Schooling Comprehensive Kids

Pupil Responses to Education

Amanda Palmer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429792021
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this volume is based upon an ethnographic study of white and black in a mixed comprehensive school conducted during the 1980s and explores differentiation in the classroom, looking at gender, colour and class differences within groups of students. The findings are discussed in the light of the strong debate within the sociology of education that took place during the 1970s and 1980s concerning academic achievement and underachievement. Amanda Palmer reveals, in contribution to this debate, that class origins played a primary role in the formation of pupils' attitudes towards school and that class, race and gender were involved in how teachers reacted to pupils

1 Introduction

Ethnography has only become an important feature of research in the sociology of education since the 1960s. Studies by Hargreaves (1967) and Lacey (1970) are among the earliest examples of participant observation inside school walls and within the ‘closed’ confines of the classroom. This is perhaps surprising, considering the enormous importance of ethnographic participant observation studies some decades before in the pioneering anthropological accounts of Malinowski (1922) and Evans-Pritchard (1940) and in view of the in-depth insights gained by early sociologists such as Whyte (1955) and Becker (1963) in their respective studies of people on the margins of society.

During the 1970s, however, there was a growing incidence of ethnographic research in the classroom, aimed at understanding the processes and interactions taking place. The earliest school ethnographies focussed not only on boys but also on ‘problem’ boys. The early work of Hargreaves (1967) concentrated on the school experiences of secondary modern boys and described an emerging anti-school culture among the boys in the lowest streams. Similarly, Lacey (1970) observed the ‘differentiation and polarisation’ between top and bottom streams in a boys’ grammar school, identifying similar pro-school and anti-school cultures associated with either academic success or relative failure. The work of Lambart (1976) is one exception to this being research conducted with girls parallel to the studies of Hargreaves and Lacey, but girls’ experiences of education did not receive much attention prior to the 1980s. As a result, research on boys was invariably taken to be research on pupils per se. From this we can deduce that girls were seen as being either as no different to boys or as unimportant. Either way, they did not require special attention. That this attitude continued late into the 1970s is confirmed by Griffin (1987) who, speaking about her research with schoolgirls conducted in 1979, says:

Exclusively male studies pass without comment, accepted as perfectly normal, whereas my work was seen as unusual from the start (Griffin, 1987, p. 219).

Invisible girls

That this is true for a number of ethnographic researches in schools during the 1970s can be illustrated by the quiet invisibility of girls in the work of Ball (1981). His Beachside Comprehensive was heralded as an important insight into the effects of banding in one of the new comprehensives, and therefore as an important sequel to Hargreaves (1967) and Lacey (1970). It passed virtually unnoticed in the book that the school under scrutiny was a mixed comprehensive and no attempt was made to separate out the different experiences and reactions of girls.

Many other examples exist to demonstrate the preponderance of boys’ studies (e.g. Willis 1977, Corrigan 1979) and these have served to highlight a predominantly male, working-class culture and perspective in the literature. Whilst there may well be sound methodological reasons why male researchers should concentrate on male respondents (e.g. for reasons of easier access and better rapport with members of the same sex), it has to be recognised that the earlier work conducted with boys provided formative frameworks for analysis that were taken to be common truths for the subsequent analysis of pupils from different groups. Thus, later studies on girls laboured under the preconceptions and precedents set by earlier work conducted solely with boys. The problems encountered by Griffin (1987) serve to clarify this point and de-mystify the importance of the pioneering studies:

I also felt the pressure to fit young women’s experiences into the dominant cultural paradigm, ... At first I too searched for female equivalents to Willis’ ‘lads’ and ‘earoles’, striving to identify female pro-and anti-school cultures .... I tried in vain to fit the young women’s experiences into this ‘gang of lads’ format, but their lives were far too complex (Griffin, 1987, p. 218).

Fortunately, Griffin has not been alone in trying to redress the balance by bringing girls’ experience of school onto the sociologists’ agenda. Many researchers (e.g. Burgess 1986, Purvis 1984, Delamont 1980) have highlighted the need for research with girls and some (e.g. Sharpe 1976, Delamont 1980 and Stanley 1986) have begun the systematic observation of young women at school and in the transition to work, training, domesticity or unemployment in order to understand their world.

