Class Differences in Achievement

Intellectual stimulation:

• Working class parents are less likely to give their children educational toys & activities that stimulate learning & are less likely to read to them, thus affecting their intellectual development.

Language:

• Berstein - working class use a restricted speech code (less analytic & more descriptive, limited vocab, simple sentences/ gestures, particularistic).
• Middle class use an elaborated speech code (more analystic, wide vocab, complex sentences, universalistic).

Parents' education:

• Fernstein - parents' own education influences their children's acheivement.
• Educated parents emphasise consistent disclipline, high expectations, active learning & exploration. Less educated parents' inconsistent discipline reduces motivation.
• Educated parents are more aware of how to help their child progress.
• Educated paretns communicate with an elaborated speech code.
• Educated parents use their income to promote children's development.

Working-class subculture:

• Immediate gratification - wanting rewards now rather than be willing to make sacrifices & working hard for future rewards (middle class have deferred gratification).
• Fatalism - a belief that 'whatever will be, will be', working class children don't believe that they can improve their position.
• Low value on education - Hyman working class don't value education as they don't eblieve they will benefit from it so don't try. Douglas - parents show less interest & give less support.

Criticisms:

• Ignores the importance of material factors.
• Ignores the impact of school factors.
• Blames the victim for their failure - the working class are not culturally deprived, just have a different culture from the school, so puts them at a disadvantage.

• Poor housing - overcrowding or damp makes it harder for pupils to find a quiet place to study.
• Poor diet - can lead to illness & absence & lack of concentration due to hunger.

Financial costs of education:

• Poorer families have fewer educational opportunities & may be stigmatised or bullied.
• Callender & Jackson - working class students are more debt averse & receive less financial support from their families at university.

Cultural capital theory:

• Bourdieu - middle class pupils are more successful as there parents possess more capital.
• Economic capital - wealth.
• Cultural capital - attitudes, values, skills & knowledge.
• Educational capital - middle class use their greater economic & cultural capital to give their children an advantage by using it to gain educational capital - qualifications.

Labelling:

• Becker - teachers label middle class students as 'ideal pupils' and prefer to teach them than working class pupils.

The self-fulfilling prophecy:

• Labels attached to pupils become true - 'what teachers believe, pupils achieve', teachers believe middle class pupils to be bright so they succeed, whilst working class are labelled negatively so fail.

Streaming:

• Lacey - differentiation/ a way of separating different abilities.
• Douglas - the IQ of pupils labelled as less able & put in the bottom stream fell over time, whereas those in the top stream increased.
• Those in lower streams may be denied access to the same curriculum.

Educational policies:

• E.g. marketisation, grants, maintenace allowance, compensatory education, school leaving age.

Pupil subcultures:

• Pro-school subcultures - accept school's values & goals.
• Anti-school subcultures - reject the school's values & often invert then.
• Lacey - lower stream pupils form anti-school subcultures as deprived so create own status hierarchy.

Class identities and achievement:

• Archer - middle class defines own habitus as superior so used in education.
• School commits symbolic violence by devaluing working class pupils' habitus.
• Leads to pupils creating alternative class identities & gain symbolic capital from peers.
• Succeeding in school mean sbeing inauthentic & changing how you present yourself to fit in.

Working-clss identity and educational success:

• Ingram - fitting in was difficult for working class grammar school boys as conflict of habitus'.
• Evans - even successful working class girld faced hidden barriers e.g. not fitting in with the habitus of elite universities.