Reference-Group Theory and Ability Grouping: A Convergence of Sociological Theory and Educational Research

Abstract

terpretation of Student B and C's scores. The teacher's use of background knowledge (consisting of the student's behavior during the testing session) was used to provide one set of scores (B's) with a sense of validity. From the teacher's perspective a score is valid when it is produced through knowledge rather than random choice by the student. This conception of validity is suggested in the teacher's remarks about how she gave the test. Student C's behavior while taking the test undercuts and alters the meaning his scores have for the teacher. The ethnographic details supplied to C's scores alters their sense of being high scores to scores produced through luck rather than knowledge. The use of background knowledge amounts to embedding the test scores in a context such that the scores take on an objective appearance. That objective appearance is the accomplishment of subjective activity: the use of background knowledge. Because the test scores are potentially equivocal, background knowledge is used to resolve that equivocality and thereby provide the scores with their factual properties. While sociologists and educators imply that the use of background knowledge undermines the objectivity of the test, I have shown that it is through the use of background knowledge that the objectivity of the test is secured by rendering an otherwise truncated account of the student's capacities into a rich and immediate context of tacitly and explicitly known matters.