Internal social class

• Hidden curriculum


  Mechanism of the capitalist society that reinforces the difference in social class by preparing unsuccessful, working-class individuals to become obedient and compliant workers
• In the hidden curriculum, education mirrors structures in the workplace which helps prepare students for future exploitation as education effectively corresponds with employment
• Evidence of hidden curriculum in schools

  • Pupils being rewarded for being punctual and getting punished for being late
  • Through this, pupils have learnt punctuality and respect for authority.
• Henry Giroux's view of the hidden curriculum


  • Working class pupils do not passively accept everything they are taught, they can interact and shape their own education and consequently they are capable of resisting the discipline imposed on them by the school
• Labelling theory


  The process of defining an individual or group in a certain way as a particular 'type'. Teachers actively contribute to moulding positive/negative pupil identities by actively judging pupils.
• Ray Rist's study


  • Found a kindergarten had been using information about kids backgrounds at home and their appearance to place them into 3 groups.
  • 'Tigers' (middle class, fast learners, neat/clean)
  • 'Clowns' (working class, seated furthest away, given lower-level books to read)
• Howard Becker's study


  • Interviewed 60 high school teachers from Chicago.
  • Teachers looked at work, conduct and appearance to make judgements, and were more likely to perceive the 'ideal pupil' as the one who conforms to middle class standards of behaviour.
• Halo effect


  Uses stereotypes and preconceived ideas help by teachers. Teachers prejudge children's potential using irrelevant labels, usually biased against disadvantaged children
• Harvey and Slatin's study

  • Found that teachers prejudged children's potential using irrelevant labels.
  • Used a sample of 96 teachers and showed them 18 photos of pupils from different social classes, genders, ethnicities and asked teachers to label them based on performance, parental attitudes etc.
  • Found lower class children are less favourable, especially to more experienced teachers
• Self-fulfilling prophecy


  Pupils acting in response to predictions which have been made regarding their behaviour, thereby making the prediction come true
• Evaluation of labelling theory and self-fulfilling prophecy

  • Teachers have a professional duty to treat all pupils fairly, failure to do so could result in disciplinary action
  • It is too deterministic, not all pupils live up to their labels and some may even rebel against their label and work harder to overcome it
  • Research involved in this area is hard to detect from any form of observation and a teacher is unlikely to admit to labelling, so therefore isn't a good resource to explain underachievement
  • Labelling blames the teacher but doesn't explain why they do it in the first place, therefore it doesn't explain a reason for underachievement as there isn't enough evidence
• Streaming and setting


  Ways of grouping students according to their actual or predicted ability, which can have an effect on their educational progress
• Ireson believes groupings are not always based on ability but on behaviour, and are used to control pupils, leading to lower groups becoming disengaged. This means the 'winners tend to be white middle class'.
• Howard Becker believed that once streamed, it is usually difficult to move up to a higher stream as the low stream children get locked in a low expectation group with little help/support.
• Keddie found that lower stream children can actually miss out on essential knowledge as the teacher only transmits the full information to higher ability streams. This limits lower stream pupils' success because they simply don't have the knowledge.
• Smythe found that students in lower-stream classes have more negative attitudes to school and find the teaching pace too slow, making them more likely to become disengaged from their learning
• Gillborn and Youdell's Educational triage


  The system of dividing students into 3 groups -

  • 'Non-urgent cases' (A*-C grade)
  • 'Suitable for treatment' (C/D grade)
  • 'Hopeless cases' (unlikely to achieve a C or above)
  • The hopeless cases were most likely to be written off and left to die an educational death. They were most likely to be those in bottom streams, disadvantaged and working class.
• Pupil subcultures


  A group of pupils who share similar values and behaviour patterns, often occurring as a response to being labelled and a reaction to streaming
• Pro-school subculture


  • Pupils who conform to the academic aims, ethos and rules of the school, tend to be in upper sets and streams who are valued and rewarded
  • Being in a pro-school subculture is likely to encourage peer group support for success in education
• Anti-school subculture


  • Pupils who rebel against school, made up of delinquent attitudes and behaviour in opposition to the schools ethos, rules and academic aims
  • Playing up to teachers, breaking school rules and disrupting school is a way of getting back at the system which denied them status by labelling them as failures
  • Pupils behave like this to increase their own self esteem as it gives them status in their peer group
• David Hargreaves found that boys in lower streams were 'triple failures' as they had failed the 11+, been placed in low streams, and been labelled as 'worthless louts'.

  As a result, they formed a group which gave them a new 'high status' as those who rebelled against the school rules. They formed a delinquent subculture which helped guarantee their educational failure.
• Paul Willis believed that there wasn't a simple relationship between the economy and the education system as students are active participants who choose to fail
• Furlong's pupil responses


  • Integration - teacher's pet
  • Ritualism - staying out of trouble
  • Retreatism - mucking about and daydreaming
  • Rebellion - outright rejection of everything the school stands for
  • Pointed out that many pupils were not committed permanently to any one response of subcultures but may move between responses, acting differently with different teachers or in different subjects.
• Carol Fuller found that negative, lower streaming and labelling made children consciously choose to reject the labels and prove teachers wrong
• Pupil identities


  How individuals see themselves and how they are seen by others
• Louise Archer found that working class students believe that in order to be successful they would have to change how they talked and presented themselves, otherwise 'posh places' like university was seen as 'not for the likes of us'. They believed education was about 'loosing yourself'
• UCAS states that 18,900 students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds in England are off to university
• Louise Archer - symbolic violence

  • Symbolic violence resulted in the working class students creating their own alternative ways of creating self-worth and status.
  • They did this by constructing meaningful identities by investing heavily in styles, especially branded clothing.
  • Style preferences were policed heavily by peer groups.
  • These street styles conflicted with school dress code and teachers labelled these students as rebellious .
• Carol Fuller's study

  • Fuller studied a group of black girls in year 11 who were in lower streams but achieving highly.
  • They had no respect for teachers and didn’t conform to the ideal pupil. They valued education enough to push themselves to work harder and prove teachers wrong.
  • Fuller proved negative labels like ‘lazy’ can have the opposite effect and don’t necessarily lead to failure. 
• Paul Willis' study

  • Willis followed a group of 12 working class lads from their last 18 months of secondary school and their first few months into work. The lads had a negative attitude to school, they did as little work as possible and saw themselves as ‘superior’. They focussed on ‘having a laff’ to cope with the boredom they felt at school and in work. Clearly, they are just trying to cope with boredom and oppression instead of actively challenging it. 
• Colin Lacey's study

  • Immersed himself into school life to gain knowledge on how pupils polarised into pro and anti-school subcultures and the impact they had on their achievement.
  • Lacey said that students react and adapt to school in a wide variety of ways in which the school has attempted the label them. This relates to whether teachers see them as the ‘ideal pupil’.
  • Once within a subculture, pupils gain a sense of belonging and group identity within the schooling process. 
• Evaluation of pupil subcultures

  •  Avoids putting the whole blame for education failure on the pupil, their family and their culture it is presented instead as the fault of the education system. 
  • Limited in explanation as it does not explain why so many teachers hold similar views on what counts as an ‘ideal pupil’.