Sociology of Education Theory: Symbolic Interactionism

According to the symbolic interaction perspective, interactions between students and teachers help each develop a set of expectations for that student's performance both in academic subjects and discipline. In particular, interaction theorists posit that through the teacher expectancy effect, a teacher's expectations of a student's performance or achievement influence the actual performance or achievement of that student. When that expectation is low, students then react by finding other outlets for positive feedback or by accepting the expectations of the teacher as true; living down to their potential. Although there has been some research done to test the validity of this approach, research in this area is difficult to perform for practical and ethical reasons. However, the interactionist perspective does have applicability in the classroom, particularly regarding differential tracking systems.

Keywords Conflict Perspective; Education; Hidden Curriculum; Reinforcement; Self-Fulfilling Prophecy; Social Stratification; Symbolic Interactionism; Teacher Expectancy Effect; Tracking

Educational Sociology > Sociology of Education Theory: Symbolic Interactionism

Overview

There are many aspects to education that can affect what and how a child learns. The formal curriculum articulates the prescribed subject matter that is taught to the student such as basic skills (i.e., reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic) or more advanced or elective courses (e.g., art, music, ecology). In addition, some theorists posit that students are also taught the agenda of a hidden curriculum, or the standards of proper behavior for a society or culture that are taught within the school system. The hidden curriculum is not part of the articulated curricula for schools, but is taught subtly through the reinforcement of behavior and attitudes that are deemed appropriate by the society or culture. For example, along with being taught material in academic subject areas, children are also taught to raise their hand before asking a question, ask permission before going to the restroom, only work on certain subjects during certain hours of the day, not to talk in class, and obey the rules that most teachers find essential for maintaining order in the classroom.

Teacher Expectancy Effect

Students often pick up on their teachers' expectations of them and perform accordingly. The teacher expectancy effect is the impact of a teacher's expectations of a student's performance or achievement on the actual performance or achievement of that student. In this type of self-fulfilling prophecy, the student may pick up on subtle (or not so subtle) cues from the teacher about how well s/he should be performing. For example, if a teacher thinks that a student should be in the top quartile of the class, but s/he is only performing at the fiftieth percentile, the teacher may attempt to encourage the student to perform up to his or her potential by reinforcing high performing behavior or trying to shame the student into higher performance. Teacher expectancies, however, do not necessarily need to be overt or consciously performed in order to impact student behavior. For example, if a student is mistakenly placed in a remedial reading group, s/he may not be given the opportunity for advanced reading because the teacher does not expect him/her to do well and therefore misses the signs that the student can handle more advanced material. Conflict theorists see this as a way of reinforcing social stratification by reinforcing children so that they stay within their class. Symbolic interactionists, on the hand, see the interactions between students and teachers as a prime way to help students improve.

The symbolic interactionist perspective assumes that one's self-concept is created through the interpretation of the symbolic gestures, words, actions, and appearances of others as observed during social interactions. In education, students and teachers each develop a set of expectations for a student's performance both in academic subjects and discipline, as well as for the teacher's behavior. The actions of the teacher toward the student may help set up a situation where the student can more easily fulfill these expectations. In addition, the teacher may unconsciously look for behaviors that support the teacher's expectations. In other words, the expectations actually cause the behavior rather than predict it. For example, if a middle class teacher expects lower class children to perform more poorly in school, s/he may act in ways that actually encourage them to do so. S/he may not give the lower class students the same attention that s/he gives the other students in the class, may not give additional help or homework that would enable them to do better in school, or ignore them when they ask a question. Although none of this may be done consciously or maliciously, the students will eventually learn that it is not worth the effort to ask a question or to study hard because the teacher is unlikely to help or encourage them. Eventually, this turns into a situation where the lower class students actually do perform more poorly, not necessarily because they have less ability but because they have not been given the same encouragement, reinforcement, or educational opportunities as the other students (Fritzberg, 2001).

