Internal
Labelling
To label = to attach a meaning or definition to them
Teachers often attach such labels regardless of the pupil’s actual ability or attitude - INSTEAD they label them on the basis of stereotyped assumptions about their class background, labelling w/c pupils negatively & m/c positively
Becker = interviews of 60 high school teachers
Found that they judged pupils according to how they fit the image of the ‘ideal pupil’
Their work, conduct & appearance were key factors influencing teacher’s judgements - saw m/c pupils as the closest to the ideal
Hempel Johnson = the notion of the ideal pupil vary according to the social class make-up of the school =
Largely w/c primary school (where discipline was a major problem) = the ideal pupil was defined as quiet, passive & obedient →defined in terms of their behaviour, not ability
Largely m/c primary school had very few discipline problems = ideal pupil defined in terms of personality & academic ability
Labelling in secondary schools
Dunne & Gazeley = argue that ‘schools persistently produce w/c underachievement’ because of the labels & assumptions of teachers
Teachers normalised the underachievement of w/c pupils & felt they could do little to overcome it
MAJOR REASON = the differences in teachers’ belief in the role of pupil’s home background = labelled w/c parents as uninterested in their children’s education (opposite for m/c)
Led to class differences in how teachers dealt w/ pupils they perceived as underachieving - e.g setting extension work for underachieving m/c but entering underachieving w/c in easier exams
Teachers underestimate w/c potential - those doing well seen as ‘overachieving’
Labelling in primary school
Ray Rists = found that the teacher used as info about children’s home background & appearance to place them in separate groups, seating each group at a different table
Fast learners (usually m/c) = tigers → seated the closest to her so they can receive the best encouragement
‘Cardinals’ & ‘clowns’ - usually w/c →seated furthest away & given lower level books to read & fewer chances to show their ability
The self-fulfilling prophecy
Self fulfilling prophecy = a prediction that comes true simply by virtue of it having been made
Interactionalists argue that labelling can affect pupils’ achievement by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy
Step by step process include =
The teacher labels a pupil & on the basis of this label, makes predictions about them
The teacher treats the pupil accordingly, acting as if the prediction is true
The pupil internalises the teacher’s expectations which becomes part of his self-image
Teacher’s expectations
Rosenthal & Jacobson = told a school they had a new test designed to identify pupils who would ‘spurt’ ahead - was untrue (test was a simple IQ test)
Teachers believed what they were told
Tested all pupils & picked 20% of them at random - told the teachers these children were ‘spurters’ →almost ½ of them had made significant progress
Teacher’s belief about the pupil had been influenced by the “test result”
Teachers had conveyed this belief through the way they interacted w/ them → e.g body lan & amount of attention & encouragement they gave them
Demonstrates that people will believe to be true will have real effects - even if not the belief originally
Can produce underachievement
Streaming
Involves separating children into different ability groups/ classes
Each ability group is taught separately from the others for all subjects
Self fulfilling prophecy = more likely to happen when children are streamed
Becker = teachers don’t see the w/c children as ideal pupils
Tend to see them lacking ability & low expectations of them
w/c children more likely to be placed in a lower stream
Usually difficult to move up to a higher stream - more or less locked into the teacher’s expectations of them - children see that they are viewed as ‘no-hopers’
Creates a self fulfilling prophecy in which pupils live up to their teacher’s low expectations by underachieving
Douglas = found that children place in the lower stream at 8 had suffered a decline in their IQ by 11
m/c pupils placed in top streams
They have a more positive self-concept, gain confidence, work harder & improve their grades
Children place in higher stream at 8 had improved their IQ by 11
Streaming and the A-to-C economy
Gillborn & Youdell = found that teachers are less likely to see w/c pupils as having ability
These pupils are placed in lower streams & entered for lower-tier exams
Denies them the knowledge & opportunity to gain good grades & widens the class gap in achievement
They link streaming to publishing the exam league tables - ranking schools based on their performance
Schools needed to achieve a good league table position to attract pupils & funding
