Sociologists For The Whole Education Topic

?
  • Created by: IzzyCobb
  • Created on: 21-04-22 19:43

External Factors - Class - Cultural Deprivation

  • Douglass: w/c score lower on tests than the m/c. Also noticed that w/c parents do not spend time with their children to further their education.
  • Bernstein and Young: m/c parents choose specific toys for their children to play with as they can be educational, and encourage learning and thinking. 
  • Bernstein: The w/c have restricted codes and the m/c have an elaberated code. This is al to do with how they speak.
  • Douglas: w/c parents place less value on education then m/c parents. they offer less encouragement and show less of an interest.
  • Feinstein: Parental support was the biggest influence on a childs educational success.
  • Sugarman: There are 4 features that are a barrier for educational achievement: fatalism, collectivism, immediate gratification and present orietation.
  • Keddie: Cultural deprivation is a myth as one cannot be deprived of their culture. Also eliees that policies have been put in place to aid this.
1 of 17

External Factors - Class - Material Deprivation

  • Flaherty: Money problems links to problems with attendence in schools. Disturbed sleep can lead t a lack of concentration. Health can affect educational achievement. All f these can relate to being absent from school.
  • Howard: Pupils from poorer homes have leass acess to school equipments like textbooks. they also may have less acess to food and vitimins to keep the healthy which can affect their education
  • Tanner: The cost of transport and books and equipment may put a burden on poorer families which may result in hand downs and could lead to bullying.
  • Boudieu: Found that there are 3 types of capital: economic, cultural and educational. Found that the m/c generally have all three were as the w/c.
  • Sullivan: Those who can do wider activities such as reading and clubs and films can gain a greater cultural capital and are more likely to succeed in education.
  • Gerwitz: Marketisation in schools can lead to 3 types of parents: the privillaged skill chooser, the diconected ocal choosers and the semi-skilled choosers.
2 of 17

Internal Factors - Class - Labeling

  • Becker: Found that teachers judged pupils on how closely they fitted in to the ideal pupil role. Also found that teacher judgements can affect a pupils work and motivation if they found out they were labeled.
  • Willis: Did the iconic study of learning to labour and looked at student behaviuor in relation to their educational achievemnt
  • Lacey: Looked at how streaming in relation to school subculturs and teacher opinions affected a pupils behaviour both in and out of the subculture.
  • Rosenthal and Jackson: Looked at the self-fullfilling prophecy and teacher labeling and how it can come about: 1- teacher labels pupil, 2-treats pupil differently 3- pupil finds out and acts a different way to fullfill it.
  • Ball: Looks at the influence of anti-school subcultures. Found that they were in decline. Found that m/c were still labeled better than w/c, within education
  • Gillborn and Youdell: Schools sort students into who will and wont pass. They found that the w/c were typically labelled as hopeless or dont try hard enough.
3 of 17

External Factors - Ethnicity - Cultural Deprivatio

  • Lawson and Garrod: people who share common history see themselves as a distinct unit
  • Driver and Ballard: looks at Asian families and educational achievement. Found that Asian families tend to have a more positive outlook and attitudes towards education. They found that they also have a respectful behaviour towards adults and school.
  • Lupton: looks at white working classes families. Claims that they are poorly disciplined and have little parental support towards educational achievement and no respect for school. Whereas in the Pakistani community parents are more supportive and their children are better disciplined. Also found that mixed ethnic families were also very supportive
  • Keddie: Criticises cultural deprivation and agues that ethnic children are culturally different and not culturally deprived. He claims those with ethnicities don’t do as well in school as it is favoured towards the white culture
  • Swann report and Gillborn/Mirza: claim that language is not a big factor in under achievement
  • Gillborn and Mirza: Note that Indian pupils do well despite the lack of English in homes and many black students lack support And motivation. Also argue that cultural deprivation could be down to the improper socialisation of children.
4 of 17

