Sociology revision Education School factors [Cultural:] • Labelling theory / self-fulfilling prophecy • Streaming / Banding / Setting • Class, gender, ethnic background • Formal Curriculum (middle class knowledge) • Hidden curriculum • Anti-school subcultures (Male: Willis / Female: Lees) • Language and textbooks (anti-female / black bias) • Gender relationships (teacher -pupil / pupil-pupil) • Gendered curriculum (patriarchal) • Teacher expectations, attitudes and behaviour (Nash) • Single / Dual sex schooling • Examination and skill changes (GCSE, A-level, Coursework) • Changing attitudes to / expectations of work (males and females)
Functionalist approach to education

Meritocracy- System where people are rewarded on the basis of ability and talent

1. Socialisation- education helps to maintain society by socializing young people into the norms and values. Durkheim argued that education was promoting individualism and that it could lead to social solidarity ( a state with of lack of shared norms) 2. Parsons suggested that educations form a bridge between the family and the wider society by socializing children to adapt a meritocratic view. 3. Davis and Moore – role allocation, Education allocates people to the most appropriate job for their talents 4. Skills provision- education teaches the skills requires by the modern industrial society. 5. Durkheim says that education passes on norms and values in order to integrate individuals into society and helps to create social order.

Marxist approach to education

1. Education is seen as an important part of the superstructure of society 2. It reproduces the inequalities and social relations of production in capitalist society 3. It serves to legitimate these inequalities through the myth of meritocracy 4. Althusser(1971) says that the main role of education is to transmit ISA values( Ruling class or capitalist) disguised as common values 5. Ramsay (1983) claimed that knowledge is being used as a form of social control and there is a hidden curriculum to keep w/c and ethnic minorities in place. 6. Bourdieu (1977) Symbolic violence where the w/c are effectively duped in to accepting their failure and limited social mobility. Their cultural attributes are rejected, because the system is defined and is for m/c who succeed by default. 7. Illich a radical Marxist wants to get rid of school completely

Bowles and Gintis (1976) argue that education serves to reproduce directly the capitalist relations of production- the hierarchy of workers from the boss down. B and G correspondence theory suggests that what goes on in school corresponds directly to the world of work. They express success is not entirely related to intellectual ability but the ability to conform and rise above those who challenge the system.

Criticisms

- Failure to recognize correspondence between schools and the needs of the economy in terms of the formal curriculum - Reynolds (1984) claims the curriculum does not seem designed to teach either skills needed by employers. - Employers are highly critical for the low level of employability skills possessed by graduates and school leavers. - Willis (1977) learned to behave in a way that didn’t fit in with capitalism’s need for a docile workforce. Willis however supported the principle that schools reproduce the relations of production by showing that the boys in the antischool subculture shared a similar outlook to the workers in the factories they were likely to end up in.

New right approach to education - Believe that education should socialise pupils into shared values such as competition, and to instil a sense of national identity - Want to create an education market they believe that competition between schools and the laws of supply and demand will empower the consumers, bringing greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools and increasing their ability to meet the needs of pupils, parents and employers -

Class and educational achievement 1. Cultural deprivation 2. Cultural capital 3. Material deprivation

Cultural deprivation

Intellectual development - Many w/c homes lack the books, educational toys and activities that would stimulate a child’s intellectual development - Douglas (1964) found that w/c pupils scored lower on tests of ability than w/c pupils. He argued that this is because w/c parents are less likely to support their children’s intellectual development through reading with them or other educational activities at home. - Bernstein and Young (1967) reached similar conclusions. They found that the way mothers think about and choose toys has an influence on their children’s intellectual development. M/c mothers are more likely to choose toys that encourage thinking and prepare children for schools.

Language - Bernstein (1975) speech codes restricted and elaborated code - Differences in speech codes give m/c pupils an advantage because elaborated code is the language used by teachers, textbooks and exams - Bereiter and Engelmann (1966) claim that the language used in lower class homes is deficient

Attitudes and values - Douglas found that w/c parents placed less value on education, were less ambitious for their children and gave them less encouragement. - Feinstein (1998) found that working class parent’s lack of interest was the main reason for their children’s underachievement and was even more important than financial hardship or factors in school - Hyman (1967) argues that the values and beliefs of w/c subcultures are a self imposed barrier to educational and career success. They believe they have less opportunity for individual advancement so see no point in education. - Sugarman (1970) argues that w/c subculture has 4 key features - Fatalism- a believe in fate - Collectivism- valuing being part of a group more than succeeding as an individual contrast with m/c - Immediate gratification- seeking pleasure now rather than making sacrifices in order to get rewards in the future. By contrasts m/c values emphasise deferred gratification. - Present-time orientation- seeing the present more important than the future and so not having long term goals.

