It is argued that teachers often classify (type) and label working class students as non-academic. However, these labels are often based not on objective measures of ability, but on how well the student matched up to their stereotype of an “academic student”.
Consequently, labeling is more to do with the teacher’s prejudices than the student’s actual ability.
Howard Becker outlines how teachers tend to evaluate and label students in terms of their image of an “ideal pupil” – their own, often unexamined, mental picture of what a well-behaved, academically able student looks like.
He found that teachers tend to perceive students from middle-class backgrounds as closest to this ideal and working class students as further away – regardless of actual ability.
Cicourel and Kitsuse (1963) interviewed counselors in American high schools, finding that middle-class students were more likely to be placed on higher-level courses. They found that the counselors’ classifications of students’ ability and potential were based on a whole range of non-academic factors, such as appearance and demeanor.
Rist found that as early as the 8th day of kindergarten, children had been grouped into “ability” and sat at different tables.
However, when the children were tested, it was found that they were actually grouped according to how well they conformed to the teacher’s own middle-class standards.
The Process of Label Formation (Speculation, Elaboration, Stabilization)
Hargreaves et al. (1975), in their classic book Deviance in Classrooms, interviewed teachers and observed classrooms. Their aim was to examine how teachers “got to know” new students.
The researchers highlight three stages through which labels evolve:
- During the speculation stage, “first impressions” are made on the basis of things like the student’s appearance, ability and enthusiasm and their relationship with other students. Teachers were observed to make a working hypothesis about the student.
- These hypotheses are either confirmed or contradicted during the elaboration stage.
- Finally, the label is stabilized and the teacher believes that they fully understand the student. At this point, the teacher believes he or she can make sense of the student’s behaviour entirely in reference to the label.
Pupil Adaptations
In order to address the problem of assuming that pupils automatically “take on” labels, Peter Woods (1979) gives a more complex account of student responses to schools.
In his study of Lowfields – a secondary modern in a rural area of the Midlands – he outlines a range of different responses. Students, he found, reacted to school in many different ways. He called these reactions pupil adaptations.
Some students, for example, attempt to ingratiate themselves with teachers by becoming “teacher’s pets.” Others actively rebel, while others simply go through the motions of the school day to stay out of trouble.
Woods identifies a total of 8 different types of pupil adaptation:
- Ingratiation – Pupils who are eager to please teachers and have very favorable attitudes towards school. Conformist pro-school.
- Compliance – Pupils who accept school rules and discipline, and see school as a useful way to gain qualifications, but who don’t have a wholly positive or negative attitude towards school. This is typical of first year students.
- Opportunism – Pupils who fluctuate between seeking the approval of teachers and from their peer groups.
- Ritualism – Pupils who go through the motions of attending school but without great engagement or enthusiasm.
- Retreatism – Pupils who are indifferent to school values and exam success- messing about in class and daydreaming are common, but such students do not want to challenge the authority of the school.
- Colonization – Pupils who try to get away with as much as possible. Such students may express hostility to the school but will still try to avoid getting into trouble. More common in the later years of schooling.
- Intransigence – troublemakers who are indifferent to school and who aren’t that bothered about conformity.
- Rebellion – the goals of schools are rejected and pupils devote their efforts to achieving deviant goals.
This theory shows that pupil responses to schools are not straightforward. There is an element of negotiation involved in classroom interaction. Students also have free will, and can choose to reject a label, or work extra hard to disprove it.
Pupil Subcultures
A pupil subculture is a group of pupils who share similar values and behavior patterns. Pupil subcultures often emerge as a response to the way pupils have been labeled and in particular as a reaction to streaming.
Another response to the labeling of pupils is the formation of an anti/counter-school subculture.
Hargreaves (1975) made this observation. Pupils labelled as “troublemakers” found themselves defined as “failures” in several different ways:
- They had failed to get into grammar schools
- They had been allocated to a low stream in their school
- Within this stream, they had been selected as the lowest
of the low and labeled as “worthless louts”
This gave them the impression that they were unable to achieve high status within the school. In order to preserve their self-esteem and positive self-concept, those students labeled as failures tended to seek each other out and form counter-school subcultures.
