Russell Haggar

Site Owner

The Culture Trap

Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth [Derron Wallace  2023]

                                       

Click here for a review By Jeffery Quaye for Schools Week

Click here for  Derron Wallace discussing his book on YouTube

[Following the summary of the Derron Wallace Study, I have also included a link to further information on cultural explanations of differences in educational achievement  and  a  summary of some conclusions of the Report of The Commission  on Race and Ethnic Disparities follows the information on the Derron Wallace Study.

Students might like to compare the findings of Derron Wallace’s study and the findings of   the Report of The Commission  on Race and Ethnic Disparities. ]

 The Culture Trap: Brief Summary

Firstly, here is an attempted two  paragraph summary which may be useful for examination purposes although it can doubtless be improved upon

In his study The Culture Trap  Derron Wallace does not deny that cultural factors have some influence on UK Afro-Caribbean  students’ educational attainment but argues that more important factors are the material disadvantages faced by Afro-Caribbean students coupled  with the adverse effects of setting on Afro- Caribbean students who are disproportionately likely to be allocated to lower sets. Consequently Afro-Caribbean students can be seen to be doubly disadvantaged relative to so- called model minority pupils and more affluent white pupils.

Whereas theorists such as Tony Sewell see cultural factors as a very significant cause of Afro-Caribbean  relative educational underachievement, Derron Wallace  argues that  culturally based explanations  result in a cultural trap  which deflects attention from the more significant explanations: material disadvantage and discriminatory setting procedures. Hence the title of Derron Wallace’s book!

More Detailed Summary of The Culture Trap

In his study The Culture Trap [2023] , Derron Wallace provides a comparative analysis of Schooling in the USA and the UK  although  I shall focus only on Professor Wallace’s analysis of the UK education system in this brief summary.

 The title of Professor Wallace’s book is highly significant in that he   seeks to show in the case of the UK that while cultural factors may have some influence on Afro-Caribbean students’ educational achievement , the significance of these cultural factors has been much overstated in ways that deflect attention from the material disadvantages and discriminatory school procedures which Derron Wallace sees as much more significant adverse influences on Afro-Caribbean students levels of educational achievement.

It is in this sense that culturally  based educational theories are seen as generating  a culture trap  which  inhibits the educational progress of Afro-Caribbean students in the UK.

Based on his investigations of setting procedures in a London school in 2010, Derron Wallace argues that setting processes are likely to affect adversely the academic progress of Afro- Caribbean students. [ Setting procedures are widely used throughout the UK education system and Derron Wallace believes that his results are therefore likely to be generalisable to many other UK secondary schools.]

