Factors Within Education

Factors Within Education

1. The Interactionist Perspective

   • Focus on processes in school & other educational institutions to explain differential achievement.
   • Teachers may label pupils, or classify them into different types, & then act towards them on the basis of this classification.

2. Labelling

   • 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.
   • Once given a label, teachers tend to interpret behaviour in terms of the label, & pupils tend to live up to the label.
   • This results in a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which the label results in the behaviour predicted by the teacher.

3. Social class & labelling

   • Many interactionists claim that social class background affects the way that teachers label pupils.
   • 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.
   • 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.
     • 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
       • 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.

4. Mac an Ghaill (1994) - Labelling & peer groups

   • This study demonstrates how class interacts with gender in shaping achievement
   • 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) Macho lads - academic failures who became hostile to the school & were usually from less skilled WC backgrounds.
       • 2) Academic achievers - academic successes usually from skilled WC backgrounds, they tried hard at school.
         • 3) New enterprisers - had a positive attitude to school & saw the vocational curriculum as a route to career success.

5. All main types of inequality (class, gender & ethnicity) act together in shaping educational achievement.

6. Evaluation of Interactionist approaches

   • Advantages of Interactionist studies
     • Often based on detailed evidence
     • Show factors operating in school can have significant impact on educational achievement,
   • Criticisms of Interactionist studies
     • Fail to explain where wider class inequalities come from.
     • Ignore factors outside school such as material/cultural factors which affect achievement.
     • Use simplified models of pupil subcultures & do not identify the full range of responses to school.
     • 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.