Within these groups, high status was awarded to students who broke the school rules as frequently as possible. As these subcultures reject the school values, they reject academic success as a goal. Consequently, they lead students to lower attainment within schools.
Setting and Streaming
One consequence of labelling and teacher prejudice is that working-class pupils are overrepresented in low streams and sets. Streaming places a pupil into one fixed ability group across most subjects.
Setting is more flexible. Pupils are grouped by attainment in each individual subject. A pupil might be in a high set for maths but a lower set for English.
In Beachside Comprehensive, Stephen Ball examined the impact of streaming directly. There were three bands.
Band one was meant to hold the ablest pupils. Band three held the least able, based on information from primary schools.
However, Ball (1981) found that the strongest predictor of being placed in band one was not measured ability. It was whether a pupil’s father held a non-manual job.
Ball argued that teachers’ differing expectations of each band then changed how pupils in them actually behaved. Most pupils arrived at school conformist and eager. Their behaviour quickly diverged. Band two, in particular, was expected by teachers to be the hardest to teach.
According to Ball, this expectation led to a progressive deterioration in band two pupils’ behaviour. Absence rose, non-conformity increased, and pupils put less effort into homework. All of this damaged attainment.
Ball also found that the two bands were taught differently and steered toward different qualifications, as the table below shows.
| Band One | Band Two |
|---|---|
| Encouraged toward high aspirations | “Cooled down” from high aspirations |
| Directed toward academic O-Level subjects | Directed toward practical subjects and CSE exams |
| More likely to stay in school past 16 | Less likely to take O-Levels or A-Levels |
Ball acknowledged that not every band two pupil failed. However, he found a strong correlation between educational success and band, and between band and social class. He concluded that “working class pupils tend to percolate downwards in the processes of academic and behavioral differentiation”.
Alternative Theories of Educational Underachievement
Labelling theory explains underachievement through moment-to-moment interactions between teachers and pupils. Several rival, structural theories instead locate the causes of underachievement in the wider organisation of society.
Functionalist Theory: Meritocracy and Role Allocation
Functionalist sociologists see education as broadly beneficial. They see it as performing necessary functions for society, not as a site of teacher prejudice. Parsons (1959) argued that schools perform two functions: socialisation into shared values, and allocation.
Allocation sorts pupils by measured achievement into the adult roles they are best suited for. This is meritocracy in action. Schools act as a broadly meritocratic sorting mechanism. Davis and Moore (1945) explained why: society’s most demanding roles need its most talented people.
This is a very different reading of the same evidence.
Where labelling theory sees streaming as a way of reproducing class-based prejudice, functionalists see the same practice as an efficient way of identifying real differences in ability. Labelling theorists reject this picture.
Cultural Deprivation Theory
Cultural deprivation theory locates working-class underachievement in the home, not the school. This is a rival explanation to labelling theory.
Douglas (1964) studied a large group of British schoolchildren. He found that working-class pupils scored lower on ability tests than middle-class pupils.
He linked this partly to less parental engagement with reading and other activities that support learning at home. Bernstein (1971) offered a linguistic version of the same argument.
He distinguished a restricted code, a simpler, context-bound speech pattern linked to working-class families. An elaborated code is a more explicit, grammatically complex pattern linked to middle-class families.
This elaborated code is also closer to the language used in formal education. So middle-class pupils start school with a systematic advantage.
Material Deprivation Theory
Material deprivation theory shifts the explanation from culture to money. Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1980) studied a large cohort of British men.
They found that financial hardship itself held back working-class pupils’ outcomes. This included poor housing, poor nutrition, and having to do paid work instead of studying.
The effect held independently of culture or language. On this account, a pupil placed in a low set may genuinely be disadvantaged already.
Not because a teacher misjudged their potential. It is because poverty itself has depressed their measured performance, through hunger, tiredness, or extra part-time work that leaves less time for study.
This is a different claim from labelling theory. Labelling theory says the teacher misreads a pupil who may be just as able.
