Teacher Constructions Of Low Attaining Students In English Secondary Schools: Nurturing Learning Or Curtailing Independence?

Author(s):

Anna Mazenod(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

05 SES 04,

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

09:00-10:30

Room:

W2.11

Chair:

Michael Jopling

Contribution

Teachers and teaching practices play a pivotal role in students’ experience of school. Whilst most schools would affirm their commitment to treating all students equally, variation in teachers' expectations of specific groups of students have been identified in different education systems (Campbell, 2015; Lareau, 1989). The differing teacher expectations can significantly impact on students’ educational outcomes and experiences of schooling (Apple, 2003; Dunne and Gazeley, 2008; Gillborn and Youdell, 2000).

Labelling students or groups of students as being 'at risk' or 'high-risk' of e.g. low educational outcomes can have counterproductive consequences by influencing the expectations teachers have of the students or by generating intentional or unintentional differential treatment of students (Corrie, 2002; Pianta and Walsh, 1996). Pianta and Walsh (1996) draw attention to the significance of the ongoing interaction between the school system and the child/family system in the developmental trajectory of each individual student. The increasingly high-stakes, single snapshot performance testing-oriented school environments across the world can however make it challenging for teachers to develop a fully-rounded understanding of the current and past environmental and developmental factors that may be contributing to their students’ low educational attainment.

This paper examines English and mathematics teachers’ expectations of secondary school students in lower attainment groups. It explores how low attaining students are being constructed as learners benefitting from specific approaches of learning often justified through discourses of nurturing and protecting. It draws on debates around dependency culture emanating from social policy and politics (see e.g. Hartley and Taylor-Gooby, 2014) to illustrate teachers' construction of low attainment learners as dependent subjects reliant on their teachers' support and protection.

Method

This paper reports findings from an on-going empirical study examining grouping practices in English and mathematics in English secondary schools. This large scale mixed methods study explores setting and mixed attainment practices, and their potential impact on student outcomes and experiences of schooling (see Francis et al, 2016 for the background to the study). The study has so far generated more than 700 completed teacher questionnaires and 40 face-to-face interviews with teachers. This paper focuses on the qualitative interviews with English and maths subject teachers with experience of attainment grouping. The individual interviews were semi-structured and typically lasted 40 minutes. Teachers were for example asked to talk about how students are grouped in their school and how they find teaching their current classes. All of the interviews were recorded, transcribed and anonymised. The data was analysed using NVivo software and coded using emergent themes.

Expected Outcomes

The paper identifies strong similarities in the discourses around the expectations of teachers in both English and mathematics. Teachers typically expect low attaining students not to be able to follow a similar pace and format to the lesson as delivered to middle or high attaining students. Many teachers felt that students in these lower sets were not able to access learning independently, students were best engaged by keeping the learning activities fairly short and that it was important to continuously refresh what had been learnt. There is a strong narrative in the teacher interviews of the need for the low attaining students to be nurtured and supported in their learning, but also of being protected from the potential disappointments that might arise from learning in more mixed attainment groupings. Intertwined in the narratives of nurture and support are, also narratives of dependency, of lower attaining students being ‘more dependent on people.’ These narratives raise concerns about the extent to which teachers’ expectations are capping opportunities for the students to develop their independence and potentially resulting in a cycle of dependency. This can further contribute to the range of factors perpetuating the self-fulfilling prophesy of students in low sets being more likely to achieve lower educational outcomes (Francis et al, 2016).

References

Apple, M. (2003) Freire and the politics of race in education, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 6:2, 107-118. Campbell, T. (2015) Stereotyped at Seven? Biases in Teacher Judgement of Pupils’ Ability and Attainment, Journal of Social Policy, 44(3), 517-547 Corrie, L. (2002) Investigating Troublesome Classroom Behaviour - Practical Tools for Teachers. London: Routledge. Dunne, M. & Gazeley, L. (2008) Teachers, social class and underachievement, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29:5, 451-463 Francis, B., Archer, L., Hodgen, J., Pepper, D., Taylor, B. and Travers, M.-C. (2016). Exploring the relative lack of impact of research on ‘ability grouping’ in England: a discourse analytic account. Cambridge Journal of Education, 1-17. Gillborn, D. and Youdell, D. (2000) Rationing education – Policy, practice, reform and equity. Buckingham: Open University Press. Dean, Hartley, and Peter Taylor-Gooby. (2014) Dependency culture. London: Routledge, Pianta, R. and Walsh, D. (1996). High-risk children in schools – constructing sustaining relationships. London: Routledge.

Author Information

Anna Mazenod (presenting / submitting)

UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom

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