SS-1065D Social Divisions and Change Week 11 Final lecture

This week
Social divisions and educational achievement
Individuals have multiple aspects to their social

identities. E.g. class, gender and ethnicity, e.g. a white working class male. He/she may be affected by all of these identities. Gender and intersection with other aspects of identity in education Class and life chances

Explanations for achievement

Biological
Biological (19th C) intelligence or natural differences between the

sexes (although see more recent 20th C work on race and IQ tests (e.g. The Bell Curve- critiqued as inaccurate and racist):

Sociological
Schooling:

the formal curriculum and hidden curriculum which pupils are taught what? Teaching approaches and teacher attitudes The school environment and structure Peer cultures

Wider social inequalities in society, cultural and material capital

Gender: Patterns up to 1980s/90s

Main question was why girls did not achieve as well

as boys in school? Up to 1960s girls outperformed boys in primary and early secondary years before boys caught up and overtook them in post-16 education. Subject choices: boys maths and science. Girls arts, languages, home economics etc.

Gender: 1990s onwards

Main question: why are boys underachieving? Or rather

why are particular groups of boys underachieving? Boys are more likely to get the highest and the lowest grades polarisation. White working class: Wendy Bottero focus on their ethnicity is hiding structural socio-economic causes, David Gillborn construction of white racial victimhood in the media talk about race, but not class war. Subject choices: more girls doing chemistry, medicine etc but still some gender divide across other subjects However, increase in education achievements of girls in comparison to boys disguises the role of class and ethnicity. There are still differences here. Middle-class white girls. (See Walkerdine et al (2001) Growing Up Girl)

Failing boys: moral panic

Epstein et al.s (1998) Failing Boys - argue that in the media

and educational policy there is a moral panic around boys underachievement This:
a) masks the continuing problems faced by girls in schools; b) reinforces male privilege by justifying a greater focus and

resources on meeting boys needs (at the expense of girls); and c) deflects attention from the larger achievement gaps according to race and social class.

Francis (2006) Heroes or Zeros? alongside poor boys

discourse, the neo-liberal focus of failure on individuals rather than social structures means certain groups of boys beginning to be demonised for their apparent wastefulness ofresources and failure to take responsibility for their own achievement (p.187)

Gender - definition
The social identity that has become historically and

culturally attached to being male or female. Masculinity and femininity used to describe the social roles, expectations and behaviours linked to each gender. (see Ann Oakley Sex, Gender and Society [1974])

The social construction of gender

Doing gender masculinities and femininities do not

exist prior to social behaviour, either as bodily states or fixed personalities (Connell 1996: 210). They come into existence as people act in everyday interactions and in organisational life (the way social practices are structured and organised) The role of school:
School as a setting the site in which interactions take

place (remember there are other sites in society through which social construction of gender takes place) School as an agent (structures and practices of school)

How success and failure is explained -Abbot (2006)

Pamela Abbott : when boys are failing it is often

explained through extrinsic factors (through factors external to them) such as the feminisation of school environment. Whereas success is intrinsic when they succeed its seen as because they naturally have a higher ability. When girls succeed it is explained by extrinsic factors such as more girl friendly teaching environment, use of coursework etc and low status intrinsic factors (e.g. neatness, conformity)

Sex-role theory
Sex-role theory schools transmit society wide norms

and children receive these Sue Sharpe (1976) Just like a girl: how girls learn to be women the hidden curriculum, also how gender socialisation outside school affects education outcomes READ Sharpes extract School and the Hidden Curriculum What does the hidden curriculum mean? Dale Spender ed. (1980) Learning to Lose: Sexism and education education as indoctrination, cult of the apron BUT what about the ways in which boys and girls use femininities and masculinities to resist control. The role of agency and how does power circulate and how is power used?

Interactionist approaches
Small scale, qualitative research based primarily on

observation in schools - ethnographic Look at the effects of within-school factors on pupil achievement, especially pupil-teacher interaction. Importance of streams/sets and mixed ability teaching. Positive and negative labelling + their effects - Selffulfilling prophecies Gender and labelling: which forms of behaviour are coded masculine and feminine and which forms of masculine and feminine identities are valued and associated with success? Also working class and some ethic minority students = most likely to be negatively labelled.

