class differences [internal]

• Internal factors- These are factors outside the education system, such as the influence of home and family background and wider society.
• Becker (1971) carried out an important interactionist study of labelling. Based on INTERVIEWS with 60 Chicago high school teachers, he found that they judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the ‘IDEAL PUPIL’. 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.
• Labelling in secondary school: DUNNE AND GAZELEY (2008) argue that ‘schools persistently produce working-class underachievement’ because of the labels and assumptions of teachers.
• • RIST- labeling in primary American kindergarten found that the teacher used information about children’s home background appearance to place them in separate groups, seating each group at a different table. fast are ‘tigers’, tended to be MC & neat and clean bg. TEACHER showed them greatest encouragement.
• rist- ‘cardinals’ and the ‘clowns’-were seated further away from TEACHER. These groups were most likely to be working-class, lower-level books to read and fewer chances to show their abilities. For example, they had to read as a group, not as individual
• Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) show the self-fulfilling prophecy at work. They told the school that they had a new test specifically designed to identify those pupils who would ‘spurt’ ahead. UNTRUE Test was in fact simply a standard IQ test.
• R & J picked 20% of them purely at RANDOM and told the school, again falsely, that the test had identified these children as ‘spurters’. On returning to the school a year later, they found that almost half (47%) of those identified as spurters had indeed made significant progress. The effect was greater on younger children.
• RESULTS - TEACHER beliefs about the pupils had been influenced by the supposed test results. The teachers have then conveyed these beliefs to the pupils through the way they interacted with them- for example, through their body language and the amount of attention and encouragement they gave them. This demonstrates the self-fulfilling prophecy: simply by accepting a prediction IT ACTUALISED
• Streaming involves separating children into different ability groups of classes called ‘streams’. Each ability group is then taught separately from others for all subjects. Studies show that the self-fulfilling prophecy is particularly likely to occur when children are streamed.
• Becker shows, teachers do not usually see workingclass children as ideal pupils. They tend to see them as lacking ability and have low expectations of them. As a result, WC children are more likely to be in a lower stream.
• self-fulfilling prophecy with streaming in which the pupils live up to their teachers’ low expectations by underachieving. For example, DOUGLAS found that children placed in a lower stream at age 8 has suffered a decline in the IQ by age 11
• [Gillborn & Youdell] shows how teachers use stereotypical notions of ‘ability’ to stream pupils. They found that teachers are less likely to see workingclass (and black) pupils as having ability. As a result, these pupils are more likely to be placed in lower streams and entered for lower-tier GCSEs
• ed policy - Gillborn & Youdell link streaming to the policy of publishing exam league tables. These rank each school according to exam performance. Schools need to achieve good league table positions to attract pupils and funding. Publishing league tables is what Gillborn & Youdell call an ‘A-to-C economy’.
• ‘A-to-C economy’ in schools. This is a system in which schools focus their time, effort, and resources on those pupils they see as having the potential to get five grade C’s
• • GILLBORN AND YOUDELL- This process is called 'educational triage'. Triage literally means sorting. The term is usually used to describe the process on the battlefields or in major disasters whereby medical staff decide who is given scarce medical resources.
• what are the 3 categories for triage?- the walking woundedthose who will die anywaythose with a chance of survival
• A pupil subculture is a group of pupils who share similar values and behavior patterns. Pupil subcultures often emerge in response to the way pupils have been labelled, and in particular as a reaction to streaming
• LACEY-DIFFERENTIATION is the process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and/or their behaviour. Streaming is a form of differentiation since it categorises pupils into separate classes. Those that the school deems ‘more able’ are given high status by being placed in a high stream, whereas those deemed ‘less able’ and placed in low streams are given an inferior status
• POLARISATION- On the other hand, is the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards two opposite ‘poles’ or extremes. In his study of Hightown boys’ grammar school, Lacey found that streaming polarised boys into a pro school and anti school subculture.
• Pupils placed in high streams (who are largely middle class) tend to remain committed to the values of school. They gain their status in the approved manner, through academic success. Their values are those of the school: they tend to form a pro-school subculture.
