Internal%20Factors%20and%20Ethnic%20Differences%20in%20Achievement

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Internal Factors and Ethnic Differences in
Achievement
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The Ethnocentric Curriculum

• What is ethnocentric?
• Definition
• Ethnocentric describes an attitude or policy
  that gives priority to the culture and viewpoint
  of one particular ethnic group while disregarding
  the others

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The Ethnocentric Curriculum

• How is the national curriculum ethnocentric?
• Troyna Williams (1986) gives priority to white
  culture English language
• Miriam David describes NC as specifically
  British as it teaches culture of host
  community while largely ignoring non-European
  languages, literature music
• Stephen Ball little Englandism history tries
  to recreate mythical age of empire past
  glories ignoring the history of black Asian
  people.

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The Ethnocentric Curriculum

• How might an ethnocentric curriculum create
  underachievement?
• Bernard Coard (2005) gives example of history,
  where British presented as bringing civilisation
  to primitive people they colonised image of
  black people as inferior undermines black
  childrens self-esteem may lead to failure
• Impact unclear NC ignores Asian culture, yet
  Indian Chinese pupils achievement above
  national average.

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The Ethnocentric Curriculum

• What is institutional racism? You may want to
  compare it to individual racism?
• Individual racism results from prejudice views
  of individuals
• Institutional racism built into the way
  institutions such as schools colleges operate
• Troyna Williams (1986) argue that ethnocentric
  curriculum is example of institutional racism,
  e.g. meagre provision for teaching Asian
  languages is racial bias built into everyday
  working of schools colleges
• Hatcher (1996) looked at schools governing
  bodies and found often no formal channels of
  communication between school governors ethnic
  minority parents, resulting in nothing done about
  their specific concerns, such as language support

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Selection Marketisation
How might this put ethnic minorities at a
disadvantage?
School gets better results
Can cream skim more able pupils
Increased funding and more facilities
School becomes more popular
Can silt-shift less able pupils to less
successful schools
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Selection Marketisation

• Gillborn (1997) selection gives more scope for
  negative stereotypes to influence decisions about
  school admissions
• Moore Davenport (1990)
• Discrimination against problem students use
  of primary school reports to screen out pupils
  with language or learning difficulties
• Application process difficult to understand for
  non-English speakers or less educated parents
• Ethnic stratification

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Selection Marketisation

• Commission for Racial Equality (1993) identified
  bias of British education system
• Reports from primary schools that stereotype
  minority pupils
• Racist bias in interviews for school places
• Lack of information and application forms in
  minority languages
• Ethnic minority parents often unaware of how
  waiting list system works and importance of
  deadlines