Gender regimes in school (Connell 1996)

Power relations teacher-teacher, teacher-pupil, pupil

pupil Division of labour Patterns of emotion Symbolization Taking up the offer - Connell points out that the terms on which people participate are not predetermined they may adjust to these patterns, rebel against them or try to modify them There may be differences within the school and gender regimes can also change over time because SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED

Sexuality and engagement with school

1970s onwards feminists have looked at WC girls and sub-

cultural forms of resistance to education through performances of femininity. Hyper-heterosexual femininity although more recent studies shown MC girls doing gender in this way also, but different outcomes (Archer et al. 2007). Also laddettes Archer et al. (2007) while the young women use heterosexual femininities as a means to generate capital, it is ultimately paradoxical because these constructions simultaneously play into other oppressive power relations. Heterosexuality and masculinity Mac an Ghail: macho boys who label boys who achieve academically as being effeminate or gay. Sexual harassment of girls. Attempts to assert power and dominance.

Work and the family

Young peoples changing perceptions on the relevance of

education More employment opportunities for women and greater participation in the workforce Many occupations traditionally seen as female now require higher qualifications e.g. nursing (Abbott) Youth unemployment and job market Attitudes to marriage and children Sue Sharp follow up study to Just like a Girl Working class boys: Deindustrialisation and decline in manufacturing jobs. Instrumental orientation to school and limited compliance to get a job no longer relevant. Lack of opportunities. Response rejection of schooling.

Statistics: ethnicity
Lower levels of attainment among Black Caribbean, Pakistani,

and Bangladeshi groups than whites. Indians, Chinese and Black Africans are more likely to have higher qualifications. (Modood, 2005, Parekh, 2000, Gallagher, 2004). Some ethnic groups (e.g. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) = internally polarized, with both high and low qualifications. In 40% of LAs, Pakistanis more likely than whites to attain 5 grade A-C GCSEs (Modood, 2005). By 1990s attainment among Bangladeshi rising considerably & in some areas outperform white pupils (DES, 2006). While Black Caribbean children begin school at the same standard as the national average, by the age of 16, the number of students who have five GCSE passes is less than half the national average (DES, 2006)
What is happening in school/wider society to produce

this? Not intrinsic to persons ethnicity.

Statistics: ethnicity
All ethnic minorities, with the exception of Black Caribbean

males, increasing representation in further education and some groups now exceed the governments target of 50% participation (Modood, 2005). Black Caribbean pupils are considerably more likely to face disciplinary action and exclusion from school; there has also been a recent increase in exclusions of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Somali pupils (DfES, 2006). Black Caribbean pupils are one and a half times more likely than white pupils to be identified as having behavioural, emotional and social needs (DfES, 2006). Gypsy/Roma and Traveller pupils experience the most severe educational exclusion of any minority ethnic group in the UK with levels of attainment being roughly of the national average.

Cultures and essentialism

As well as variations within a culture, cultures are also not static. They change over time and locations.
James Clifford (1986: 10) : Cultures do not hold still for their portraits. Attempts to make them do so always involve simplification and exclusion, selection of a temporal focus, the construction of a particular self-other relationship.

Black masculinities and schooling: how Black boys survive modern schooling (Tony Sewell 1997)
Ethnographic study in 2 London high schools These categories are not held to be rigid or homogenous,

but used by Sewell to build explanations. Teacher attitudes:

Supportive
Irritated Antagonistic

Student responses (attitudes to means and goals of

school):
Rebels Conformist Innovators compares to Fullers (1990) pro-ed, anti-school girls

Retreaters

Routes into education and employment for young Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in the UK (Dale et al. 2010) Young people interviewed in Manchester and Oldham

Found high aspirations and motivations to do well in

education . . . if they (girls) want to be independent, you know, then they should carry on (with their education). I think most of them do carry on, because of their independence, they dont rely on the partner or anything like that. (Pakistani girl) In my family, right, . . . my family expects me to go out, get a degree, do this, do that, and everyones always expecting me to do this, do that, and sometimes, Im getting wound up by the pressure. (Pakistani boy)

Differing perspectives on izzat (1)

Parents izzat is extremely important and they

(children) need to know that. Im not saying that they cant study away from home. I say they can even go abroad as far as America if they want to and my husband and I agree on this. They can study wherever they want but the condition is that they remember the door of their parents home and that they will be returning through that door the way they left. And if they follow this advice, then I dont think theyll lose out in life, ever. The world will respect them and parents will also respect them.

