Education: Gender and educational achievement: Flashcards
(32 cards)
How has the decline in the nuclear family had an affect on gender educational achievement?
The traditional nuclear family is in decline. Thus girls are more prepared and desire to be financially independent from an early age. Which means they understand the need for educational success.
What Act was passed in 1970? What did it do?
The Equal Pay Act, 1970:
Made it illegal to pay women less money for the same work of equal value.
What Act was passed in 1975? What did it do?
The Sex Discrimination Act, 1975:
Made it illegal to employ someone on grounds of gender.
What was Sue Sharpe’s study of gender and educational achievement?
Sharpe interviewed girls about the way they see themselves and their futures in 1974 and the 1990’s.
What did Sue Sharpe’s study reveal about girl’s and society’s changing attitudes?
In 1974 the girls main ambitions were ‘family’, ‘marriage’ and ‘love’.
In 1974 to be intellectual and intelligent was considered to be ‘unattractive’.
However in the 1990’s their main priorities were: ‘jobs’, ‘‘a career’ and being able to support themselves.
They were more confident as society accepted strong women as role models.
What do Liberal feminists think about girl’s changing educational attainment and achievement?
Continue to create equal opportunities in education. It is a meritocracy (agree with functionalism).
What do Radical feminists think about girl’s changing educational attainment and achievement?
It’s a good start, but the education system is till patriarchyl. Stereotyped subject choice, sexual harassment and parts of the curriculum ignore the contribution of women.
What did Ghaill develop about sexual harassment in schools?
‘The male gaze’:
Girls are seen as sexual objects, looked up and down by males in schools. They are subjected to dominant heterosexual masculinity. Boys peer group label each other as ‘gays’ if they don’t participate.
What term did Lees, 1986, develop about sexual harassment in schools?
‘Slags and Drags’.
What term did Connel develop about sexual harassment in schools?
That girls suffered a ‘rich vocabulary of abuse’.
Why do working class girls underachieve?
They underachieve as they suffer a dilemma of identity. They are caught between meeting the ideals of a working class student and middle class identity of the 'ideal student'. Try to keep their working class identity instead of being pushed into a middle class habitus. As a result they want to be negatively labelled instead of incurring the halo effect.
What is Bourdieu’s idea of ‘symbolic capital’?
Status, recognition and sense of worth gained from others (peer groups).
What did Louise Archer et al do? What did she find?
She used Bourdieu's idea of symbolic capital when studying a group of working class girls in education. She found that they employed different strategies in order to maintain their working class status, including employing 'hyper hetero-sexual identities'.
Define hyper hetero-sexual identities:
Where the group invested a large amount of time and money into constructing a ‘desirable’ and ‘glamorous’ identity. The feminine identities constructed made sure that the girls weren’t labelled as ‘tramps’. So they weren’t marginalised from their group.
However the effort into their appearance lead the teachers to believe they were distracted and that it prevented them from engaging with their education. Also, other peer groups would label them as incapable of educational success.
What term did Bourdieu develop to describe peer groups labeling other pupils as incapable of educational success?
‘Symbolic violence’.
What subjects are girls achieving higher in at GCSE standard?
All subjects.
What percentage of girls and boys achieve an A*-C in English?
70% of girls, 54% of boys.
What did Stanworth, 1983, Licht and Dweck, 1987 and Renold and Allan, 2006, all have in common concerning gender educational achievement?
That girls lacked confidence, underestimated themselves and felt undervalued in the classroom.
Renold and Allan’s, 2006, research found that this still remained true today.
What did research in South Wales find about girl’s in education?
That they were torn between being educationally bright and attractive to boys.
To seem attractive to boys they played down their academic abilities.
What did Barbar’s 1996 research find about boys educational attitude and results?
That ‘more boys than girls think they are able or very able, and fewer boys think they are “below average”’. Yet the GCSE results contradict the statement.
What do boys think about their results in education? Which sociologist’s research links to the theory?
Boys seem to coast along and expect good results, not challenging themselves academically. This maybe because they don’t like school. However, they still think they are very capable.
Francis’ research in 1998-9 confirms this. When they failed the boys tended to blame the teacher or their own lack of effort, not their ability.
What did Forde at al argue, concerning boy peer groups?
Peer group pressure encourages dominant masculine identity developed by resistance to school, which does not work with academic success.
What did Epstein et al, 1998, argue about working class boys and educational achievement?
That they risked harassment, bullying or were labeled as ‘gay’ for working hard out of school. And aspiring for academic success is seen to conflict with adolescent conceptions of masculinity.
What did Francis’, 2000, research discover about male peer groups? What is the consequence of this?
The boys gained more peer group matcho status by resisting teachers and schools - through laddish behaviour. This contributed to their underachievement in learning.