Black and white

Just as gender in general, and girls in particular, have until recently been ignored in ethnographic studies, so has race received scant attention. The work of Hargreaves, Lacey, Ball, Willis and many others concerned not just boys but indigenous white boys. Riley (1985a) remarks on this in her study of black South London schoolgirls. She writes:

Girls at school are assumed either to be non-existent or just pale reflections of the male pupils. Black girls are doubly invisible (Riley, 1985a, p. 63).

Even where researchers have incorporated the male/female dimension in their work they have more often than not looked only at white pupils or left ethnicity unspecified (e.g. Stanworth 1981, Measor 1984 and Davies 1979).

Yet as Wright (1985) states:

Studies on gender and classroom interaction which have failed to give some consideration to the participants’ race (or ethnicity) as an important variable run the risk of either projecting too simplistic or distorted a picture of classroom dynamics (Wright, 1985, p. 184).

Exceptions to this include Griffin (1985) and Furlong (1984) who conducted interviews and conversations with both white and non-white pupils in order to understand the factors important in shaping their school lives. With Griffin’s work, however, there is the fact that black, white and Asian girls were researched without any comparison with boys. With Furlong, there is the same lack of comparison but from the opposite perspective, for in his study white and black boys received attention without reference to the experiences of girls attending the same school. A similar, but more restrictive problem arises in studies that confine themselves to an analysis of black pupils’ experiences alone as in the article by Fuller (1980). Though much rich data can be obtained in studies that concentrate on one particular ethnie group, there is always the danger that what is discovered is then attributed to that group and that group alone, when comparative research might have indicated that some of the findings were in fact common to other groups of pupils, and not due solely to racial or ethnic factors.

Wright’s (1986) ethnographic study sought to offer a comprehensive account of black and Asian pupils’ experiences in comparison with those of their white peers. Male and female, Asian, black and white pupils in two Midlands comprehensives were thoroughly researched through eighteen hundred hours of classroom observation, formal and informal interviews and school records. This, it could be argued, is a thorough ethnography which compares and contrasts the experiences of British school pupils according to their race (ethnicity) and gender. Yet here once more there is a deficit inasmuch as class receives scant attention. Indeed, Wright (1986), in describing her two schools where research was conducted merely states:

Schools A and B are mixed comprehensives, approximately three miles apart. The ethnic compositions of the two schools vary considerably .... Despite the variation in the percentage of ethnic minority groups in the two schools, the school experiences of the Afro-Caribbean pupils in both schools appears [sic] not dissimilar (Wright, 1986, p. 218).

A three-mile distance in a British city can spell an enormous difference in catchment area and, in consequence, in the class origins of pupils.

The class dimension

What is required here is the additional analysis of the social class (or class consciousness/aspirations) of the pupils concerned for as Troyna (1984) says with regards to studies of West Indian underachievement:

Social class is clearly a critical factor yet rarely have the data been standardised to take this into account (Troyna, 1984, p. 162).

Paradoxically, it was the earlier studies of such researchers as Hargreaves (1967), Willis (1977) and Corrigan (1979) which acknowledged the role played by working class values and culture as mediated through parents, family life and peer group influences. Thus, it would appear that as subsequent researchers elaborated on the gender and race dimensions of life in school they allowed the significance of class to recede. King (1987) notes the importance of this oversight as follows:

Generalisations about men and women, or boys and girls, including their education, without reference to social class, are as limited as those about the social classes without reference to sex (King, 1987, p. 298).

This oversight is particularly important in the area of race and education where much research (e.g. Swann 1985, Eggleston et al. 1986) has demonstrated West Indian children to be underachieving vis-á-vis their white peers. Here, it is argued by such authors as Troyna (1984) and Reeves and Chevannes (1981), that it is crucial to understand the working class position of most West Indian families in Britain and to view the achievements of pupils from such families against a matched sample of working class whites. Reeves and Chevannes (1981) specifically make this point in their critique of the Rampton Committee’s Interim Report (later Swann Report, 1985). They state:

.... the figures are unstandardised for such crucial factors as parental social class or educational level.... The only variable mentioned in the case of the Rampton figures is that of racial (geographical?) group, but the significance of this factor can only be demonstrated after other well-established factors affecting educational performance have been allowed for (Reeves and Chevannes, 1981, p. 37).