Cultural capital

- Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) suggested that m/c cultural capital is as valuable as material wealth. The forms of knowledge, values, ways of interacting that m/c pupils possess are developed further and rewarded by the education system. - Bourdieu (1984) argues both cultural and material factors contribute to educational achievement and are interrelated. - Ball et al 3 types of parents privileged/skilled choosers m/c who use their economic and cultural capital to select the best schools. Semi-skilled choosers are mainly w/c but were ambitious for their child. Disconnected chooser w/c parents whose choices were restricted by lack of economic and cultural capital. - Sullivan (2001) tested Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital. She carried out a survey research of children nearing school leaving age in 4 school sin England and received questionnaire data from 465 pupils. Occupations of parents were used to determine class, parent’s education qualifications used to measure cultural capital. Pupils were asked about what book they read, TV programmes they watches etc. The research then examined which of these factors affected Ed performance in GCSEs. Sullivan found they were more likely to be successful if they read more e complex fiction, documentaries and watching more sophisticated drama. - Gerwitz (1995) study of class differences in parental choice of secondary school. Her study of 14 London schools is based on interviews with teachers and parents using documents. She uses Bourdieu’s idea to explain her findings and found that differences in economic and cultural capital lead to class differences In how far parents can exercise choice of secondary schools - Whitty (1998) notes marketisation has not led to more opportunities for w/c children, instead allowed m/c to use their wealth and knowledge even more than before.

Material deprivation - Poverty is closely linked to educational underachievement e.g. in 2006 33% of children receiving FSM gained 5 or more GCSEs at A*-C against 61% who were not. - Flaherty (2004) money problems in the family were a significant factor in younger children’s attendance at school - Nearly 90% of failing schools are located in deprived areas - Halsey 1980 found that the most important factor preventing working class was lack of financial support. - Douglas 1964 found that children in unsatisfactory living conditions didn’t do very well in ability tests compared to other pupils from more comfortable homes.

Housing - Overcrowding can make it harder for the child to study. It means less room for educational activities, nowhere to do homework, disturbed sleep from sharing beds/bedrooms - Poor, damp housing can affect the child’s health making them ill leading to a low attendance and the child falling behind

Diet and health - Howard (2001) notes that young people from poorer homes have lower intake of energy, vitamins and minerals. Poor nutrition affects health e.g. weaker immune system - According to Wilkinson (1996) among 10 year olds, the lower the social class, the higher the rte of hyperactivity, anxiety and conduct disorders, all which have a negative effect on a child’s education

Financial support and cost of education - Tanner et al (2003) found that the cost of items such as transport, uniforms, books, computers, stationery, and music and art equipment places a heavy burden on poorer families. As a result, poor children have to make do with second hand and cheaper unfashionable equipment which can harm the child’s self esteem making them an easy target for bullying. - Ridge found that people in poverty take on jobs such as baby sitting, cleaning and paper rounds and this has a negative impact on school work

EMA - offset the need for older students to work part time - to support parents by removing the need for hem to pay for their child’s travel

Class and educational achievement- inschool factors
Labelling- Interactionist’s explanations of the influence of school

- Labelling theories suggest that teacher’s judge pupils by theory characteristics of class, gender and ethnicity - Becker (1971) showed how teachers perceive the ideal pupil to be the one who conforms to m/c standards. - Ball (1981) in his study of beachside comprehensive argued that the same effects can be observes in whole groups. Pupils at this school were put into three bands. Ball argues that all students entered the school eager to learn but die to the effect of the teacher’s attitudes and expectations, band 1 warmed to Ed and did well whereas band 2 and 3 cooled down and underachieved. - Rist studied at an American kindergarten found that early on in the children’s start in the school they were put into settings. They found at that the teachers set them according to appearance and family background. - Cicourel and Kibuse studied decisions of counsellors in a American high school. Found that counsellor’s classifications were influenced by non academic factors such as posture, manner of speech, slang, walk and clothes. - Rosenthal and Jacobson studied at an elementary school took a random sample of pupils and tested their IQ at the beginning of the experiment and told the teachers that they would show a rapid intelligent growth. After 1 year they were retested and found that they showed a greater change claiming that teacher’s expectations can greatly affect the pupils performance - Hargreaves 3 stages of classification, speculation phase a theory about what sort of child they are, elaboration phase prediction is confirmed or rejected, stabilisation teacher fells they know the pupil. - Keddie looked at the operation of streaming in a large London comprehensive school studied in which knowledge was evaluated and classified and found out that teachers and students had different definitions - Fuller showed that all pupils live up to their label. Study of a group of black girls in a London comprehensive school. Fuller 1984 found that the girls resent their negative labels and they developed a preschool subculture rejecting their self fulfilling prophecy

