Interactionism

• Interactionism

  theory based around the idea that individuals create meaning based on their interactions with others

  in context of education, they focus on interactions between pupils and teachers and peers amongst each other such as labelling
• Interactionism effects of streaming

  Hargreaves

  research in a secondary school- participant observation

  found that

  • there was a close correlation between stream and social class
  • the streaming process developed pupil sub-cultures that led to conflict between pupils
  • lower stream created an anti-school subculture as the school had labelled them as failures- placed higher value on bad behaviour
• Interactionism labelling normalising wc underachievement

  Dunne and Gazelely

  schools persistently produce working class underachievement because of the labels and assumptions of teachers

  found that teachers normalised wc underachievement and felt unconcerned about it because they felt they couldn't do anything about it
• Interactionism kindergarten- labelled on tables

  Rist

  children were made to sit at tables according to the teachers evaluation of their academic ability- they were based on social class

  the working class children at the 'clowns' table whereas the middle class children at the 'tiger' table- found these initial labels had stuck

  what began as subjective evaluations became objective as the school continued to process the children based on these initial labels
• Interactionism teacher labelling - SFP

  Rosenthal and Jacobsen

  found that if teachers labelled pupils as academically gifted, their attainment came to reflect that label- supports the idea of a self fulfilling prophecy
• Interactionism polarisation

  Lacey

  polarisation is the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of two opposite extremes- found that streaming polarised mc boys into pro school and wc boys into anti school subcultures
• Interactionism ideal pupil and halo effect

  Becker

  teachers judge pupils according to how closely they fit in their image of their 'ideal pupil'- therefore wc children are perceived as less intelligent than mc children

  this can also lead to the 'halo effect' where pupils are stereotyped either favourable or unfavourable on the basis of earlier impressions
• Interactionism banding and streaming

  Ball

  found that pupils who started school with similar attitudes to study began to diverge when they were banded and streamed

  wc pupils gravitated towards the lower band and then became increasingly disinterested in education- this led to wc children leaving school with fewer qualifications, therefore reproducing class inequalities
• Interactionism SFP

  Rosenthal and Jacobsen

  selected a random sample of 20% of student population in an elementary school and told teachers that these students are expected to be high academic achievers

  the teacher then had high expectations for these children and aided these students more and so these randomly selected pupils on average had gained more IQ
• Interactionism SFP

  Mirza

  study of young black girls in London

  found that although there was evidence for teacher racism and some girls felt these teachers had low expectations of them , she argues that this did not have a negative effect on the girls self esteem

  however in the end, these girls still failed to reach full potential as their coping strategies meant avoidance of teachers and to study themselves which meant they were still disadvantaged
• Interactionism criticism of SFP

  Fuller

  criticises interactionism as she found that the girls in her study rejected the negative labels placed upon them and succeeded despite labels

  the idea of a SFP is too deterministic as it assumes failure