Labelling

• Interactionists see labelling theory in action in education. Labelling theory says that people make judgements about others and label them accordingly.
• Labelling

  • The way teachers label pupils can influence a number of factors, including pupil identities and, ultimately, achievement.
  • Rosenthal and Jacobson demonstrated that pupils can bring their self-image and behaviour in line with these teacher stereotypes and expectations; a phenomenon known as the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.
• The self-fulfilling prophecy

  • The negative effects of the self-fulfilling prophecy have been found to be more pronounced on working-class and black boys and are most positive on middle-class pupils and girls, most notably, Indian Asian girls.
• The self-fulfilling prophecy

  • The negative effects of the self-fulfilling prophecy have been found to be more pronounced on working-class and black boys and are most positive on middle-class pupils and girls, most notably, Indian Asian girls.
• Iverson study

  • In his book High School Confidential, Jeremy Iverson writes about his experience as a Stanford graduate posing as a student at a California high school.
  • One of the problems he identifies in his research is that of teachers giving students labels that the students are never able to lose.
• Iverson study cont.

  • One teacher told him, without knowing he was a bright graduate of a top university, that he would never amount to anything (Iverson 2006).
  • Iverson obviously didn’t take this teacher’s false assessment to heart. But when an actual 17-year-old student hears this from a person with authority over him or her, it’s no wonder that the student might begin to “live down to” that label.
• Experiment

  • Rosenthal and Jacobson tested the theory of the self-fulfilling prophecy using a field experiment.
  • In a state primary school in California, they gave teachers false information about the IQ scores of some of the pupils.
• Method

  • Pupils were selected at random but teachers were told that one group was particularly bright and that the other group had low IQ scores and weren’t expected to progress very far.
• Findings

  • Results showed that, in general, the pupils performed in line with the (false) information that had been given to teachers.
• Evaluation: Reliability

  • The study has been replicated many times, with some of the results confirming the impact labelling has on academic achievement.
  • However, other studies have failed to find a relationship.