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Class differences in achievement- Internal Factors
Labelling
All children are like an empty unlabelled tin can when they are born.
However, as they go through life they get ‘labels’ attached to them based
on their gender, class and ethnicity. This mostly happens when they enter
the education system and begin to get labelled by their teachers and peers.
Something to think about…
What the education system would be like if labelling didn’t occur, would all
subtends get 5A*-C’s?
Or are labels just common sense? Giving the teacher an idea of how to reach
certain students and how to pitch their lessons to different abilities and social
groups? This is the essence of what will be studied in this topic.
What’s troubling for sociologists about labels is that teaches often attach labels based on
stereotypical assumptions about their social class (WC negatively and MC positively), rather than
on the students actual ability or aptitude to the subject they teach. If this is happening in primary
school and leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy and begins to change a pupil’s attitude towards the
education system are they ever really going to want to be at secondary school and get good
qualifications?
Interactionists Methods
Interactionists have a specific set of
There have been loads of studies on labelling carried out by
methods that they use to collect data
Interactionists sociologists. Interactionists are quite
about the world around them. As they
different to structural sociologists like functionalists and
often want to get a ‘real life view’ of
Marxists (also known as conflict and consensus theories and
how people attach meanings to actions
Macro theories as they look at how society’s institutions
and situations they are very often
affect behaviour). Interactionists study small-scale, face to
present during the research.
face interactions between individuals, such as in the
Methods used: - Participant and nonclassroom or playground. They are interested in how people
participant observations, interviews,
attach labels to one another, and the effects that this has on
and field experiments.
those who are labelled.
Data Type: - They prefer qualitative
data as they believe it allows them to
Labelling in Secondary Schools- Howard Becker
get a real life picture of what is really
going on- they suggest it has a higher
Becker carried out an important
validity than statistics
Interactionist study of labelling. He carried
Objectivity:- very often the sociologists
out interviews with 60 teachers form a high
has to make judgements based on what
school in Chicago. He found that teachers
they have seen which means that their
judged pupils according to how closely they
research is subject to their own
fitted their image of the ‘ideal pupil’.
interpretations of the data they collect
meaning they could have made a
He suggested that the teachers judgements were based on
misinterpretation.
the way students worked in class, conducted themselves
around school and their appearance. The teachers saw MC
Backing Becker Up
In the exam you might need to add some
weight to an argument and in this one you
can back up Becker’s work with Cicourel
and Kitsusse who found that Councillors in
American high schools changed the way
they gave career advice to students based
on their social class or race. They pushed
MC pupils into aspirational jobs and
steered WC pupils into low level
professions. They found that although the
councillors claimed to base their
judgments on a student’s ability Cicourel
and Kitsusse found that they were more
likely to base their judgments on whether
or not they had the MC’s collage potential.
Would using this nugget of information
just prove to the examiner how much you
know about labelling in schools!
pupils as the closest fir to the ‘ideal pupil’. They
regarded WC students as badly behaved based
on them not fitting into the teacher’s idea of a
perfect pupil.
Labelling in Primary Schools
Ray Rist did a study of an American Kindergarten
and suggested that labelling occurs from the
start of a child’s educational career. His research
showed that teachers used information about a
child’s home background and their appearance
to place them into certain groups within the
class. They were then seated together for the
rest of the year. Those that were seen as ‘fast
learners’ were labelled as the ‘tigers’, and were
seated at the front of the class closest to her.
These children tended to be from the MC’s and
were neat and clean in their appearance, they
were also shown the greatest encouragement
from her.
The teacher also labelled two other groups the ‘cardinals’ and the ‘clowns’ (who were seated the
furthest away from her). Students in these two groups were more likely to be WC and were given
lower level books to read and fewer opportunities to demonstrate their abilities in class e.g. they
only read as a group not as individuals.
Link- think back to Douglas, and Bernstein, if children form WC families
can’t afford books, educational toys and are culturally deprived can their
children ever achieve at school if they are put into classes based purely
on age? Surely we could organise the education system better to put
children of ability together rather than just by age so that everyone gets
the support/push they need?
Rachel Sharp and Tony Green
British studies show similar patterns to those we have examined above. Green and Sharp studies
and ‘child centred’ primary school (Mapledene), where children were allowed to choose activities
for themselves and develop at their own pace. Teachers felt that when a child was ready to lean
they would seek help from staff- for example with reading. The teachers suggested that children
who were not yet ready to lean should engage in ‘compensatory play’ in the Wendy House until
they were ready to learn.
However, in reality this just made the class divisions in the class bigger according to Sharp and
Green. As MC children had started to read at home they gained help from the teachers, while the
WC pupils were ignored while they were engaging in play.
