Sociology!
!
!
Rist (1970)!
Ray Rist published Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education.
Through an analysis of an all-black school, he observed that a kindergarten teacher, also black, assigned her students to three tables within the classroom only a few days after the beginning of the year. The most promising group was placed at the front, and the least promising group at the rear of the classroom.
Interestingly, Rist found that placement of these groups was based not on cognitive abilities, but on appearance. Using class-related characteristics (darkness of skin colour, dress style, hair style, and even smell), the teacher made judgments of academic promise. Those in the front of the classroom received more praise and had more interaction with the teacher, while those labeled as 'slow-learners' had less opportunity to participate in learning experiences and were reprimanded more often. This created a caste-like classroom, in which there was not only little mobility at the end of the kindergarten year, but also the gap between the groups increased as they progressed to elementary school. In sum, Rist showed that students in the same classroom received differential treatment, that teacher expectations of student performance were largely shaped by class-related features, and hence that school reinforced existing socio-economic inequalities.!
!
Keddie (1971)!
●
Labelling is the Idea that teachers label students with either positive or negative labels. Other students and adults might label children as well !
●
Self fulfilling Prophecy is a theory that the student either accepts the label and become the label, or reject the label and rebels.!
●
Keddie found that working class children were labelled unfairly as unitelligent or stupid because of unruly behaviour. He believed ‘cultural deprivation’ is a myth. He argued that education needs to build on working class culture, not just middle class!
!
Gilborn and Youdell!
Educational triage arises from Gillborn and Youdell’s (2000) study where they apply the medical model of triage to secondary mathematics. In a medical crisis, triage is used to assign limited resources for the greatest benefit. Casualties are grouped and treated accordingly. Generally three categories are applied: safe cases (those who will survive without intervention), cases suitable for treatment (requiring immediate treatment) and ‘hopeless cases’ (unlikely to survive even with treatment). Gillborn and Youdell applied this triage process to the educational context, examining the systematic process of directing educational resources to some pupils whilst neglecting others. The focus of their study was on GCSE mathematics. They found that the pressures of accountability under the A-C economy resulted in practices being enacted to maximise the school’s scores in league tables, resulting in strategies that often focus on pupils seen as heading towards grade D passes, where an improvement of a single grade could potentially figure significantly in the school’s final results. In effect, the schools seek to convert likely grade Ds into grade Cs.!
!
Rosenthal and Jacobsen!
The original research of Rosenthal and Jacobsen focused on an experiment at an elementary school where students took intelligence pre-tests. Rosenthal and Jacobsen then informed the teachers of the names of twenty percent of the students in the school who were showing “unusual potential for intellectual growth” and would bloom academically within the year. Unknown to the teachers, these students were selected randomly with no relation to the initial test. When Rosenthal and Jacobson tested the students eight months later, they discovered that the randomly selected students who teachers thought would bloom scored significantly higher. This means those who have been labelled as ‘about to bloom’ are most likely to succeed, and those who are labelled otherwise will most likely fall into a downwards spiral. 