Tracking & Labeling

Children are often labeled in educational systems in general or the classroom specifically. One child, for example, might be placed in a remedial track that receives less challenging work while another child is put into the gifted track and is challenged to do his/her best. Even outside the formal tracking system, students can be labeled informally as trouble makers, developmentally slow, or as poor leaders. Once a child is labeled in this manner, the cycle of reinforcement for that kind of behavior begins. For example, a child who is considered not to have leadership potential may not be given leadership positions where s/he could learn and practice leadership skills while other children are given that opportunity. Eventually, the child denied the experience of being a leader will typically be less able to lead than other children who are given the opportunity, even if their innate abilities are equal.

Interactionists are particularly interested in the impact of tracking in the educational system on student performance. Interactionists have studied the teacher expectancy effect and found that it is particularly important in the lower grades (i.e., through grade 3). For example, Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968, as cited in Fritzberg, 2001) administered a verbal and reasoning pretest to elementary school students and then randomly selected a sample of 20 percent of the students and designated them as "spurters" from whom teachers could expect superior performance. Because the students in this group had been randomly selected, they represented all levels of ability and were not, in fact, all from the top 20 percent of students as rated by the pretests. However, a later posttest found that the children who had been labeled as spurters scored significantly higher than children who had not been labeled as spurters despite their scores on the pretests. Not only did the rankings of the children's test scores change, but they also received differential ratings from the teachers. Students who had been labeled as spurters were rated by teachers as being more interesting, more curious, and better adjusted than the other students. The researchers concluded that the improvements in performance were a result of the differences in the teachers' perceptions of the students (Fritzberg, 2001).

Other researchers have also found that teachers' expectations affect students' performance. For example, research has found that teachers tend to wait longer for answers from a student whom they believe to be a high achiever and are more apt to give such students a second chance than they are to students they believe are lower achievers. Research has found that this applies not only to academic subjects requiring mental skills and abilities, but to subjects requiring physical abilities as well. For example, one study found that students who were expected to perform better in physical education class (e.g., ability to do a greater number of sit-ups or push-ups) actually did perform better in these areas.

Although the research results in the area of the teacher expectancy effect are fascinating and have implications for the way that students should be taught and what information about student abilities should be passed on to teachers, there are difficulties with the research in this area. The concept of teacher expectancy is a subjective one and difficult to operationally define and measure. Better definitions and further research is necessary in order to better understand the relationship between teacher expectations and student performance. However, the results to date do demonstrate that ability may not be the only predictor of educational performance. Indeed, ability tests commonly used to place students into tracks may not be as helpful as thought.

Applications

Lack of Cultural Capital

Fritzberg (2001) used a culture-sensitive interactionist framework to explain his observations while working with educationally disadvantaged high school students in South Seattle. He noted that most poor and minority students arrive at school underprepared socially, intellectually, and even physically due to the realities of their home lives. In contrast, middle class students typically arrive at school already inculcated with the culture conventions that are taught there, including communication skills, behavioral norms, and a sound work ethic. For example, middle class children are more likely to understand the question and answer paradigm typically used in the classroom, to have learned to look someone in the eye when speaking, and other skills not learned by poor and minority children. As a result, middle class children typically have an advantage within the educational system; a kind of cultural capital that can be used to their advantage within the educational system.

Because they do not have the same cultural skills as middle class children, poor and minority students often have difficulty communicating well with their middle class teachers in school. This can lead to a situation in which in which teachers believe (often unconsciously) that these students are academically inferior. Although most teachers try to base their opinions of students based on hard data about the children's abilities through such things as test scores and academic records, these data are tainted because the children were not properly prepared academically in order to do well on such predictors. This situation is compounded by the fact that these children are typically not culturally prepared for school. As a result, communication to these students often centers on control and discipline issues rather than academic issues. This situation can be even further exacerbated through tracking. In the end, these children often react in one of three ways:

1. Attempt to please the teachers with their social rather than their academic skills,
2. Accept the verdict that they are academically inferior and then live up to that lowered expectation, or
3. Redirect their talents to other endeavors that give them positive feedback (e.g., gang activities, bullying) (Fritzberg, 2001).

