Social Class and Differential Educational Achievement

Fill-in-the-blank practice flashcards covering sociological theories of differential educational achievement by social class, including outside-school factors (cultural deprivation, material deprivation, cultural capital) and inside-school factors (labelling, banding, counter-school cultures).

Educational underachievement occurs when a pupil's academic performance is __________ than others.

significantly lower

The two main theoretical categories explaining class differences in achievement are factors inside school and factors __________ school.

outside

Cultural deprivation is defined as a lack of values, norms, attitudes, skills, and knowledge needed for __________.

educational success

Cultural deprivation theorists identify three aspects of deprivation: language, attitudes and values, and __________ development.

intellectual

JWB Douglas argues that working class parents are less likely to __________ to their children or engage in other educational activities in the home.

read

According to Bernstein, the speech code that is grammatically simple and context bound is the __________ code.

restricted

Bernstein describes the elaborate code as context __________ because the speaker does not assume shared experiences and spells out meanings explicitly.

free

Bernstein argues that working class pupils struggle academically because schools predominantly use the __________ code.

elaborate

According to JWB Douglas, the single most important factor affecting educational achievement is the level of __________.

parental interest

Sugarman identifies four key features of working class subculture: fatalism, collectivism, immediate gratification, and __________ orientation.

present time

In Sugarman's framework, a belief in 'whatever will be will be' and that one cannot change their status is known as __________.

fatalism

Unlike working class immediate gratification, middle class culture values __________ gratification, which involves making sacrifices now for greater future rewards.

deferred

Critics of Douglas argue that working class parents attend fewer school visits due to job demands or feeling made to feel __________ by middle class teachers.

socially inferior

Bourdieu argues that working class pupils fail because they are culturally __________ rather than culturally deprived.

disadvantaged

The knowledge, tastes, values, and attitudes of middle class pupils that provide an advantage in the education system are defined as __________ capital.

cultural

Bourdieu uses the term __________ to refer to the learned, taken-for-granted ways of thinking, being, and acting shared by a particular social class.

habitus

Critics view cultural deprivation theory as a __________ explanation because it blames working class pupils for failure rather than the school system.

victim blaming

Mortimore argues that __________ deprivation, meaning a lack of material necessities like adequate housing or income, is the primary cause of underachievement.

material

Ball et al. identify three types of capital possessed by the middle class: cultural capital, social capital, and __________ capital.

economic

In interactionist theory, the process of attaching a meaning or definition to a pupil is called __________.

labelling

Becker demonstrated that teachers label pupils on the basis of stereotypical class assumptions rather than their actual __________.

ability

When a pupil internalises a teacher's expectation into their self-image and acts accordingly, it results in a __________ prophecy.

self fulfilling

In Ball's study at Beachside Comprehensive, pupils whose fathers were __________ class had the highest chance of being placed in the top band.

middle

Stephen Ball observed that lower-band pupils developed __________ subcultures in response to negative labelling.

anti school

In the study Learning to Labour, Willis researched a group of $12$ working class boys known as '__________'.

the lads

In Willis's study, 'the lads' bullied conformist pupils who followed school rules, calling them '__________'.

ear-oles

Willis concluded that working class boys chose to fail because they recognized education was irrelevant for factory jobs and saw through the '__________ myth'.

meritocratic