How These Theories Compare with Labelling Theory
All three structural theories agree on one thing. Working-class pupils are concentrated in lower streams and sets, and each theory offers real evidence for why.
Labelling theory claims something different. Much of the gap, it argues, reflects the teacher’s own unexamined prejudice about what an “academic” pupil looks like.
This is not about real differences in ability, culture or resources. It is about perception.
These explanations are not necessarily rivals, though. A pupil from a materially deprived home who also speaks in a restricted code may be genuinely disadvantaged.
That same pupil could also be separately mislabelled by a teacher who reads the disadvantage as low ability. Willis (1977) occupies broadly this position.
His working-class “lads” are shaped by real material and class circumstances. The school’s own labelling and streaming practices reinforce, rather than create, that path.
Applications of Labelling Theory
Labelling theory turns a teacher’s first impression into an institutional, curriculum-shaping category that follows a pupil for years. Because of this, it has shaped real policy and classroom-practice debates.
Setting, Streaming and Mixed-Attainment Teaching
Francis and colleagues (2017) ran a large mixed-methods study of English secondary schools. They found that pupils’ self-confidence tracked their assigned set level, not their measured attainment.
This is striking. It suggests the label itself, not real ability, shapes how confident a pupil feels.
The researchers used this finding to argue for caution before increasing structured ability grouping. They argued schools should treat mixed-attainment teaching, grouping pupils of different attainment levels together, as a genuine alternative.
This should be a live option, not a fringe one. Where schools do keep setting, the research points to specific safeguards.
Set placements should be reviewed often, using transparent, attainment-based criteria. This counters the kind of non-academic, class-linked judgement that Cicourel and Kitsuse (1963) and Ball (1981) both documented.
Schools should also avoid a rigid curriculum split. Ball (1981) found that lower sets were quietly steered toward a narrower range of qualifications.
This narrows a pupil’s options long before they choose their own path. Set composition should also be checked for unintended gender or class skew.
Charlton and colleagues (2007) found exactly this kind of skew. It appeared even in a reform explicitly designed to promote equity.
Teacher Training and Expectancy-Awareness
Much of the “ideal pupil” bias operates below a teacher’s conscious awareness. Hargreaves and colleagues’ (1975) speculation-elaboration-stabilisation model suggests this happens fast.
So simply telling teachers to “be fair” is unlikely to be enough. De Boer, Timmermans and van der Werf (2018) tested a more structured approach.
Their meta-analysis pooled many intervention studies together. It found that structured training could measurably raise both teacher expectations and pupil achievement.
The interventions worked in a specific way. They made teachers aware of the evidence on expectancy effects.
They also trained teachers to set and communicate high expectations for every pupil, regardless of prior attainment. This gives a practical, evidence-based case for building expectancy-awareness training into standard teacher education.
One concrete strategy is simple. Schools can delay giving a new class’s prior attainment data to its teacher until several weeks of direct classroom observation have passed.
Critical Evaluation of Labelling Theory
Contemporary research has tested labelling theory’s central claims using much larger samples than the classic studies. The findings mostly support the theory, though several criticisms remain.
Contemporary Research
- Aim: Friedrich et al. (2015) tested whether teachers’ expectations about pupils’ maths ability predict later achievement gains, and how any such effect works.
- Method: The team tracked 73 teachers and 1,289 fifth-grade pupils in German maths classrooms over a school year. They compared early teacher expectations against later grades and test scores, controlling for prior achievement.
- Results: Teacher expectations predicted later achievement even after controlling for prior ability, and the effect was partly explained by pupils’ own academic self-concept.
- Conclusion: Teacher expectancy effects operate as a genuine influence in ordinary classrooms, not just in artificial lab studies.
- Aim: De Boer et al. (2018) asked whether interventions designed to correct teachers’ expectations actually raise pupils’ achievement.
- Method: The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of intervention studies that trained teachers or gave them feedback about specific pupils. They then measured any resulting change in expectations and achievement.
- Results: Interventions raised teacher expectations (Hedges’ g = 0.38), and this shift was followed by higher pupil achievement (g = 0.30) across the pooled studies.