External Factors - Ethnicity - Material Deprivatio

  • Pryce: sees the family structure as contributing to the underachievement in black Caribbean pupils in Britain. Found that Asians do better because they are more resistant to racism than black people therefore it does not effect their self esteem
  • Rex: shows that racial discrimination means that minority’s are more likely to be found in poor housing compared to their white counterparts
  • Gillborn and Youdell: In one local authority African Caribbean were the highest achieving pupils on entry to secondary school yet they did worse at GCSE level. they think it is down to the following factors: subcultures, institutional and teacher racism and segregation
  • Foster: Found that teachers stereotyped black pupils which lead to them being placed in lower sets than people with a similar ability.
5 of 17

Internal Factors - Ethnicity - Subcultures

  • Fuller and Mac en Ghail: Found that pupils responded in a positive way to negative labelling. Found that black girls were high achieving and challenged their stereotypes and they did not seek approval from their teachers.
  • Mirza: Found a less positive response to teacher racism and negative labelling. Found that teacher racism discouraged black pupils. Found that the majority of teachers held a racist attitude
  • Swell: looked at ways boys coped with racism. Found 4 ways in which boys responded to racist stereotyping. Tended to rebel from school and joined subcultures, become conformists and accept school, retreatests who isolate themselves and what draw from school
6 of 17

Internal Factors - Ethnicity-Curriculum and Racism

  • Ethnocentric Curriculum :
    • Tronya and Williams: Described The curriculum in British schools to be ethnocentric, in the sense that it gives priority to one culture more than the other (white culture and English language)
    • Ball: Criticises the national curriculum for ignoring cultural and ethical differences in which it causes underachievement in the ethnic minorities.
    • Stone: Disagrees that the ethnocentric curriculum affects children’s self esteem especially black students
  • Institutional Racism:
    • Hatcher: Looked at school governing bodies and found that little priority was given to race related issues. Also found that there were no formal channels between school governors and ethnic minority parents
    • Gillborn: Believed that marketisation puts pupils from ethnic backgrounds at a disadvantage. Selection of pupils gives more scope for negative stereotypes and influences decisions about school admissions
    • Davenport: Found that selection procedures in American schools led to more segregation with minority pupils failing to get in to better schools. Used primary school reports to screen out pupils with learning or language difficulties.
7 of 17

External Factors - Gender - Feminism

  • Strives for equal rights since the 1960s, law has been able to improve more women’s rights, women challenged the stereotypical role of the mother and the house wife, improved self-esteem has encouraged women to aim higher and media images of women have changed the way they influence other women.
  • McRobbie: Claims that social policies have influenced how well the different genders do in education due to the level of jobs they can apply for regardless of their gender. For example the equal pay act 1970 helped to reduce the difference in the pay gap that influenced what job women could apply for. Also leading to women working harder in school so that they can achieve the high paying job they want.
  • Sharpe: Interviewed a group of girls in the 1970s and then some in the 90s and found that ambitions were low in the 70s but had changed in the 90s, due to the change in priorities from family to career.
  • Liberal Feminists: celebrate progress made so far in improving achievement. They also believe that further progress can be made through positive models and continuation of equal opportunities and policies to overcome sexist attitudes and stereotyping.
  • Radical Feminists: take a more critical view and believe that the education system and the rest of society are patriarchal. sexual harassment of girls continues at school and education still limits their subject and career options.
8 of 17

External Factors - Gender - Main Reasons

  • Impact of feminism
  • Changes in the family
  • Changes in women’s employment
  • Girls changing perceptions and ambitions
9 of 17

External Factors - Gender - Boys Achievement

  • Boys are found to have poor literary skills
  • Decline in traditional male jobs
  • Mothers read to them when you were younger
  • DCSF says that the gender gap is a result of boy’s poor literary skills.
  • Boys are more interested in there leisure time activities than school work such as sports and computer games.
  • Globalisation of industries have meant that industries have moved abroad and are finding alternate workers
10 of 17