Sharp and Greens findings support the Interactionists view that children from different class
backgrounds are labelled differently. However, their explanation goes beyond the level of smallscale, face-to-face interactions. They agree that the negative labelling of WC children is also the
result of inequalities between social classes in wider society- not just those interactions in the
classroom.
High and Low Status Knowledge
The studies looked at so fat all look at how labelling puts the WC’s at a disadvantage. Nell Keddie
points out those labels are not only applied to pupils but also to knowledge that is taught to pupils.
She examined how streaming can be linked to labelling within comprehensive schools.
She observed classes that were streamed by ability but that all followed that same humanities
course and covered the same course content. Keddie found that although teachers though they
were teaching pupils in the same way, they were actually teaching the A Stream in a different way
to the C stream pupils. For example, by using abstract theoretical ideas to stretch the A stream
pupils (which she called high status knowledge) and using more descriptive and common-sense low
status knowledge to teach the C stream pupils. She found that the A streams contained mostly MC
pupils and the C stream mostly WC pupils. She suggests that by streaming by ability teachers are
withholding high status knowledge form WC pupils.
Bringing it up to date Gillborn and Youdell (2001) show how schools use teachers notions of
‘ability’ to decide which pupils have the potential to achieve five A*-C grades at GCSE. They found
that WC and Black students were less likely to be perceived as having ability and more likely to be
placed in lower sets and entered for lower-tier GCSE’s. This denies them the knowledge and
opportunity needed to gain good grades and so widens the class gap in achievement.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that becomes true by simply having it made. Interactionist’s
sociologists argue that labelling can affect a pupil’s achievement by creating a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
How it works
Teacher labels
•Teacher labels a pupil as
being inteligent and makes
predictions about how well
they will perform in the future
Teacher treats pupil
differently
•Teacher starts to push the
student towards the target
they belive they can achieve acting as though this
prediciton about their
progress hass already become
true
Pupil Interanlises
•The upil begins to internalise
the teachers expecations of
them and it becomes part of
their self-image and now they
begin to take this label on as
part of their identiy living up
to the teachers expecations.
By having a positive label the
pupil gains confidence and
begins to sucseed
Teachers Expectations- Rosenthal and
Jacobson
Rosenthal and Jacobson carried out a study at
Oak Community Primary School in California to
prove that teachers perceived expectations
about ability can create self-fulfilling
prophecy.
Methodology
Methods- Using Experiments
Sociologists occasionally use field experiments because they
allow the researchers to manipulate a real, naturally occurring
social situation to discover cause and affect relationships.
Rosenthal and Jacobson were able to manipulate classroom
interaction by labelling some pupils as spurters to see whether
this would cause a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, the researchers cannot control all the possible factors
that might have led to the pupils spurting, so they cannot be
certain that they have in fact discovered the real case of their
improved performance.
Also you need to think about what are the pitfalls in this
research- for example was this research ethical research? What it
fair for the other pupils? Would these pupils have had an
educational spurt anyway?
When you use a sociologists study you need to weigh up how
useful it is based on how they came about making their
assumptions about a social phenomenon- you don’t need to talk
about this much in the first part of the exam so much but you
might want to mention it to show you have a depth of
knowledge. But you will want to focus on this in the second half
of the essay question in the method section.
They told the school that they had developed
a new test specially designed to identify those
pupils who would ‘spurt’ ahead academically
even if they weren’t showing signs at present.
This method is known as a field experiment.
However, they had not got a test designed;
instead what they did was carried out standard IQ tests on the pupils.
What is really important about this experiment was that the teachers
believed what Rosenthal and Jacobson were telling them, as if the
teachers hadn’t their data would have been invalid.
After they had compiled the results from the IQ tests the researchers
picked a random 20% sample from the class, and then told the schools
that these pupils they had identified were academic ‘spurters’.
A year later when they returned to the school they found that almost half
(47%) of those identified as spurters had indeed made significant
progress. The effect was greater on younger children.
Rosenthal and Jacobson suggested that the teachers’ belief about the pupil’s academic progress
had been influenced by their belief in the researchers test results. The teachers had started to
teach the identified ‘spurters’ differently through the way they taught, interacted and gave them
extra attention.
This demonstrated that the self-fulfilling prophecy actually occurs. When the teachers simply
accepted the prediction that some children would spurt it brought on an actual academic
improving in the students identified. Rosenthal and Jacobson said that they had proved this by
picking a random sample rather than actually picking students who scored the lowest on the IQ
tests. This study’s findings illustrate an important interactionist principle: that what people believe
to be true will have real effects- even if the belief was not true originally.
Streaming and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Streaming is where children are separated into different ability groups.
