Class differences in achievement (internal factors) Flashcards
List the different internal factors which impact achievement.
Which school a child attends (private/ state/
‘quality’)
Labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy
Setting and streaming
Pupil subcultures
The relationship between class identities and the school
Explain state versus private schools.
Sutton et al- found stark differences in the positive
school experiences of privately educated children, and those of children who lived on a disadvantaged housing estate and attended state school. The estate children were negative about education, opportunities for after-school activities were limited, and school was associated with coercion and control.
The book ‘Engines of Privilege’ argues that private schools block social mobility;
reproduce privilege down the generations; and underpin a damaging democratic deficit in our society.
Green (2019) finds the resource ratio of private: state schools to be about 3: 1
Private schools instil in students students
embodied privilege, enabling them to move through the world with ease.
Explain marketisation and schools.
Marketisation policies encourage schools to try to attract- the ‘best’ pupils who will do the most to boost their school league table results. The process of attracting the most able students has been
called ‘cream-skimming’.
Middle-class pupils are generally seen as more desirable and marketisation encourages pupils and their parents to try and get places in the most successful schools.Middle-class parents have more resources to manipulate the system to give their children the best possible chance of getting into the ‘best schools’.
This tends to create a polarised school system.
What are the psychic effects of attending a school pathologised as failing or bad?
Reay interviewed working class students and found that demonised schools were thought to be for stupid students w o the good schools did not want. The children were acutely aware of the hierarchy of selection in terms of cleverness and had an accurate idea of where they were positioned in the ranking.
Evaluate the impact of the school a child goes to as an internal factor impacting their achievement.
- Only 7 percent of children are privately educated so it can be seen as a minor issue
- The Coleman report found that schools themselves did little to affect a student’s academic outcomes over and above what the students themselves brought to them to school- the inequalities
imposed on children by their home, neighbourhood and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school’. This is similar to Bernstein’s claim that ‘education cannot compensate for society’.
\+ the school attended clearly does matter- particularly for working-class children. The performance of schools like Michaela demonstrates the transformative effect a very good school can have for disadvantaged children.
Explain labelling and the self fulfilling prophecy as an internal factor impacting class differences in achievement.
Rosenthal and Jacobson carried out an experiment to test the hypothesis that there is a correlation between teachers’ expectations and students’ achievement.
They gave an intelligence test to all of the students at an elementary school at the beginning of the school year. They randomly selected 20% of the students - without any relation to their test results - and reported to the teachers that these 20% of ‘average’ students were showing “unusual potential for intellectual growth” and could be expected to “bloom” in their academic performance by the end of the year.
Eight months later, at the end of the academic year, they came back and re-tested all the students. Those labelled as “intelligent” children showed significantly greater increase in the new tests than the other children who were not singled out for the teachers’ attention.
This means that the change in the teachers’ expectations regarding the intellectual performance of these allegedly ‘special’ children had led to an actual change in the intellectual performance of these randomly selected children.
Explain the concept of the ideal pupil as an internal factor impacting class difference in achievement.
The ‘ideal pupil’ concept was first used by Becker
in his study of how teachers perceive
pupils in relation to their socio-economic
background.
Becker shows that teachers base their
perception and treatment of pupils on a model
of how a pupil should respond to their teaching.
From the view of the teachers in the school in
which his research took place, none of the pupils
fitted the ideal mould. Nevertheless, pupils from
the higher and middle socio-economic groups
were considered far closer to this than those
from the low SES group. Yet, this ideal remained
the standard for a teacher’s judgement of the
quality of children as pupils, and this influenced
interactions with them.
Evaluate the impact of labelling as an internal factor impacting class difference in achievement.
+ Rosenthal and Jacobson’s classic experiment provides evidence for the potential for labelling to impact student achievement.
- Deterministic. There is evidence that children
can reject a label. - Can be seen to blame teachers, when many
teachers enter education motivated by social
justice. - Marxists criticise labelling theory for ignoring
the power structures in which labelling takes
place.
