Labelling Theory and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Last Updated on October 21, 2026 by Karl Thompson

In the sociology of education, labelling theory looks at how the labels teachers attach to pupils shape their identities and their results. The best-known version of this is the self-fulfilling prophecy: a teacher’s prediction about a pupil comes true because the teacher acted on it and the pupil came to believe it.

This post covers:

1. What labelling is, and how teachers come to label pupils.
2. Classic studies: Hargreaves, Hester and Mellor, Rist, Cicourel and Kitsuse, and Rosenthal and Jacobson.
3. Labelling by gender and ethnicity.
4. Contemporary research on teacher labelling.
5. Criticisms of labelling theory, and how the topic comes up in the exam.

Labelling is one of the main in-school processes on the AQA specification (“relationships and processes within schools”), examined on Paper 1 (7192/1). It is also the clearest example of the interactionist approach applied to education.

Labelling Theory in Sociology: an overview

Labelling refers to the process of defining a person or group in a simplified way – narrowing down the complexity of the whole person and fitting them into broad categories. At the simplest level labelling involves that first judgement you make about someone, often based on first impressions. Is someone ‘worth making the effort to get to know more’, are you ‘indifferent to them’, or are they ‘to be avoided’…?

According to labelling theory, teachers actively judge their pupils over a period of time, making judgements based on their behaviour in class, attitude to learning, previous school reports and interactions with them and their parents. Eventually they classify pupils according to whether they are ‘high’ or ‘low’ ability, ‘hard working’ or ‘lazy’, ‘naughty’ or ‘well-behaved’, ‘in need of support’ or ‘capable of just getting on with it’ (to give just a few possible categories, there are others!).

A number of small-scale, interpretivist studies of teacher labelling have found that the labels teachers give to pupils are sometimes based not on their behaviour but on preconceived ideas teachers have about pupils’ ethnic, gender or social class background. In other words, labelling can be grounded in stereotypes.

Much of this work goes back to Howard Becker’s (1952) interviews with 60 Chicago school teachers, who judged pupils against an image of the ‘ideal pupil’ that was, in practice, middle class. I cover Becker’s study in more depth in the post on social class and in-school factors.

A closely related concept is the self-fulfilling prophecy – where an individual accepts their label and the label becomes true in practice. For example, a pupil labelled as deviant actually becomes deviant in response to being so labelled.

Labelling theory is one of the main parts of social action, or interactionist theory, which seeks to understand human action by looking at micro-level processes – looking at social life through a microscope, from the ground up. (Labelling theory is also used to explain crime – that version, built on Becker’s later work, is covered in the post on the labelling theory of crime and deviance.)

Classic studies on teacher labelling in education 

Classic studies on teacher labelling in education

Most of the work of labelling theory applied to education was done in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Four classic studies are summarised below:

• David Hargreaves, Hester and Mellor (1975) Deviance in Classrooms.
• Ray Rist (1970) ‘Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education’.
• Aaron Cicourel and John Kitsuse (1963) The Educational Decision-Makers.
• Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) Pygmalion in the Classroom (the ‘famous’ self-fulfilling prophecy experiment!).

David Hargreaves: Speculation, Elaboration, Stabilisation

David Hargreaves and his colleagues Hester and Mellor (1975), in their classic book Deviance in Classrooms, analysed the ways in which pupils came to be typed, or labelled. Their study was based on interviews with secondary teachers and classroom observation in two secondary schools, focusing on how teachers ‘got to know’ pupils entering the first year of the school.

Teachers have only a very limited idea about who their pupils are as individuals when they first arrive, based mainly on the area they come from, so they have to build up an image of each pupil as the school year goes on. Hargreaves, Hester and Mellor distinguished three stages of typing:

1. Speculation
2. Elaboration
3. Stabilisation

In the first stage, speculation, teachers make guesses about the types of pupil they are dealing with. The researchers noted seven main criteria teachers used to type pupils:

• their appearance
• how far they conformed to discipline
• their ability and enthusiasm for work
• how likeable they were
• their relationships with other children
• their personality
• whether they were deviant.

Hargreaves, Hester and Mellor stress that in the speculation stage teachers are tentative in their typing and willing to amend their views. Nevertheless, they do form a working hypothesis, or theory, about what sort of child each pupil is.

In the elaboration phase, each hypothesis is tested and either confirmed or contradicted, and through this process the typing of each pupil is refined.

When the third stage, stabilisation, is reached, the teacher feels that they ‘know’ the pupils and finds little difficulty in making sense of their actions, which are interpreted in the light of the general type of pupil the teacher thinks they are. Some pupils will be regarded as deviant, and it will be difficult for any of their future actions to be seen in a positive light.

Labelling Theory and Social Class

A lot of the early, classic studies on labelling focused on how teachers label according to indicators of social class background, not the actual ability of the pupil.

Rist: labelling in a kindergarten class

Research in one American kindergarten class by Ray Rist (1970) suggested that labelling can happen much more quickly than Hargreaves, Hester and Mellor’s three stages suggest, and that it is heavily influenced by social class.

Rist found that after only eight days the teacher had seated the children at three tables – one for the ‘fast learners’ and two for the slower learners. The children had not been assessed. The real basis of the seating plan was social class: the middle-class children were on the ‘fast’ table and the children from poorer homes were on the other two.