Since the Swann Report, some researchers (e.g. Brewer and Haslum, 1986, Plewis, 1987) have addressed themselves to the interaction of race and class in affecting pupils’ educational performance. Their work has highlighted the importance of home background and social class origins, factors indicated to have some importance in the research of previous authors such as Bagley (1971) and Driver (1980). However, their work has been based on quantitative data (e.g. measurable performance in reading tests and examinations) and not on ethnographic accounts of pupils’ lives. Achievement relative to others is therefore established but not explained in terms of how these factors operate to affect life chances. In this respect, both Swann (1985) and Taylor (1981) have indicated the need for detailed research to determine the processes involved, with Taylor advocating studies of:

the attitudes of pupils to teachers, and their perceptions of home and school differences, especially on the issue of differential expectation and aspiration which has been postulated (Taylor, 1981, p. 241).

An additional point concerning these studies is that again, they only take two of the three key variables of gender, race and class into account; in these cases just race and class are assessed without reference to gender.

Burgess (1986) has noted this deficit in the literature in relation to gender, race and class stating:

... the evidence has been reviewed separately yet in reality individuals experience the interaction of class, gender and race as the product of their membership of different social groups (Burgess, 1986, p. 126).

Towards integration

It is mindful of this deficit that this study attempts to deal simultaneously with the three variables of gender, race and class as they affected the lives of very ‘ordinary’ British-born white and black pupils during their final year of compulsory education (and beyond) at a mixed comprehensive in the south of England.

By Ordinary’ is meant those pupils who do not have privileged backgrounds or very high academic ability. The term is used in a similar way to Brown (1987) and his findings are compared with this study in relation to pupils’ attitudes to school and their career or job choices. These ordinary pupils are further divided, in this study, into ‘achievers’ and ‘less-achievers’. The former refers to pupils primarily taking 0-levels and the latter to pupils taking primarily CSEs or no examinations at all.

The term ‘black’ refers only to pupils of West Indian/Afro-Caribbean origin unless otherwise stated in the text. Where the term ‘West Indian’ appears this also signifies West Indian origin irrespective of place of birth. Where Asian pupils are involved they are referred to specifically as ‘Asian’ and not incorporated within the usage of the term ‘black’. As Modood (1988) states, this falls in line with the actual practice of many researchers who use the term black solely to refer to people of West Indian origin. It also takes into account the fact that many Asian pupils do not see themselves as black but instead define themselves in terms of an Asian ethnicity and identity (Hanson, 1987). See Appendix 3 for a full list of terminology used.

This study examines race, class and gender issues both individually and in combination with each other, and uses an ethnographic and predominantly participant observation approach in order to understand what actually ‘happened’ in the daily lives of informants, both in and out of lessons.

Insufficient attention has been paid to the ‘consumers’ of education, yet it is crucial to listen to their voices in order to understand the pupils’ world, hopes and ambitions and how school either serves or fails them. As Stebbins et al. (1987) state on the ritual of school:

It is rare for a social scientist to enter and observe the world of the student as this world unfolds both inside and outside the classroom (Stebbins et al., 1987, p. 86).

Who, where and how?

By wishing to focus on attitudes to school, choices regarding staying on and career choices, 5th formers became the target group for study. A small group of 20 pupils were tracked both in their final year of compulsory schooling and beyond. This enabled the study of their reactions to school, their levels of achievement and their career choices, their exam results (if any), decisions regarding any further schooling or other education, and, finally, the search for work.

The school was selected to provide the highest proportions of black pupils in the area whilst simultaneously yielding a group of white and black informants who shared similar surroundings, housing and economic constraints. It was considered important that all pupils participating as in-depth informants in the research should come from one school and have received all their secondary education at that establishment.

The research which emanates from such a study can be said to be idiosyncratic with dubious representativeness of pupils ‘in general’. It then follows that if the researcher has any aspirations for the findings to be utilised in changing policy or practice within the education syst...