Internal Factors of Social Class and Educational Achievement: Teacher and Pupil Attitudes

Question 1

Define the ‘labeling theory’.

Answer 1

When someone is given a specific label that highlights them either following or deviating from the social norms.

Question 2

Define ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.

Answer 2

A prediction that directly causes itself to become true.

Question 3

What did Becker (1971) find in regards to teachers giving pupils labels?

Answer 3

He found that the most common image of the ‘ideal type’ of student was someone who was intelligent and well behaved. And so pupils who went against their ideal type were given negative labels.

Question 4

What did Becker (1971) find in regards to the self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 4

Teachers giving pupils labels such as high and low achievers through sets causes them to treat them this way causing their behaviour to eventually conform to these labels due to internalising them.

Question 5

What did Rist (1970) find in regards to labeling and positioning in class?

Answer 5

Those who were labelled as more intelligent would be put in groups and sat closer to the teacher in a room and so more attention would be given to them, increasing their achievement.

Question 6

What did Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) find in regards to labeling and the self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 6

They found that when they told teachers that a randomly selected group of children were labelled ‘spurters’ the teachers then developed higher expectations of them. After revisiting the school they found that those randomly selected students had significantly increased their ability.

Question 7

Define ‘master status’.

Answer 7

When someone is labelled by the most obvious characteristic about them, controlling how we are identified in public.

Question 8

Give and example of master status.

Answer 8

Being a woman.

Question 9

How are these processes related to social class?

Answer 9

Having a master status of working class would generate a negative label from a middle class teacher as they would not fit the ‘ideal type’ of pupil due to not having as many resources to motivate themselves to achieve higher education.

Question 10

Define ‘setting’.

Answer 10

When children are put into sets on the basis of their ability.

Question 11

What did Stephen Ball (1981) find in regards to setting?

Answer 11

Middle class students dominated the top sets whilst working class students were seen as poor learners and so were put in lower sets.

Question 12

Define ‘warmed up’ and ‘cooled down’.

Answer 12

Warmed up = having high aspirations

Cooled down = having lower aspirations

Question 13

What did Ball (1981) claim about top band pupils compared to middle band pupils?

Answer 13

What students in the top band were much more ‘warmed up’ than students in lower bands who were more ‘cooled down’.

Question 14

In what way does education today provide higher status and lower status knowledge in certain subjects?

Answer 14

Using higher tier and foundation papers with multiple sets.

Question 15

How might being put in lower sets increase academic success?

Answer 15

Students may feel bad about being in a lower set and so will be motivated to work harder to get higher.

Question 16

How are these processes related to social class?

Answer 16

Those of lower classes have lower aspirations and so are ‘cooled down’ because they want to get a job as soon as possible and so don’t focus on higher education.

Question 17

Define ‘subculture’.

Answer 17

A cultural group within a larger cultural group having norms and values at variance with those of the larger cultural group.

Question 18

What did Hargreaves (1967) find in regards to the effects of labeling and setting?

Answer 18

Students labelled as ‘troublemakers’ were usually placed in lower sets, regardless of their ability. He found that they sought out each others company and often broke the school rules - hence a self-fulfilling prophecy occurred.

Question 19

What did Lacey (1970) find in regards to the social class of boys in lower sets.

Answer 19

That they were from working class backgrounds and suffered from low self-esteem and began to reject the values of the school creating further problems for themselves.

Question 20

What did Paul Willis (1977) find in regards to the underachievement of working class boys.

Answer 20

Working class boys rejected school and created anti-school subcultures where they would refuse to learn and behave, leading to the decrease in their educational achievement.

Question 21

Give 2 weaknesses of the labeling theory.

Answer 21

1) Hard to establish cause and effect between a teacher’s label and the student educational achievement
2) Not reliable as you can’t predict how a pupil will respond to a label