- Conclusion: Expectancy effects are not fixed. Training teachers to expect more from every pupil produces a real, measurable achievement gain.
- Aim: Francis et al. (2017) tested whether being placed in a particular attainment set shapes pupils’ self-confidence, regardless of their actual attainment.
- Method: The team surveyed 11,546 English Year 7 pupils about their set placement and self-confidence. They also interviewed 66 pupils in follow-up focus groups.
- Results: Perceived set placement predicted pupils’ self-confidence independently of actual attainment. Low-set pupils described themselves using their set’s label, such as “I’m bottom set so I’m not clever.”
- Conclusion: Setting functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy for many pupils, giving Ball’s (1981) classic findings a large, modern evidence base.
These large-sample findings echo the classic ethnographic studies above: Becker (1963), Rist (2000) and Ball (1981). This is a real strength of the theory.
Despite this support, the theory faces several recognised criticisms:
- Determinism versus Pupil Agency: critics argue the theory implies a labelled pupil has no choice but to fail, when pupils often resist their labels.
- Structural and Marxist Critiques: Dale and Marxist theorists argue the theory ignores where the “ideal pupil” image comes from and how schools reproduce class divisions.
- Gender Bias Overlooked: most labelling research focuses on social class, but the same mechanism can operate through gender as well.
- Methodological Limitations: much of the founding evidence rests on small, single-school studies that are hard to generalise from.
Determinism and Pupil Agency
If we are to believe the explanation, all it would take for to get everyone an A-grade in sociology would be for me to label you all as incredibly bright. Consequently, we must be cautious about over simplifying labeling as an explanation of differential achievement, and recognize that the consequences of labeling can range.
Critics say this over-simplifies the theory. A pupil, they argue, will always fulfil the prophecy a teacher sets for them.
Mary Fuller’s (1984) study of working-class Black girls found the opposite. The girls worked harder specifically to disprove a negative label, instead of living up to it.
Woods (1979) makes the same point. His eight pupil adaptations range from ingratiation to rebellion.
This shows labelled pupils respond in many different ways, not one fixed way.
Together, these findings suggest the theory captures a real, moderate tendency rather than a fixed, deterministic law that leaves pupils no room to resist.
Structural and Marxist Critiques
Roger Dale (1973) argues that labelling theory focuses too narrowly on small-scale classroom interaction. This leaves unanswered where an idea like the “ideal pupil” comes from in the first place. It rarely asks why the image favours middle-class traits.
Marxist sociologists Bowles and Gintis (1976) answer this with their correspondence principle. A school’s hierarchy and discipline, they argue, deliberately mirror the capitalist workplace. So what looks like one teacher’s prejudice is really the system reproducing class structure.
Willis (1977) reaches a similar conclusion.
His study of working-class “lads” found their rejection of school was less about any single label. It was more an anticipation of the manual jobs they expected anyway.
Together, Dale, Bowles and Gintis, and Willis point to the same gap. Labelling theory rarely asks where the bias comes from.
Gender and the Limits of the “Ideal Pupil” Story
Most classic labelling research focuses on social class alone. This includes Becker (1963), Rist (2000) and Ball (1981). Charlton and colleagues’ (2007) case study shows the same mechanism can work through gender too.
One Australian school restructured its sets to close a perceived gender gap. The new top and bottom sets quickly became gendered. Pupils in the bottom sets, mostly boys, faced the same lowered expectations Ball found for his band-two pupils.
This is a useful corrective.
The teacher’s “ideal pupil” image can be shaped by gender as well as class. Fixing one kind of bias can accidentally create another. It suggests the mechanism labelling theory describes is not limited to one kind of prejudice, and correcting one bias can require watching for others.
Methodological Limitations
Much of the founding evidence for labelling theory comes from small, single-school studies. This includes Becker (1963), Hargreaves and colleagues (1975), Ball (1981) and Fuller (1984). These studies capture how a label forms moment by moment.
But they are weak at showing how common or large the effect is nationally. A single school cannot establish that.
This is exactly the gap the contemporary research above helps to close. Francis and colleagues’ (2017) 11,546-pupil survey and de Boer and colleagues’ (2018) meta-analysis both confirm the classic findings. Both used methods much less exposed to this weakness.
