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Social Class and and Education - Coggle Diagram
Social Class and and Education
EXTERNAL- Deprivation Theories
Statistics (Browne)
WC are more likely to start school unable to read
WC dont do aswell on tests such as SATs
WC less likely to gain places in top performing state schools
WC more likely to be placed in lower streams
WC less likely to go onto higher education
2006 - 60% of HE students were MC
2006 - 5% of people from unskilled background were accepgted into HE
WC more likely to go into vocational courses post 16 rather than academic courses
less than 1/3 WC achieve 5 A*-C compared to 4/5 MC
Material Deprivation - Lacking the essential economic and material needs to effectively achieve in Education - WC are materially deprived
Douglas - The home and the school
overcrowded homes
poor diet
Howard talks about a poor diet lacking essential vitamins and minerals that leads to children becoming ill, having to miss school, and consequently failing
low income/ unemployment
lack of nursery provision
taking up a part time job
poverty stricken and disadvantaged areas
children from poor social classes are more likely to develop emotional and behavioural problems - Wilkinson
Bull - the cost of education - this highlights free schooling is never free and there are always hidden costs
Tanner - the financial burdens of schooling can lead to children from lower social classes to be ostracised and bullied
The National Audit Office found WC students spend double the time in paid employment to pay off educational debts than MC students
Cultural Deprivation - WC lack the necessary views, knowledge and attitude to achieve in education - HC have high cultural capital whereas WC have low cultural capital
Douglas and Feinstein - parents education and support - WC parents are less likely to be supportive of their children in education and lack the motivation and ability to help them educationally
Hyman and Sugarman - WC subcultures and values - they state how WC create a subculture that doesn't value education and therefore leads to educational failure
the values of the WC subculture come from lack of job security/ lack of influence in their work/ low wages/ a lack of structure and employment opportunities
WC - fatalism/ collectivism/ immediate gratification/ present-time gratification
MC - optimism/ desire/ individualism/ deferred gratification/ future orientation
Bernstein - socio linguistics - language codes - WC language code is deficient in terms of managing education and this leads to their failure. WC use the restricted code - limited vocabulary/ grammatically simple/ gesticulations/ particularistic/ context bound. MC use the elaborated code - large vocabulary/ grammatically complexed/ fully elaborative/ abstract/ universal. MC are advantaged as education system uses the elaborated codes in text books and applications etc.
Bourdieu - cultural capital - this creates a framework of habitus that highlights what is good/ bad in terms of attitude and knowledge. The dominant group get to impose their habitus onto society. Education favours and rewards MC habitus and looks upon negatively and punishes WC cultural traits and therefore they experience a cultural clash
Sullivan - evidence of cultural capital in achievement - students that read complex novels and watch serious documentaries accompanied with high achieving parents are more likely to achieve themselves - these are usually MC students
Putnam - social capital - social networking is important in one realising their potential - the higher social capital increases life chances
Marketisation
Gerwitz - cultural capital/ marketisation/ parental support - the marketisation of education leads to a free market and increases parental choice in their children's education (1988 Education Reform Act)
marketisation has not lead to the WC having more opportunities but instead allowing the MC to use their power more effectively than before
Privileged - Skilled Choosers- professional MC who use their economical and cultural capital to gain educational capital for their children. The parents know the admissions process and how to maintain pressure whilst being remembered by the teachers. They also know the appeals procedure and how to play the waiting list
Disconnected Local Choosers - these are WC parents who have been disconnected due to lack of economic and cultural capital - they also found the admissions stage difficult and were unaware of the options available to them with distance and cost being a major deciding factor.
Semi skilled choosers - mainly WC but more ambitious than disconnected choosers however they still lacked economic and cultural capital and have anger and frustration towards the system
Critique
Compensatory education and positive discrimination
a way of counteracting cultural and material deprivation by providing under privileged schools with extra resources and equipment
operation head start 1960s - included health visitors/ nursery classes/ parental skills/ Sesame street
educational priority areas 1960s
educational action zones 1990s
sure start 2000
The myth of cultural deprivation
Keddie - cultural deprivation theories are a way of victim blaming as a child cannot be deficient in their own culture. WC culture is not deficient but just different
Troyna and Williams - they support Keddie by saying that the WC restricted language code is not to blame but it is the way the teacher reacts to the different language codes
Blackstone and Mortimore - WC parents are not disinterested in their children's education however they are unable to attend parents evenings due to unsociable working hours and commitments
the external explanation ignore how the effects of what goes on inside the school effects a child's ability to succeed due to their social class
INTERNAL - Labelling/Interactionist Theories
Rutter - he argues there are specific factors that make a school good or bad and the role that the teachers play is the most important
positive features include...