Limitations of labelling - Marxists also criticise labelling theory for ignoring wider structures of power within which labelling takes place. - Marxists argue that labels are not merely the result of teachers’ individual prejudices but stem from the fact that teachers work in a system that produces class divisions

Pupil subcultures Lacey’s (1970) concepts of differentiation and polarisation to explain how pupil subcultures develop: - Differentiation of teachers categorising pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and/or behaviour - Polarisation- Is the process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one of the two extremes
The preschool subculture - Pupils placed in high streams which are largely m/c tend to remain committed to the values of the school. They gain status in the approved manner, through academic success. Their values are those of the school: they tend to form a preschool subculture

The antischool subculture - Lacey found those place in lower streams who tended to be w/c suffer a loss of self esteem. - This label of failure pushes them to search for alternative ways of gaining statues. This usually involves inverting the school’s values of hard work, obedience and punctuality. - Such pupils form an anti school subculture as a means of gaining status among peers. - Joining an anti school subculture is likely to become a self fulfilling prophecy of educational failure.

Variety of pupil responses
Woods (1979) argues other responses as well as anti and pro school subcultures are also possible such as - Ingratiation: being teacher’s pet - Ritualism: going through the motions and staying out of trouble - Retreatism: daydreaming and mucking about - Rebellion: outright rejection of everything the school stands for.

The A-C economy - Gillborn and Youdell call the publishing league tables the A-C economy. This is a system in which schools ration their time, effort and resources, concentrating on those pupils they perceive as having the potential to get 5 A*-C at GCSE to boost the school’s league table position - Schools categorise pupils into those who will pass anyway, those with potential and hopeless cases. - Teachers do this by using notions of ability in which w/c are labelled as lacking ability. As a result it leads to a self- fulfilling prophecy and failure.

Competition and selection - Marketisation also explains why schools are under pressure to select more able, largely m/c pupils who will gain the school a higher ranking in the league tables - Those with good league tables will then further attract m/c pupils or able pupils and will further improve the school’s results, making it more popular thus increasing funding. - Unpopular schools are obliged to take less able or difficult pupils so their results worsen, becoming less popular and their funding is reduced - These pressures have resulted in increased social class segregation between schools. - Bartlett (1993) argues that marketisation leads to popular schools: - Cram skimming- selecting higher ability pupils who gain the best results and cost less to teach - Silt shifting- off loading pupils wit learning difficulties that are expensive to teach and get poor results.

Ethnicity and educational achievement
Intellectual and linguistic skills - Language is a problem, many AC speak a different dialect of English this may cause problems in schoolwork and communicating with teachers leading to a disadvantage at school - Bowker (1968) identifies their lack of standard English as a major barrier to progress in education and integration into wider society. - However Mirza (2000) note that Indian pupils do very well despite often not having English as their home language
Family structure
According to report by Babb et al (2004) children who are most likely to be low educational achievers in England are

- Male - From a low socio-economic background - With parents who have low or no qualifications - Living in a single parent household - Having many siblings - Attending a state school - Attending a school with a high rate of FSM

- Children of Indian, Chinese and African-Asian origin do very well within the ed system. There is a strong emphasis on self improvement through ed in these cultures - Moynihan (1965) argues that because many black families are headed by a lone mother, their children are deprived of adequate care because she has to struggle financially in the absence of the male breadwinner. The father’s absence also means that boy lack an adequate role model of male achievement. - Scruton (1986) sees the low achievement levels of some ethnic minorities as resulting to embrace mainstream British culture. - Murray (1984) argues that a high rate of lone parenthood and a lack of a positive male role model - Strand (2007) focuses on 2 ethnic groups- Indian pupils widen the gap by achieving higher than their white peers, whereas African-Caribbean pupils do so by achieving less progress.
According to Strand Indian’s pupils relative progress can be explained by positive factors such as - High parental and pupil educational aspirations - Undertaking high levels of homework - Low levels of truanting, exclusion or social service/EWS involvement - High resource provision at home (private tutors and computers) - High parental monitoring of their children’s whereabouts.

