Hey could someone please mark my 12 marker for sociology? Thanks.
Discuss how far sociologists would agree that the way in which students are grouped together within the school can have a significant effect on their educational performance.
This essay will discuss how far sociologists would agree that the way students are grouped in school can have a significant effect on their educational performance (how well they achieve in school).
Sociologists would agree with this statement and would argue that this is applicable especially when students of the same gender and class are grouped together as they have similar norms and values. Therefore, they will form a subculture. This can be backed up by his research where he studied 12 working class boys in the Midlands who would avidly misbehave, showing evidence that their norms and values were not based on doing well in school (especially since they viewed this as effeminate) and instead it was based on the standards of masculinity. This bad behaviour was further amplified when they were together as they would form an anti school subculture, gaining status off each other by misbehaving. For example, they made fun of the ‘ear’oles’ who enjoyed school showing that together they would collaborate to disrupt lessons. They rejected everything the school stood for: their norms and values such as respecting teachers, and focused on ‘having a laff’. This shows Willis would agree with this statement as together they ruined the education of other students by being disruptive; diminishing their performance. This can be evaluated as Willis only studied 12 working class boys. This isnt representative of all working class boys.
However, sociologist Ball would disagree and argue that teachers’ attitudes have a greater effect on educational performance, not how students are grouped. This is backed up by his research where he stayed at Beachside Comprehensive for 3 years and identified 2 grouping techniques used: banding and mixed ability classes. He found that the bands were based on the students’ fathers’ occupation, so therefore students in band 1 were middle class and were labelled positively as they were ‘high ability’ unlike students in band 3 who were labelled negatively such as ‘dumb’, leading to a self fulfilling prophecy were they accepted this label and didn’t try in school. However, with mixed ability classes, middle class students were positively labelled and working class ones weren’t. This shows Ball would disagree as no matter how the students were grouped, the teacher’s attitudes wouldn't change which negatively affected the performance of working class students but positively benefited middle class ones. This can be evaluated as he only researched one school and this demographic may not be prevalent in other schools.
Overall, one may disagree with this statement as regardless of how the students are grouped, labelling and joining a subculture is inevita