Then the different ability groups are then taught separately from the other
for all subjects. Studies show that a self-fulfilling prophecy is particularly
likely to occur when children are streamed.
What Came First?
This links to Becker’s ideas as he showed that teachers did
not see WC pupils as ideal students, and as a result they
often ended up in lower streams. However again this leads
to the question which came first the label or WC under
achievement? Is it because they have less money and are
likely to suffer from different forms of derivation that they
are disadvantaged by the education system and end up in
lower streams? Or is it because the education system does
not value working class students?
Marxism LinkThis links to the Marxist
concepts of cultural
reproduction and also links to
the concept of the hidden
curriculum. So you could link
these concepts to Marxist
theory and show that you
really are a smart cookie using
theory to examine internal
school factors. You might also
want to look at how this links
to the correspondence
principal that Bowles and
Glints coined.
Once a pupil gets put into a stream and WC pupils ‘get the message’
that they are locked into their teacher’s low expectations. Children in
the lower streams are very unlikely to move up a stream as they
begin to internalise what the teachers think of them. This creates a
self-fulfilling prophecy in which the pupils will constantly under
achieve or achieve based on their WC background. Douglas found
that children placed in lower streams at the age of 8 has suffered a
decline in their IQ score by age 11 meaning that they were less likely
to pass the 11+ exam. Douglas also found
that the same was true in reverse for MC
children, where there IQ improved after
being placed in higher streams, as did their
confidence.
Remember that labelling and self-fulfilling
prophecies can have positive and negative effects on pupils, don’t just
focus on the negative ones in an exam show you have a depth of
knowledge on the subject.
Pupil Subcultures
Culture is all those things that are learnt and shared by a society or
groups of people and transmitted from generation to generation though
the socialisation process. It includes a society’s norms, values, languages
and traditions as well as other things. A subculture is a group of people
who share similar values and behaviour patterns. Pupil subcultures
emerge as a response to the way pupils have been labelled, and in
particular as a reaction to streaming.
There a number of studies that show how pupil subcultures play a part in
creating class differences in achievement. Colin Lacey (1970) concepts of
differentiation and polarisation help to explain how pupil subcultures
develop.
It might seem strange to you
that people dress in this way
but think about why they
might join a subculture like
this? Is it because human
beings just want to belong?
Imagine being a labelled
student in all the low stream
at school- wouldn’t it be easy
to join a subculture as you will
all probably be WC and have
the same attitudes and values
like Sugarman identified so
wouldn’t it be easy to join and
anti-school subculture after
being exposed to labelling for
such a long time in the
education system?
By differentiation he meant the process by which teachers categorise pupils
according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and/or behaviour. Lacey
suggests that streaming is a form of differentiation, since it categorises pupils
into separate classes. Those that the schools deems ‘more able’ are given
high status by being placed in a high stream, whereas those deemed ‘less
able’ and placed in low streams are given an inferior status.
By polarisation he meant the process in
which pupils respond to streaming by
moving towards one of two opposite poles
or extremes.
In his study of Hightown Boys Grammar School Lacey found that
streaming polarised boys into pro and anti-school subcultures.
 Pro-School Subculture
Pupils placed in the higher streams, tend to be mainly MC and
tend to be committed to the values of the school. They gain their
status in school through the approved manner, through academic
success. Their values are those of the school, and thus they form
a pro-school culture seeing the benefits that they can gain from
conforming with the schools goals.
Methods Link- Colin Lacey
He used a variety of methods to carry out
his research, including participant and
non-participant observation. He
immersed himself in school life, teaching
some lesson and observing others as well
as helping with the cricket team and going
on school trips. He was able to gain
detailed insight into social relations within
the school to show how pupils polarised
into pro and anti-school subcultures and
the impact this had on their achievement.
However observational methods can be
very time consuming meaning that they
have practical implications. Lacey’s field
work took him 18 months. Also while
observations can provide detailed insight
into a single school, this school may not
be representative of others and so the
result of the study may not be
generalisable.
Remember the above methods link- could
this research ever be objective? However,
could he have ever have found this out by
using positivist quantitative data like
statistics?
 Anti-School Subculture
Lacey found that those placed in low streams who tend to be WC
suffer a loss of self-esteem. By placing students in lower sets it
undermines their self-worth by placing them in a position of
inferior status. As they have no official status within school- as
they cannot achieve in the legitimate ways (e.g. getting good
grades) they turn to other ways to gain status. For example, they
might begin to misbehave to gain some status, or even truant. They join up with other children
who feel the same and begin to act out in ways that undermines the schools culture that they
couldn’t possibly achieve in and create their own where they can.
