2.2.1 Social Class: Internal factors

Social Class Differences in Educational Achievement

• Educational achievement differs between certain groups of people. Sociologists have identified 3 factors that account for the differences: social class, gender and ethnicity.

Differences

• Differences in achievement between pupils of different social classes can be divided into those that are:

  • External of the school environment.

  • Internal (or within) the school.

External influences

• External influences include:

  • Material factors (poverty, home circumstances, and catchment area).

  • Cultural factors, including the parental level of education and attitudes towards education, language use and lack of cultural capital.

Internal influences

• Internal influences include:

  • Teacher evaluations

  • Stereotyping

  • Streaming and labelling

  • The self-fulfilling prophecy

  • Subcultures

Factors that affect educational achievement:

1. Social class

2. Gender

3. Ethnicity

Examples of external influences of educational achievement:

Cultural factors → E.g. parental level of education and attitudes towards education, language use and lack of cultural capital.

Material factors → E.g. poverty, home circumstances and catchment area.

Differences in Achievement: Social Class (Internal Factors)

• Differences in achievement between pupils of different social classes can be divided into: external of the school environment and internal (or within) the school.

⟹ Becker and Keddie (1971)

• Keddie applied the idea of labelling (developed by Becker) when looking at the operation of streaming in schools.

• She found that teachers label children from middle class backgrounds as ‘ideal pupils’ and, they tended to be treated more favourably than working class pupils.

Differences in Achievement: Social Class (Internal Factors)

Impacts of labelling

• Positive labelling resulted in middle-class children being more likely to be put into the higher streams where teachers tended to have higher expectations of the students.

• The working class students in the lower streams were treated more negatively and have higher level knowledge withheld from them.

Differences in Achievement: Social Class (Internal Factors)

⇒ Ball (1981)

• Ball (1981) found that there was a strong correlation between the bands that students were placed in schools and the occupational backgrounds of their parents. That is, students with parents who had middle class occupations were placed in the higher bands whereas children from whose parents had working class jobs were in the lower bands.

Link to teachers

• ⇒ Ball linked this situation to the process of positive and negative labelling by teachers - teachers have higher expectations of children in the higher bands and streams which resulted in a self fulfilling prophecy and differential educational achievement.

Differences in Achievement: Social Class (Internal Factors)

Woods (1983)

• Woods (1983) identifies ways in which pupils may ‘adapt’ to their schooling environment.

• E.g. Woods argues that some pupils adopt positive adaptations whereby they accept the school aims for academic success. He labels such an adaptation as ‘ingratiation’ whereby students seek to ingratiate themselves with their teachers as fully as possible, whereas other students may opt for ‘compliance’ which isn’t as strong an adaptation but reflects a degree of conformity.

Woods: 'rebellion'

• A more negative adaptation that Woods identified is ‘rebellion’, whereby students openly reject the goals of the school and the means as to how to achieve these and this culminates in an anti-school culture.

• Woods generalised that pupil adaptations could be linked to class in that working class pupils adopt negative non-conformist adaptations whereas middle class pupils were positive and more conformist.

What did Ball (1981) find a strong correlation between?

• The bonds that students were placed in schools

• The occupational backgrounds of students parents

A school adaptation that Woods (1983) identified?

• Compliance

• Ingratiation

• Rebellion