Y12 M3

• Bowles and Gintis on education?

  • correspondence principle - schools organised to achieve bourgeoisie wants
  • hidden curriculum - produces submissive workers for capitalism
  • meritocracy doesn't exist in education
• Criticisms of Bowles and Gintis?

  • Functionalists/New Right believe education is meritocratic
  • Functionalists - hidden curriculum for socialisation not exploitation
  • It is economically deterministic, assuming all working-class students accept their subservient role and passively accept it
  • Marxist Paul Willis suggests students actively reject this system
• What was Paul Willis' study called?

  Learning to Labour
• What methods did Willis use in his study?

  • Qualitative research
  • Participant observation
• Role of education according to Postmodernists?

  • Society is more diverse and fragmented, class divisions are no longer important
  • Education has become more diverse and responsive to needs of different individuals
  • Education reproduces diversity, not inequality
  • Post-Fordism calls for a system that encourages self-motivation and creativity
  • Need lifelong training as rapid technological change makes existing skills obsolete
  • Economy is now based on 'flexible specialisation' - production is customised for small specialist markets
• Differentiation?

  The process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their abilities, such as streaming
• Polarisation?

  The process of student's reacting to the streaming process by moving to one of two 'extreme poles'
• What did Lacey suggest?

  Pupil Subcultures
• What are pupil subcultures?

  a group of pupils who share similar values and behaviour patterns
• What did Furlong find?

  Many pupils are not committed permanently to one approach, but may move between different responses with different teachers
• Who found that many pupils are not committed permanently to one approach, but may move between different responses with different teachers?

  Furlong
• What did Hargreaves find?

  Education system saw boys in low stream as triple failtures (failed 11+, in low streams, labelled 'worthless'). The solution was to create their own subculture, giving high status to those flaunting school rules, that ensured their educational failure
• Who studied triple failures?

  Hargreaves
• What did Ball find about differentiation and polarisation?

  • Abolished banding meant pupil polarisation into subcultures was largely removed, the influence of anti-school subculture declined.
  • Labelling from teachers continued, and exam results confirmed a self-fulfilling prophecy had occurred
• What did Peter woods find?

  4 different responses:

  • Ingratiation
  • Ritualism
  • Retreatism
  • Rebellion
• What is ingratiation?

  Being the teachers pet
• What is ritualism?

  Going through the motions, keeping out of trouble
• What is retreatism?

  Daydreaming and mucking about
• What is rebellion?

  Outright rejection of all school rules
• Who theorised rebellion, retreatism, ritualism and ingratiation?

  Woods
• Class difference in achievement?

  83% of pupils in higher professional families gain 5A*-C grades, compared to 44% for lower class families
• Social class and educational achievement: external factors?

  • Cultural deprivation
  • Material deprivation
• Social class and educational achievement: internal factors?

  • labelling
  • streaming
  • pupil subcultures
• What is cultural deprivation?

  The theory that many working-class and black children are inadequately socialised and therefore lack the 'right' culture needed for educational success eg their parents do not instil the value of deferred gratification
• Douglas and Parents Education?

  Working-class parents placed lass value on education:

  • less ambitious for their children, less encouragement, visited schools less often
  • resultingly, children had less motivation or lower levels of achievement
• Feinstein on Parents' Education?

  Since middle class parents tend to be better educated, they give their children an advantage by socialising them through:

  • parenting style, parents' educational behaviours, use of income, parental education
• Sugarman and class achievement?

  Suggests large sections of the working class have different goals, beliefs, attitudes and values from the rest of society.

  Argues this is contrived of four key features:

  • Fatalism
  • Collectivism
  • Immediate gratification
  • Present-time orientation
• Fatalism?

  Nothing you do will change your status. A lack of progression in education is predetermined. Contrastingly, middle class parents emphasises that you can change this through effort
• Collectivism?

  • Valuing being part of a group more than succeeding as an individual
  • Contrasts the middle-class view that an individual should not be held back by group loyalties
• Present-time orientation?

  • Seeing the present as more important than the future and so not having long-term goals
• What is the difference between labelling and self-fulfilling prophecies?

  Labelling is attaching a meaning to someone, whereas a self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true simply by making it
• What is the difference between differentiation and polarisation?

  Differentiation explains teachers categorizing pupils on perceived behaviours, attitudes and ability, whereas polarisation is how pupils respond by moving to one of two opposite extremes
• What are the characteristics of a pro-school subculture?

  Tend to form in high streams, are largely middle-class, share the values of the school, gain status through academic success
• Why do anti-school subcultures develop?

  Pupils that are placed in low streams suffer from low self esteem, this label of failures pushes pupils to search for alternative ways of gaining status
• What are some criticisms of labelling theory?

  It is deterministic in nature, and it ignores the wider structures of power in which labelling takes place
• What is meant by 'habitus'?

  The learned ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class
• What is meant by 'symbolic capital'?

  Status and recognition: a person deemed by others to have worth or value
• Habitus?

  The learned ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class. This includes their tastes and preferences, their outlook on life and their expectations about what is normal for 'people like us'
• Symbolic capital?

  • The status, recognition and worth we obtain from others, especially those of similar class position
  • Working-class girls gained symbolic capital being hyper-heterosexual feminine, conflicting with the schools middle class ethos
• Symbolic violence?

  Damage done by symbolic capital, labelling other identities 'worthless'