A useful next step is longitudinal research. Following the same pupils across several teachers and years would show how far a label persists. It might fade, or be overwritten, as a pupil moves through school.
Key Takeaways
- Ideal Pupil Bias: Teachers often judge pupils against an unexamined image of an “ideal pupil” that closely matches middle-class norms of speech and behaviour, not objective ability.
- Label Formation: A label forms in three stages, speculation, elaboration and stabilisation, often settling within days of a pupil starting a new class.
- Pupil Agency: Pupils are not passive. Woods (1979) identified eight distinct ways pupils respond to a label, from eager conformity to outright rebellion.
- Setting and Streaming: Working-class pupils are disproportionately placed in low streams and sets, which then shapes their curriculum, behaviour and exam entry.
- Modern Evidence: Large-scale contemporary studies, including Francis et al. (2017) and de Boer et al. (2018), confirm the classic findings using much bigger samples.
- Main Criticism: The theory has been accused of determinism, though evidence shows many pupils actively work to disprove a negative label.
Further Information
References
Ball, S. J. (1981). Beachside comprehensive: A case-study of secondary schooling. Cambridge University Press.
Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. Free Press of Glencoe.
Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control, Volume 1: Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. Basic Books.
Charlton, E., Mills, M., Martino, W., & Beckett, L. (2007). Sacrificial girls: A case study of the impact of streaming and setting on gender reform. British Educational Research Journal, 33(4), 459-478. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701434011
Chriss, J. J. (2018). Social control: History of the concept. The handbook of social control, 7-22.
Dale, R. (1973). Phenomenological perspectives and the sociology of the school. Educational Review, 25(3), 175-189.
Davis, K., & Moore, W. E. (1945). Some principles of stratification. American Sociological Review, 10(2), 242-249.
De Boer, H., Timmermans, A. C., & Van der Werf, M. P. C. (2018). The effects of teacher expectation interventions on teachers’ expectations and student achievement: Narrative review and meta-analysis. Educational Research and Evaluation, 24(3-5), 180-200. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2018.1550834
Douglas, J. W. B. (1964). The home and the school: A study of ability and attainment in the primary school. MacGibbon & Kee.
Francis, B., Connolly, P., Archer, L., Hodgen, J., Mazenod, A., Pepper, D., Sloan, S., Taylor, B., Tereshchenko, A., & Travers, M.-C. (2017). Attainment grouping as self-fulfilling prophesy? A mixed methods exploration of self confidence and set level among Year 7 students. International Journal of Educational Research, 86, 96-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2017.09.001
Friedrich, A., Flunger, B., Nagengast, B., Jonkmann, K., & Trautwein, U. (2015). Pygmalion effects in the classroom: Teacher expectancy effects on students’ math achievement. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 41, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.10.006
Fuller, M. (1984). Black girls in a comprehensive school. In Life in school: The sociology of pupil culture.
Halsey, A. H., Heath, A. F., & Ridge, J. M. (1980). Origins and destinations: Family, class and education in modern Britain. Clarendon Press.
Hargreaves, D. H., Hester, S. K., & Mellor, F. (1975). Deviance in classrooms. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Parsons, T. (1959). The school class as a social system: Some of its functions in American society. Harvard Educational Review, 29(4), 297-318.
Rist, R. C. (2000). Student social class and teacher expectations: The self-fulfilling prophecy in ghetto education. Harvard Education Review, 70(3), 1-46.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. The urban review, 3(1), 16-20.
Wang, S., Rubie-Davies, C. M., & Meissel, K. (2018). A systematic review of the teacher expectation literature over the past 30 years. Educational Research and Evaluation, 24(3-5), 124-179. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2018.1548798
Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labour: How working class kids get working class jobs. Saxon House.
Woods, P. (1979). The divided school. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Associate Editor for Simply Psychology
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology, where she contributes accessible content on psychological topics. She is also an autistic PhD student at the University of Birmingham, researching autistic camouflaging in higher education.
Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol)
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD, is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.