Differing perspectives on izzat (2)

Around here, theres a young girl, about 20 years

old and she recently got married and people didnt even know they had a daughter of that age, because she never went out anywhere and just stayed in the home. She had younger sisters who went everywhere with their mum, but she never went anywhere; she was that faithful she never went anywhere. So as you see, in our Islam it is strongly recommended not to go out of the home, but these days, its become a custom wherever you look, everybody goes out and everybody works.

Community monitoring of behaviour

Some people, like, they talk about you . . . Oh, your

daughter is doing this or . . .they say hows your daughter . . . and they say theyve gone to college and they are studying this . . . and then they say: why do you do that? . . . why dont you just get them married? (Focus group of Pakistani and Bangladeshi girls aged 1415)

Activity
It is often argued that the curriculum has been

feminised, or that it only reflects white and/or middle class values. These arguments are sometimes given as reasons for inequalities between students of different genders, and class or ethnic backgrounds. Think about your school or college or university curriculum In small groups, consider gender, class or ethnicity and think about a) whether you agree with the argument and b) the ways in which the curriculum might be biased towards one particular group.

Race and Class (Mirza et al. 2000)

There is evidence that the inequality of attainment between social classes has grown since the late 1980s (Mirza et al. )
Even when controlling for social class, there remain significant inequalities of attainment between different ethnic groups. For example, only white pupils improved year on year regardless of their class

background. However, pupils from non-manual backgrounds still have significantly higher attainments, as a group, than their peers of the same ethnic origin but from manual households. Although for Black Caribbean pupils the social class difference is much less pronounced The gender gap is considerably smaller than the inequalities of attainment associated with ethnic origin and social class background although does still exist and significant in its effects when intersecting with particular ethnicity and class.

IQ Theory
E.g. Charles Murray. The key assumptions of IQ theory

are: Intelligence can be defined clearly It can be measured accurately via IQ tests Data indicate clear social class differences in intelligence Research on identical twins suggests that up to 80% of the variation in intelligence among individuals can be explained by genetic factors Environmental factors , therefore, are less important than inherited IQ as determinants of intelligence Walkerdine et al case study where MC girl and WC girl getting low grades teachers perspective: MC girl not trying, WC girl low ability.

Criticism of IQ theory
Intelligence cannot be defined clearly or accurately measured by IQ

tests. IQ tests may be culturally biased Student IQ test scores can improve with practice, suggesting that they do not measure fundamental intelligence Some studies suggest working class students with high IQ scores are still more likely to leave school at an early age - suggesting environmental factors are important Douglas found that upper middle class pupils obtained twice as many O Level passes as lower working class children with the same measured IQ. Some groups have improved their performance, e.g. girls and black pupils. IQ theories cannot explain how this happens.

Cultural deprivation theory

Relevant theorists: e.g Douglas, Bernstein.
The relative educational underachievement of working class students

is explained by their cultural deprivation.

This explanation argued that the working class lacked the

necessary attitudes for educational success. A number of factors were cited, but particularly a lack of parental interest in their childrens education.
Key elements of cultural deprivation: fatalism, strong present

time orientation, unwillingness to plan for the future, unwillingness to defer gratification, linguistic deprivation.

Criticism of cultural deprivation theory (1)

Douglas work has been criticised because of the way he

measured parental interest: i.e. whether parents visited the school. Walkerdine et al. what is seen as culture and how is certain behaviour interpreted? Parents experiences of school: in their study most WC parents had left school early, many had not enjoyed it, a priority for some was that children would be happier at school than they had been, Advocacy: WC parents seen as aggressive, trouble makers or if deferring to teachers assumed knowledge about education seen as uninterested. MC parents as assertive advocates for their children. Parents evenings: Power in teacher-parent interactions: MC parents seen as equal professionals or even see teachers as providing service to them.

Criticism of cultural deprivation theory (2)

Material deprivation (lack of money, poor health or housing)

may disadvantage certain groups. Educational Maintenance Awards (EMAs) were introduced to attempt to counter this Working class parental ambitions may have declined as a result of inaccurate and/or unfair setting processes and/or inaccurate negative school reports. It may be lack of material resources which force working class parents and pupils to be oriented to the present and make them unable to defer gratification In any case many working class parents are keen to give their children a better chance than they had. What about material circumstances and also the organisation of schools?