Internal Factors - Gender - General Changes

  • The national curriculum was introduced in 1998 to make what boys and girls learn the same.
  • Women were given more opportunities at schoolwork get in to male dominated career paths
  • Women were shown to be role models to men and showing them how they can reach a position of importance.
  • Mitos and Browne: They found that girls were: more organised, better with deadlines, spend more time on work, take more care with presentations, bring the required equipment to lessons, mature quicker and can concentrate for longer
  • Elwood: claims that much of what Mitos and Browne are saying comes from socialisation. She also analysed the coursework and exams and found that exams have more of an influence on the final grades.
11 of 17

Internal Factors - Gender - Teacher Attention

  • Spender: Found that teachers spectre time with girls than boys
  • French: Found that teachers interacted with boys when they were naughty
  • Francis: Found that boys receive more attention but were treated more harshly than girls
  • Swann and Graddol: Found that boys are generally more boisterous than girls resulting in them receiving more attention. However girls receive more positive attention. They have also found that boys challenge the stereotype of the curriculum
12 of 17

Internal Factors - Gender - Peer Pressure

  • Refers to the influence exerted by a peer group encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values or behaviour in order to conform to groups 'norms'.
  • Subject choice can be influenced by peer pressure, more in mixed schools than single sex schools
  • Paetcher: Found that pupils see sport mainly within the male gender. Sporty girls have to cope with an image that contradics the conventional female stereotypes. This may be why girls opt out of such subjects
  • Dewar: Found that male students wouls call girls lesbians or butch if they appeared to be more interested in sports than boys.
13 of 17

Internal Factors - Gender - Gendered Careers

  • Some sociologists say that employment is highly gendered. This means that any jobs are seen as either a mans job or a women’s job.
  • A women’s job are typically an extension to what they do at come like childcare and or cleaning
  • Overall half of a women’s job falls into 4 sectors: clerical, secretarial, personal services and cleaning
    only one sixth is males work in these sectors
  • This affects boys and girls perceptions about which jobs are possible or acceptable of their gender
  • Vocational courses are Act more gender specific.
14 of 17

Internal Factors - Gender - Gendered Subjects

  • Many people perceive that certain academic subjects are gender specific. Subjects such as cooking and English are seen as girls subjects and maths and science are seen as boys subjects
  • Colley: notes that boys subjects are more geared towards heavy lifting such as machinery and the lessons tend to have less of a formal discussion.
  • In a study done by DfES found that in same sex schools are less likely to form a gendered stereotype around certain subjects
  • Leonard: Found that in relation to the study above pupils are less likely to choose gendered subjects, when choosing a-levels, girls choose science and boys choose modern languages and English. This was also continued to university where girls were more likely to choose male dominated subjects so that they can earn a higher salary.
15 of 17

Internal Factors - Gender - Early Socialisation

  • Early socialisation shapes children’s gender identity, as this is where they learn values and beliefs and behavioural skills.
  • Oakley: According to her ‘sex’ refers to the identity you are born with and what makes you a male or a female. Children of a young age learn cultural differences and gender role socialisation is the process of learning behaviour expected of males in society
  • Norman: from an early age boys and girls are dressed differently and given different toys and encouraged to take part in different activities. Also looks at the different ways parents reward their children based on their gender.
  • Byrne:Teachers encourage boys to be tough and show initiative and not to be weak and girls are taught to be quite and helpful and not to be rough and noisy
  • Murphy and Elwood: Boys read information books and texts while girls are more likely to read stories about people.
  • Brown and Ross: Argue that children’s beliefs about gender domains are shaped by their early experiences and expectations of adults. For example mending a car is seen as a Boys ideals rather than looking after sick people.
  • Murphy: Boys and girls interpret tasks differently. Boys and girls look at different tasks differently and the same tasks differently.
16 of 17

Internal Factors - Gender - Identity

  • Pupil experiences in school reinforce their gender and sexual identities.
  • Verbal abuse can affect a students sense of identity
  • Male peer groups
  • Teachers and discipline can affect the way a child feels about themselves and their identity
  • The male gazes
  • Double standards
17 of 17

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Sociology resources:

See all Sociology resources »See all Education resources »