Processes In The Education System

The following sample essay on processes in the education systemю Interactionists focus on processes within the education system, which result in different levels of achievement. Interactionist sociologists have said that the interaction between the teacher and pupil will affect their attainment. This can be because some teachers tend to label their learners; these labels can be positive or negative with the positive labels meaning the pupils will succeed where as the negative labels meaning the pupils will be more likely to under achieve.

  Howard Becker writing in the 1960s said that teachers had an ideal pupil image, which was based on conduct, manners and the nature of attitude of the learner.Becker said that the academic ability of the learner could influence their interaction with the teacher, which could therefore determine their educational attainment.

The teachers usually have an ideal image, however this image tends to be conformist, this has led to the self-fulfilling prophecy theory, where the teacher is the prophecy and the leaner is self-fulfillist, this results in the teacher labelling there learners with the working class usually being negative, the pupils then react to the label given and respond accordingly meaning the label has become true and the prophecy is fulfilled.

However interactionists recognise that not all pupils will live up to their labels. Fuller writing in 1984 found that black girls in a comprehensive school resented their negative stereotypes of being both black and female.

They felt that people expected them to fail so they tried to prove them wrong by devoting themselves to their work in order to achieve success.

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Fuller’s work avoids some of the pitfalls of deterministic versions of the labelling theory, which suggest that failure is inevitable for those with negative labels attached to them.The school organisation has been criticised with teachers interacting differently with different streams, especially since the middle classes are normally in the top stream and the working class in the lower stream. There is also said to be a culture clash between teachers and working class pupils as the teachers are normally middle class, which could all ultimately affect the child’s educational achievement.Nell Keddie writing in the 1970s commented on the differentiation of an undifferentiated curriculum.

Keddie felt that all streams should have the same information, something, which was not happening in schools at the time, she was writing. Keddie also felt that the curriculum was middle class orientated with the subjects, way of learning, the language and the more mental and abstract concepts, which would leave the working classes at a disadvantage.This meant that the middle class would possess the key to open the doors to success. We can see that the research of Douglas et al shows that various home background factors and experiences of cultural deprivation can account for attainment levels of the working class being lower than the middle class. It may be that those sociologists who emphasise the inside school factors are nearer in explaining the causes of a differential education system.