Class differences in achievement
(Internal Factors)

Labelling

The self-fulfilling prophecy

Streaming

Pupil subcultures

Labelling: to attach a meaning or definition to someone

Interactionist sociologists are interested in how people attach labels to one another, and the effects that this has on those who are labelled. 

 Becker (1971):

1) 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
2) Pupil's work, conduct and appearance influenced teachers' judgments
3) Children from middle class backgrounds were seen as the closest to the ideal pupil and working class children as furthest away

Hempel-Jorgensen (2009): different teachers have different notions of the **ideal pupil** and these vary according to the social class make up of the school
  • Aspen primary school (largely working class): quiet, passive and obedient; ideal pupils were defined in terms of their behavior
  • Rowan primary school (mainly middle class): ideal pupils were defined in terms of their personality and academic ability
Dunne and Gazeley (2008): labelling in secondary schools; interviews in 9 English state schools
  • 'Schools persistently produce working class underachievement'
  • Teachers normalised the underachievement of working class pupils and were unconcerned about it, they felt they could nothing about it
  • Working class parents were labelled as uninterested in their children's education; middle class parents were labelled as supportive
  • Teachers underestimated working class pupils' potential and those who were doing well were seen as 'overachieveing'
Rist (1970): labelling in primary
  • Teachers used infomation about children's home background and appearance to place them in separaate groups
  • 'Tigers' = fast learners, middle class, neat and clean appearance. Teacher sat them nearest to her and showed them greatest encouragement
  • 'Cardinals' & 'clowns' = working class, seated further away, given lower level books to read, fewer chances to show their abilities, read as a group and not as individuals

Step 1: Teacher labels a pupil and makes predictions about him

Step 2: Teacher treats the pupil accordingly, acting as if the prediction is already true

Step 3: Pupil internalise the teacher's expectation, which becomes part of his self-image

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968): Study of Oak community school, a California primary school
  • They told the school that they had a test that would identify pupils who would spurt ahead - this was untrue
  • Researchers tested all pupils and picked 20% of them randomly and told the school that these children were the 'spurters'
  • 47% of the identified spurters had made significant progress; teachers' beliefs about the pupils had been influenced by the test results, they then conveyed these beliefs to the pupils through the way they interacted with them
  • If teachers believe a pupil to be of a certain type, they can actually make him or her that type
  • What people believe to be true will have real effects - even if the belief was not true originally

Streaming = separating children into different ability groups or classes, they are then taught separately from the others in all subjects

Working class pupils are most likely to be placed in lower streams as teachers see them as lacking ability

Is it hard for pupils to move to a higher stream because they are locked into their teachers' low expectations of them; they know teachers have written them off as no hopers

Douglas:

  • Children placed in a lower stream at age 8 had suffered a decline in their IQ score by age 11
  • Children placed in a higher stream at age 8 had improved their IQ score by age 11
Streaming and the A-to-C economy 

Educational triage

Gillborn and Youdell looked at how teachers use stereotypes to label pupils. They also linked labelling to the league tables; the tables rank each school according to its exam performance. Schools need to achieve a good league table position if they are to attract pupils and funding

'A-to-C economy' = a system in which schools focus their time, effort and resources on those pupils they see as having the potential to get 5 grade Cs and so boost the school's league table position

Triage = (literally meaning) sorting

3 'types' schools categories pupils into:

  • Those who will pass anyway and can be left to get on with it
  • Those with potential, who will be helped to get a grade C or better
  • Hopeless cases, who are doomed to fail

Differentiation = process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and/or behaviour. Streaming is a form of differentiation

Polarisation = process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of two opposite 'poles' or extremes

Pro school subculture =
  • Pupils placed in high streams
  • Committed to the values of the school
  • Gain their status through academic success
Anti school subculture =
  • Pupils placed in law streams
  • Suffer loss of self-esteem; school undermined self-worth by placing them in a position of inferior status
  • Failure pushes them to gaining status through inverting the school's values
  • They gain status among their peers
Abolishing streaming

