Pupil Subcultures

What is a pupil subculture?

A group of pupils who share similar values and behaviour patterns.

How do pupil subcultures usually emerge?

As a response to the way pupils have been labelled, and in particular as a reaction to streaming.

What can Lacey’s concepts of differentiation and polarisation explain?

How pupil subcultures develop:

• Differentiation

• Polarisation

What is differentiation?

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

How is streaming a form of differentiation?

It categorises pupils into separate classes. Those that the school deems ‘more able‘ are given high status by being placed in a high stream and those deemed ‘less able‘ and placed in low streams are given an inferior status.

What is polarisation?

The process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one or two opposite ‘poles‘ or extremes.

In Lacey’s study of Hightown boys’ grammar school, what did he find?

Streaming polarised boys into a pro-school and an anti-school subculture.

What do pupils placed in higher streams (who are largely middle-class) tend to remain?

Committed to the values of the school. They gain their status in the approved manner, through academic success. Their values are those of the school:they tend to form a pro-school subculture.

What do those placed in lower streams (who tend to be working-class) suffer?

A lack of self-esteem: the school has undermined their self-worth by placing them in a position of inferior status. This label of failure pushes them to search for alternative ways of gaining status. This usually involved inverting the school’s values of hard work, obedience and punctuality.

What did Lacey say about the anti-school subculture?

‘A boy who does badly academically is predisposed to criticise, reject or even sabotage the system where he can, since it places him in an inferior position.‘

What do such pupils form an anti-school subculture as a means of?

Gaining status among their peers, for example by cheeking a teacher, truanting, not doing homework, smoking, etc.

Although joining an antischool subculture may solve the problem of lack of status, what does it create?

Further problems for such pupils, as Lacey says:

‘The boy who takes refuge in such a group because his work is poor finds that the group commits him to a behaviour pattern which means that his work will stay poor- and in fact often gets progressively worse‘ - it is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of educational failure.

What did Hargreaves find?

A similar response to labelling and streaming in a secondary modern school. From the POV of the education system, boys in the lower streams were triple failures: they had failed their 11+ exam; they had been placed in lower streams and had been labelled as ‘worthless louts‘.

One solution to this status problem was for these pupils to seek each other and form a group within which high status went to those who flouted the school’s rules. In this way, they formed a delinquent subculture that helped to guarantee their educational failure.

What did Ball find?

That when the school abolished banding (a type of streaming), the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of the anti-school subculture declined.

In Ball’s study, while polarisation all but disappeared, what remained?

Differentiation continued. Teachers continued to categorise pupils differently and were more likely to label middle-class pupils as cooperative and able. This positive labelling was reflected in their better exam results, suggesting that a self-fulfilling prophecy had occurred.

What did Ball’s study show?

That class inequalities can continue as a result of teachers’ labelling, even without the effects of subcultures or streaming.

Since Ball’s study and especially the Education Reform act of 1988, what has there been a trend towards?

More streaming and towards a variety of types of school, some of which have a more academic curriculum than others.

This has created new opportunities for schools and teachers to differentiate between pupils on the basis of their class, ethnicity or gender and treat them unequally, as studies such as Gillborn and Youdel show.

What are pro and antischool subcultures two possible responses to, and what does Woods argue?

Labelling and streaming, however Woods argues other responses are possible.

What are the other responses to labelling and streaming as argued by Woods?

• Ingratiation.

• Ritualism.

• Retreatism.

• Rebellion.

What is ingratiation?

Being the ‘teacher’s pet‘.

What is ritualism?

Going through the motions and staying out of trouble.

What is retreatism?

Daydreaming and mucking about.

What is rebellion?

Outright rejection of everything the school stands for.

What did Furlong observe?

That many pupils are not committed permanently to any one response (to labelling and streaming), but may move between different types of response, acting differently in lessons with different teachers.

What are the studies of internal educational factors useful in?

Showing that schools are not neutral or fair institutions, as cultural deprivation theorists assume.

On the contrary, what can the interactions within schools actively create?

Social class inequalities.

What has labelling theory been accused of?

Determinism: it assumes that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy and will inevitably fail. However, studies such as Fuller’s show that this is not always true.

What do Marxists criticise labelling theory for?

Ignoring the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place. Labelling theory tends to blame teachers for labelling pupils but fails to explain why they do so.

What else do Marxists argue?

That labels are not merely the result of teachers’ individual prejudices, but stem from the fact that teacher’s work in a system that reproduces class divisions.