Material circumstances
Working class students may experience a range of adverse material

circumstances such as: Fewer pre-school play groups and nurseries in working class areas Greater risk of poor diet, under-nourishment, tiredness, sickness and absence from school W/C pupils may feel forced to take part-time paid work which interferes with studies: for M/C pupils this is optional rather than necessary. No quiet room for study Parents unable to afford relevant books, trips or personal computers Parents unable to afford part-time private tuition or full time private education Parents unable to afford housing in catchment areas of top schools Parents and students anxiety over debts associated with higher education

The role of education

How and why did education systems arise? Looking

back to 19th Century Normalisation of the working-class to fit middleclass aspirations and values. Liberation or containment and pacification? An instructed and intelligent people besides are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant oneless apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of the government (Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations)

Structural explanation: producing a labour force

Functionalists and Marxists have both argued that

working class children are bound to do less well in school. This is a preparation for their future role in an unequal society. Functionalists: this is inevitable and meritocratic. Schools select the best people for the most important jobs. Marxists: this is essential to the capitalist system: failure at school justifies a role at the bottom of the social class structure. Bowles and Gintis argued that the schooling you get corresponds to your future role in production. In Learning to Labour Willis however argued that working class boys see through all of this.

Paul Willis Learning to Labour: how working class kids get working class jobs (1977) (1)
Willis study focused mainly on 12 male working class

non-examination students in a secondary modern school in the 1970s (where students who failed 11+ exam went to instead of grammar school)
The study looked at the interaction of structure and

agency
Willis: main reason for the relative educational under-

achievement of these pupils was that they actively chose a future involving hard , unskilled manual work as a means of confirming their masculinity. This is the agency aspect of Willis theory.

Paul Willis Learning to Labour: how working class kids get working class jobs (1977) (2)
The boys have realised that their exam grades would not

improve their employment prospects substantially, but they have not realised the long term disadvantages of unskilled manual work. Here their behaviour is influenced by the structure of society.
The lads preparing for the factory floor The earoles seen by the lads as being effeminate.

School as a pathway to a career

De-industrialisation
In the mid 1970s ,unskilled manual work was widely

available but the mass unemployment of the 1980s and early 1990s and the decline of manufacturing industry have changed attitudes to employment for many workingclass boys. Mac an Ghail (1994) - with reduced potential for achieving in terms of traditional working class trades, the macho lads no longer have instrumental attitude to school. Instead they seek alternative anti-school values and adopt laddish attitudes and behaviour

Cultural capital
Some sociologists argue that working class students

may be at an educational disadvantage not because their culture is deprived or inferior but because it is different and values and knowledge associated with their culture have less status in society. Cultural analysis of class expose the unacknowledged normality of the middle classes (Ball, 2003; Reay et al. 2007; Savage et al. 2001) + the pathologisation of the working classes (Lawler, 2005; Reay, 2004; Skeggs, 2004).

Pierre Bourdieu (1)

French sociologist (1930-2002) Class distinctions and class cultures- cultural dimensions

of class stratification Habitus - refers to a set of patterns of thought, behaviour and taste that are acquired through the internalisation of culture and social structures, and through individuals experiences (Bourdieu and Waquant 1992: 54).
Class cultures are different and working class children even if

culturally different from middle and upper class children are culturally different rather than culturally deprived.

Pierre Bourdieu (2)

Concerned not only with inequality of educational opportunity but

with the overall functions of education systems . Capitalist societies are class societies where the dominant classes use their power to maintain their class advantages Dominant class have the social power to ensure that their culture is defined as the culture which is superior to other class cultures The dominant classes have the power also to ensure that schools and colleges evaluate students in terms of the culture [knowledge, attitudes and skills] possessed by most of the dominant class children, but only rarely by working class children The dominant class culture can be learned only in dominant class families because schools and colleges do not teach this culture although they do assess students in terms of it.

Bourdieu (3)
Working class students are put at an educational disadvantage

because they are assessed in terms of a dominant culture which they cannot learn at home or at school Bourdieu calls the knowledge attitudes and skills available to the dominant class children cultural capital because its transmission from parents to children helps to perpetuate class advantages across the generations in the same way as the transmission of wealth does (economic capital) and useful social connections (social capital) Capitalist education systems may be seen as fair and meritocratic but for Bourdieu this is merely a convenient myth which hides the roles of education systems in the reproduction of capitalist class structures.

