In school processes

• Labelling


  The process of defining a person or group in a simplified way – narrowing down the complexity of the whole person and fitting them into broad categories
• Labelling theory


  • Holds that if a teacher labels a pupil a certain way, they will accept that label and it will become true
• Self-fulfilling prophecy


  Where an individual accepts their label and the label becomes true in practice
• The labels which teachers give to pupils can influence the construction and development of students' identities, or self-concepts
• Labelling can affect students' attitudes towards school, their behaviour, and ultimately their level of achievement in education
• Labelling process


  1. Teachers actively judge their pupils over a period of time

  2. Make judgments based on their behaviour in class, attitude to learning, previous school reports and interactions with them and their parents

  3. Eventually classify their students according to categories
• Labelling can be grounded in stereotypes based on students' ethnic, gender or social class background
• Classic studies on teacher labelling


  • David Hargreaves: Speculation, Elaboration, Stabilization
  • R.C. Rist: Student Social Class and Teachers' Expectations
  • Rosenthal and Jacobson: Pygmalion in the Classroom
• Hargreaves' stages of typing/classification


  1. Speculation

  2. Elaboration

  3. Stabilisation
• Teachers use 7 main criteria to type students: appearance, discipline conformity, ability/enthusiasm, likeability, relationships, personality, deviance
• Labelling is influenced by social class background, not just ability
• Counsellors' decisions on college-prep programs were influenced by students' social class, not just grades and IQ
• Positive label from teacher


  Student is more likely to succeed
• Negative label from teacher

  Student is more likely to fail
• Rosenthal and Jacobson's study found that teachers' higher expectations of a randomly selected 'spurter' group led to greater IQ gains
• Research shows teachers have differential labelling based on gender and ethnicity
• Once labels are applied, they can become a 'pivotal identity' for students that teachers use to interpret their behaviour
• Black Boys were shed as severely as Asian girls were largely ignored because they were seen as passive and not willing to engage in class discussion
• The issue of ethnicity and education is covered in more depth here
• Teacher labelling of pupils


  As either normal/average or deviant types, as a result of impressions formed over time, has implications for the way teachers interact with pupils
• Once these labels are applied and become the dominant categories for pupils, they can become what Waterhouse called a 'pivotal identity' for students – a core identity providing a pivot which teachers use to interpret and reinterpret classroom events and student behaviour
• A student who has the pivotal identity of 'normal'


  Is likely to have an episode of deviant behaviour interpreted as unusual, or as a 'temporary phase' – something which will shortly end, thus requiring no significant action to be taken
• A student who has the pivotal identity of 'deviant'


  Will have periods of 'good behaviour' treated as unusual, something which is not expected to last, and thus not worthy of recognition
• Negative labelling can sometimes have the opposite effect – Margaret Fuller's (1984) research on black girls in a London comprehensive school found that the black girls she researched were labelled as low-achievers, but their response to this negative labelling was to knuckle down and study hard to prove their teachers and the school wrong
• The Rosenthal and Jacobson research has been proved unreliable – other similar experimental studies reveal no significant effects
• Labelling theory attributes too much importance to 'teacher agency' (the autonomous power of teachers to influence and affect pupils) – structural sociologists might point out that schools themselves encourage teachers to label students
• In some cases entry tests, over which teachers have no control, pre-label students into ability groups anyway, and the school will require the teacher to demonstrate that they are providing 'extra support' for the 'low ability' students as judged by the entry test
• One has to question whether teachers today actually label along social class lines. Surely teachers are among the most sensitively trained professionals in the world, and in the current 'aspirational culture' of education, it's difficult to see how teachers would either label in such a way, or get away with it if they did
• Pupil subcultures


  Groups of students who share some values, norms and behaviour, which give them a sense of identify, and provide them with status through peer-group affirmation
• Types of school subculture


  • Anti-school subculture
  • Pro-school subculture
• Anti-school subculture


  Consist of groups of students who rebel against the school for various reasons, and develop and alternative set of delinquent values, attitudes and behaviours in opposition to the academic aims, ethos and rules of a school
• Behaviours in anti-school subculture


  • Truancy
  • Playing up to teachers
  • Messing about
  • Breaking the rules
  • Avoiding doing school work
  • Disrupting the smooth running of the school day
• Pro-school subculture


  Groups of students who accept the values and ethos of the school and willingly conform to its rules
• Types of pro-school subculture


  • Academic achievers
  • New Enterprisers
• Academic achievers


  Mainly middle class students pursuing success through traditional A-level subjects
• New Enterprisers


  Mainly working class students pursuing success through vocational subjects such as Business Studies
• Range of pupil responses to school


  • Ingratiation
  • Compliance
  • Opportunism
  • Ritualism
  • Retreatism
  • Colonization
  • Intransigence
  • Rebellion
• Differentiation


  The process where schools place a high value on things such as hard work, good behaviour and exam success, and teachers judge students and rank and categorise them into different groups
• Polarisation


  The way students become divided into two opposing groups, or 'poles': those in the top streams who achieve highly, who more or less conform, and those in the bottoms sets who are labelled as failures
• Macho lads subculture


  • Academic failures placed in bottom sets
  • See school as 'hostile authority'
  • Form anti-school culture based on acting tough, having a laugh and looking after mates
  • View academic work as effeminate, prefer physical work