Teacher-Student Interaction

The interactionist perspective on education is also applicable at the postgraduate education level. To better understand the impact of a high interaction approach to teaching at the university level, Snow (1973) performed research in six departments at the University of California at Davis. The departments ranged in size with three departments having 10 or fewer faculty members (above the rank of teaching assistant) and three having 15 or more faculty members. Of the departments randomly selected for the study, two each (one large and one small) came from the College of Letters, two from the College of Sciences, and two from the College of Agriculture. The resultant sample comprised 80 faculty members. Each subject in the sample participated in a brief interview during which data for a personal history was collected. Of the entire sample, 21 subjects were randomly selected for a longer interview which inquired into the nature of their relationship with their students. Interview items were designed to gather information concerning aspects of a faculty member's job profile that might make the person seem more attractive, available, or interesting to students. The remaining 59 subjects were asked to keep a journal for a week listing their contact with their students outside the classroom. Additional information collected in the journal included class standing of each student, amount of time spent with each student, and topics covered during the contact.

In addition to collecting data from the faculty members, the researcher also collected data from upper class students who majored in the subject areas of each of the six departments included in the study. All students meeting these criteria were telephoned and at least 50 percent of the students in each major were eventually contacted. Those students contacted were asked if there was one or more faculty member within their major department with whom they had significant contact outside the classroom and what this contact comprised. Faculty members were then grouped according to the feedback received from the students into high contact (16 percent of more of the students said that they had significant contact with the faculty member), medium contact (6 to 15 percent of the students said they had significant contact with the faculty member), and low contact (less than 6 percent of the students said they had significant contact with the faculty member).

Of the 198 students, 31 percent said that they had no significant contact with any faculty member within their respective departments. This finding was consistent across all departments. The analysis of the interview data showed no statistical significance that discriminated between faculty members in the three groups. However, since data were collected using interviews rather than a survey instrument, Snow was able to collect data concerning how subjects interacted with others, in particular, the typical scenario in which a student drops by the office without an appointment. During the long interviews (which included more open-ended questions than did the short interviews), it was found that subjects who were later labeled as high-contact based on student feedback, gave significantly more time to the interview than did members of the low-contact group (39 versus 22 minutes respectively). High-contact faculty members were also more talkative than their low-contact peers, displayed more interest in the interview, and shared many stories to illustrate their points. This was labeled as an interactionist style of faculty-student interaction. According to the researcher, this style includes openness and flexibility in interactions with students, a willingness to let the interaction take its own course, and a focus on the other person in addition to the topic of conversation. Interactionist faculty members used their time with students differently from other faculty members. The interactionist group tended to put in significantly more time on the students' intellectual interests and growth, including vocational planning and goals and personal concerns. However, faculty in all three groups tended to spend approximately the same amount of time per student on more businesslike topics (Snow, 1973).

Issues

According to symbolic interactionism, the interactions between students and teachers help each develop a set of expectations for that student's performance both in academic subjects and discipline. The actions of the teacher toward the student may help set up a situation where the student can more easily fulfill these expectations and the teacher unconsciously looks for behaviors that support the teacher's expectations. This theory has been supported by research. However, doing research in this area is difficult because it is neither plausible nor ethical to treat children differentially in order to test a theory. Further, it is difficult to operationally define such concepts as teacher expectancy that are central to an interactionist framework. Better definitions and further research is necessary in order to better understand the relationship between teacher expectations and student performance. Another criticism that has been leveled against interactionism is that much of the work in their study of education focuses on a micro view by immersing themselves in the myriad details of small situations and fail to adequately address the big picture of the macro view, with its emphasis on large systems and society in general.

However, the interactionist perspective does have applicability to the classroom. In particular, the interactionist view underscores that although well-intentioned, there are limits to the usefulness of tracking within the educational system. Further, this perspective has implications for what types of data should be given to teachers about students' test scores as well as for the types of preparation that might make poor and minority students in particular better placed for academic success.

