Class differences- internal factors Flashcards
(18 cards)
Becker- labelling
Interviewed 60 Chicago high school teachers, he found they judged pupils based on how far they fitted the image of the “ideal pupil”
Rist
labelling occurs right at the beginning of a childs education as he studies American Kindergartens. Found that teachers use information about a child’s background and appearance to place them into groups.
Rosenthal and Jacobsen
picked 20% of students in a school at random told the teachers they would spurt ahead. Came back to school and found that 47% of students labelled as spurters had made significant progress. Suggests teachers beliefs on students has had a significant on their achievement
Becker- streaming
Teachers are likely to see working class pupils are not ideal and have low expectations and subsequently, put them in lower streams.
Gillborn and Youdell- working class and black pupils
Teachers are less likely to see working class and black pupils as having ability. As a result, they are more likely to be placed into lower streams and entered for lower level GCSE’s
Gillborn and Youdell- Educational triage
Argues schools go through a process called the Educational triage where students are placed into one of three groups:
Those who will pass anyways
Borderline C/D pupils- targeted for extra help
hopeless cases
Marxists- labelling
criticize labelling theory as they ignore wider structural inequalities that create the labels and stereotypes.
Lacey
Uses concepts of differentiation and polarisation to explain how subcultures in schools emerge
Lacey- streaming
streaming led to pro school and anti school subcultures.
Ball- streaming study
Studied a school that was in the process of abolishing streaming. He found that in this school, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of anti-school subcultures declined. However, class inequalities still remained
Woods- response to streaming
Found that pupils did not just respond in the two ways identified by Lacey. Instead, there were a variety of responses which where:
Ingratiation
Ritualism
Retreatism
Rebellion
Archer- Habitus
Those with a similar habitus to the teachers (e.g. Middle class pupils) receive symbolic capital, and those who don’t receive symbolic violence
Bourdieu- Symbolic violence
refers to this as being a process in which schools withhold symbolic capital for working class students as they see their tastes as being inferior
Archer- students being alien
found that working class students felt that to be successful, they had to change how they both presented themselves and talked, and often said middle class spaces such as universities and professional careers were not for them
Archer- Nike identities
Style performance were policed by peers. Not conforming could lead to “social suicide.” The right appearance brought symbolic capital and brought safety from bullying. This was a response from working class students to receiving symbolic violence with the goal of making their own status.
Archer- working class identities
Working class identities are not just a cause of marginalisation in education, they also express their positive preference for a particular lifestyle. Therefore, they may seek self exclusion from school, actively choosing to reject education because it doesn’t fit their identity.
Ingram’s study on catholic boys
Studied catholic boys from a highly deprived area in Belfast. One group attended Grammar school and the other attended the local secondary school. The w/c community placed great emphasis on “fitting in” and the grammar school boys felt tension between the habitus of their working class neighbourhood and the middle class culture at school.
Evans
Studied a group of working class girls from south London and found that they were reluctant to apply to elite universities such as Oxbridge, and those who did feared they wouldn’t fit in. This self exclusion limits the options for many working class pupils, limiting their success.
