JUDGMENT, LABELING, AND SCHOOL FAILURE IN SCHOOLING CONTEXTS

Abstract

This article discusses school failure through the categories of teacher judgment, labeling, expectation, and symbolic violence. It argues that school practices of classifying, naming, and evaluating students may transform social differences into legitimate school differences, thus producing trajectories marked by lasting labels. The study is a theoretical essay of a bibliographic nature, based on authors who examine assessment, school classification, stigma, and the reproduction of inequalities. The analysis draws on teacher judgment in Bourdieu and Saint-Martin, the sociological reading of schooling in Bourdieu, teacher expectations in Rasche and Kude and in Rist, Freire’s critique of authoritarian pedagogical practices, and Goffman’s discussion of stigma. The central argument indicates that school failure goes beyond individual performance. It is constituted within pedagogical relations, assessment criteria, expectations projected onto students, and the ways educational institutions recognize, distinguish, and hierarchize subjects.