Education
- External Class factors
- Guess the sociologist – external factors
- Internal Class factors
- External factors Quiz
- Class Differences REVISION SUMMARY
External Class factors
- External Factors significantly impact educational achievement. These are elements outside the school environment.
- Cultural Deprivation:
- Working-class individuals may have “inferior norms and values, skills and knowledge” that hinder their access to education.
- This can manifest as a restricted code of language, characterised by limited vocabulary, short sentences, and colloquialisms. This is contrasted with the elaborated code used in schools.
- Working-class parents may place less value on education and provide less encouragement for educational activities.
- They may also have a practical view of education, prioritising work over school.
- Subcultural Barriers: Working class subcultures may hold values such as:
- Fatalism: a belief that one’s status is unchangeable.
- Collectivism: valuing group membership over individual achievement.
- Immediate Gratification: prioritising pleasure now over future rewards.
- Present-time orientation: focusing on the present rather than long-term goals.
- These factors can act as a barrier to educational achievement for working-class pupils.
- Material Deprivation:
- This involves a lack of resources needed to succeed in school and is linked to poverty.
- Housing issues such as shared rooms, unsafe conditions, and lack of space for play can negatively impact learning.
- Poor nutrition and health resulting from limited access to healthy food can lead to health problems and absences from school.
- The cost of education, including uniforms, transport, books and resources, can be a burden for working-class families.
- Limited access to computers and the internet impacts homework completion.
- Some students may need to work part-time, reducing study time.
- Cultural Capital:
- Middle-class individuals possess “superior norms and values, skills and knowledge”.
- Bourdieu identifies three types of capital: cultural, economic, and educational.
- Middle-class families often have more economic capital to provide cultural experiences like travel and museum visits, enhancing their children’s educational capital.
- Economic capital can also be used to afford private schooling and tutors.
- Greater cultural capital has been associated with academic success.
- Social Class Inequality:
- There are significant differences in educational achievement between social classes.
- This inequality is evident even before primary school.
- Higher social class is generally correlated with greater educational success.
- Both material and cultural factors, within and outside of schools, contribute to social class inequalities.
- Cultural capital is only a part of the reason for differences by social class; resources and aspirations are also key.
Guess the sociologist – external factors
Internal Class factors
- Internal factors are those within the school environment that affect a pupil’s ability to achieve.
- Labelling is a key concept. Teachers form opinions of students based on whether they fit the ‘ideal pupil’ and give them a label.
- The characteristics of an “ideal pupil” are often female, white, middle-class, quiet, articulate, hard-working, conscientious, studious, and obedient.
- This label affects how teachers treat students, with those not fitting the ‘ideal’ receiving less motivation, help, encouragement, and extra work.
- Teacher/pupil interactions are based upon these labels.
- Self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when a student takes on the label given to them by the school/teacher and acts accordingly.
- Students given a positive label may develop a positive self-concept and work harder.
- Those labelled as troublemakers may act as such.
- Working-class (WC) students are more likely to receive negative labels.
- Rosenthal + Jacobson‘s study demonstrated the ‘Pygmalion Effect’, where higher expectations improve behaviour.
- They used fake IQ tests and identified some students as ‘spurters’.
- Teachers treated these ‘spurters’ differently, leading to significant improvement.
- Ray Rist found that teachers are more likely to label WC students, placing them further away in the classroom.
- In American kindergartens, teachers made assumptions based on appearance, labeling WC students as ‘clowns’ and middle-class (MC) students as ‘tigers’.
- Fuller‘s research on black girls in London showed that they responded to negative labeling by working harder to prove teachers wrong, not seeking approval from them.
- This demonstrates that negative labels do not always lead to failure.
- Hempel Jorgenson argues that the ‘ideal pupil’ varies depending on the school’s makeup.
- In a WC school with discipline problems, the ‘ideal pupil’ was quiet and obedient, while in a MC school, it was defined by personality and academic ability.
- Streaming involves placing students in groups based on ability across all subjects.
- Gillborn and Youdell found that teachers label WC students as unintelligent and place them in lower streams.
- Setting is the process of placing students in groups according to ability in individual subjects.
- Ball‘s study at ‘Beachside Comprehensive’ showed that banding/streaming negatively impacted WC pupils.
- Teachers in mixed-ability classes worried about the brightest pupils being held back or weaker pupils being left behind.
- WC pupils gravitated towards lower bands, becoming increasingly disinterested in education.
- This can lead to downward mobility for WC students, reproducing class inequality.
- Lacey identified pupil subcultures that develop through polarisation and differentiation.
- Differentiation (streaming) categorises pupils based on ability and behaviour, with higher streams getting higher status.
- Polarisation is a pupil’s response to streaming by moving towards pro-school or anti-school subcultures.
- Those placed in lower streams can lose self-esteem and look for alternative ways of gaining status.
- Hargreaves found that boys in lower streams may be labelled as ‘triple failures’ after failing the 11+ exam and being placed in lower streams.
- These boys may form anti-school subcultures to gain status.
- Archer‘s research on pupil identities highlights how WC pupils invest in ‘Nike’ identities.
- WC students gain symbolic capital from branded sportswear, while MC students are more associated with brands like Gucci.
- This can lead to clashes with teachers over uniform and behavior, further marginalising WC pupils.
- WC pupils may see education as undesirable and not suited to their ‘habitus’.
- Schools can impose symbolic violence against students with ‘Nike’ identities, suggesting that education is not for them.
Sociology Simplified 
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