Inside-school factors: labelling, setting, triage and institutional racism

Overview

Recall questions on inside-school and outside-school explanations, structural, material and cultural explanations, Becker on labelling, Rosenthal and Jacobson's self-fulfilling prophecy, streaming and setting, Lacey's differentiation and polarisation, Gillborn and Youdell's educational triage, the ethnocentric curriculum and institutional racism in schools.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Distinguish between inside-school and outside-school explanations of differential achievement.

   Model answer

   Inside-school explanations locate the cause in what happens within the institution, such as labelling, setting and pupil subcultures, while outside-school explanations locate it in the home, the neighbourhood and the wider economy.

2. 2

   Distinguish structural, material and cultural explanations of differential achievement.

   Model answer

   Structural explanations blame the way society and the education system are organised, such as the class structure, selection, marketisation or institutional racism; material explanations blame a shortage of money and resources; cultural explanations blame differences in values, language, attitudes and expectations.

3. 3

   What is labelling, and what kind of pupil did Becker find teachers rewarded?

   Model answer

   Labelling is the process of attaching a definition to a pupil, such as bright or troublesome; Becker found teachers judged pupils against an image of the ideal pupil whose speech, appearance and conduct were closest to middle-class norms.

4. 4

   Explain the self-fulfilling prophecy in education, using Rosenthal and Jacobson's findings.

   Model answer

   A false definition of a pupil can become true because the teacher acts on it and the pupil internalises it; Rosenthal and Jacobson told teachers certain randomly chosen children would 'spurt', and those children went on to make greater gains than their classmates.

5. 5

   How can streaming and setting turn a teacher's judgement into a lasting outcome?

   Model answer

   Once placed in a low group a pupil receives a narrower curriculum, lower expectations and often less experienced teaching, and may be entered for lower tiers, so the placement itself limits what they can achieve regardless of their original potential.

6. 6

   Explain Lacey's twin processes of differentiation and polarisation.

   Model answer

   Differentiation is teachers ranking and separating pupils by perceived ability and behaviour; polarisation is the pupils' response, as those ranked highly form a pro-school subculture and those ranked low form an anti-school one.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.