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. Pupils will pick up on this and see their selves in a new light as either ‘stupid’ or ‘smart’ and act on this belief, affectively fulfilling a prophecy not even made by them selves. Pupil’s achievement is affected by the quality of interaction between pupil and teacher.
Ball studied banding of first years and found that there were other factors than academic ability that affect where pupils were placed. He found that pupils with fathers who were non-manual workers had a much higher chance of being placed in the top set.
He noted that most pupils at the start of the course were eager to learn and happy to conform, it was later on in the course that pupil’s altitudes towards school and education started to change for the better or worst. From this he was able to conclude that attitudes toward academic achievement must be an affect of teacher’s attitudes and expectations. Teachers tended to have stereotypical ideas of how each band was likely to behave and perform and would encourage them to aim higher or prepare for failure from this belief.
However through these theories have some elements of truth not all children fail many are able to overcome the huddles of their banding, labelling, stereotyping, and peer pressure and do amazingly well.
There is no prove that the self full-filling prophecy happens as there are many other influencing factors such as gender, and the processes mentioned above.
But genially there was a strong correlation between low academic achievement and negative interactions.
