Relationships and Process Flashcards
The hidden curriculum…
The Hidden Curriculum refers to the unwritten rules, values and normative patterns of behaviour which students are expected to conform to and learn while in school.
The Hidden Curriculum is normally contrasted to the ‘formal’ curriculum which consists of the formal programme of specific subjects and lessons which governments, exam boards and schools designs to promote the educational achievement of students.
What is taught through the hidden curriculum?…
> Respecting authority
Respect for other pupils and their opinions
Punctuality
Aspiring to achieve
Having a ‘work ethic’
Theorists…
Marxists opinion on the hidden curriculum. Bowles and Gintis explicitly mentioned it in their Correspondence Principle when they argued that the norms taught through it got children ready for future exploitation at work.
They argued, for example, that accepting the authority of teachers in school got children ready for accepting the authority of managers later in work. The learning of values was thus part of ideological control.
Evaluation…
A weakness of the concept of the ‘Hidden Curriculum’ is that most, if not all of the expected patterns of behaviour listed above are today written down and thus formally encoded in school rules, thus it’s debatable whether they are really ‘hidden’!?
For example, students usually have to formally agree to them through their school’s tutorial system, so whether theses factors make up a truly ‘Hidden Curriculum’ today in school is, to my mind, questionable.
School Ethos might be a more relevant concept for today’s schools.
School ethos…
The ‘school ethos’ refers to the character, atmosphere, or ‘climate of the school’. This might include things like:
> Whether there is an emphasis on academic success, and/ or artistic or sporting achievements.
> Whether there is an emphasis on equal opportunities for all students – does the school focus on helping disadvantaged students, for example?
> Whether there is an emphasis on respect for diversity – does the school promote multiculturalism and anti-racism and sexism?
> Whether the school encourages students to participate in community life. Etc.
> It’s probably most relevant when trying to understand what’s really different about elite education in the very top public schools such as Eton and Harrow. The ethos of these schools is really that they teach pupils that they are part of the ruling elite. For example Westminster School has pictures of Winston Churchill and other leaders hanging in their assembly rooms – as they are ex-pupils. This means pupils come to the end of their schooling feeling as if they belong among the global elite, feeling as if they have the right to be earning a $50K salary as a starting wage.
> Its not just about smaller class sizes its about ethos!
The educational triage…
Gillborn and Youdell argue that publishing league table leads to the “A-C economy.
This is a system in which schools ration their time and effort on those pupils they perceive as having the potential to get five A-C’s at GCSE and thus boost the schools league table position”.
School’s categories pupils as; those that will pass anyway, those with potential and hopeless cases. Teachers label students this using ability, class and ethnicity, working class tend to be labelled as unable. As a result they are classed as “hopeless” cases and ignored. This produces self fulfilling prophecy and failure.
This has led to a triage (or a ranking system) for treatment of students.
Labelling…
To label someone is to attach a meaning or – definition to them. Teachers may label someone as intelligent or troublesome.
Studies show that teachers attach labels based more on class rather than on actual ability, and attach negative labels to working class and positive to middle class. Evidence shows that labelling occurs throughout education.
Research…
Rosenthal and Jacobson told a school they had a new test designed to identify spurters this was in fact a standard IQ test. They then selected 20% of students at random and told teachers these were the future spurters. When they returned to the school a year later 47% of the “spurters” showed significant progress. This suggests that when teachers believe a child is able they show motivation to help them achieve, and demonstrates the impact of self fulfilling prophecy.
Critique…
Negative labelling can sometimes have the opposite effect – Margaret Fuller’s (1984) research on black girls in a London comprehensive school found that the black girls she researched were labelled as low-achievers, but their response to this negative labelling was to knuckle down and study hard to prove their teachers and the school wrong.
Teacher stereotypes…
Labelling by teachers can contribute to the moulding of student’s identities and can affect educational achievement.
The stereotype held by the teacher can produce a halo effect or negative self-fulfilling prophecy and anti-school subcultures.
Sex, ethnicity and class can all affect whether the teacher sees the student as an ‘ideal pupil’.
Black, working-class boys are the most likely to suffer from teacher stereotyping.
The way teachers interact with boys and girls also effects gender differences in achievement. Spender found that teachers spend more time interacting with boys. However French found that boys tend to receive more negative attention for poor behaviour and girls receive more positive attention which is work related and helps them achieve.
Differentiation and polarisation…
Lacey’s (1970) - Mixed methodology - of a middle class grammar school found that there were two related processes at work in schools – differentiation and polarization. Most schools generally placed a high value on things such as hard work, good behaviour and exam success, and teacher judge students and rank and categorise them into different groups – streams or sets – according to such criteria. This is what Lacey called differentiation.
One of the consequences of differentiation through streaming, setting and labelling is polarization. This refers to the way students become divided into two opposing groups, or ‘poles’: those in the top streams who achieve highly, who more or less conform, and therefore achieve high status in the terms of the values and aims of the school, and those in the bottoms sets who are labelled as failures and therefore deprived of status.
Varies studies, such as that by Hargreaves (1967, 1976), Ball (1981) and Abraham (1989), have found that teachers’ perception of students’ academic ability and the process of differentiation and polarization influenced how students behaved, and led to the formation of pro- and anti-school subcultures.
Setting and streaming…
Ways of grouping students according to their ability.
This leads to an unequal access to classroom knowledge and causes an inevitable fall in the students ability.
Smyth et al found that students in lower streams or sets had more negative views toward school.
Streaming…
Streaming involves separating children into different ability groups called streams. Each group is taught separately based on their ability.
This is likely to have an effect on working class students achievement as teachers see them as less able and poorly behaved so are placed in lower streams.
Once in lower streams its hard for them to achieve high grades as they do not have access to higher exam papers.
Middle class tend to be placed in high sets and so have greater self esteem and more motivation to succeed.
Subcultures and formation…
Pupil subcultures are often based on social class, gender and ethnicity, and much research on this topic has focused on the educational significance of working-class subcultures, male subcultures and ethnic minority subcultures especially.
There is significant theoretical debate concerning the formation of pupil subcultures (i.e. the question of where they come from). Some commentators seem to think that pupil subcultures are a ‘response’ to in-school processes such as teacher labelling, however, some sociologists, such as Tony Sewell, argue that it’s more complex than this because the kind of students who join anti-school subcultures get their anti-school attitude from outside of school, so the subculture cannot simply be a response to processes within school.
Pro-school subcultures…
Pro-school subcultures are typically comprised of children from middle class backgrounds, although not in all cases: Mac An Ghaill’s (1994) found examples of two different types of pro-school subculture in his participant observation study:
The academic achievers - who were mostly from skilled manual working-class backgrounds and sought to achieve academic success by focusing on traditional academic subjects such as English, maths and the sciences.
The New Enterprisers – who were typically from working class backgrounds and rejected the traditional academic curriculum, which they saw as a waste of time, but were motivated to study subjects such as business and computing and were able to achieve upward mobility by exploiting school-industry links to their advantage.
