Some sociologists argue that even though teachers have a professional duty to treat all pupils fairly, they often give negative labels to pupils based on the pupils social class, gender and ethnicity. Pupils may respond to these labels in a variety of ways, including forming anti-school subcultures. With covert field experiments, the real purpose of the research is not known and this may help to overcome the Hawthorne Effect. Another issue is whether a particular statement or action on the part of a teacher is actually an example pf unfairly attaching a label to a pupil. This is very much open to interpretation by researchers.

Applying material from Item A and your own knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of field experiments for the study of teachers’ labelling of pupils. [20marks]

Interpretivists prefer covert field experiments because they can gain a better insight into the group and so gain more validity. Interpretivists prefer this because they are more concerned about the reasons why teachers label.

The practical strengths of a covert field experiments is that it is likely to produce the teachers true behaviour when carried out well. This is because the experiment is covert which means the teacher is not aware of the researchers true intentions and also because it is a field experiment which means that the teacher is in their natural environment and these two reasons are likely to produce the teachers true behaviour because they will reduce the Hawthorne Effect meaning that the teacher is less likely to change their behaviour because they are unaware that they are being watched and so increases the validity. However, the presence of another adult in the class room is still likely to make the teacher change their behaviour because if the teachers impression management. An example of a covert field experiment is Rosenthal and Jacobsons study in which they selected 20% of pupils in a classroom (after the pupils were made to complete an IQ test) of the school the research took place, and had informed the teachers that the selected 20% of pupils were expected to achieve rapid intellectual development. A strength of this covert field experiment is that it was reliable due to the pupils being told to complete an IQ test which is easily repeatable. However, a criticism of this is that they had deceived the teachers and they had also likely tampered with the educational development and progression of the 80% of the pupils who were not chosen as the teachers didn't pay as much attention to them as they did to the 20% of the pupils that were chosen.

A practical weaknesses of covert field experiments is time an money. In Rosenthal and Jacobsons study, they had to wait a year and then return to the school to collect the results of the study. This means that their study had effectively taken a year to complete and so is very time consuming. Covert field experiments also produce qualitative data which could mean that although interpretivists prefer this, it is very difficult to quantify and so difficult to analyse. Covert field experiments also require the correct personal skills that are needed in order to do the experiment covertly as the teachers would need to believe what the researcher tells them that they are therefore so the experiment can be carried out covertly and their cover is not blown. A third practical weakness is access to the school as the school is not likely to give access to a researcher as the school does not want their image to be damaged if the findings show proof of labelling and were published and so therefore lacks representativeness.

Ethical issues of covert filed experiments are that there is no informed consent from the teachers due to the field experiment being covert. On top of this, due to the field experiment being covert, the researcher would have deceived the teachers in the experiment about the true intentions of the research. There also may have been harm to participants, the participants being the pupils, as for example in Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study, pupils who were lacking reading skills may have felt embarrassed if they could not understand the questions on the IQ test. However, an ethical strength is confidentiality, as the researcher can make the findings of the study confidential, and if this happens, then this prevents damage to the teachers careers and the schools image.

To conclude, based on the evidence, there are far more weaknesses than strengths for using covert field experiments to study teachers’ labelling of pupils as it proves to be ethically problematic. Instead, it would be better to pair this experiment with a questionnaire to back up the evidence.