Internal Factors

• labelling - attaching a meaning/definition to people

  • teachers label pupils on basis of stereotyped assumptions
• Dunne + Gazeley: secondary schools persistently produced WC underachievement, due to assumptions and labels of teachers

  • "normalised" underachievement of WC pupils + teachers underestimating them
• Rist: study of American kindergarten found teacher used info about children's home background + appearance

  • teachers decided fast learners = "tigers" - tended to be MC with clean appearance
  • other 2 groups = "clowns" seated further away from teacher - given lower-level books and fewer chances to show abilities
• Self-fulfilling Prophecy

  Step 1: teacher labels pupil + makes prediction based on first impressions

  Step 2: teacher treats pupil accordingly

  Step 3: pupil internalises teachers expectations
• Teachers Expectations

  Rosenthal + Jacobson: show the SFP - 47% of those identified as spurters made significant progress

  • teachers conveyed beliefs through interaction with students

  e.g. body language, amount of attention + encouragement

  • illustrate important interactionist principle - what people believe to be true will have real effects
• Streaming

  • teachers don't see WC children as ideal pupils: lack ability and have low expectations - difficult to move up to higher stream

  Douglas: children placed in lower stream age 8 suffered decline in their IQ score by 11

  • vice versa - developed more positive self-concept, confidence, working harder + improved grades
• Streaming + A-C Economy

  Gillborn + Youdell: teachers use stereotypical notions of "ability" to stream pupils

  • denies lower streams of knowledge + opportunity needed to gain good grades
  • link streaming to publishing exam league tables

  e.g. gaining 5 or more GCSE A*-C needed for good position to attract pupils and funding
• Educational Triage: argue A-C Economy produces Educational Triage where schools categorise pupils into 3 types

  1. those who will pass anyway
  2. those with potential that can be helped to get good grade
  3. hopeless cases, doomed to fail

  • schools operate within wider education system "marketisation" policies directly affect micro-level processes, produces class differences in achievement
• Pupil Subcultures - group of pupils who share similar views + behaviour patterns
• Lacey: explains how subcultures develop

  Differentiation - teachers categorise pupils according to perceived ability, attitude/ behaviour

  • "more able" given high status by being placed in higher stream
  • vice versa = inferior status

  Polarisation - pupils respond to streaming by moving towards 1/2 opposite "poles"
• Polarisation

  pro-school subculture: placed in higher streams, remains committed to values of school

  • gain status in approved manner through academic success

  anti-school subculture: those placed in lower streams suffer loss of self-esteem

  • label of failure pushes them to search for alternative ways of gaining status - form ASS as means of gaining status among peers
• Abolishing Streaming

  Ball: study of Beachside Comprehensive in process of abolishing banding + teaching mixed-ability groups

  • basis for pupils to polarise into subculture was removed + influence of ASS declined
  • teachers continued categorising pupils differently, more likely label MC as cooperative + able
• Abolishing Streaming

  Woods: argues variety of pupils responses

  1. ingratiation - "teachers pet"
  2. ritualism - going through motions, staying out of trouble
  3. retreatism - daydreaming, mucking about
  4. rebellion - outright rejection of everything school values
• Abolishing Streaming

  Furlong: pupils not committed permanently to one response, varies with different lessons/teachers
• EVALUATION (labelling theory)

  • studies useful showing schools not neutral/fair institutions, as interactions in school actively create inequalities
  • deterministic view - studies like Fuller oppose this
  • Marxist - labels not merely result of teachers' individual prejudices, stems from teachers working in system with divisions
• pupils class identities + the school: class identities formed outside of school produce educational success/failure

  Archer et al - interaction between WC pupils' identities + school
• habitus - learned, taken-for-granted ways of thinking shared by particular social class

  • includes preferences about lifestyle, consumption, outlook + expectations
  • MC = power to define habitus as superior + impose on education system - schools hold higher value on MC tastes
  • links to Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital
• Symbolic Capital + Violence: pupils socialised at home into MC taste gain "symbolic capital" + recognition from school - deemed to have worth

  • school devaluates WC habitus - WC pupils' tastes deemed as worthless
• Symbolic Capital + Violence

  Bourdieu: withholding symbolic capital "symbolic violence" defines WC habitus as inferior - keeps lower classes "in their place"

  • clash of habitus = WC students feeling alienated from education as feels unnatural

  Archer: WC pupils felt that to be educationally successful, they had to change how they talked + presented themselves
• "Nike" identities - symbolic violence = seeking alternative ways of creating self-worth, status + value

  • constructed meaningful class identities in "styles"
  • style performances heavily policed by peer groups + not conforming = "social suicide"

  right appearance earned symbolic capital + safety from bullying
• "Nike" identities

  Archer: MC habitus stigmatises WC pupils identities

  • Nike styles play part in their rejection of higher education

  unrealistic - not for "people like us" and are seen as unaffordable risky investment

  undesirable - doesn't "suit" their preferred lifestyle/habitus
• "Nike" identities

  Archer et al: WC pupils choose self-elimination/self-exclusion from education due to investment in Nike identities

  • actively choose to reject it
• Working-class identity + Educational success

  Ingram: groups of WC Catholic boys from same highly deprived neighbourhood

  • one passed 11+ exam - gone to grammar school
  • other failed - gone to local secondary school
  • grammar school had strong MC habitus of high expectations
• Working-class identity + Educational success

  • WC identity inseparable from belonging to WC locality - gave them intense feeling of belonging
  • great emphasis on conformity + pressure to "fit in" - tension between habitus of WC neighbourhood + MC school

  e.g. Callum ridiculed by classmates coming to school in tracksuit on non-school uniform day

  EXAMPLE OF SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE - forced to abandon WC identity
• Class identity + Self-exclusion - clash between WC identity and habitus of higher education = barrier to success

  • partly from process of self-exclusion

  Evans: studied group of 2 WC girls from comprehensive studying A-Levels

  • reluctant to apply to elite universities + few who did felt sense of hidden barriers - not fitting in

  Bourdieu: WC people think of places like Oxbridge as "not for the likes of us"

  • feeling comes from habitus, becomes part of identity + excludes themselves from elite universities
• Relationship between Internal + External factors: interrelated not in isolation

  • wider external factors, national educational policies like league tables drives A-C Economy - results in labelling + streaming (internal)
  • poverty (external material) lead to bullying + stigmatising by peers (internal)
  • WC pupils restricted speech code (external cultural) labeled by teachers as less able - leading to SFP (internal)