Ethnicity and Educational Opportunity: case studies of West Indian male‐white teacher relationships

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Abstract
The paper examines the complexity of West Indian pupils’ adaptations to school. Their situation is such that ability, hard work and a commitment to academic achievement may not be sufficient in the struggle for academic success. West Indian pupils face the additional barrier of staff ethnocentrism, which must be handled without reinforcing the widespread belief that they represent a challenge to teachers’ authority. The size of this task is examined through the use of detailed case studies of pupils drawn from ethnographic research in a single multi‐ethnic inner‐city Comprehensive. The paper describes the strategies which allowed one West Indian pupil to succeed academically, whilst a group of his peers experienced increasingly conflictual teacher‐pupil relations which culminated in academic failure and, in one case, expulsion from the school.