Class Differences In Educational Achievement

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Flashcards on Class Differences In Educational Achievement, created by phoebebutler on 15/04/2015.
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Flashcards by phoebebutler, updated more than 1 year ago
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Question Answer
Class Differences: External Factors Cultural Deprivation: Intellectual Development Language Attitudes and Values
External Factors: Intellectual Development This is when children are able to think and solve problems on their own Problems: - WC (working class) homes haven't got the books and toys to develop these skills -Children from WC homes o to school and they haven't developed the intellectual skills they need to do well
External Factors: Intellectual Development DOUGLAS Found that WC children have lower scores on ability tests than MC (middle class) children - He argues that this is because WC parents are less likely to support their children at home by reading to them or providing them with educational activities - Douglas found that the kind of toys that parents choose can influence there children's intellectual development. - MC mothers are more likely to choose toys involving thinking and problem solving that would be useful for school
Evaluation More research by FEINSTEIN has showed that this may still be true today - He found that MC parents take more interest in there children's school than WC parents - As they are better education they understand the school system, therefore they take more interest in there child's intellectual ability before they go to school - However parents don't just go to buy toys for intellectual development, its what's modern at the time - WC parents may be more interested because they want their child to do better in school unlike them
External Factors: Language BERNSTEIN Made a distinction between elaborated and restricted speech codes - The WC use the Restricted code; descriptive language, limited VOC, short and unfinished sentences, assumes listener understand what they are talking about and sometimes gestures are used instead of a word - The MC use the elaborated code; wider VOC, more complex sentences, spell the meaning of what they say other than assumption, finished sentences and don't use gestures. The elaborated code is more useful when at school
External Factors: Attitudes and Values WC have a subcultures that leads to their underachievement 1. Immediate gratification - Want to achieve now so they want to go out to work to earn money. don't want to wait MC have deferred gratification -You will be rewarded but you need to sacrifise so you will get higher rewards at the end of it 2. Fatalism - Don't change anything. What will be will be 3. Low value of education - WC parents don't value education. they didn't try therefore didn't encourage their own children. HYMAN Argue that values of WC are a self-embossed value because they don't think getting a high status job I important
External Factors: Attitudes and Values SUGARMAN - He believes in COLLECTIVISM - More important to be apart of a group than being a successful individual. However MC think individualism is the most important - Sugarman tried to explain why there's a difference between MC+WC. MC are thought to be more secure. - There are opportunities for promotions which encourages ambition and long term planning but you need to invest time. - WC have less secure jobs and a low % of a promotion - Worldwide recession - MC people have not had secure jobs and their children have seen their parents give up things and working hard but get nothing out of it
Evaluation of cultural deprivation - Ignores the impact of the school - Schools don't just process children who arrive with attitudes and ambitions they have got from their family -MC students might do better because they get more encouragement and praise from teachers as they are more in tune with them - The idea of cultural deprivation seems to blame social class background and the family - This can result in these families being labled which can lead to low expectations by teachers and a self-fulfilling propachy where the student realises the teacher doesn't expect much of them. It is rather than cultural deprivation that leads to poor performance of some people in school
External factors: Evaluation KEDDIE - Argues rather than blaming the family and social class background, schools hould improve the situation - She suggests there is no cultural deprivation, there is just a different culture from the school which puts them at a disadvantage This problem omes about because education is based on white middle class culture. This disadvantages students from other backgrounds - One way for the school to overcome cultural deprivation is to offer compensatory education. This is extra help for children coming from poor backgrounds and includes things like extra resources, better paid teachers and money to spend on imporving buildings - These things are thought to improve education and achieved for children from deprived backgrounds
Examples of compensatory education Operation headstart (USA) It was a scheme introduced to enrich a deprived childs environment and develop learning skills ed. setup nursery classes, helped with parenting skills and gave advice on diet UK example Education action zones where money was given to schools in deprived areas to improve educational performance
External Factors: Evaluation of evaluation Neither of these schemes (OHS & EAC) were successful because they had an enriched environment at school and went home at night to the same deprived background
Class Differences: External Factors Material Deprivation: Housing Diet Money
External Factors: Housing Overcrowding, mood, leisure time restricted, damp house which can lead to health issues, temporary accommodation & absence from school
External Factors: Diet - WC children don't have as any vitamins so they have low energy - The immune system doesn't function properly if you have a poor diet - Other priorities - Say they cant cook as they don't have time so they get takeaways as they are easier
External Factors: Money - Children from poor families don't have the equipment they need for school - School uniform - if its taken out of class there could be bullying - If students get financial help at school that could lead to bullying and weather you have free school meals or not - Financial difficulty can lead to students dropping out of 6th form to go out and work - More middle class students go to uni than WC class as MC parents provides the child's money - Catchment area of school - If school isn't good MC parents will move - WC children do well at school - material deprivation isn't important
External Factors: Material Deprivation WILKINSON - Found children who come from poor homes are more likely to have emotional and behaviour problems - Among 10 year olds the lower the social class, the higher levels of hyper activity and anxiety which will effect their education
External Factors: Material and Cultural deprivation BOURDIEU - He thinks bother cultural and material factors determine how well WC children do - WC children lack cultural and material factors - MC are more successful because parents have got what it takes to make them successful 3 types of cultural capital: 1. Economic capital - MC families have money 2. Cultural capital - Attitudes. values, skills and knowledge the UC (upper class) have 3. Educational capital - MC use there economic and cultural capital to give there children an advantage by using them as a way to get qualification which should get them a MC job and more economic capital. Therefore, the advantages MC have are reproduced from one generation to the next - He argues material and cultural factors are not separate, they are linked together to produce class inequalities