Material deprivation and class
- Ethnic minorities are more likely to come from a w/c backgrounds this mean they do not share the m/c class values of the school institution.
- African- Caribbean on average experience greater poverty (FSM), are more likely to live in rented accommodation, attend schools that are more deprived

In school factors for ethnic minority

- Gillborn (1990) found that AC pupils were more likely to be given detentions. This was because or teacher misinterpretation of speech of Ac pupils - Sewell (1996) claimed that many teachers were fearful of black boys in school as the result of stereotypical assumptions - Jasper (2002) the expectations that white female teachers have of black boys behaviour dictate the form and style of the teaching that they offer them - Wright (1992) found discrimination She observe that teachers paid Asian pupils, especially girls less attention - Gillborn (2002) argues that schools are institutionally racist as teachers interpret policy in a way that disadvantages Black pupils. - Ethnocentrism, Coard (1971) showed how the content of Ed also ignored black people he argued that this lead to low self esteem among black pupils. However Report and Stone noted that despite feeling discriminated against by some teachers AC children had been able to maintain an extremely positive self image.

Gender and educational achievement

- until the late 1980’s girls underachieved, however since the early 1990’s girls begun to outperform boys

Why have girls achievement improved?

- The job market- increasing job opportunities fro women while the availability of traditional male manual work has reduced. Mothers in paid employment which provided a positive role model, girls recognize the future offers more choices - Female expectations- many women look beyond the mother/housewife role, growth in employment opportunities, rise in young women occupational ambitions, (Frankton and Selton 2005) many girls now looking forward towards jobs that require degree level qualification - Feminism, Weiner (1995) has argued that teachers have more forcefully challenged stereotypes and many sexist images have been removed from learning material. However Best and Abraham found that women continue to be presented as passive or in a narrow range of domestic jobs. Work feminist sociologist in the 1970’s and 80’s has led to greater emphasis on equal opportunities. - Behaviour- Girls work harder than boys. On average girls put more effort into work, take care with presentation. (Burns and Bracey 2001) many boys believe that school work should be done at school and are no prepared to drat their work. - Changes in the organisation of education- Pirie (2001) has argued that the old o-levels were a boys exam by contrast the coursework in gcses requires organisational skills and sustained motivation. However Myhill (1999) has pointed out that shifts in assessment to increase the proportion of unseen exams in English have been paralleled by an increase in the extent to which girls outperform boys in that subject - Better socialisation for schooling0 Hannan (2000) shows that girls spend their leisure time differently fro boys. Whereas girls relate to one another by talking, boys relate to their peers by doing. This puts girls at an advantage because school is essential a language experience. Boys consider it weak to ask for help whereas girls are happy to help one another. Kirby (2000) has suggested that communicative play through organized social games have been replaced by technology. He points out while modern computer games may exercise spatial and visual abilities they do little o address language deficiency

What are the concerns about boy’s underachievement?

- Boys are behind girls at reading and writing by the age of 6 - At age 11 the average boy in 9 months behind girl in development of speaking skills - White w/c boys the lowest achieving group - Young men are much more likely to be excluded from school (DfeS 2006)

Why are boys making slower progress?

- Changes in the job market/status frustration- Mac an Ghaill (1994) suggest that w/c boys are experiencing a crisis of masculinity, moreover new jobs are part time, desk based more suited to the lifestyle of women. They may feel that qualifications is a waste of time because of limited opportunities in the job market and seek other ways of defining their masculinity - Laddish behaviour and peer group status, development of antischool subcultures, Willis showed how these boys accepted ed failure and so developed anti-ed coping strategies to compensate for status frustration. - Social control differences, Mitsose and Browne 1998 teachers are not as critical with boys as with girls. They may have lower expectations of boys - Unrealistic attitudes- research shows that they are surprised when they fail exams and blame it on bad luck however Francis (200) boys are no longer likely to consider themselves more able than girls. He also notes that boys are more likely to have career aspirations which do not require ed success e.g. professional footballer whereas girls career ambitions more often require academic success.

Male subcultures

- Willis 1997 antischool subculture - Mac an Ghaill (1994) identifies a range of school subculture - The macho lad s- hostile to school authority - The academic achievers- most likely skilled manual w/c developed ways of accusation of effeminacy by the macho lads - The new enterprisers- a new successful preschool subculture who embrace the new vocationalism - Real Englishmen- m/c pupils usually from a liberal professional background. They rejected what school had to offer and thought their culture was superior - Gay students- they commented on the heterosexist and homophobic nature of schools.

Female subcultures

Griffin (1985) studied young white w/c women during their first 2 years in employment. They created small friendship groups. Their deviance was defined by their sexual behaviour rather than trouble making. There were three possible routes for the girls, which the could follow all at the same time - The labour market- securing a job - The marriage market- A permanent male partner - The sexual market- having sexual relationships while at the same time maintaining their reputation to not damage marriage prospects