Define setting and streaming.
Setting- ability groups for individual subjects
Streaming- separating children into different ability groups with each group taught separately for all subjects
Due to teacher labelling, and the fact that they
may start school behind their middle-class peers,
working-class children are more likely to end up
in lower sets/ streams, and it can then be difficult
for them to move up.
Explain setting and streaming as an internal factor impacting class differences in achievement.
Due to teacher labelling, and the fact that they
may start school behind their middle-class peers,
working-class children are more likely to end up
in lower sets/ streams, and it can then be difficult
for them to move up.
Ireson and Hallam (2009) used a questionnaire with pupils aged 14 and 15 in 23 secondary schools, and found that those in higher sets were more likely to have a positive academic self-concept- e.g. to believe that they could learn quickly. This also made them more likely to want to stay on in education.
Setting and streaming may also affect the type of knowledge that students can gain access to, with those in lower sets potentially being denied the chance to gain knowledge than makes educational success possible. Keddie found that in the lower stream teachers simplified the content to the extent that learning was largely based on common sense ideas. Further, student questions were often seen as an attempt to disrupt the class.
Reay argues that “For working-class children, classrooms are often places of routine everyday humiliations and slight”, and low sets are perceived as places of educational failure and despair.
Explain educational triage and the A-C economy as an internal factor impacting class difference in achievement.
Gilborn and Youdell found that teachers use stereotypical ideas about students and their ‘ability’ to stream pupils. They argue that schools perform triage, categorising pupils:
those who will achieve anyway (and therefore don’t require too much input)
hopeless cases (who would be a waste of effort)
borderline cases who require attention and input to get their 5 Cs at GCSE.
They linked this with the pressure on schools to maintain their position on league tables. Therefore this could be seen as a connection between education policy (e.g. marketisation policies like league tables) and processes within schools, such as labelling.
Evaluate the impact of setting and streaming as an internal factor impacting class difference in achievement.
+ The Education Endowment Foundation finds that setting and streaming does have a negative impact for low and mid-range attaining learners- however, it is a very low negative impact.
- Streaming used much less now than in the past.
- Of less relevance as an explanation for predominantly working-class schools
- Fewer tiered qualifications than in the past.
- Academic setting can be beneficial if done appropriately: it doesn’t necessarily contribute to class inequalities.
Explain anti-school subcultures as an internal factor impacting class difference in achievement.
There is evidence that working-class pupils may form anti-school subcultures
Lacey proposed that the development of anti-school subcultures may be in response to ‘differentiation’ (the practise of setting and streaming) resulting in ‘polarisation’ between pro-school and anti-school extremes.
In the anti-school subculture, truancy, playing up to teachers, messing about, breaking the rules, avoiding doing school work and generally disrupting the smooth running of the school day become a way of getting back at the system and gaining status among peers.
This behaviour then contributes to student underachievement and educational failure.
Explain pupil responses.
Woods suggested that dividing pupil subcultures into two poles was too simplistic, suggesting that there are a wide variety of responses to school, and pupils can switch between different adaptations as they progress through their school careers. He identified 8, a few examples are:
- ingratiation: conformist, pro school
- opportunism: fluctuate between seeking approval of teachers and from peer groups
- rebellion: goals of school are rejected and pupils devote efforts to achieving deviant goals
Evaluate anti-school subcultures.
(+) A recent report on behaviour in schools found plenty of evidence for widespread bad behaviour in schools, and this disrupts learning.
+ Plenty of evidence for the existence of anti-school subcultures, and it is not difficult to see how these could contribute to educational underachievement- however, should be noted that these aren’t necessarily generated by internal processes such as setting and streaming.
- the idea of the simple pro/ anti binary is overly simplistic, and ignores the many individuals who don’t fall neatly into one category- Woods’ typology is perhaps more useful.