However, although pupils may join an anti-school subculture to gain some status it created further
problems for pupils who become involved in it. Lacey suggests “the boy who takes refuge in such a
group because his work is poor finds that the group commits him to a
behaviour patterns which means that his work will stay poor- and in
fact often gets progressively worse”. In other words joining an antischool subculture is likely you become a self-fulfilling prophecy of
educational failure.
Lacey’s research shows that the power of labelling and streaming can
actively create failure. The boys had all been successful at primary
school and were among elite of about 15% of the towns’ pupils who
had passed the eleven plus exam to get into a grammar school.
However, once the elite set of boys were placed within streams at
school and were labelled as failures by being put in lower streams some of the boys showed
extreme physical reactions to this. For example some of them started bed-wetting and suffered
from insomnia. By the second year they boys had become distinctly anti-school as they adjusted to
their new status as failures.
David Hargreaves (1967)
Hargreaves found a similar response to labelling and streaming in a
secondary modern schools. He suggested that from the viewpoint of the
education system, boys in the lower streams were triple failures. He
argued they has failed their 11+, been placed in low streams, and had
been labelled as ‘worthless louts’ by the teachers.
Hargreaves states that as a solution to their lack of status they sort out
other pupils who felt the same way and formed a group. Within this group
the highest status went to those who broke the school rules. In doing this
they had joined a delinquent subculture that helped guarantee their
educational failure.
Abolishing Streaming- Stephen Ball
Mixed Ability- would abolishing
streaming really work?
Ball takes Hargreaves and Lacey’s analysis of streaming further. His
study at Beachside (a comprehensive school) examined what happened
when a school was in the process of abolishing streaming in favour of
mixed ability students (students of all different abilities in one class).
Ball found that when the school abolished banding, the basis for pupils
to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of
the anti-school subculture declined. This was because students were
less likely to be labelled and therefore not likely to turn to an antischool subculture to find some form of status whether legitimate
(following school rules) or illegitimate (breaking school rules).
He found that although pupil polarisation has pretty much disappeared,
differentiation still continued to happen. Teachers still categorised pupil
differently and were more likely to label MC pupils as cooperative and
able. This positive labelling was reflected in their better exam results,
indicating that a self-fulfilling prophecy had occurred. Ball shows that
class inequalities can continue as a result of teachers’ labelling, even
without the effect of subcultures or streaming.
Is it really better to have mixed
ability classes for everyone? Will it
really befit those who are the
smartest, or will it disadvantage
them as the teacher may have to
spend a lot of time going over
basic things that students who are
of a lower ability just don’t get?
Surely there is an argument for
and against streaming and mixed
ability classes. If you were in
charge of the education system
what would you choose to
implement, streaming or mixed
ability classes?
Since Balls study and especially since the Education Reform Act (1988)
there has been a trend towards more streaming and towards a variety of types of school, some of
which have a more academic curriculum than others.
This has just created new opportunities for school and teachers to differentiate between pupils on
the basis of their class, ethnicity and gender and treat them unequally, as backed up by Gillborn
and Youdell which we examined above.
The Variety of Pupil Responses
Pro and Anti school subcultures are two possible responses to labelling and streaming. However,
Peter Woods argues other responses are also possible, he identifies that following: -
Ingratiation
• Being the teachers 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
John Furlong observes pupils are not committed permanently to any one response, but may mover
between different types of responses acting differently in lessons with different teachers.
The theme of pupil subcultures is an important one in several areas of the study of the education
system, and you need to be able to make links between subcultures, labelling and self-fulfilling
prophecies that occur in the examination of gender and ethnicity in the education system. You will
need to link these notes to later notes on Fuller, Sewell, Mac an Gaill and Willis.
The Limitations of Labelling Theory
Most of the studies that have been examined above look at underachievement being the result of
negative labelling and this resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy occurring; with pupils often joining
anti-school subculture which guarantees mainly WC pupils failure. These studies are useful in
showing how the interactions within schools actively create class inequalities, and that schools are
not neutral institutions like cultural deprivation theorist assume; it acknowledges that individual
interactions can help to create inequalities based on social background within schools.
However, labelling does not have all the answers, and is heavily criticised for being too
deterministic (automatically assuming something will happen based on a presumed assumption).
Labelling theorists assume that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy
and will inevitably fail. Although studies such as those carried out by Mary Filler show that this is
not always the case.
Marists also criticise labelling theory for ignoring the wider structures of power within which
labelling takes place. Labelling theory tends to blame teachers for labelling pupils but fails to
explain why they do so. 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 reproduces class divisions.
However, you can see this clearly when looking at Willis study where he twins a Marxist
background to understand why working class boys get working class jobs, and uses interactionist
methods analyse the in school processes that lead to this phenomenon occurring.