03 Section B Option 2, Key question 3 - Culture, class and educational success (part 2)

Culture and cultural deprivation

Cultural explanations examine how learnt values, expectations, knowledge and ways of communicating can affect educational achievement.

Differential achievement means differences in educational outcomes between social groups, such as qualification results. A material explanation concerns resources such as income, housing and equipment. A structural explanation concerns the organisation of opportunities and power, such as access to well-resourced schools. A cultural explanation concerns learnt meanings and practices. These categories identify mechanisms; they need not be competing alternatives.

A deprivation argument might propose that learning to plan for distant rewards helps a pupil continue studying when immediate paid work is available. It would link an orientation towards future rewards to sustained schoolwork and qualifications. That is an explanation to test, not evidence that all working-class families favour immediate rewards. Choosing wages may also be a practical response to household need or uncertain employment prospects rather than a rejection of education.

The difficult question is how a researcher identifies a supposed lack. If middle-class practices define the standard, differences may be classified as deficiencies before their educational effects have been investigated. A parent who cannot attend an afternoon meeting may work inflexible hours, understand school expectations poorly, or distrust how the school treats them. Non-attendance alone cannot establish low aspirations.

In an original teaching example, two parents both want their children to gain qualifications, but only one can change a shift to attend a meeting. The observed behaviour differs while the stated educational value is the same. To infer a cultural explanation, we would need evidence about meanings and expectations as well as behaviour and resources.

Language, context and school expectations

A pupil's way of speaking may fit some settings better than others without being an inferior language.

Basil Bernstein's distinction between restricted and elaborated codes, developed in work including his 1964 article, concerns socially organised ways of communicating. Restricted-code communication relies more on shared context and assumptions; elaborated-code communication makes meanings more explicit when that shared context cannot be assumed. A code is not simply an accent, a dialect or a measure of intelligence. Bernstein connected unequal access to elaborated forms with social relations and class; it is misleading to turn this into a rule that every working-class child speaks one way or that middle-class people never use restricted forms. Bernstein's original text extract.

Consider an original example. While looking at the same object, friends understand “Put that there.” A written account for someone who was absent needs to identify the object, location and reason. The first statement may work perfectly in its setting. School assessment often requires the second kind of explicit explanation. Familiarity with that demand can confer an advantage, and schools can teach it rather than assume it was acquired at home.

William Labov's The Logic of Nonstandard English (first published 1969) challenged linguistic-deficit claims using recorded speech and analysis of African American English. In one demonstration, eight-year-old Leon gave minimal answers to an adult interviewer. Bringing a friend, reducing the adult's physical dominance and making conversation informal produced much fuller speech. This supports an interactional explanation of apparent verbal limitation. It does not establish the national prevalence of any language practice, isolate which change caused the response, or prove that school language demands have no effects. Labov's original chapter.

The reasoning matters for ethnicity: a speech difference is not evidence of deficient reasoning. An unfamiliar or threatening assessment setting can influence what a child demonstrates. Researchers must distinguish language competence, familiarity with the assessed register and the social conditions under which speech is elicited.

Cultural capital and institutional reward

Cultural capital explains advantage by asking which resources institutions recognise and reward.

Pierre Bourdieu's 1986 account distinguishes embodied capital, such as practised ways of expressing ideas; objectified capital, such as books or instruments; and institutionalised capital, such as qualifications. Economic capital is money and assets; social capital consists of resources available through relationships. They can interact: money can buy an instrument, but learning to play takes time and practice. Owning the object does not automatically supply the skill. Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital.

The educational issue is the relationship between home resources and institutional expectations. In an original scenario, a school asks pupils to discuss a museum exhibition without explaining how to analyse its displays. One pupil has practised this at home; another has extensive knowledge of local sport but no museum experience. The first has a relevant advantage because of what this task rewards. That does not make the second pupil cultureless. The advantage combines an outside-school resource with an inside-school assumption.

Cultural reproduction means the continuation of social advantage through cultural transmission and institutional processes. School credentials may make inherited advantages appear to be entirely individual achievement. This argument differs from saying that disadvantaged homes contain no worthwhile culture. It directs attention to the power to define valuable knowledge. It does not mean that every academic standard is arbitrary or that learning to explain evidence is unnecessary.

Alice Sullivan's 2001 study surveyed Year 11 pupils in four English comprehensive schools in 1998: 465 questionnaires were adequately completed. She measured cultural activities, vocabulary and knowledge and followed up GCSE results. Cultural capital helped explain class differences, but parental class remained significant after the measured cultural resources were controlled. This supports a partial explanation, not a complete account or proof that teachers favour particular tastes. Four schools and observational associations limit generalisation and causal inference. Sullivan's original study.

Functionalism and achievement standards

Functionalists explain education in relation to its contribution to the wider social system.

For Talcott Parsons, the school class helps socialise children and allocate people to adult roles. His 1959 account contrasts particular family relationships with more universalistic standards: standards intended to apply to everyone in a relevant category. Meritocracy means allocating rewards and positions according to demonstrated ability and achievement. School achievement is therefore supposed to prepare people for roles requiring different skills and commitments. This is a theoretical account, not an experiment proving that every school is fair. Official summary of Parsons's original account.

Applied to differential achievement, a functionalist argument can emphasise how learning achievement-oriented values and skills prepares pupils to meet common standards. Cultural experiences may help explain differences in preparation. However, functionalism and cultural deprivation are not synonyms: identifying the function of selection does not establish that a particular group's values cause its results.