ethnicity and education

• WHAT ARE THE TRENDS?

  -Chinese pupils have the highest level of educational achievement

  -gypsy Roma and black Caribbean pupils have fallen behind
• WHAT ARE TTHE EXTERNAL FACTORS?

  -linguistic skills

  -family structure

  -attitudes and values

  -material deprivation
• WHAT ARE THE INTERNAL FACTORS?

  -labelling

  -pupil subcultures

  -the ethnocentric curriculum
• DESCRIBE THE AFFECT OF LINGUISTIC SKILLS ON EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

  -some pupils speak a different language and some pupils speak an informal version of English

  -Bereiter and Engelmann: black Caribbean language is ungrammatical and disjointed which means they cannot convey abstract ideas
• DESCRIBE THE AFFECT OF FAMILY STRUCTURE ON EDUCATION

  -higher rates of lone parent families among black ethnicities

  -Moynihan: lone mother lead to lower achievement among black boys because they do not have a male role model
• DESCRIBE THE AFFECT OF ATTITUDES AND VALUES ON EDUCATION

  -some sociologists argue black pupils have a fatalistic outlook and therefore value short-term gratification over long-term
• DESCRIBE THE AFFECTS OF MATERIAL DEPRIVATION ON EDUCATION

  -minority ethnic groups experience racism in wider society

  -discrimination in housing and employment

  -impacts educational opportunities
• GILLBORN AND YOUDELL ON LABELLING

  -teachers had racialised expectations of black pupils and expected more discipline problems

  -saw their behaviour as threatening
• FULLER ON LABELLING

  -studied a group of black girl who were labelled as likely failures

  -responded to this labelling by working harder to achieve success

  -valued education but not teacher approval
• MIRZA ON LABELLING

  -found that black girl's strategies for dealing with teacher racism still disadvantaged them

  -e.g., would not ask for help
• WRIGHT ON LABELLING

  -found that Asian primary school students were stereotyped and treated differently

  -teachers used simple language as they assumed they spoke poor English
• SEWELL ON SUBCULTURES

  -black boys developed a range of responses to racist labelling

  1. conformists- want success and accept values

  2. innovators- pro-education but anti-school

  3. retreatists- disconnected from school and black subcultures outside of it

  4. rebels- rejected school goals, fir macho-lad stereotype
• TROYNA AND WILLIAMS ON THE ETHNCOCENTRIC CURRICULUM

  -British curriculum prioritises white culture and the English language

  -e.g., holidays inline with the Christian calendar