Class differences in achievement (internal)

• CLASS DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT (2) INTERNAL FACTORS


  Those factors within the education system that contribute to class differences in educational achievement
• Labelling


  Attaching a meaning or definition to someone
• Examples of labelling


  • Teachers labelling pupils as bright or thick, troublemaker or hardworking
• Studies show that teachers often attach such labels regardless of the pupils actual ability or attitude. Instead they label pupils on the basis of stereotyped assumptions about their class background, labeling working-class pups negatively and middle-class pupils positively
• Interactionist sociologists


  Study small-scale, face-to-face interactions between individuals, such as in the classroom or playground. They are interested in how people attach labais to one another, and the affects that this his on those who are labelled
• Interactionist study


  • Howard Becker's study of 60 Chicago high school teachers and how they judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the ideal pupil
• Pupils work, conduct and appearance were key factors influencing teachers' judgements. The teachers saw children from middle-class backgrounds as the closest to the ideal and working-class children as furthest away from it because they regarded them as badly behaved
• However different teachers may have different notions of the ideal pupil. A more recent study of two English primary schools by Amelia Hempel-Jorgensen (2009) found these notions vary according to the social class make-up of the school
• Ideal pupil in Aspen primary school

  • Quiet, passive and obedient - defined in terms of behaviour, not ability
• Ideal pupil in Rowan primary school

  • Defined in terms of personality and academic ability, rather than behaviour
• These internal factors and processes indude be face-to-face meactions between wachen and pats, and what is going on in such a small seal s
• However expectations can be boed k ways this reas that resehen aho setting and streaming, teaches teach eparts, get a grades, informaties to pe teachen and polls may be unaware of how teacher expectation are puding sa defy questioning then may not be effective
• Some paph may be unwilling to talk about the perceptions of teades expectations because they lear getting indo Yeable the teacher fads out what they have said
• Heads ney be concerned fut the earth will create the impression that their school has a problem of negative teacher expectations
• The self-fulfilling prophecy
• Streaming and the A-to-C economy
• Educational triage
• Pupil subcultures
• the pro-school sabcature
• the anti-school acatare
• abolishing streaming
• the variety of pupil responses
• wating afety
• The theme of pupil subcultures is an important one in several areas of education, and in Topics 3 and 4 there are further examples in relation to ethnicity and gender as well as class
• Criticisms of labelling theory
• Most of the studies we have examined in Topic 2 are influenced by labelling theory This starts from the idea that under-achievement is the result of pupils being negatively labelled and, often, placed in a lower stream. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, with pupils often joining anti-school subcultures that help to guarantee their failure
• These studies are useful in showing that schools are not neutral or fair institutions, as cultural deprivation theoris assume. On the contrary, the interactions within schools c actively create social class inequalities
• However, labelling theory has been accused of determin That is, it assumes that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy and will inevitably fail
• However, studies such as Mary Fuller's (1984) show that the is not always true.
• Marxists also criticise labelling theory for ignoring the wide structures of power within which labelling takes place
• Labelling theory tends to blame teachers for labelling pup but fails to explain why they do so.
• Marxists argue that labels are not merely the result of teachers' individual prejudices, but stem from the fact that teachers work in a system that reproduces class divisions
• Pupils' class identities and the school
• So far we have focused on how in-school processes such as labeling, streaming and pupil subcultures can shape a pupil's identity and affect their achievement. However, sociologists are also interested in how pupils' class identities that are formed outside school interact with the school and
• Symbolic capital and symbolic violence
• For one, one boy Callum, w unform de y cin wonten by the schools The choice for nothing school for the and worssess a home for nor of symbolic violence, in abandon their worthless Por (1960)
• Class identity and self-exclusion


  Despite the class inwate working-des young i ee however he cle the habtus of higher educa party due to a proce education, many more go on 10 uninity Even woking des dirty and bar to summ Thi
• Savans 2009 study group

  • 21 working-csp hom a south London compte Hudying for the Ames are found that they toplysee users such as Odridge and that the fow who did apply of hidden baves
• Bourdieu's concept of habitus


  Refers to the dispositions' or leaned, taken forgrated ways of thinking, being and acting that are shaned by a particular soca dan. it includes their tastes and preferences about Vestyles and consumption (such as fashion and leisure pursuit their outlook on life and ther expectations about what is normal or realistic for people
• Although are claws habitus is not intrinsically better than another, the middle dass has the power to define its habitus as superior and to impose it on the education systems. As a result, the school puts a higher value on ridde-dan tates, prefences and so on.