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Differential Educational Achievement
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Differential Educational Achievement
In this course, Dr Siôn Llewelyn Jones (Cardiff University) explores differential educational achievement. In the first lecture, we think about the forms that differential educational achievement can come in. In the second lecture, we look at functionalism and new right thinking as ways of explaining differential educational achievement. In the third lecture, we think about the Marxist viewpoint and the work of Pierre Bourdieu in the context of differential educational achievement. Next, we think about the feminist view on differential educational achievement. In the fifth and final lecture, we think about the interactionist view on differential educational achievement and the role of labelling theory.
Differential Educational Achievement
In this lecture, we think about which forms differential educational achievement can come in, focusing in particular on: (i) understanding social class as divided into working, middle and upper classes; (ii) free school meals eligibility as a measure of social class; (iii) the key stage three core subject indicator as a measure of educational achievement; (iv) data from the Welsh government, which shows a significant performance difference between students who are and are not eligible for free school meals; (v) issues with using free school meals as a measure of social class, including that not all families eligible apply for them, due to the attached stigma; (vi) differentiating between gender and sex, with sex referring to biological differences and gender referring to social differences; (vii) a graph showing core subject indicator achievement by gender, using Welsh government data; (viii) a table showing pupil achievement across subjects by gender, using Welsh government data; (ix) a graph showing university subject selections by gender; (x) the tendency for sociological researchers to use the term ethnicity, rather than race, due to the fact that ethnicity refers to social differences, rather than biological differences; (xi) a table showing core subject indicator achievement by ethnicity; (xii) Kimberlé Crenshaw’s term intersectionality, which can be applied here to describe how class, gender and ethnicity can interrelate to produce differing educational outcomes; (xiii) a table showing the differences in core subject indicator achievement by both free school meals eligibility and gender.
Hi. My name is doctor Schonkywell and Jones.
00:00:06I'm a lecturer in the school of social sciences,
00:00:09and this video is an introduction to differential
00:00:11educational achievement.
00:00:14So be looking at how why individuals
00:00:16from different groups and how they perform within the
00:00:19education system and what qualifications they achieve.
00:00:21So sociologists
00:00:25are interested in differential education treatments.
00:00:27And why certain groups of people perform differently
00:00:30within the education system because it has an impact on the
00:00:33life chances and what sort of jobs they achieve in the
00:00:36future. In this video,
00:00:40we'll be looking at statistics on differential educational
00:00:42achievements in terms of three key social characteristics.
00:00:45So it's class, gender, and ethnicity.
00:00:49So we start by looking up the differential educational
00:00:52achievement of students from different social class groups.
00:00:55So what is social class? Well in the in to kingdom,
00:01:00we often talk about the working class, the middle class,
00:01:04and the higher class.
00:01:07There is a hierarchy that exists between these different
00:01:09social class groups.
00:01:12So the higher classes and at the top of the social hierarchy,
00:01:14then we have the middle class and then the working class.
00:01:18Social class is multidimensional concept and
00:01:22there are different ways measuring social class.
00:01:25In educational research,
00:01:28researchers often use free school meals as a way of
00:01:30measuring social class.
00:01:34This is because parents who are l for free school meals
00:01:36on some sort of benefits and come from poorer households.
00:01:41As a living whales,
00:01:45we're going to be looking at statistics on educational
00:01:46achievements in wheels.
00:01:49But it's likely we're gonna see similar patterns in other parts
00:01:50of the UK as well.
00:01:53To measure educational achievements,
00:01:55I'm gonna be looking at what we call the key stage three
00:01:57course subject in the Keter.
00:02:01And this gives us an idea of the percentage of pupils
00:02:03who achieve a certain level at key stage three in the core
00:02:07subjects in wheels. And in wheels,
00:02:11the core subjects are English, Walsh, mathematics, and science.
00:02:14So we'll now look at a graph which shows a percentage of
00:02:20students which achieved key stage three course subject to
00:02:23indicate on who are on free school meals and not on free
00:02:26school meals. And light represents pupils
00:02:29on free school meals the dog represents students who are not
00:02:33some preschool meals.
