Internal Factors and Ethnicity

Internal Factors and Ethnicity

1. Labelling and teacher racism

   • Gilbourn&Youdell (2000) found teachers were quicker to discipline black pupils than others for the same behaviour due to racialised expectations
     • Pupils responded negatively and further conflict resulted.Black pupils felt underestimated.
   • Bourne (1994) found high levels of exclusion in Black pupils, which affect achievement.
   • Osler (2001) found Black pupils were more likely to suffer from unofficial exclusions, internal exclusions, and to go to pupil referal units.
   • Wright (1992) did a study that shows asian students can be victims of labelling due to teachers' ethnocentric views. Students felt isolated, marginalised, and ignored.
   • Mirza (1992) Main types of teacher racism
     • The colour blind: teachers who believe all pupils are equal but in practice allow racism to go unchallenged.
     • The liberal chauvinists: teachers who believe black pupils are culturally deprived and have low expectations of them.
     • The overt racists: teachers who believe black people are inferior and actively discriminate against them.
     • Mirza studied ambitious black girls who faced teacher racism and found that racist teachers discouraged black pupils from being ambitious through the kind of career and subject choice advice they gave them. Although the girls had high self-esteem the strategies they used to avoid racist teachers put them at a disadvantage by restricting their oppertunites.

2. Black Pupils & Streaming

   • Gilbourn & Youdell found that in the A-C economy, teachers focus on students most likely to achieve a grade C (educational triage)
     • This results in negative stereotypes about black pupils' abilities so were more likely to be placed in lower streams.

3. Archer's Pupil Identities

   • The ideal pupil: A white, m/c pupil with a masculinised identity and a 'normal' sexuality
   • The demonised pupil: A white or black, w/c pupil witha hypersexualised identity.
   • The pathologised pupil: an asian pupil with a feminised, asexual identity.

4. Institutional Racism

   • Gillborn (1997) argues that marketisation in education allows negative stereotypes to influence decisions about school admissions.
   • Moore and Davenport (1990) show how selection procedures lead to ethnic segregation, with minority students failing to get into better secondary schools due to discrimination.
   • The ethnocentric curriculum
     • Miriam David (1993) describes the national curriculum as a 'specifically British' curriculum that largely ignores non-european languages, literature, and music.
     • Coard explains that in history the British may be presented as bringing civilisation to the 'primitive' peoples they colonised and that this image of black people as inferior can undermine black pupils' self-esteem and lead to underachievement.
       • Stone (1981) argues that black children do not suffer from low self-esteem.
   • Assessment
     • Gillbourn (2008) argues that the 'assessment game' is rigged to validate the dominant culture's superiority. In the past primary schools used base line assessments, but then they were replaced by the foundation stage profile (FSP). After this change, black pupils appeared to be doing worse than white pupils and Gillborn explains that this is because the FSP is based entirely on teachers' judgements and is completed at the end of the reception year instead of the beginning. Gillborn argues that this increases the risk of teacher stereotyping affecting the results.
     • In one local authority in 2000, black children had been the highest achievers on entry to school however, by 2003, the FSP had black children ranked lower than white children across all 6 developmental areas it measured.
     • Sanders and Horn (1995) did a study of GCSE and found that when tasks assessed by teachers were given more weight, the gap between the scores of different ethnic groups widened.
   • Access to Opportunities
     • Gillborn (2008) point out that official statistics show white pupils are over twice as likely as black caribbean pupils to be identified as gifted and five times more likely than black african pupils for the 'Gifted and Talented' program
     • Tikly et al (2006) found that in 30 schools in the 'Aiming High' initiative to raise the achievement of Caribbean pupils, black pupils were still more likely to be entered for lower tier GCSE exams than white pupils
   • The 'new IQism'
     • Gillbourn argues that teachers and policy makers make false assumptions about the nature of pupils' 'ability' or 'potential' and see it as a fixed quality that can easily be measured so they can be put in the right set/stream.
     • Gillbourn and Youdell (2001) note that secondary schools are increasingly using IQ tests to allocate students to different streams on entry. For Gillbourn, there is no genuine measure of potentialand test can only show what someone already knows, not what they might be able to do in the future.