Outline two cultural factors that may affect ethnic differences in educational achievement (4)

One cultural factor is socialisation. Most children are socialised into the mainstream, shared culture of society of willingness, ambition and sacrifice. However, it is argued children from Afro-Caribbean households are socialised into a fatalistic ‘live for today’ attitude. As a result, they do not possess the values needed to succeed in education and thus lack the motivation, leading to underachievement.

A second cultural factor is language and development. Bereiter and Engelman argue that black American families communicate using deficient language in the home. The use of disjointed, ungrammatical phrases means that black children are incapable of expressing complex ideas. Much like Bernstein, they argue that this puts them at a disadvantage when they start school because schools use elaborated speech codes, leading to underachievement.