Subcultures

• What is a subculture?

  It is a group who share ideas and behaviour patterns which are different to the mainstream culture
• What are the 2 most commonly discussed subcultures?

  pro-school and anti-school
• What are some example of subcultures within schools?


  Sporty, academic achievers, lads
• How can subcultures impact students?

  they can have a positive or negative effect on student achievement
• What did Lacey claim about subcultures?

  That they formed due to streaming, he noted that even in a grammar school, the bottom stream formed anti-school subcultures, because they were labelled as failures
• What did Fuller suggest about ethnic subcultures?

  Fuller studied black girls in year 11 at a comprehensive school, they were high ability but felt that their teachers were racist, so they didn’t work for teachers approval. Instead they formed a subculture worked alone then succeeded
• What did Willis suggest about class subcultures?

  Willis studied a group of boys who had formed an anti-school subculture. He found that the ‘lads’ deliberately disrupted lessons as a way of gaining respect from others within subculture. He also observed that these boys were working class and likely to get manual jobs after school. They seemed to believe that school was of no use to the in the future
• What can influence the achievement of pupils?

  Factors such as labelling, self-fulfilling prophecy, the organisation of teaching and subcultures
• What can bring together factor such as SFP and labelling ?

  A pupils identity because you can think about it alongside factors outsized of schools such as parental attitude/involvement and whether they are lining in poverty
• What might cause a pupil to identify himself as ‘non-academic’?

  It may of begun with a teacher label but the biggest factor may be a subculture of other, like minded-pupils who are ‘non-academic’
• Why might a non achieving male choose GCSE PE?

  because he sees it as a male subject and he’s already in a top ability set, while adopting an anti-school attitude in English and history lessons
• What may cause an underachieving male to underachieve at home ?

  No access to books that would help his English or history performance
• What is a disadvantage of studying pupils identities ?

  The complexities of them. - if a sociologist wants to study the effect of a specific process within a school on achievement, then identity can make this difficult.
• What did Louise Archer look at?

  The interaction between working class pupils identities and school
• What did Archer say?

  That schools have a middle class habits - they gain symbolic capital or status and recognition from the she ool and fare labelled as being ‘more able’ students, or high achievers
• what is the WC habitus?

  Such as clothing and accent - schools devalue it
• What does habitus mean?

  Dispositions of learned, taken for granted ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a social class

  Its is formed due to social class influence
• How might education be viewed to WC according to Althusser ?

  As Alien
• What did Archer find about the WC?

  that WC pupils felt that to be educationally successful they would have to change how they talked and presented themselves - WC pupils chose to reject education as it does not fit in with their identity or way of life
• What does Archer mean by ‘nike identities’?

  Archer argued that WC pupils may get their status and value vie ‘styles’ such as branded clothing - ‘Nike’. This right appearance earned ‘symbolic capital’ and approval from their peers and safety from bullying however not wearing the correct uniform led to conflict with he schools dress code and teaching staff
• Who are victims of symbolic violence?

  The WC as their habitus is not valued by the MC school habitus which claims dominance
• What did Archer suggest about WC girls?

  she identified strategies WC girls used girls to create a better status for themselves - the hyper heterosexual feminine identity which involved having a boyfriend and being loud