Differential Educational Achievement

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.