Internal Factors Labelling Self-fulfilling prophecy Pupils subcultures Marketisation and selection policies
Internal Factors: Labelling Making a judgement - In schools teachers label student - They label someone to make sense of something - Problem with teachers is they give a child a label, regardless of how bright they are - The labels can be based on stereotypes about class backgrounds
Internal Factors: Labelling BECKER - American study Interviewed 60 high school teachers and he found that they judged the pupils and give them a label according to how closely they fitted a image to an ideal pupil - MC children were closer to ideal - WC children were further away from ideal based on appearance, behaviour and work
Internal Factors: Labelling CICOUREL AND KITSUSE - Study supported labelling and found it can disadvantage WC students In American high schools, councillors decide which of the students get onto courses that prepare them for higher education - The councillors judged the students on there social class rather than ability - They labelled MC students as having potential, not WC students
Internal Factors: Labelling Primary schools In an American study, teachers used information about childs home background and appearance and separated them so they worked on a different table, according to that label - MC children were labelled as being fast learners and class and sat at the table nearest the teacher - The other children were WC and were given lower level books to read and sat further away from the teachers
Internal Factors: Labelling SHARPE AND GREEN Supported the internationalist view (Becker) that teachers labelled pupils according to their class background but they also suggested that WC children are given a negative label at school because of inequalities between social classes in wider society - Labelling can also be applied to the knowledge children are taught
Internal Factors: Labelling KEDDIE Observed secondary classes that were streamed by ability - All the classes studied the same course but teachers gave the top stream more abstract and high status knowledge than lower stream MC = Top Stream WC = Lower Stream - Teachers held the high status information which can increase class differenced in achievement
Internal Factors: Labelling GILLBORN Showed that schools use teachers ideas pf ability to decide which pupils would get 5 A*-C grades in GCSE's - If the teachers think the student don't want to get that they are put in a class of lower ability and entered for foundation rather than higher tier. Therefore, the pupils are not given the knowledge they need to improve
Internal Factors: Self-fulfilling prophecy A prediction about someone or something that comes true - Teachers can create a SFP through labels they give to students - Studies show that teachers believe that MC pupils are bright and achieve - WC pupils are likely to be labelled as failures so they don't achieve
Internal Factors: Self-fulfilling prophecy ROSENTHAL AND JACOBSON - California study on primary schools - Told the school they got a new test that would tell teachers if children were spurter - All pupils were tested and researchers picked 20% of pupils and told the school this 20% showed up on the test as spurters - Went back to the high school after a year and found that half of the 20% had made a lot of progress - They concluded that the test had influenced the teachers expectations of the pupils - treated the pupils differently - This study showed that f a teacher believed a pupil is a certain type they can make that pupil into that type
Internal Factors: Self-fulfilling prophecy SFP can lead to underachievement because if teachers have low expectations they can show this in the way they interact with the children who see themselves as failures and give up trying - Streaming is an extreme form od labelling where all pupils of similar ability are in the same class or subject
Internal Factors: Self-fulfilling prophecy LACEY Argues that streaming creates a SFP because bright pupils are put together in a top stream and not so bright ones are at the bottom of the stream
Evaluation Idea of a SFP is supported - Douglas found that the IQ of pupils labelled as less able are put in the bottom stream and IQ fell over time - Pupils in top stream had an increased IQ - Research has shown WC pupils end up in lower streams and MC end up in higher ones which can widen the achievement gap between the classes - A problem with the labelling theory is that it is deterministic but not all pupils who are labelled as failure full-fills the prophecy and some pupils reject the label and achieve - Not all teachers label WC pupils negatively - Marxists argue that labels are not just the result of teachers prejudice because they work in a system that produced class divisions
Internal Factors: Pupils Subcultures A group that get together that have similar values and behaviours - Genrally students form own subcultures as a response of being labelled - You can have pro-school subcutures which are the pupils who ar ein top sets and wouldn't play up in school, have regular attendance, do work in and out of school, enthusiastic about showing the school off and they have respect for teachers - However anti-school subculures are the lower down set streams and reject everything school
Internal Factors: Pupils Subcultures LACEY Did a study on anti-school subcultures - Found that students in the low streams will join an anti-school subculture because the school has labelled than as a failure - The pupils form the subculture to create their own status which they get from their peers - In his study he look at 12 WC boys who had all been successful at primary school and had passed the 11+, They didn't grammar school because it was competitive and they were streamed and labelled as failures - They were anti-school and they has taken on their label of a failure - This means that pupils subcultures can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy
Internal Factors: Pupils Subcultures HARDGREAVES - Found similar regarding labelling and streaming and from this study he found that boys in the lower stream from a secondary school though they were triple failiure.They failed 11+ exam, they got put in lower streams and labelled as worthless - One way to overcome he problem of subcultures is to abolish streaming - However this can lead to further problems because children are put in the same class of different abilities and form subcultures
Internal Factors: Pupils Subcultures Education policies - What goes on in school isn't about what teachers decide to do. Schools are influences by policies and can effect how well children perform e.g. it can be argued that marketisation policies have increased the amount of streaming in schools - Cant separate external and internal factors in schools education and achievement. Its a mixture of both educational policies like school leaving age, compensatory education and how much money the school gets all have an impact on home background factors such as material an cultural deprivation
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