• Chinese and Indian students achieve the best examination results at all levels of the UK education system and are therefore most likely to be regarded by teachers as model minorities. Teachers are very likely to have high expectations of these pupils and to push them to reach their full potential. Derron Wallace [and many other sociologists] argue that for Afro-Caribbean students the reverse is the case.
• Students may well have been setted in their primary schools and this may well have led to misbehaviour which inhibited their progress and contributed to their being placed in lower sets in secondary school where further setting contributes to further misbehaviour which restricts their progress even further. [We may see a link here to the earlier work on streaming by David Hargreaves who claim that streaming contributed to an anti-school subculture among working class pupils although Paul Willis argued that anti-school subcultures also derived from factors external to the schools themselves. ]
• When pupils first enter this secondary school, they are setted in the main academic subjects based on their SATs results and school reports from their primary schools, sometimes supplemented by the results of tests taken in their first few weeks of secondary schools. Derron Wallace concentrates mainly on setting for English in Year 10 although he also includes an interview with a Black Mathematics teacher who strongly opposes setting.
• Afro-Caribbean students are disproportionately likely to be allocated to low or possibly to middle sets. Few Afro-Caribbean students are allocated to high sets.
• Derron Wallace claims that teachers tend to evaluate Afro-Caribbean student cultures negatively relative to other ethnic cultures and to believe that the relatively poor academic performance of Afro-Caribbean students can be explained in terms of their cultural deprivation [ even though the limitations of cultural deprivation are well known within the Sociology of Education.] rather than in terms of material disadvantage and the negative effects of setting within the schools themselves . Thus, belief in theories of cultural deprivation deflects attention from much more significant explanations for Afro-Caribbean relative educational underachievement.
• Therefore, Derron Wallace concludes that although biological racism is very much on the decline and that there have been claims that both USA and UK societies should increasingly be seen as “post-racial” societies , biological racism i has been replaced by a widely practised cultural racism which denigrates the culture of Afro-Caribbean students. However,   Derron Wallace does note that many teachers treat lower set students  with respect and encourage them to do well but he believes that  the setting system which teachers support actually inhibits the amount of progress which  lower set students can make.
• Also, the disproportionate allocation of Afro-Caribbean students to lower sets reinforces the view that Afro-Caribbean students exhibit deficient cultural attitudes.
• Once Afro-Caribbean students are allocated to low sets, teachers’ negative expectations are usually [but not always] reinforced and teachers are likely to believe that these students’ potential for academic progress is limited and therefore unlikely  to encourage these students to develop their full educational potential. Also, Derron Wallace presents evidence that Afro-Caribbean students in middle and even higher sets  will be praised for producing work at GCSE C or B levels [now 5 or 6 levels] rather than encouraged to strive for the highest 7, 8, or 9 levels. In effect,  teachers tend to see Grades 5 /6 as “good for an Afro-Caribbean student”.
• Also, once pupils are consigned to the lowest sets, they may be taught by less experienced teachers [ although there is a possible caveat here in that Heads of Department may feel that they have a special responsibility to teach lower set students themselves rather than allocating these sets to less experienced teachers] . However, in any case lower set students will almost certainly follow restricted, less demanding syllabi which means that promotion to higher sets is almost impossible because they will not have followed the more advanced syllabi which are being followed in the higher sets. One Black teacher in the study is acutely aware of the negative consequences of setting but feels unable to do much to alleviate the difficulties which are faced by pupils in the lower sets. [
• However, despite the above criticisms of setting. many teachers are likely to claim that the setting system is essentially fair because students are setted based upon a combination of SATs, primary school reports and tests taken by all pupils on entry to secondary school. They are also likely to emphasise that the setting system is certainly not racist because many Chinese, Indian and Black African students are in higher sets as are Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and some Afro-Caribbean students. Derron Wallace notes that many teachers treat lower set students with respect and encourage them to do well but he believes that  the setting system which teachers support actually inhibits the progress of lower set students.
• Derron Wallace rejects these teachers’ views and notes that several Afro-Caribbean students were conscious of experiencing a double disadvantage. They felt that some students were allocated to high sets not necessarily because of especially high ability but because they had received additional support from affluent, well- educated parents who might also be able to afford private tuition. These students then experienced a double advantage because of being allocated  to higher sets  while the Afro-Caribbean students in lower sets experienced a double disadvantage  not because their parents did not value education but because they lacked the cultural, economic, and social capital necessary to provide effective practical support for their children.
• Derron Wallace notes that many Afro-Caribbean pupils responded to negative teacher expectations by attending supplementary Saturday schools where expectations of them were much higher. However, although Derron Wallace presents a generally positive view of Supplementary Schools, he also finds evidence that they are unlikely  to be able to compensate fully  for the adverse effects of the Afro-Caribbean students’ experiences in their main schools.

Ethnicity, Subculture and Educational Achievement: Some Further Information

You may click here and scroll down to Part Four for  further information this topic  Here you will find an overview of the various cultural theories of educational achievement which have been advanced in the last 40-50 years. In each case these theories have attracted considerable criticism

Ethnicity and Culture:  Conclusions

With regard to family life  it is noted that a large proportion of Afro Caribbean families are headed by lone mothers and that this might in principle affect their children’s educational prospects adversely although there are several studies which point to the resilience of Afro-Caribbean lone parent families and to the fact that non-resident fathers may nevertheless participate substantially in the upbringing of their children.

With regard to ethnic minority family life in general there were several studies from the 1980s to the early 2o00s which indicated that if anything Asian and Black parents on average took their children’s education very seriously and ethnic minority educational achievement levels now exceed white British educational achievement levels in all ethnic categories apart from the Black Afro-Caribbean , Gypsy Roma and Traveller of Irish Heritage categories.

From around 2014 attention began to focus especially on the relative educational underachievement of white working class pupils [i.e. those eligible for free school meals]  and it was suggested that  minority parents and pupils were if anything more likely than white British parents and pupils to  prioritise educational achievement although the difficulties of measuring and comparing aspirations and expectations with any certainty were recognised .