• Hargreaves : found a similar response to labelling and streaming in a secondary modern school. From the point of view of the education system, boys in the low streams were triple failures: they have failed their 11+ exam; they had been placed in lower streams; and they had been labelled as ‘worthless louts’ .
• BALL'S study of Beachside, a comprehensive that was in the process of abolishing streaming in favor of teaching mixed-ability groups. Ball found that when the school abolished streaming, the basis for pupils to polarize into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of the anti-school subculture declined
• Since BALL'S study, and especially since the Education Reform Act (1988), there has been a trend towards more streaming and towards a variety of types of school, some of which have a more academic curriculum than other
• WOODS argues, other responses are also possible such as:  Ingratiation- being the ‘teacher’s pet’.  Ritualism- going through the motions and staying out of trouble.  Retreatism- daydreaming and mucking about.  Rebellion- outright rejection of everything the school stands for
• [Furlong] observes that many pupils are not committed permanently to any one response but may move between the different types of response.
• CRITICISM OF LABELLING- it assumes that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfill the prophecy and will inevitably fail. However, studies such as Mary FULLER STUDY OF BLACK GIRLS show that this is not always true.
• Marxists also criticize labelling theory for ignoring the wider structure of power within which labelling takes place. Labelling theory tends to blame teachers for labelling pupils 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 & the school: Habitus- Refers to the ‘dispositions’ of learned, taken for granted ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class. Linked to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital. Because the school has a middle-class habitus that gives them a disadvantage, while working-class culture is regarded as inferior.
• Many pupils were conscious that society and school looked down on them. This SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE led them to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and violence. They did so by constructing meaningful class identities for themselves by investing heavily in ‘styles’, especially through branding like Nike.
• Archer et al were concerned with the lower rates of participation in Higher Education of working-class and minority ethnic students. Drawing upon the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, they suggested that one of the reasons for lower participation in HE for these groups was the cultural clash between the habitus of working-class pupils and the environment of Higher Education which was better suited to the habitus of the white middle-class – who knew the ‘rules of the game’.
• Style performances were heavily policed by peer groups and not conforming was ‘social suicide’. The right appearance earned symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying. However, at the same time, it led to conflict with the school’s dress code. Reflecting the school’s middleclass habitus, teachers opposed ‘street’ styles as showing ‘bad taste’ or even as a threat. Pupils who adopted street styles risked being labelled as rebels.
• A study by INGRAM(2009) of two groups of working-class Catholic boys from the same highly deprived neighborhood in Belfast: One group had passed their 11+ exam and gone to grammar school, while the group has failed and gone to a local secondary school. Grammar had strongly middle-class habitus of high expectations and academic achievement, while secondary school had a habitus of low expectations of its underachieving pupils.
• INGRAM found that having a working-class identity was inseparable from belonging to a working-class locality. Networks of family and friends were a key part of the boy’s HABITUS. It gave them an intense feeling of belonging. As inARCHERS study, street culture and branded sportswear were a key part of the boy’s habitus and sense of identity.
• SELF EXCLUSION Evans (2009) studied a group of 21 working-class girls from a south London comprehensive studying their A-levels. Evans found that they were reluctant to apply for elite universities such as Oxbridge and that the few who did apply felt a sense of hidden barriers and of not fitting in.
• CLASS IDENTITY SELF EXCLUSION: BOURDIEU many working-class people think of Oxbridge as being ‘not for the likes of us’. This feeling comes from their habitus, which includes benefits about what opportunities really exist for them and whether they would ‘fit in’. Such thinking becomes part of their identity and leads working-class students to exclude themselves from elite universities.
• • The relationship between internal & external factors:  Working-class pupils’ habitus and identities formed outside school may conflict with the school’s middle- class habitus, resulting in SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE and pupils feeling that education is not for the likes of them.  Working-class pupils using the RESTRICTED CODE [BERNSTEIN] may be labelled by a teacher as less able, leading to self-fulfilling prophecy.
• As DUNNE AND GAZELEY show, an internal factor what teachers believe about working-class pupil’s home backgrounds-an external factor. Actually, produces underachievement.  Poverty may lead to bullying and stigmatsation by peer groups. In turn this may lead to truanting and failure.