The variety of pupil responses

Ball (1981): When the school abolished banding, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of the anti school subculture declined

Education Reform Act (1988) created a trend towards more streaming and new opportunities for schools and teachers to differentiate between pupils on the basis of their class, ethnicity or gender and treat them unequally

Although pupil polarisation disappeared, differentiation continued; teachers continued to categorise pupils differently and were more likely to label middle class pupils as cooperative and able

  • Woods (1979):
    • 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 (1984): many pupils may move between different types of response, acting differently in lessons with different teachers

Criticisms

✅Useful in showing that schools are not neutral or fair institutions, as cultural deprivation theorists assume
❎Determinism; assumes that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy and will inevitably fail
❎Marxists criticise labelling theory for ignoring the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place
❎Marxists argue that labels stem from the fact that teachers work in a system that reproduces class division

Pupils' class identities and the school

Habitus

Symbolic capital and symbolic violence 

‘Nike’ identities 

Working-class identity and educational success 

Class identity and self-exclusion 

The relationship between internal and external factors

Habitus = the 'dispositions' or learned, taken-for-granted ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class

The school’s habitus disadvantages working-class pupils because the school has a middle class habitus, this gives middle class pupils an advantage, while working class culture is regarded as inferior

Symbolic capital = refers to the status, recognition and sense of worth we are able to obtain from others, especially those of a similar class position to us

Symbolic violence = refers to the harm done by denying someone symbolic capital; it reproduces the class structure and keeps the lower classes 'in their place'

Archer: Working-class pupils view educational success as a process of 'losing yourself'; they felt that to be successful, they'd have to change how they talked and presented themselves

Some working-class pupils need to create a ‘Nike’ identity because it was an alternative way of creating self-worth, status and value; they constructed meaningful class identities for themselves by investing heavily in 'styles'

This create conflict with the school's dress code; teachers opposed 'street' styles as showing 'bad taste' or a threat

Some working-class pupils reject the idea of higher education because it's:

  • Unrealistic; not for 'people like us', they wouldn't fit in, unaffordable and risky investment
  • Undesirable; it wouldn't 'suit' their preferred lifestyle or habitus

Archer et al: working class pupils actively choose to reject higher education because it does not fit in with their identity or way of life

There may be conflict between working class habitus and middle-class habitus; Ingram (2009): studied 2 groups of working class Catholic boys from the same highly deprived neighbourhood, one went to a local secondary school and the other to a grammar school

  • Having a working class identity was inseparable from belonging to a working class locality. The neighbourhood's dense networks of family and friends were a key part of the boys' habitus, it gave them an intense feeling of belonging
  • Working class communities place great emphasis on conformity. The boys experienced a great pressure to 'fit in' which was a problem for the grammar school boys, who experienced a tension between the habitus of their working class neighbourhood and that of their middle school

Ingram: 'the choice is between unworthlessness at school for wearing certain clothes and worthlessness at home for not.'

Maguire (1997): 'the working class culture capital of my childhood counted for nothing in this new setting.'

Evans (2009): studied 21 working class girls from South London; they were reluctant to apply to elite univeristies such as Oxbridge and that the few who did apply, felt a sense of hidden barriers and of not fitting in

Bourdieu (1984): many working class people think of places like Oxbride as being ' not for the likes of us', which comes from their habitus; this becomes part of their identity and leads working class students to exclude themselves from elite universities

Reay (2005): self exclusion from elite or distant universities narrows the options of many working class pupils and limits their success

If working class pupils wish to achieve in education they are forced to choose between maintaining their working class identities, or abandoning them and conforming to the middle class habitus of education in order to succeed

Working class pupils' habitus and identities formed outside school may conflict with the schools' middle class habitus, resulting in symbolic violence and pupils feelings a that education is not for the likes of them

Working class pupils using the restricted speech code (external) may be labelled by teachers as less able, leading to self-fullfilling prophecy (internal)

Poverty (external) may lead to bullying and stigmatisation by peer groups (internal), which could lead to truanting and failure