A recent study from Bristol University (Burgess and Greaves 2009) into teacher assessment outlined how young people are disadvantaged by teacher stereotyping. Although the focus of the study was mainly on ethnic minority young people, it also found the White working class young people equally suffer from low teacher expectations. Reay found teachers treating students very differently on the basis of their social class. “For example, over the course of four weeks’ observation the middle class students were given almost twice the amount of positive feedback provided to working class students” (2006).
This confirmed previous research which had pointed out that teacher attitudes, assumptions and behaviours which were influenced by pupils’ socioeconomic background were disadvantageous for pupils from deprived backgrounds” (DCSF 2009b). This compounded the disadvantage for these pupils which resulted from being placed in low ability groups which had poor quality teaching (DCSF 2009a).
The above was also confirmed by Gazeley and Dunne whose research pointed out that “teachers hold stereotypical views and attitudes about pupils and their parents which favoured the middle class …and blame underachievement on the pupils’ social class”.
They also found when teachers referred to a pupil’s home; they made greater proportion of positive references about pupils identified as middle class:
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