Internal Factors: Labelling & the self-fulfilling prophecy Flashcards
Overview
To label someone is to attach a meaning or stereotype to them. E.g. teachers may label a pupil as bright or thick, troublemaker or hardworking. Studies show that teachers often attach such labels regardless of the pupil’s actual ability or attitude. Instead, they label pupils on the basis of stereotyped assumption
Howard Becker
carried out an important interactionist study of labelling. Based on interviews with 60 Chicago high school teachers, Becker found that they judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the ‘ideal pupil’. Teachers are m/c & have a view of what this ‘ideal pupil’ should be like based a pupil’s appearance, language, social skills & social class background rather than in terms of their real intellectual abilities. w/c children were often perceived by teachers as being on average less intelligent than m/c children.
can also lead to the ‘halo effect’ when pupils then become stereotyped, either favourably or unfavourably, on the basis of earlier impressions
Rist
Rist found that it was not ability which determined where each child was seated, but the degree to which the children conformed to the teacher's own middle class standards. Those negatively labelled as ‘cardinals’ & ‘clowns’ tended to be from a lower social class & were seated further away, given lower-level reading books & were given fewer chances to show their abilities which all could contribute to educational underachievement. This research suggests that teachers tend to expect more from middle class students
A03
Labelling theory can be deterministic in suggesting the inevitability of failure for those with negative labels attached to them as this often does not occur. E.g. Mary Fuller found that the black w/c girls in her study resisted the attempt to label them as failures by devoting themselves to school work in order to be successful, while still maintaining successful relationships with their peers.