00:02:36There is a gap in lines between twenty nineteen and twenty
00:02:38twenty two because these assessments did not please
00:02:40because of the COVID nineteen pandemic.
00:02:43So if we compare the educational achievements
00:02:46of students on free school meals and students not on school meals.
00:02:49What we see is that students not some preschool meals
00:02:53generally perform better
00:02:57than students on preschool meals.
00:02:59So this suggests there are cost differences in terms of
00:03:01educational achievements because students on not some
00:03:05free school meals were from more affluent backgrounds
00:03:09performed better than the students on free school meals
00:03:12were from poorer backgrounds. However,
00:03:16we must treat the states with caution because there are some limitations
00:03:18of using free school meals as an indicator of the social
00:03:23background of students.
00:03:27For instance,
00:03:29not all families who are eligible for future meals apply
00:03:30for the scheme because of the stigma attached to scheme.
00:03:34However, fiscal meal status is a good indicator
00:03:38of social background and is an accessible indicator
00:03:41of the social background of students.
00:03:45So next, we'll look at gender and educational achievements.
00:03:47So what do we mean by gender?
00:03:51Our sociologists
00:03:53prefer to use the term gender rather than sex.
00:03:55Sachs refers to the biological differences between men and
00:03:58women. Whereas gender
00:04:02refers to the social differences between men and
00:04:05women. So it takes into account that there are social ideas,
00:04:08ideas that exist in society eighty regarding what it is to
00:04:12be a man and what it is to be a woman.
00:04:15So we'll now look at the educational achievement of boys and girls.
00:04:19So this graph shows the percentage of boys and
00:04:23percentage of girls, which is the key stage three course
00:04:26object indicator.
00:04:29Again,
00:04:31there is a gap in these two lines between twenty nineteen
00:04:31and twenty twenty two because these assessments did not take
00:04:35place because of the COVID nineteen pandemic.
00:04:38And as we can see,
00:04:41girls generally perform better than boys within the education system.
00:04:43So this suggest that agenda differences in terms of the
00:04:47educational achievements of boys and girls.
00:04:50But how are boys and girls performing in subjects.
00:04:53Here is a table which shows the performance of boys and girls
00:04:58in the different core subjects that we study.
00:05:01You compare the performance of boys and girls in different course subjects,
00:05:05what we see is that there is a greater difference between the
00:05:09performance of boys and girls certain subjects such as
00:05:13English and welsh,
00:05:16but the difference is a smaller in other subjects such as sciences.
00:05:18So this table suggests that although girls generally
00:05:22perform better than boys in schools,
00:05:25that our differences the terms of the performances of boys and
00:05:28girls in different subjects.
00:05:31Evidence also suggests their agenda differences in terms of
00:05:34the tapes of subject
00:05:37that male and female students study.
00:05:39This table shows the types of subjects that male students and
00:05:42female students study at university.
00:05:47What we can see is that
00:05:51female students are more likely to study
00:05:54subjects which are related to the humanity's arts and
00:05:57languages and the social sciences
00:06:01where man are more likely male students are more likely to
00:06:04study subjects to do with the sciences
00:06:07such as science to technology, engineering and mathematics.
00:06:11Next, we'll look at ethnicity and educational achievements.
00:06:16So what do we mean by ethnicity
00:06:20A ethnicity is commonly used by sociological researchers that
00:06:22rather than race.
00:06:26This is because race refers to biological differences
00:06:28primarily skin color.
00:06:31Ethnicity refers to social differences between groups with
00:06:33ethnic groups sharing characteristics such as the same culture,
00:06:38traditions,
00:06:42history, religion, and language.
00:06:44We'll now look at a table which shows a percentage of different
00:06:47ethnic groups which achieve the key stage three core subject indicator.
00:06:50A fortunately we don't have a data for certain ethnic groups
00:06:55because the small sample.
00:07:00As we can see from the t that are differences in terms of the
00:07:01education performance of students from different ethnic backgrounds.
