Language

Feinstein

• Educated parents communicate in ways that challenge their children to self-evaluate their understanding

Hubbs-Tait et al.

• This then leads to better cognitive performance

• Educated parents praise their children, allowing them to develop a better sense of their own competence

• Lower-qualified (often w/c) parents do not do this and so their children perform worse than children with educated parents

‘Better’ language used leads to ‘better’ language acquired which results in educational success.

Bereiter and Engelmann

• W/c pupils are language deficient as they communicate through gestures, single words and disjointed phrases, which limits their ability to express complex ideas and engage in detailed discussions, ultimately hindering their academic performance

Bernstein

• Speech codes

• Restricted (w/c)

  • Limited vocabulary

  • Short, unfinished, grammatically simple sentences

  • Predictable

  • Gestures

  • Context-bound (speaker assumes the listener shares the same set of experiences)

• Elaborated (m/c):

  • Wider vocab

  • Longer, more grammatically complex sentences

  • Varied

  • Communicates abstract ideas

  • Context-free

• Elaborated code favoured by schools and used by teachers, textbooks and exams, taken as the ‘correct’ way to speak and write

  • Seen as more effective for analysing, reasoning and expressing thoughts more clearly

• M/c students socialised in elaborated code, feel at home at school and therefore succeed