Processes Within Schools

What Happens Inside Schools?

Sociologists who focus on the macro level — class, capitalism, patriarchy — risk overlooking the daily processes within schools that shape individual outcomes. Interactionist sociologists argue that what happens in classrooms and corridors — how teachers perceive and label pupils, how pupils are grouped, how peer cultures develop — has a profound effect on achievement that cannot be explained solely by external factors such as class or home background.

Key Fact

Processes within schools that affect educational achievement include: streaming, setting, mixed ability teaching, labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Streaming and Setting

Many secondary schools in England allocate pupils to different ability groups. Streaming places pupils in a fixed group for all subjects, based on an overall assessment of ability. Setting places pupils in different groups for individual subjects, allowing for movement between groups as performance changes. Some schools use mixed ability teaching, keeping pupils of all abilities together in the same class.

From a functionalist perspective, streaming and setting allow teachers to pitch lessons at the appropriate level for each group, potentially improving efficiency. From an interactionist perspective, the process is more problematic. Once pupils are placed in a low stream or set, teachers may have lower expectations of them, offer them less challenging work, and interact with them differently. The pupils themselves may internalise the label “low ability” and adjust their own aspirations accordingly.

Ball on Banding and Teacher Expectations

Stephen Ball’s study Beachside Comprehensive (1981) investigated the effects of banding, and of the school’s move to mixed-ability teaching, in a real comprehensive school given the pseudonym “Beachside”. Ball found that the band a pupil was placed in at the start of secondary school significantly shaped their educational trajectory, regardless of their actual ability. Pupils in the lower bands received a less academic curriculum, had lower teacher expectations placed on them, and developed more negative attitudes towards school. Ball’s research showed that the act of grouping pupils by ability was not a neutral administrative decision but a process laden with social consequences, particularly for working-class pupils who were disproportionately placed in lower bands.

Labelling Theory and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Labelling theory, associated with interactionist sociologists, argues that the definitions and categories that teachers attach to pupils have real consequences for those pupils’ futures. When a teacher identifies a pupil as “bright”, “disruptive”, “lazy” or “hard-working”, this label shapes subsequent interactions: the pupil receives more (or less) encouragement, is called on more (or less) frequently in class, and is treated differently in disciplinary situations.

This process can produce a self-fulfilling prophecy: a pupil labelled as “high ability” begins to internalise that identity and works hard to fulfil expectations; a pupil labelled as “low ability” or “a troublemaker” may disengage from school, accept the label and behave accordingly. The original label — which may have been based on class, ethnicity or gender prejudice rather than genuine ability — becomes self-confirming. Howard Becker’s broader interactionist work on master status is relevant here: once a pupil is labelled as “a problem”, that label can become their master status, colouring every interaction they have with teachers and other pupils.

Paul Willis’s 1977 ethnographic study Learning to Labour followed twelve working-class boys (whom Willis called “the lads”) in a West Midlands comprehensive school in the mid-1970s. Willis found that “the lads” developed a counter-school culture: a system of values that actively opposed the school’s emphasis on academic work, obedience and qualifications. The lads saw conformist “ear’oles” (pupils who accepted the school’s rules) as passive and weak. The lads valued masculine physical toughness, resistance to authority and the anticipation of manual labour — the very traits that would lead them into working-class factory jobs.

Willis’s study is significant for several reasons. First, it challenged Bowles and Gintis by showing that working-class pupils are not passive: they actively resist the school’s authority rather than being socialised into compliance. Second, it showed that this very resistance — which the lads experienced as freedom and rebellion — ultimately prepared them for working-class jobs just as effectively as conformity did. Third, Willis drew on interactionist ideas about peer culture while framing his analysis within a Marxist concern with class reproduction.

Functionalist: Streaming and setting are rational, efficient responses to differences in pupil ability. They allow teachers to target teaching appropriately and ensure that the most able pupils are stretched. The process is seen as broadly meritocratic, matching pupils to future roles based on demonstrated ability.

Interactionist: Labels attached by teachers shape pupils’ identities and trajectories through the self-fulfilling prophecy. Banding and streaming are not neutral — they reflect and reinforce teacher judgements that are often shaped by class, gender and ethnicity (Ball’s Beachside research). The focus is on micro-level classroom interactions.

Marxist: Processes within schools are mechanisms of class reproduction. Counter-school cultures (Willis) arise because working-class pupils recognise — at some level — that the meritocracy claim is hollow. Streaming channels working-class pupils towards lower expectations and lesser credentials, reproducing the class structure.

Feminist: Labels and expectations are also gendered. Teachers may expect girls to be quieter, more compliant and less mathematically able, and boys to be noisier, more disruptive and more suited to sciences. These gendered expectations shape behaviour and subject choice, reproducing occupational gender segregation.