation to ’primitive people’ they colonised. He argues that this image of black people being inferior undermines black students’ self-esteem and leads to their failure
unclear and what Stone argues
What are the two evaluations of the theory that the ethnocentric curriculm leads to EM underachievement?
It is not clear what impact the ethnocentric curriculum has. For example, while it may ignore Asian culture, Indian and Chinese students’ achievement is above the national average.
Stone 1981 argues black children do not suffer from low self-esteem
Assessment
- What does Gillborn argue?
argues that ‘the assessment game’ is rigged to validate the dominant culture’s superiority.
If black students succeed as a group, the rules will be changed ‘re-engineer failure’
Assessment
2 What was the example used by Gillborn to prove his theory?
Independent ‘baseline assessments’ in primary schools have been replaced by the foundation stage profile (FSP in 2003).
Overnight, black pupils now appeared to be doing worse than white pupils e.g. in one local authority where black pupils had been the highest achievers in 2000, by 2003 the new FSP had black children ranked lower than whites across all six developmental areas that it measured.
3 What are the 2 institutional factors that caused this?
The Foundation Stage Profile (FSP) is based entirely on teachers’ judgements, whereas baseline assessments often used written tests as well.
A change in the timing: the FSP is completed at the end of reception year, whereas baseline assessments were done at the start of primary school
4 what did Gillborn argue these factors increased?
increased risk of teachers stereotyping which then affected students results.
assessment
How did Sanders and Horns study support Gillborn’s claims?
that where tasks were based more on teachers than written exams the gap between the scores of different ethnic group widens. So, showing how teachers stereotyping affected students results.
access to opportunities
What does the ‘Gifted and talented’ programme mean?
was created with the aim of meeting needs of more able pupils in inner city schools.
This was seen to bring benefits for bright pupils from minority groups.
However, Gillborn found that official statistics show how white students are 2x more likely than black students to be identified as gifted & talented.
access to opportunites - Tikly et all
What was the Exam tiers
conducted a study - the 30 schools in ‘Aiming high’ initiative to raise Black Caribbean pupils’ achievement. She saw that black students were more likely to be entered for low tier GCSEs because they placed in low sets so more likely to only get C’s.
access to opportunities
What was Strand’s findings
analysis of large-scale data from the Longitudinal study of Young People in England (LSYPE):
Shows a white-black achievement gap in maths and science tests at aged 14.
He argues this is because black pupils are systematically underrepresented in higher tier tests.
Ethnic differences in entry to test tiers reflect teachers’ expectations leading to the SFP.
New IQism
Access to opportunities depend on what according to Gillborn?
What is the new IQism according to Gillborn?
teachers’ assessments of pupil’s ability which works against black students.
Teachers place students in sets based on disciplinary concerns & perceptions of their attitudes. Teachers have racialised expectations- see black students as posing more discipline problems.
- teachers & policymakers make false assumptions about nature of their ability of potential.
How do schools see potential?
fixed quality – potential can be easily measured and once it’s been measured you can easily put students into the right set, and put them forward to opportunities such as gifted & talented etc.
New IQism
What do Gillborn and Youdell note?
What does Gillborn say about tests?
What was Gillborns conclusion?
more secondary schools are using old styled IQ tests to allocate students to sets or streams.
However, they argue that there is no genuine measure of ‘potential’. All tests show is what a student has learnt already and can do in the moment not what they can do in the future.
the education system is institutionally racist, creating an environment where EM pupils are routinely disadvantaged.
Critisism of Gillborn
Sewell argues that Gillborn focuses too much on the internal factors, and although he doesn’t believe racism has disappeared entirely, he does argue that it is not powerful enough to prevent individuals from succeeding.
He says we should focus more on external factors such as boys’ anti- school attitudes, the peer group and the nurturing role of the father.
Over-achievement of ‘Model Minorities’ Indian and Chinese students perform better than the white majority. If these two groups do so well, then how can there be institutional racism in education?
black boys and underachievement
What do CRT argue - use sociologist as an example?
Hhow is this different to other sociologists like sewell?
CRT such as Gillborn argue that institutional racism is the main cause of underachievement.
They argue that internal factors within the education system such as assessment and setting, systematically create the failure of many ethnic minority pupils, especially black boys.
Other sociologists like Sewell disagree and reject this view. Although he does not believe that racism has disappeared from schools – he argues it is not powerful enough to prevent individuals from succeeding. We need to focus on boys’ anti-school attitudes , peer group and the nurturing role of the father.
model m inorites : indian and chinese achievement
what do critics of the idea that the education system is institutionally racist point out?
How does Gillborn respond?
even though there is groups of black boys underachieving there is also ’overachievement’ by other ‘model minorities’. For example, Indian and Chinese students perform better than the white majority
the image of Indians and Chinese as hard working ‘model minorities’ performs an ideological function.
model minorities: Indian and chinese achievement
Gillborn : It conceals the fact that the education system is institutionally racist:
- It makes the system seem fair and meritocratic - when Indian and Chinese students succeed as they make the effort and take advantage of the opportunities offered to them.
- It justifies the failure of other minorities, such as black students – that they fail because they are unable or unwilling due to their ‘unaspirational’ home culture.
- It ignores the fact that ‘model minorities’ still suffer racism in schools – for example Chinese students report similar levels of harassment to Black Caribbeans.
Ethnicity, class and gender
What did Evan say?
What did Connolly say about black boys and asian asian boys ?
argues to fully understand the relationship between ethnicity and achievement we need to look at how ethnicity interacts with gender and class.
For examples she says when sociologists look at black children’s achievement, they tend to look at culture and ethnicity but rarely class.
Teachers construct masculinity differently depending on ethnicity – Black boys were seen as underachievers; they were controlled by more punishments and channelling their energy towards sports. The boys responded by seeking status in non-academic ways like playing kiss-chase and football. Asian boys – were seen as more passive, conformist, keen and academic; when misbehaving they’re seen as immature not threatening.
Other boys picked on them and left them out in football. Both teachers and students saw Asian boys as more ‘feminine’ and in need of protection from bullying.
ethnicity class and gender
What do Evans and Connolly’s study show?
Connolly - interaction effect
we cannot consider ethnicity alone from class and gender.
This is that class and gender interact differently with ethnicity depending on which ethnic group we are looking at.
For example, there is a bigger gap between the achievements of the white WC pupils than there is between black MC and black WC pupils