00:07:05With students from Chinese and Chinese British backgrounds,
00:07:09performing better compared to certain ethnic groups.
00:07:12We can also see that certain ethnic groups such as students
00:07:16from gypsy oroma backgrounds and the performing compared to
00:07:19other ethnic groups.
00:07:23So this table suggests that there there are differences
00:07:25in terms of ethnicity in relation to educational achievements.
00:07:30So far, we have looked at how class, gender,
00:07:35and ethnicity individually affect educational achievement
00:07:37However, we need to take into account how these characteristics
00:07:41work together and have an impact together on of achievements.
00:07:45The term we use for this is intersectionality
00:07:50which is associated with a black feminist Kimberly Crenshaw.
00:07:53If you were to taken in sexual approach to understanding
00:07:58educational achievements, we would look at not only how
00:08:01class, for instance, has an impact on educational achievements,
00:08:04but how class gender and ethnicity has an impact
00:08:07together on educational achievements.
00:08:11For example, this table here expose the percentage of boys
00:08:14and girls who are on free school meals and not some free
00:08:19school meals that she's the key stage three course subject indicator
00:08:22If we focus on just gender what we see is that girls on free
00:08:26school meals and girls not on free school meals perform
00:08:30better compared to boys on physical meals and boys not on physical meals.
00:08:33But if you look at both gender and physical meals,
00:08:38what we see is that not all girls perform better than boys.
00:08:41So for instance,
00:08:45girls who are on free school meals underachieve compared to
00:08:47boys who are not on free school meals.
00:08:51So we need to look at how a range of social characteristics work together
00:08:53to impact on educational achievements.
00:08:58So in this video, I explored how class, gender an ethnicity
00:09:01has an impact on educational achievements.
00:09:06So firstly we can see that there are class differences in
00:09:09terms of educational achievements with students not
00:09:12of preschool meals performing better compared to students on
00:09:15free school meals.
00:09:20We can also see as well that there are gender differences
00:09:21with girls performing better compared boys,
00:09:24but there are differences in terms of the performance of
00:09:28boys and girls in different subjects and there are also
00:09:31differences in terms of the types of subjects,
00:09:33the boys and girls that
00:09:36We can also see as well that there are differences in terms
00:09:39of the educational performance of students from different
00:09:42ethnic groups. With students from Chinese,
00:09:45a Chinese British background overachieving and performing
00:09:48well in the education system and students from gypsum rumor
00:09:51backgrounds and achieving in the education system. In this video,
00:09:55I've used the key stage three course subject indicator key to
00:09:59to measure educational achievement.
00:10:02But we have to be aware as well of the limitations of using
00:10:04this indicator as a way of measuring educational achievement.
00:10:08So it only looks at the performance of students in
00:10:11their course subjects which in wales is English, welsh,
00:10:14mathematics, and sciences,
00:10:18but doesn't look at performance in other subjects.
00:10:20Some researchers would argue that we need to look beyond
00:10:23educational achievements in order to understand the
00:10:26educational experience of students.
00:10:28Some researchers would argue that we should look as well at
00:10:32how the education system impacts on the subjective
00:10:35well-being of students so how students feel about themselves
00:10:38and feel about life. However,
00:10:42it's still important for us to look at individual's
00:10:44educational achievements because how people perform in
00:10:47school and the qualifications they gain from school has an
00:10:51impact on the life chances and the types of jobs that they
00:10:56have in the future.
00:10:58In this video,
00:11:00we've looked at the statistics and the path in terms of
00:11:01educational achievements,
00:11:04but in other videos we'll be looking at the explanations the
00:11:05different perspectives provide for
00:11:09references in terms of the educational achievements of
00:11:12different groups.
00:11:15
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Jones, S. (2023, June 16). Differential Educational Achievement - Differential Educational Achievement [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/differential-educational-achievement
MLA style
Jones, S. "Differential Educational Achievement – Differential Educational Achievement." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 16 Jun 2023, https://massolit.io/courses/differential-educational-achievement