Topic 2 - ethnic

CD - fathers, gangs and culture

Sewell

• black boys under achieve because of ‘tough love’, instead they turn to gangs where they get perverse loyalty and love - make role model is anti - school black masculinity

Arnot - this is the ultra tough ghetto superstar that’s reinforced by MTV and rap lyrics

• results in bad attitude to education and at risk to peer pressure from gangs

CD - Intellectual and linguistic skills

CD theorists say that children from poor black families lack intellectual stimulation and enriching experiences, making them ill-prepared for school and likely to fail

Bereiter and Engelmann say language spoken by black families does not express abstract ideas so it’s inadequate for educational success

CD - White working class families

• the study of 16k pupils found ethnic minorities aspire to go to university more that white W/C

• study of 4 W/C schools found teachers blame parental support for white W/C pupils failure, as they had no poverty markers like FSM

CD - Asian families

Sewell says Indian and Chinese pupils benefit from supportive families that place high value on education

Lupton - the adult authority in Asian families is like the ones in school where chrildrens respect to adults is expected

• this has a knock on effect to school, as Asian parents are more likely to support the behaviour policies

CD - criticisms

• Keddie says CD is victim blaming. They’re not culturally deprived just different. Schools are just biased of white culture

• Ignores the positive effects on education that ethnic minority families can have. Black Caribbean families provide a strong female role model for girls

L+T - streaming

Black pupils are more likely to be the hopeless cases in the A-C economy due to teacher stereotypes putting them into lower streams

Foster - teacher stereotypes of black pupils behaviour can also place them in lower streams than other pupils of the same ability, causing a self fulfilling prophecy and under achievement

L+T - Asian pupils

Wright - study of multi-ethnic primary school found Asian pupils are also victims of teacher labelling

• she found teachers hold ethno-centric views which would mean teachers would assume Asian pupils had poor English and leave them out of class discussions

L+T - black pupils and discipline

Gillbourne and Youdell - found teachers are quicker to discipline black pupils for the same behaviour

• this is due to racialised expectations - teachers expect black pupils to misbehave so they misinterpret their behaviour. This then means the pupil responds negatively causing further conflict

Bourne - says this explains black boys high exclusion rates. The school seems them as a threat and labels them negatively leading to exclusion

R+S - failed strategies for avoiding racism

mirza - studied ambitious black girls faced with teacher racism, finding this discouraged them from professional careers and racism

3 types of teacher racism

• colour blind (believes pupils are equal but doesn’t challenge racism)

• Liberal chauvinists (believes black pupils are CD)

• Overt racists (openly discriminates)

R+S - rejecting negative labels

Fuller - studied a group of black year 11 girls finding that they were high achievers in a school that put black girls in lower streams

• they used their anger about the low ability stereotypes as motivation

• they only conformed as far as school work, relying on their own effort instead of teachers

This shows that pupils can still succeed if they refutes to control and negative labels don’t always lead to self fulfilling prophecy

• a similar study found Asian a level students don’t always accept the negative label given to them

R+S - boys responses

Sewell

1. Rebel - most visible and influential. Reject schools rules in favour of conforming to the anti school black macho lad

2. Conformist - accept the schools goals

3. Retreatist - hated by the rebels, isolated from school

4. Innovators - pro education and anti school. Approved by rebels

PI - Archer

Archer found teachers dominant discourse (view) was that ethnic minority pupils don’t fit the stereotypical ‘ideal pupil’ identity

• ideal pupil identity - white MC with a masculine identity and natural ability

• Pathologised pupil identity - Asian, ‘deserving poor’ with a feminised identity and no natural talent

• Demonised pupil identity - black or white WC with a hyper sexualised identity. Peer led, culturally deprived and under achiever

PI - Chinese pupils

Archer argues even successful pupils can be pathologised

• Chinese pupils are praised and viewed negatively by teachers at the same time - they were successful but achieved it the ‘wrong’ way (hardworking not natural talent)

Archer and Francis call this the negative positive stereotype

• teachers stereotype Chinese families as tight/close to explain passive pupils, and would wrongly assume they were MC or that south Asian girls were oppressed by their family

IR - marketisation and segregation

Gillbourne - marketisation girls school more scope to select pupils, allowing negative stereotypes into schools admissions

Moore + DavenPort - found selection procedures discriminate against ethnic minorities

• primary school reports were used to screen out pupils with language difficulties

  Therefore we can conclude that selection causes ethnic differences in achievement by affecting the type/quality of school pupils are allowed into

IR - Institutional racism

Troyna and Williams

Discrimination that’s built into how institutions such as schools operate

IR - critical race theory

This theory sees racism as an ingrained feature of society - involving the intentional actions of individuals as well as institutional racism

IR - ‘locked-in inequality’

Roithmayr

Institutional racism is a ‘locked-in’ inequality - the history of discrimination is so borax that there’s no longer a need for conscious discrimination, inequality becomes self-perpetuating

• Gillbourne applies this to education, arguing that ethnic inequality is so large it’s almost an inevitable feature of education

IR - class, ethnicity and gender

Evans - argues we need to link these 3 things together to understand ethnic achievement differences

Connolly - study of primary school found teachers construct masculinity by ethnicity

• black boys are disruptive underachievers, responding by getting status from non academic things like sports

• Asian boys are seen as passive, conformist and academic, and were labelled immature for misbehaviour. This is due to teachers seeing them as feminine

IR - criticisms of Gillbourne

• Black boys underachievement - Sewell argues that although there’s racism in schools, it’s not powerful enough to prevent pupils from succeeding. Instead we should focus on external factors

• Model minorities - how can schools be institutionalised racists when there are ethnic minority groups that perform better than white pupils

IR - the ethnocentric curriculum

• David - the national curriculum is specifically British because it ignores literature and music that’s non European

• Ball says that the NC ignore ethnic diversity and has a ‘little Englandism’ attitude ignoring black and Asian pupils history

However, despite this Chinese and Indian pupils still perform very well

IR - assessment

Gillbourne argues the assessment game is rigged to validate white pupils superiority

Evidence - primary schools changed baseline assessments to foundation stage profiling in 2008 - all of a sudden black pupils were doing worse than white pupils

• FSM is based on teachers judgements

IR - access to opportunities

• Gifted and talented programmes - help disadvantaged pupils, but Gillbourn said whites are 5x more likely to be selected than Black Africans

• Exam tiers - found despite schools ‘aiming high’ initiative for black Caribbean pupils, they were still entered for foundation exams at GCSE’s

IR - new IQism

Gillbourne argues teachers and policy makers see potential as a fixed quality they can measure with radicalised expectations - putting ethnic minorities as low ability