Terms & Concepts

Conflict Perspective: An approach to analyzing social behavior that is based on the assumption that social behavior is best explained and understood in terms of conflict or tension between competing groups.

Education: From a sociological perspective, education is a formal learning process in which some individuals take on the social role of teacher and others take on the social role of student.

Hidden Curriculum: The standards of proper behavior for a society or culture that are taught within the school system. The hidden curriculum is not part of the articulated curricula for schools, but is taught subtly through the reinforcement of behavior and attitudes that are deemed appropriate by the society or culture.

Reinforcement: An act, process, circumstance, or condition that increases the probability of a person repeating a response.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A situation in which one's belief or expectation sets up a condition where the belief or expectation is met. For example, a student who thinks that s/he will not do well on an examination even if s/he studies will not study and, therefore, not do well on the examination.

Social Stratification: A relatively fixed hierarchical organization of a society in which entire subgroups are ranked according to social class. These divisions are marked by differences in economic rewards and power within the society and different access to resources, power, and perceived social worth. Social stratification is a system of structured social inequality.

Society: A distinct group of people who live within the same territory, share a common culture and way of life, and are relatively independent from people outside the group. Society includes systems of social interactions that govern both culture and social organization.

Symbolic Interactionism: A theory that assumes that one's self-concept is created through the interpretation of the symbolic gestures, words, actions, and appearances of others as observed during social interactions.

Teacher Expectancy Effect: The impact of a teacher's expectations of a student's performance or achievement on the actual performance or achievement of that student. The teacher expectancy effect is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tracking: The educational practice of placing students into different curriculum groups based on achievement or aptitude test scores, prior performance, or other criteria. For example, students may be placed in a "gifted" track, a "remedial" track, or placed with the main body of students for that class or grade.

Bibliography

Andersen, M. L., & Taylor, H. F. (2002). Sociology: Understanding a diverse society. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Everitt, J. G. (2013). Inhabitants moving in: Prospective sense-making and the reproduction of inhabited institutions in teacher education. Symbolic Interaction, 36, 177–196. Retrieved October 23, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87563922

Fielding, R. (1984). Extended review: Interactionist sociology of education [book review]. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 5 , 89–95. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=10612892&site=ehost-live

Fritzberg, G. J. (2001). Less than equal: A former urban schoolteacher examines the causes of educational disadvantagement. Urban Review, 33 , 107–129. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=11308916&site=ehost-live

Rahman, K. (2013). Belonging and learning to belong in school: the implications of the hidden curriculum for indigenous students. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34, 660–672. Retrieved October 23, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=91281399

Schaefer, R. T. (2002). Glossary. In Sociology: A brief introduction (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072435569/student%5fview0/glossary.html

Snow, S. G. (1973). Correlates of faculty-student interaction. Sociology of Education, 46 , 489–498. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=13008351&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Boocock, S. S. (1978). The social organization of the classroom. Annual Review of Sociology, 4 , 1–28. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=10457393&site=ehost-live

Dennis, A., & Martin, P. J. (2005). Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power. British Journal of Sociology, 56 , 191–213. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=17131734&site=ehost-live

Greenfield, D. (2006). Understanding social structure through personal experience: The creative use of status and role as explanatory factors. Teaching Sociology, 34 , 404–411. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=23164549&site=ehost-live

Merolla, D. M., Serpe, R. T., Stryker, S., & Schultz, P. (2012). Structural precursors to identity processes: The role of proximate social structures. Social Psychology Quarterly, 75, 149–172. Retrieved October 23, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=76331318

Pollard, A. (1982). A model of classroom coping strategies. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 3 , 19–37. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=10605309&site=ehost-live

Pollard, A. (1990). Towards a sociology of learning in primary schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11 , 241–256. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9603062232&site=ehost-live

Turner, G. (1983). The social world of the comprehensive school. London: Croom Helm.

Woods, P. (1983). Sociology and the school: An interactionist viewpoint. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.