Topic 3-Ethnic Differences In Achievement Flashcards
Cultural deprivation
Underachievement of some ethnic groups caused by the result of inadequate socialisation at home.
3 main explanations:
-attitudes and values
-intellectual and linguistic skills
-family structure and parental support
Intellectual and linguistic skills
Major cause of underachievement-CDT argue that low income black families lack intellectual stimulation and extra curriculum experiences=poorly equipped for school cause they haven’t been able to develop the necessary skills and problem solving skills.
Bereiter and Engelmann
Language spoken from low-black families is inadequate for educational success -ungramatical,disjointed,can’t express abstract ideas
David and Mizra
Note that Indians do well despite English not being their first language
Attitudes and Values
CDT lack of motivation reason of failure for black kids
-they are socialised into subcultures which holds a fatalistic ‘live for today’ attitude and doesn’t value education=unequipped for school,they are not socialised into the mainstream curriculum and socialisation.
Family structure and parental support
CDT argue that this failure to socialise children adequately is the result of a dysfunctional family structure.
Moynihan
Black families are headed by lone mother,results to their children’s being deprived from inadequate
care due to struggling financially in the absence of male breadwinners,
this also means a lack of role model for male achievement=sees it as a cycle where inadequately socialised children from unstable families fail in school and became inadequate parents themselves.
Murray
High rate of lone parents and lack of positive role models lead to underachievement of some minorities
Pryce
Asians are higher achievers cause their culture is more resistant to racism and gives them greater sense of worth,but Caribbean culture is cohesive(stick together) and less resistant,meaning BP have low self esteem.
Pryce-coloniasm
BP=experience of slavery was culturally devesting for blacks,being sold and transported meant they lost their language,cultural,religion,family.
Asians family structure ,language religion were not destroyed
Sewell:fathers,gangs and culture
Argues that it is not the absence of fathers as role models that lead BP to underachieve but the problem is the lack of father nurturing or tough love(firm,fair,respectful,non-abusive)=to Black boys finding hard to overcome the emotional and behavioral difficulties of adolescence.
-Street gangs come along and offer preserve love and loyalty=making them subjects to anti-school peer groups.
Sewell interviewed academically successful black boys and they felt that the greater barrier to success was pressure from other boys as doing well in schools was seen as selling out to the white establishment.
BP do worst then their Asian counterparts cause of cultural differences in socialisation and attitudes to education.
Gillborn
Argues that its not per pressure but institutional racism within the education system itself that systematically produces failure of BP
Asian families(Sewell)
Indian and Chinese benefit from the supportive families that have an Asian work ethic and place high value in education.
Asian families(Lupton)
Argues that adult authority is similar to the model that operates in schools.Found respectful behavior towards adults from children was expected=parents were more likely to support school behavior policies
White working-lass families(McCulloch)
He did a survey of 16,000 pupil and found that ethnic minority pupils are more likely to aspire to go to university than white British pupils.
-lack of aspirations may be due to lack of parental support .
White working-lass families(Lupton)
Studied 4 WC schools
-Two white, one Pakistani and on ethnically mixed community.
-Found that teachers reported levels of behavior and discipline in the white WC schools-despite fewer children in FSM.Teachers blames this on lower levels of parental support and the negative attitude that white WC parents have
-Ethnic minority parents were more likely to see education as a way up to society.
White working-lass families(Evans)
street culture in white WC area is brutal and so young people need to withstand intimidation and intimidate others therefore WC bring this behavior to schools
Criticisms of CDT(Keddie)
Sees CDT as a victim-blaming explanation-argues ethnic minority children are culturally diff not deprived. They underachieve cause school are ethnocentric: biased in favour of white culture and against minorities.
Criticisms of CDT(Lawrence)
Challenges Pryce’s view that black pupil fail cause they are weak and they lack self-esteem and so underachieve they do so cause of racism
Compensatory education
Policies adapted to tackle cultural deprivation-Operation Head Start in the USA was to compensate children for the cultural deficit they are said to suffer because of deprived backgrounds .
Criticisms of CDT(Driver)
Criticisms CDT for ignoring the positive effects of ethnicity on achievement. Shows that black Caribbean are far from dysfunctonal-provides girls with positive role models of strong independent women-black girls end to be more successful in education than black boys
Material deprivation and class(Guy Palmer)
-Almost half of all ethnic minority children live in low-income households, against a quarter of white children.
