Labelling.

Labelling.

Definition: to attach a meaning or definition to someone.
labelling at secondary school.
1. Howard Becker (1971) carried out an interactionist study of labelling. based on interviews with 60 Chicago high school teachers, he found that they judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the 'ideal student'
2. pupils work , conduct & appearance were key factors influencing teacher's judgements. the teachers saw children from middle class backgrounds as the closest ideal, & lower class as furthest away because they regarded them as badly behaved.
3. Aaron Cicourel & John Kitsuse's (1963) study of educational counsellors in an American high school shows how such labelling can disadvantage working class students. Counsellors play an important role in deciding which students will get on to courses that prepare them for higher education.
  1. Cicourel & Kitsuse found inconsistences in the way counsellors assessed students suitability for courses. Although they claimed to judge students according to their abilities, I practice they judged them on the basis of their social class and/or race.
Labelling in primary schools.
1. Ray Rist's (1970) study of an American kindergarten found that teachers labelled middle class, well kept children as 'tigers' and gave them the most encouragement & labelled working class more scruffy students as 'clowns' and gave them less encouragement.
2. Rachel Sharp & Tony Green (1975) studied Mapledene, a 'child-centred' primary school were children were allowed to choose activities for themselves & develop at their own pace. the teachers felt that when a child already was ready to learn they would seek help, e.g. reading. on the other hand, children who weren't ready to learn should be allowed to engage in 'compensatory play' however this meant that middle class children, who started reading earlier, received the help they need while working class children were ignored.
  1. Sharp & Green's findings support the internationalist view that children of different class backgrounds are labelled differently.
High & low status knowledge.
1. Other studies show that labelling can be applied not just to pupils, but also to the knowledge they're being taught. Nell Keddie (1971) found both pupils & knowledge cab be labelled as high or low status. the comprehensive school classes she observed were streambed by ability, but all streams followed the same humanities course & covered the same course content. however, Keddie found that although teachers believed they were teaching all pupils in the same way, in practice they taught the A stream they gave them abstract, theoretrical high status knowledge.

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	Created by rosieelsafty almost 11 years ago