teachers are well prepared for lessons
teachers have high expectations of pupils
mixed ability classes - high ability lead by example
teachers place more emphasis on praise and reward rather than punishment and blame
teachers should generate an ethos that reflects these points
teachers lead by example
teachers show genuine interest
teachers treat their pupils as responsible people
Labelling theory
to label someone is to attach a meaning or definition to someone i.e. labelling a pupil as smart or bright or on the flip side stupid and deviant
teachers apply labels to people based on their pre existing stereotypes of the ideal pupil
Becker - labelling theory in secondary schools - interviews of 60 high school teachers found that teachers based their labelling of the pupils work, attitude and appearance. Teachers saw the MC pupils as the closest to the ideal pupil and the WC as far away from the ideal pupil
Hargreaves suggests these labels create false halos for some pupils and these stay with them throughout their educational experiences - the halo effect
Cicourel and Katsuse - Counsellors and labelling - they found that counsellors assess their students on social class and/or race and play a large part in assessing what course they can do - MC pupils have higher chances of getting put into higher ability streams and academic subjects
Rist - labelling in primary schools - he found that labelling begins at the beginning of a child's educational career and labelling at a kindergarten was found to label children based off their background and appearance. Those seen as fast learners were called tigers and seated closer to the teacher and given more attention (tended to be MC) whereas those who struggle were called the clowns and they were sat at the back of the class and had fewer resources and lower levelled ones (tended to be WC)
Unequal access to classroom knowledge
Keddie found students labelled as higher achievers had higher status knowledge whereas students labelled as low achievers had low status knowledge
low ability groups - descriptive/ common-sense/ basic/ dumbed down
top ability groups - abstract/ theoretical/ detailed/ full curriculum
Self fulfilling prophecy
stage 1 - the teacher labels the pupil and makes predictions about them in relation to the label
stage 2 - the teacher interacts with the student based on the label and prediction
stage 3 - the pupil internalises the label and teacher's prediction and becomes the prophecy
Rosenthal and Jacobson - teachers expectations and self fulfilling prophecy - R&J conducted a study in a school and told the teachers that they could test the students and identify the 'spurters'. 20% of pupils were labelled as spurters and identified to the teachers. A year later, another test was done on all pupils and were found that 47% of these had over achieved compared to the remaining 53%. This study showed the teachers applied more attention to those labelled as spurters despite that being a lie and they over achieved as a result of that
Setting, streaming and anti-school subcultures (Hargreaves)
setting - students are placed in different sets for each subject depending on their performance in that particular subject
streaming - students are placed in one stream for all subjects despite their performance in each individual subject
WC pupils found the value system of the school contradictory to their own progress and achievement and this frustration forms anti school subcultures that directly oppose the values the school promotes. Status and Reward can therefore be achieved through an alternative set of rules set out by an other group (Peer Group Status)
Lacey - Hightown Grammar
Differentiation - refers to the ways in which teachers categorise and differentiate between pupils based on their stereotypes about ability and appearance. Streaming and sets are a form of differentiation as well as foundation and higher tier exams
Polarisation - the way that pupils respond to differentiation and there can be two extreme responses
polarisation leads to two subcultures; the pro school subculture and the anti school subculture
the pro school subculture - associated with MC/ positive stereotypes/ positive labels/ Halos/ high sets and streams/ high status knowledge and more attention/ high expectations/ positive self fulfilling prophecy/ warmed up
the anti school subculture - associated with WC/ negative stereotypes/ negative labels/ no halos/ low sets and streams/ low status knowledge and less attention/ low expectations/ negative self fulfilling prophecy/ cooled down
Hargreaves refers to warming up as teachers motivating and encouraging students whereas referring to cooling down as alienating pupils
Ball - Beachside Comprehensive
supports Hargreaves when saying that streaming etc can be damaging for the pupils
his study suggested that as streaming phased out the polarisation forming subcultures decreased
despite this, teachers are still differentiating based on social class and it is clear to see in exam results therefore the SFP is still affective
Evaluation
the main use of interactionist theories may be the fact that it shows the education system is not neutral as cultural deprivation theorists suggest
Critiques
subcultural theories about pupils ignore the other pupil responses such as retreatism and ritualism (Woods) - pupils can go through many different responses and it is not fixed (Furlong)
Marxists say they ignore structural causes of educational under achievement such as capitalism
specialist based vocational schools have been set up to support the underachievers at academical schools
it assumes all teachers stereotype and label pupils
they assume that once a label is applied it sticks and determines the whole of the childs educational career
they are too deterministic
they ignore cultural/ material deprivation theories
they ignore factors such as gender or ethnicity
marketisation and selection policies
This is a macro level theory
1988 Education Reform Act introduced market principles into education in order to create competition amongst schools in order to raise standards
education is made up of free funding/ league tables/ parentocracy - this puts pressure on schools to act well in order to promote their schools in the tables and to gain students. Schools are therefore more likely to focus on those more 'able' in order to increase their chances in moving higher up the league tables
Gillborn and Youdell - The 'A-C economy' (Triage)
because of the pressure caused by league tables, schools have begun to use triage in order to prioritise their attention
a) those who will pass either way (MC) - less resources and time
b) border line cases (MC) - given alot of time and attention
c) hopeless cases (WC) less attention and time
Bartlett - cream skimming and silt shifting - these are implemented as schools have a higher volume of applicants due to marketisation so they can turn more away and choose more of who they want
cream skimming - selecting higher ability pupils who are more likely to succeed
silt shifting - turning those away who are more likely to be difficult and expensive to teach