Many Asian, African and White children may have English as an additional language [EAL] but there is clear evidence that although these children may be at a disadvantage when they enter school by the age of 16 they are on average outperforming pupils whose main language is English and they are also more likely to gain access to Higher Education. However as noted above in the case of African pupils some linguistic subgroups within the broad ethnic categories mat continue to experience difficulties. Also, it is argued that Afro-Caribbean pupils in the UK Black American pupils  may face difficulties because their specific dialects are undervalued in school setting as is indicated in the work of Ian Cushing [UK] and April Baker-Bell [USA]. 

The issue of Afro-Caribbean youth culture is considered to be a significant factor affecting educational achievement by Tony Sewell, but other sociologists claim that he has overstated its importance and underestimated the importance of material poverty and institutionalised racism within schools as factors affecting educational achievement.

 

 

 The Report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities did provide some support for these cultural theories, and I have repeated some summary conclusions of the Report below.

Nevertheless, the Report was also widely criticised, and Professor Derron Wallace’s study adds to these criticisms.  Students might like to discuss the differences between the main conclusions of the Report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities and the conclusions of the Derron Wallace Study !!

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities {CRED} which published its Report March 2021. The Report is very wide ranging, and I shall only summarise here its main conclusions on the education of Ethnic minority students.

• The Report emphasised that ethnic minority students are making good educational progress and that only Black Caribbean, Gypsy Roma and Traveller of Irish Heritage pupils are performing worse than White pupils. {It should be noted, however, that although Black African pupils are on average performing well, some subgroups within the Black African category are less successful than others.]
• It did not deny the existence of institutional racism in the UK but argued that the term should be used with much more care than was currently the case [according to the authors of the Report]. The authors argue that the relatively poor performance of some ethnic minority students can be explained not just in in terms of their ethnicity but also in terms of their social class background, their gender, and their geographical location so that to emphasise only the pupils’ ethnicity would be misguided.
• The authors also argue that because, on average, students in several ethnic minority groups have higher levels of attainment than White British students it means that racial discrimination is unlikely to be a very significant factor affecting educational achievement and that the fact that Black African students out- perform Black Afro-Caribbean students points to an absence of anti-Black racism.
• To explain ethnic differences in educational attainment the CRED suggested that ethnic differences ibn educational attainment can to some extent be explained in terms of the Immigrant Paradigm.
• This suggests that whereas white working class students may carry a legacy of several generations of educational underachievement and that the same may apply to Black Caribbean students whose families may have migrated to the UK in the 1950s Black African families may have arrived in the UK more recently and have retained their optimism as to the prospects of educational success. Also, Black African, and Indian origin adults may be well educated and have held professional jobs in their country of origin which are more likely to foster beliefs in the possibility of upward social mobility. It is further suggested that Pakistani and Bangladeshi families are more likely than White working class families to be able to draw on community resources to promote educational success.
• It must be emphasised that this line of argument has been seriously called into question on the grounds that negative stereotypes of Afro-Caribbean culture have regularly been used to explain Afro-Caribbean underachievement in a way which marginalises the impact of material disadvantage and racism within schools and the wider society that many sociologists see as key factors in Afro-Caribbean underachievement.
• Having questioned the extent of institutional racism in general CRED also questioned its extent in the school system and while it recognises the higher rates of pupil exclusion of Black Caribbean pupils it denies that this can be explained in terms of institutional racism.
• The Report also downplays the significance of negative labelling as a factor inhibiting educational attainment. This flies in the face of a great deal of sociological research and recent reports for the IFS by Diane Reay  and by  Heidi Mirza And Ross Warwick    certainly reiterate the continued significance of negative labelling.
• The Report emphasised that it was very important for ethnic minority histories and cultures to be represented positively within UK school and college curricula, but it also courted controversy because of its claims that students might face dangers of indoctrination by teachers sympathetic to the arguments of critical race theorists.
• The Report also attracted criticism because of its treatment of the history of slavery and minor amendments were made in the Report to address these criticisms. For this and further criticisms of the Report from the Guardian click here   and for a defence of the Report by Kemi Badenoch click here and here for a more detailed statement of her views.