Factors Within Education

The Interactionist Perspective
1. Focus on processes in school & other educational institutions to explain differential achievement.
2. Teachers may label pupils, or classify them into different types, & then act towards them on the basis of this classification.
Labelling
1. Hargreaves, Hester & Mellor (1975) found factors such as a pupil's appearance, how they respond to discipline, etc. leads teachers attaching labels to them as "good/bad" pupils.
2. Once given a label, teachers tend to interpret behaviour in terms of the label, & pupils tend to live up to the label.
3. This results in a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which the label results in the behaviour predicted by the teacher.
Social class & labelling
1. Many interactionists claim that social class background affects the way that teachers label pupils.
2. MC pupils fit teacher's stereotype of the ideal pupil better than WC pupils & hence WC pupils are more likely to be labelled as deviant/lazy.
3. Labelling can lead to pupils being placed in ablity groupings within school. Lower class pupils may be more likely to be placed in lower sets, bands or strems.
  1. These lower groupings are likely to be seen as less able & as more likely to be distruptive. This can lead to the formation of pupil subculutures
    1. Lower streams or sets are more likely to form anti-school subcultures. Among these pupils, academic work is not valued & peer groups encourage deviant behavious & discourage hard work.
Mac an Ghaill (1994) - Labelling & peer groups
1. This study demonstrates how class interacts with gender in shaping achievement
2. Studies WC students in a Midlands comprehensive school. The school had divided pupils into 3 sets, as a result, 3 distinct, male WC peer groups developed.
  1. 1) Macho lads - academic failures who became hostile to the school & were usually from less skilled WC backgrounds.
    1. 2) Academic achievers - academic successes usually from skilled WC backgrounds, they tried hard at school.
      1. 3) New enterprisers - had a positive attitude to school & saw the vocational curriculum as a route to career success.
All main types of inequality (class, gender & ethnicity) act together in shaping educational achievement.
Evaluation of Interactionist approaches
1. Advantages of Interactionist studies
  1. Often based on detailed evidence
  2. Show factors operating in school can have significant impact on educational achievement,
2. Criticisms of Interactionist studies
  1. Fail to explain where wider class inequalities come from.
  2. Ignore factors outside school such as material/cultural factors which affect achievement.
  3. Use simplified models of pupil subcultures & do not identify the full range of responses to school.
  4. Not all pupils live up to labelling by teachers. Study by Margret Fuller (1984) found that a group of black WC girls who were labelled as likely failures responded by working harder to achieve success.

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