Creates an A-to-C economy = a system in which schools focus their time, effort & resources on the pupils they see as having the potential to get 5 grade Cs (and above)
Educational triage
G&Y= call this process ‘educational triage’ - schools categorise pupils into 3 categories =
Those who will pass anyway & can be left to get on w/ it
Those w/ potential, who will be helped to get a grade C or better
Those who are doomed to fail
w/c are likely to be labelled as ‘hopeless cases’ →produces a self-fulfilling prophecy & failure
The need to gain a good league table position drives education triage - becomes the basis for streaming, where teacher’s beliefs about the lack of ability of w/c pupils are used to segregate them into lower streams or sets → they receive less attention, support & resources
Schools operate within a wider educational system whose ‘marketisation’ policies directly affect these micro level processes to produce class differences in achievement
Pupil subcultures
Pupil subcultures = a group of pupils who share similar values & behaviour patterns
Often emerge as a response to the way pupils have been labelled & in particular as a reaction to streaming
Colin Lacey = concepts of differentiation & polarisation to explain how pupil subcultures develop:
Differentiation = the process of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability , attitude and/or behaviour
Streaming is a form of differentiation, since it categorises pupils into separate classes
Those that the school deems ‘more able’ are given high status by being placed in a high stream, whereas those deemed ‘less able’ & placed in low streams are given an inferior status
Polarisation = the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards 1 of 2 opposite ‘poles’ or extremes
The pro-school subculture
Pupils placed in high streams (largely m/c) tend to remain committed to the values of school
They gained their status in the approved manner, through academic success - their values are of those of the school : they tend to form a pro-school subculture
The anti-school subculture
Those place in low streams (w/c) suffer a loss of self-esteem : the school had undermined their self-worth by placing them in a position of inferior status
Label of failure pushes them to search for alternative ways of gaining status - usually involves inverting the school’s values of hard work, obedience & punctuality
Lacey = boys are predisposed to criticise, reject or sabotage the system where he can - it places him in an inferior position
Some pupils form an anti-school subculture as a means of gaining status among their peers - e.g by cheeking a teacher, truanting, not doing h/w, smoking ect
HOWEVER - joining an anti-school subculture is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of educational failure
David Hargreaves = found a similar response to labelling & streaming in a secondary modern school
Boys in the lower stream were triple failures - failed their 11+ exam, placed in low streams & labelled ‘worthless louts’
One solution to status problem = these pupils seek each other out & form a groups within which high status went to those who flouted the school rules
They formed a delinquent subculture
Abolishing streaming
Stephen Ball = takes the analysis a step further in his study of Beachside - a comprehensive that was in the process of abolishing banding in favour of teaching mixed-ability
Found that when the school abolished banding, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed & the influence of the anti-school subculture declined
HOWEVER - teachers continued to categorise pupils differently & were more likely to label m/c pupils
Positive labelling reflected in better exam results, suggesting that a self-fulfilling prophecy had occurred - shows that class inequalities can continue as a result of teacher’s labelling, even w/o the effect of subcultures
Since education reform act 1988 - trend towards more streaming & variety of types of schools, some of which have a more academic curriculum than others
Created new opportunities for schools & teachers to differentiate between pupils on the basis of their class, ethnicity & gender
The variety of pupil responses
Peter Woods = argues other responses are possible other than the pro & anti school subcultures, include :
Ingratiation = being the teacher’s pet
Ritualism = going through the motions & staying out of trouble
Retreatism = daydreaming and mucking about
Rebellion = outright rejection of everything the school stands for
John Furlong = many pupils are not committed permanently to any one response, but may move between different types of response, acting differently in lessons w/ different teachers
Criticism of labelling theory
Useful in showing that schools are not neutral or fair institutions as cultural deprivation theorists assume
Accessed of determinism - assumes that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy
Ignores the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place
Tends to blame teachers for labelling but fails to explain why
Marxist argue that ;labels are not the result of teacher’s individual prejudices but stem from the fact that teachers work in a system that reproduce class divisions
Pupils’ class identities and the school
Habitus
Bourdieu = concept of habitus
Habitus = refers to the ‘dispositions’ or learned, taken for granted ways of thinking, being & acting that are shared by a particular social class
Includes their taste & preferences about lifestyles & consumptions, their outlook on life & expectations about what is normal or realistic for ‘people like us’
m/c has the power to define their habitus as superior & impose it on the education system
Cultural capital - m/c habitus will give the m/c an advantage
Symbolic capital and symbolic violence
Schools have m/c habitus - pupils who have been socialised at home into m/c values gain ‘symbolic capital’ - status or recognition from the school
School devalues w/c habitus - symbolic violence
SV would reproduce the class structure & keep the w/c ‘in their place’
There is a clash between w/c & m/c habitus →w/c students may experience the world of education as alien & unnatural
Archer = w/c pupils felt that to be educationally successful, they would have to change how they talked & presented themselves
w/c students experience of education is often a process of losing their self
Nike identities
Symbolic violence leads them to seek alternative ways of creating self worth, status & value - used branded clothing to create a sense of identity
Wearing branded clothes was seen as a way of being me - pupils identities were also strongly gendered e.g girls adopted a hyper-hetrosexual feminine style (heavily influenced by peer groups)
The right appearance earned symbolic capital & approved from peer groups & safety from bullying
Led to conflict w/ the school’s dress code
Archer = schools m/c habitus stigmatises w/c identities
Pupils’ performance of style are a struggle for recognition = while m/c see their nike identities as tasteless to the young people they are a means of generating symbolic capital
Nike styles also play a part in w/c pupils’ rejection of higher education - seen as both unrealistic & undesirable =
Unrealistic = it was for people ‘not like us’ but for the rich, posh, clever people - seen as unaffordable & risky investment
Undesirable = it would not suit their preferred lifestyles or habitus - e.g they did not want to live on a student loan because it wouldn’t be able to afford the street styles
Argues w/c pupils’ investments is not only cause of their educational marginalisation by the school - also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle
May choose to self-eliminate themselves from education
Working class identity and educational success
Nicola Ingram = 2 groups of w/c catholic boys from highly deprived neighbourhoods
One groups had passed their 11+ exam and gone to grammar - other didn’t
Found that w/c identity was inseparable from belonging to w/c locality - neighbourhood networks of family & friends were a key part of their habitus & gave them intense feeling of belonging
Street culture & branded sportswear were a key part of their identity
The boys experienced a great pressure to fit in - experienced tensions w/ the grammar school boys
‘The choice is between unworthiness at school for wearing certain clothes & worthlessness at home or not
Class identity & self-exclusion
There is a clash between w/c identity & the habitus of higher education as a barrier to success - partly due to process of self exclusion
Sarah evans = study of 21 w/c girls from south london studying their a levels
They were reluctant to apply to elite uni & those who did apply felt a sense of hidden barriers & of not fitting in
Also found that girls had a strong attachment to their locality - 4 out of 21 girls intended to move away
Reay et al = self exclusion from elite or distant uni narrows the options of many w/c pupils & limits their success
Bourdeiu = many w/c people think of places like oxbridge as being ‘not for the like of us’ - feeling comes from their habitus
Includes beliefs about what opportunities really exist for them & whether they would fit in
This thinking becomes part of their identity & leads w/c excluding themselves
The relationship between internal & external factors
w/c pupils habitus & identities formed outside school may conflict w/ the school’s m/c habitus, resulting in symbolic violence
w/c pupils using the restricted speech code may be labelled by teachers
Dunne & Gazeley = show an internal factor - what teachers believe about w/c backgrounds - actually produces underachievement
Poverty may lead to bullying & stigmatisation
Wider external factors outside school may affect processes within it