Sociological expanations of the different educational achievements(important notes>_<)

Generally,we can divide the explanations into 3 parts: Social class,ethnicity and gender from factors inside and outside schools.

Social class:
-outside: 1.material deprivation:A lack of money will lead to inadequate studing resources like textbooks,computor access. Besides,the living and studing condition will not suitable for students which may make them uncomfortable or even cause illness and absenteeism from school. Therefor,a lot of researchers gave evidence and explanations:
1) Halsey(1980): found that the most important facor preventing working-class students continuing school was a lack of financial support.
2) Douglas(1964): stated that children living in unsatisfactory condition didn't do well in tests compared to kids from comfortable backgrounds.
3) Phillips(2001): showed that the "socially excluded" pupils are not simply poor but the consequence of family attitudes and values that are anti-education and a system that both encourages dependency and undermines individual responsibilities.
2.home fators and parental interest:1) Douglas saw parental interest and support as the most important factor affecting pupils' progress. 2) Reay argued that unlike working-class parents, many middle-school parents especially mothers,invest "emotional labour" in their children'education.
3.language differences: the speech patterns of different families will affect the children's achievements. Bernstein identified two codes-restricted and elaborated codes. He thought that middle-class students have advantages for that elaborated codes are the language of education. However, Labov argued that the restricted codes are just different not inadequate.
4.culture capital: According to Bourdieu,inequalities in power and wealth in society account for the inequalities in educational achievements. He argued that the children have been socialised into the dominat culture which will always exclude the working-class students and enable them to fail in the exams and self-elimination.
5.positional theory: Marxist sociologist Boudon argued that educational inequality is inevitable because of social stratification. Students start schools from very different positions,depending on their social class.

-inside school: Firstly, labelling and self-fulfilling prophency: 1) Becker: said that teachers tended to see middle-class students as closer to ideal. 2) Keddie: found that teachers social class and streaming are closely linked that working-class students are more likely from lower streams. 3) Ball: Teachers had high expectations of pupils from top bands which are usually middle-class and taught them in different ways. Secondly,attitudes of children themselves.
1) Sugarman: The pupils from manual backgrounds lived for immediate grafitication rather than deferred grafitication.
2) Hyman: the values of the working-class students are self-imposed barrier to improving their position that working-class tend to place a low value on education.
3) Feinstein found that social class continued to have a significant impact on educational achievement and therefore,redistributive policies like Sure Start should carry on throughout a student's entire education.

Gender: Colley found that there're still significant gender differences remaining in option choices despite the National Curriculum.
-outside: 1. changes in attitudes: Sue Sharpe found that girls are more confident and independent that they aim at carrers and qualifications. 2.Boys are physically active while girls are more likely to spend their time reading. 3.The feminist movement caused a change in female expectations. 4.The change in labour market like an increase in service-sector jobs has enhanced the opprtunity for women. Ulrich Beck argued that women are leading the move towards the individualised self that they are setting the pace for change. 5. Changes in the female-handed family in which children lack the role model of fathers and that will threaten tranditional masculine identities in terms of Jackson.

-inside: 1.Laddish behaviour: Francis found that Laddish Behaviour in the school and anti-school attitudes of boys has been seen as a means of off-setting generally poor levels of esteem
they get from teachers and girls. 2. The introduction of National Curriculum ensured the equal subjects for boys and girls. 3.Mitsos and Browne said teaching has been feminised that women are more likely to teach in the classroom which gives girls positive role models. 4. Textbooke and resources. 5.The quality of interaction with teachers is different from boys and girls that girls are more likely to talk about homework and study according to Swann&Graddol. 5. Jackson said that schools tended to label boys negatively and may leads to self-fulfilling prophency. 6.Willis found out the anti-school subculture by lads that they reject school,mess up the classroom and see education as uesless.

Ethnicity:
-outside: 1. Racism:Victimisation studies indicate that Asians are 50 times more likely to be the victims of a racist attack than white people. 2. Cultural deprivation: Afro-Caribbean home life is more stressful with high proportion of lone families that Pryce claimed that family among West Indians was turbulent while Asian families gives positive resources for their children.
3. language difference: Labelling theorists said that the dialects or having accent might influence the expectations of teachers. However,Driver and Ballard found Asian students whose English is not the first language are also good at English. 4.social class: The Swan Report found that social economic status was a factor in the low levels of achievement of Afro-Caribbean backgrounds.

-inside: 1.curriculum bias: The national curriculun doesn't include the history of black people and foreigh languages taught are always European. 2.Teacher expectation: According to Gillborn,teachers tend to lable the black negatively but have high expectations of Asian students. Besides,Coard said that the black students are made to feel inferior in British schools.
3. Pupil exclusions: Statistics indicate that all pupil exclusions have risen markedly since 1980s but Afro-Carebbean are over-represented.