Item A
Internationalist sociologists such as Becker claim that teachers label different groups of pupils and treat them unequally. This affects pupils’ self-esteem and educational achievement.
Teachers are required to treat pupils fairly and so are unlikely to admit that they label them. If teachers are aware that they are being studied, they may avoid saying or doing anything that could be taken as ‘labeling’.
Whether or not a particular action by a teacher is part of a labeling process is open to interpretation. For example, one researcher might see telling off a pupil as ‘labeling’, while another might view it as ‘justifiable classroom discipline’.
Researchers not only want to know whether labeling occurs. They also want to measure its effect on pupils’ self-esteem and achievement.

Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess the strengths and limitation of experiments for the study of labeling in schools (20 marks)

Using experiments for studying the theory of labeling in schools can have many strengths and limitations, included in practical, ethical and theoretical factors. The labeling theory is the idea that categorizing group or individuals can seriously affect their behavior. Two types of experiments – fields and laboratory, can investigate the effects of this theory.

Interpretivists typically use field experiments as they’re taken place in a more natural environment, such as a school; which are usually real life situations. They can also extract qualitative and valid data, meaning you can look deeper into the truth behind the study of labeling on children in schools. However there is lack of scientific credibility and so there isn’t any identified or controlled variables. Experiments are unlikely to be used by interpretivists. On the other hand, positivists are more likely to use lab experiments because they’re reliable. They are very scientific and are also quantitative research, so it is easier to measure and identify cause and effect of behavior patterns of the children’s responses to the study of labeling. Lab experiments have full control over controlled variables and so they’re easy to replicate. However it is very unethical to perform lab experiments on children as it may cause harm to themselves and their education in the long run. As lab experiments are ‘set up’ they’re not valid, this means it is very difficult to generalise the results to every child in the school.

Rosenthal and Jacobson’s “Pygmalion in the classroom” experiment is a covert field experiment which shows that the “The Hawthorne Effect” which item A states is occurring in schools can be avoided. In this experiment they used a real school situation and planted ideas in the minds of some of the teachers about how well students would perform in the future. They then measured whether this prediction turned into reality – which would indicate how far teachers expectations influenced achievements. Pupils were given an IQ test and teachers were told that this had enabled the researchers to identify the 20% of pupils who were likely to ‘spurt’ in the next year. The pupils were actually chosen at random. The teachers were not aware that they were being used for sociological research and so didn’t act any differently to the way that they usually would in this situation, increasing validity. Nevertheless because this was a field experiment the sociologists were unable to control the variables and so the experiment couldn’t be replicated making it high in validity however not representative.

There are also huge ethical problems when studying children in education. Firstly, because of informed consent; it is unethical to do some research on minors without parental being aware of the situation and the school governors have to allow you to do so. If you do ask for consent it could contaminate the experiment and it would no longer be covert and could have lead to the ‘experiment effect’. Also, using covert field experiments, with a situation such as labeling, it is impossible to conclude whether the teacher has actually being unfair and certain labeling the children unless you’re present in the room to observe. Other ethical factors include the fact that children are extremely venerable to harm; as a whole experiments use some sort of manipulation of those involved. Using an experiment to asses the study of labeling in schools can damage a child and potentially their education for a very long time. An example of this is in Rosenthal and Jacobson’s experiment they allow a randomly selected group of school children the advantage of doing well in school, this is unfair on the other pupils in the class and could have a lasting effect. The rest of the class was potentially held back from their education. Similarly in Harvey and Slatin’s study about whether teacher has a preconceived idea about pupils of different social class, it shows that lower-class children were rated less favorably, presenting that teachers do label students on their appearance and class. Agreeing with Item A saying that ‘teachers label different groups of people and treat them unequally’.

There are also practical issues when using experiments to measure labeling in schools. Since schools are very large and there is also a lot of them in the world many variables can affects teacher expectations. For example, class size, streaming, type of school, age of pupils etc. Not only does this means that sociologists can not conclude or generalise their findings but it also means that they cant conclude that teachers label students based on achievement or looks as there must be other variables and factors included. Along the lines of this, when looking at Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study, they have not taken into consideration other factors such as home life, the medial or cultural factors that may have influenced the academic achievement of the students that they observed. As the experiment is taking part in a school, it would be very difficult for “anyone” to get access. Another practice issue could be the way someone operationalizes a concept, as stated in Item A ‘one researcher might see telling off a pupil as labeling, while another might view it as justifiable classroom discipline’. This is true as the results could come out entirely different depending on how someone would view a certain situation.

In conclusion, it is clear that there are both strengths and limitations of both field and lab experiments in researching labeling in schools. Different types of sociologist, interpretivists and positivists have a huge effect on how useful on how useful the experiment is to the research itself and practical, ethical and theoretical issues are a big part of how effective the research is.