Assessment of the View That Labeling Within Schools Are What Define Who Succeed and Who Fails in Education

Assessment of the View That Labeling Within Schools Are What Define Who Succeed and Who Fails in Education

The main influences that affect pupil achievement seem to come from

outside of the school construct such as home background, social class

etc. However there are many things that can influence pupil

achievement within the school.

Interactionists have put forward a number of processes they feel

affect achievement to start with social role plays an important part

there are the fixed roles of pupil, teacher, head teacher, etc but

interactionists believe that these roles are not inflexible pupils and

teachers have may have different views about what makes the ideal

pupil and ideal teacher. These models may be unobtainable and as a

result pupils may be forced to form subcultures, as they feel valued

and accepted in these subcultures. The pupil's views of ideals can be

modified to reject or embrace education and this will obviously affect

achievement.

Willis's study of 'the lads' showed that pupils can form

counter-school subcultures valuing having a 'laff' over learning and

would even reject peers who want to perform well, labelling them

'earoles'.

Labelling can even take place in a teacher pupil relationship and will

happen at an early age; when pupils first enter school little is known

about them. Hargreaves identified three stages of labelling. The first

stage is speculation the teacher will make guesses about the type of

pupil their dealing with mainly through appearance. The second stage

is elaboration where the teacher will either confirm or change their

fist speculation. The third stage is stabilization where the teacher

feels pretty confident in their evaluation of the pupil and will judge

all future behaviour from this base.

Labelling is believed to affect the future progress of pupils and can

even affect important educational decisions such as what class they

are put Into and what courses they take.

A more specific type of labelling called the self-fulfilling prophecy

theory argues that predictions made by teachers on the future of

pupils will affect the teacher's behaviour toward them.