Identity transformation
Reay (2009): Influenced by Bourdieus class analysis

Reay argues that working-class students need to transform their identity in order to succeed.
Shaun: In the classroom I am not myselfIn the

playground, yeah Im back to my normal selfjust being normal

Beyond the school gate

The Zombie Stalking English Schools: Social Class and Educational Inequality by Dianne Reay [2006].
within education policy the prevailing focus has been on within-school processes; a focus that has often been at the expense of understanding the influence of the wider economic and social context on schooling. (p. 289) Good article if looking at social mobility and class

Hidden curriculum: labelling, class and self-fulfilling prophecies

Interactionist studies found that teachers stereotyped

(labelled) pupils in lower streams/sets/bands in schools. This tended to produce low expectations of pupils. They argued that pupils accepted these labels and developed anti-school cultures. This explanation pointed out that pupils were affected by what went on in school and not just at home. Marxists criticised these explanations for not explaining why the working class were in lower streams and why they were the group which was labelled. They argued that interactionists ignored power.

Classroom interactions
Streaming and assessment procedures (Reay 2009):

produces and reaffirms some as academic stars while producing sense of worthlessness among others. Ill be a nothing and do badly very badly.

Some classic studies on streaming and teacherpupil interactions

Hargreaves (1967): streaming in a boys secondary modern

school led to the development of academic and delinquent subcultures Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) self-fulfilling prophecy: when teachers were provided with intentionally inaccurate assessments of pupils abilities this had a significant impact on pupil- teacher interactions. V unethical methodology! Nell Keddie (1970) Classroom Knowledge: Streaming/banding. Important information withheld from lower band pupils because teachers believe they will not understand it Ball (1981) Beachside Comprehensive: Informal ability grouping within mixed ability classes is also likely so that mixed ability teaching does not remove the problem of negative labelling.

Activity
In your group, design a new curriculum that would

better cater for the needs of all groups. For this activity you should consider:
The national curriculum subjects Teaching methods and delivery New or alternative forms of learning

 Ball, S. J. (1981). Beachside comprehensive. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BALL, S.J. (2003) Class Strategies and the Educational Market: the Middle Classes and Social Advantage (London, RoutledgeFalmer). Bernstein, B. (1971) Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America: Education Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books Inc CLIFFORD, J. 1986. Partial Truths. In: J. Clifford, and G. Marcus, eds. Writing Culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 1-26. Connell, R. (1996) Teaching the Boys: New Research on Masculinities and Gender Strategy for Schools, Teaching College, 98(2) Dale, A., Nusrat Shaheen, Virinder Kalra & Edward Fieldhouse (2010) Routes into education and employment for young Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in the UK, Ethnic and Racial Studies DfES (Department for Education and Skills). 2006. Ethnicity and Education: The Evidence on Minority Ethnic Pupils Aged 5-16. London: DfES. Douglas ,J. W. B. (1964), The Home and the School, MacGibbon and Kee,

London. Epstein et al. (1998) Failing boys: Issues in gender and achievement, Open University Press.

 Francis, B. (2006) Heros or Zeros? The discursive of underachieving boys in English neo-liberal education policy Journal of Education Policy, 21 (2) 187-200. Hargreaves, D. (1967). Social Relations in a Secondary School. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Keddie, N. (1970) Classroom Knowledge. In Young (Ed.) Knowledge and Control , London: Collier-Macmillan. LAWLER, S. (2005) Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities, The Sociological Review, 3 (3), 429446. Mac an Ghail, M. (1994) The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexulaities and Schooling, Buckingham: Open University Press. Modood, Tariq. 2005. Multicultural Politics. Routledge. London Murphy, P. & Elwood, J. (1998) Gendered experiences , choices and avhievements exploring the links, Journal of Inclusive Education, 2(2): 95-118. Parekh, Bhiku. 2000. The Parekh Report. Princeton: Princeton University Press. REAY, D. ( 2004) Mostly Roughs and Toughs : Social class, race and representation in inner city schooling, Sociology, 35 (4), 10051023. REAY, D. et al. (2007) A darker shade of pale? Whiteness, the middle classes and multi-ethnic inner city schooling, Sociology. Rosenthal , L. & Jacobson, L. (1968) Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils intellectual development , Holt, Rinehart and Winston Savage, M. et al. (2001) Ordinary, ambivalent and defensive: class identities in the Northwest of England, Sociology, 35 (4), 875892. Walkerdine et al. (2001) Growing up Girl: Psychosocial explorations of gender and class, Basingstoke: Palgrave.