Topic 3- Ethnic Differences in Achievement (Summary)
Internal Factors in ethnic achievement
Ethnocentric Curriculum
▪ History: Ball - criticizes the national curriculum for ignoring ethnic diversity and for promoting “little
Englandism” e.g., “mythical age of empire and past glories” while ignoring the History of Black and
Asian culture.
▪ Language, Literature and Music: Miriam David - the national curriculum is a “specifically British”
curriculum that ignores non-British Language, Literature and Music.
▪ Bernard Coard: Ethnocentric curriculum may produce underachievement.
▪ This gives priority to white students as it disregards other cultures therefore ethnic students.
▪ Despite this, Chinese pupils although their lack of representativeness in the curriculum achieve
higher in education than their white counter parts.
Assessments
▪ Gillborn: argues that “the assessment game” is rigged to value the dominant cultures superiority.
▪ Saunders and Horn: Found that where more weight was given to teacher assessed tasks rather than
written exams, this widens the gap between different ethnic groups.
▪ FSP is based of teacher's judgements where the baseline test is often written
Institutional Racism
▪ `Troyna and Williams: Argues to explain ethnic differences in achievement, we need to go beyond
explaining individual racism.
▪ Carmichel and Hamiton: institutional racism is less obverted and more subtle.
▪ Critical race theory sees racism as an ingrained feature of society.
Labelling and teacher Racism
▪ Howard Becker: teachers judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the “ideal
pupil” which is white middle-class pupils
▪ Students from ethnic minorities will be in the self-for filling prophecy and will then receive a poorer
education quality
▪ Black pupils are labelled as disruptive and Asian pupils are often labelled as passive.
▪ These negative labels may lead teachers to treat ethnic minorities pupils differently.These
disadvantages may lead to these pupils' failures.
External Factors in ethnic achievement
Cultural deprivation
Intellectual and Linguistic skills
▪ Bernstein: Restricted code as ethnic minorities have English as a second language putting them at a
disadvantage as education is catered to the elaborated code of the White middle class. This gives
white middle class pupils an advantage as they have English as a first language.
▪ Gillborn and Mirza: Indian pupils despite having English as a second language do well in education.
▪ Children from low-income black families lack intellectual stimulation.
Internal Factors in ethnic achievement
Ethnocentric Curriculum
▪ History: Ball - criticizes the national curriculum for ignoring ethnic diversity and for promoting “little
Englandism” e.g., “mythical age of empire and past glories” while ignoring the History of Black and
Asian culture.
▪ Language, Literature and Music: Miriam David - the national curriculum is a “specifically British”
curriculum that ignores non-British Language, Literature and Music.
▪ Bernard Coard: Ethnocentric curriculum may produce underachievement.
▪ This gives priority to white students as it disregards other cultures therefore ethnic students.
▪ Despite this, Chinese pupils although their lack of representativeness in the curriculum achieve
higher in education than their white counter parts.
Assessments
▪ Gillborn: argues that “the assessment game” is rigged to value the dominant cultures superiority.
▪ Saunders and Horn: Found that where more weight was given to teacher assessed tasks rather than
written exams, this widens the gap between different ethnic groups.
▪ FSP is based of teacher's judgements where the baseline test is often written
Institutional Racism
▪ `Troyna and Williams: Argues to explain ethnic differences in achievement, we need to go beyond
explaining individual racism.
▪ Carmichel and Hamiton: institutional racism is less obverted and more subtle.
▪ Critical race theory sees racism as an ingrained feature of society.
Labelling and teacher Racism
▪ Howard Becker: teachers judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the “ideal
pupil” which is white middle-class pupils
▪ Students from ethnic minorities will be in the self-for filling prophecy and will then receive a poorer
education quality
▪ Black pupils are labelled as disruptive and Asian pupils are often labelled as passive.
▪ These negative labels may lead teachers to treat ethnic minorities pupils differently.These
disadvantages may lead to these pupils' failures.
External Factors in ethnic achievement
Cultural deprivation
Intellectual and Linguistic skills
▪ Bernstein: Restricted code as ethnic minorities have English as a second language putting them at a
disadvantage as education is catered to the elaborated code of the White middle class. This gives
white middle class pupils an advantage as they have English as a first language.
▪ Gillborn and Mirza: Indian pupils despite having English as a second language do well in education.
▪ Children from low-income black families lack intellectual stimulation.