-ETM are more likely to be unemployed compared with whites
-ETM households more likely to be 3 times homeless
-More likely to be engage in shift work,LIKELY Pakistani and Bangladesh women engaged in low-paid homeworking
Does class override ethnicity
Indian and Chinese pupils who are materially deprived still do better the most .For example 2011,86% of Chinese girls who received FSM achieved 5 or more higher grade GCSESs compared with 65% of white girls who were not receiving FSM
Modood
Found children in low income families generally did less well,the effects of low income were much less for other ethnic groups than for white pupils
Racism in the wider society
Some sociologists argue poverty is itself the product of another factor(racism)
Racism in the wider society(David Mason)*
Discrimination is a continuing and persistent feature of the experience of Britain’s citizens of minority ethnic origin
Racism in the wider society(John Rex)
Shows how racial discrimination leads to social exclusion and how this worsens the poverty faced by ethic minority.EG.
-In housing discrimination means that minority are more likely to be forced into substandard accommodation than white people of the same class.
-In employment, deliberate discrimination
Racism in the wider society(Wood)
Sent 3 closely matched job application to each of almost 1000 job vacancies. These came from fictitious applicants using names associated with different ethic groups. For each job,1 application was from a white person and 2 from minority groups. Found that only 1 in 16 ethnic minority applications were offered an interview against 1 in 9 white applications=these have negative effects on their childrens educational prospects
Internal factors(1)laelling,identities and pupil responses(Gillborn and Mizra)
In one local education authority, black children were the highest achievers on entry to primary school by the time of GCSE they had the worst results of any ethnic group=suggest that factors internal to the education system itself may be playing a major part in producing ethnic differences in achievement (teacher racism,labelling,pupil identities/responses,subcultutre)
1 Labelling and Teacher racism
Teachers often label Black and Asian pupils as far from ideal pupil
-eg-black pupil are often seen as distruptive and asian pupil as passive
-negative labels may lead teachers to treat ethnic minority pupils differently=disadvantaging them to failure
Labelling
To label someone is to attach meaning/definition to them eg troublemaker
Material deprivation
Means lack of those physical necessities that are seen as essential or normal for life in todays society
Ethnic minorities may be at greater risk of the material deprivation that results from unemployment,low pay and overcrowding.
-Many live in economically depressed areas with high unemployment and low wage rates
-A lack of language skills and foreign qualifications not being recognised by UK employers.
Black pupils and discipline
-Gillborn and Youdell-racialised expectations
-Found that teachers were quicker to discipline black pupils than others for the same behaviour
-This is the result of racialised expectations.They found that teachers expected BP to present more discipline problems and misinterpreted their behaviour as threatening or as challenging authority
-When teachers acted on this misinterpretation the pupils responded negatively and conflict broke out
-Much of this conflict results from white teachers and black pupils racial stereotypes teachers holds,rather than pupils actual behaviour
Black pupils and discipline
-Bourne-explain the high levels of exclusions
Found that schools tend to see black boys as a threat and label them negatively,leading to exclusion-which effects achievement 1/5 excluded pupils achieves 5 GCSEs
Black pupils and discipline
-Osler-unofficial exclusions
Black pupils appear to also suffer from unofficial exclusions and from internal exclusions where they are sent out of class.Placed in pupil referral units excluding them from mainstream curriculum
Black pupils and streaming
-Gillborn and Youdell = A-to-C economy
Due to league tables, pupils are placed in different streams based on abilities (or assumed results). Schools focus more on pupils who are at least going to achieve a C and above grade. Because of this negative stereotypes about black ability caused teachers to place them in lower streams/sets.
Black pupils and streaming
-Peter Foster = teachers stereotypes of students behaving badly & lower sets
found that teachers’ stereotypes of black pupils as badly behaved could result in them being placed in lower sets (even if they had at least a C grade ability). Streaming black pupils on the basis of negative stereotype rather than their ability can lead to the SFP of underachievement.
Asian pupils
-Cecile Wright = study of multi ethnic primary school and Asian students
found that Asian pupils can also be the victims of teachers’ labelling. Teachers held ethnocentric views despite schools having commitment to equal opportunities that is:they took for granted that British culture and Standard English is superior
-Teachers assumed that the Asian pupils would have a poor grasp to English because of this they would leave them out of discussions or used simplistic and childish language when speaking to them.
-Asian pupils felt isolated when teachers expressed disapproval of their customs and mispronounced their names. in general, teachers saw them not as a threat , but as a problem they could ignore. Asian pupils, especially the girls were marginalised - pushed to the edges and prevented from participating fully.