Rist then followed the class into its first and second year of school and found the groupings largely stayed in place. The teacher’s early judgement had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Cicourel and Kitsuse: the educational decision-makers

Aaron Cicourel and John Kitsuse (1963) studied the decisions counsellors made in one American high school.

The counsellors largely decided which pupils were placed on programmes that prepared them for college. They claimed their decisions were based on the grades pupils achieved in school and the results of IQ tests, but there were discrepancies: not all pupils achieving high grades and IQ scores were placed on college-preparation programmes.

Cicourel and Kitsuse found that social class background had an influence. Pupils from middle-class backgrounds were more likely to be placed on higher-level courses even when they had the same grades as pupils from lower-class backgrounds.

They argued that the counsellors’ decisions rested on a number of non-academic criteria related to social class, such as the clothes pupils wore, their manners and their general demeanour. Similarly, when deciding which pupils were to be classified as ‘conduct problems’, counsellors used criteria such as speech and hairstyle, which were again related to social class.

In general, those with middle-class manners were more likely to be labelled good prospects for college, while those with working-class manners and style were more likely to be labelled conduct problems.

Labelling theory and the self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy theory argues that predictions teachers make about the future success or failure of a pupil will tend to come true because that prediction has been made. If a pupil is labelled a success, they will succeed; if they are labelled a failure, they will fail.

The reasons a label can become self-fulfilling are as follows:

• Teachers push the pupils they think are brighter harder, and expect less from pupils they have labelled as less able.
• Building on the above point, a positive label is more likely to result in a pupil being put into a higher set or band, and a negative label into a lower one (see setting and streaming).
• Positively labelled pupils are more likely to develop a positive attitude towards studying; those negatively labelled an anti-school attitude.
• All of the above may be reinforced by the peer group – see pupil subcultures.

It follows that in labelling theory, a pupil’s attainment is, at least to some degree, the result of the interaction between teacher and pupil, rather than just their ability.

Rosenthal and Jacobson: Pygmalion in the Classroom

A classic study which supports self-fulfilling prophecy theory is Rosenthal and Jacobson’s (1968) experiment at an elementary school in California, which they called Oak School. They tested all the pupils’ IQ, then picked about 20% of them at random and told their teachers that these pupils could be expected to ‘spurt’ academically in the coming year.

When they retested the pupils, they found that the randomly selected ‘spurters’ had, on average, gained more IQ points than the other 80%, whom the teachers believed to be ‘average’. The gains were concentrated among the youngest children, in the first and second grades.

Rosenthal and Jacobson argued that the teachers had passed on their higher expectations to the ‘spurters’, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy. (For how this study holds up, see the criticisms below.)

Gender, ethnicity and labelling

A considerable amount of research has been done into the ways in which pupils of different genders and ethnicities are labelled by teachers.

One classic study of gender and labelling was John Abraham’s (1995) research in a comprehensive school, published as Divide and School. He found that teachers had ideas of ‘typical boys’ and ‘typical girls’, expecting girls to be more focused on schoolwork and better behaved than boys in general. Teachers also had higher expectations of girls than boys.

The issue of gender and labelling is covered in more depth in this post: Gender and educational achievement: in-school processes.

Many studies have also looked at how teachers label differently on the basis of gender and ethnicity together.

David Gillborn (1990), for example, argued that teachers have the lowest expectations of Black boys and even see them as a threat, while Paul Connolly (1998), in a study of a multi-ethnic inner-city primary school, found that teachers saw Asian boys’ disruptive behaviour as immature rather than deliberately disruptive, so they weren’t punished as severely as Black boys. Meanwhile Asian girls were largely ignored because they were seen as passive and unwilling to join in class discussion.

The issue of ethnicity and education is covered in more depth here: Ethnicity and differential achievement: in-school processes. Gillborn’s later work with Deborah Youdell on ‘educational triage’ has its own post: Gillborn and Youdell: Rationing Education.

Contemporary research on labelling theory

Waterhouse: pivotal identities

Waterhouse (2004), in case studies of four primary and secondary schools, suggests that teacher labelling of pupils as either normal/average or deviant types, as a result of impressions formed over time, has implications for the way teachers interact with pupils.

Once these labels are applied and become the dominant categories for pupils, they can become what Waterhouse called a ‘pivotal identity’ – a core identity which teachers use as a pivot to interpret and reinterpret classroom events and pupil behaviour.

For example, a pupil with the pivotal identity of ‘normal’ is likely to have an episode of deviant behaviour interpreted as unusual, or as a ‘temporary phase’ – something which will shortly end and requires no significant action. A pupil with the pivotal identity of ‘deviant’, on the other hand, will have periods of good behaviour treated as unusual – something not expected to last, and so not worth recognising.

Dunne and Gazeley: teachers and working-class underachievement

Dunne and Gazeley (2008) studied secondary school teachers in England and how they identified and responded to underachievement. They found that teachers’ judgements were shaped by an unspoken sense of pupils’ social class. Many of the teachers said they resisted being influenced by class, yet they relied on class stereotypes to explain pupils’ attainment and to set their expectations of them.

This matters for evaluation: it suggests that class-based labelling hasn’t disappeared just because teachers are now trained to avoid it. It may simply be less visible, including to teachers themselves.

Criticisms of the labelling theory of education

Labels can be rejected

Negative labelling can sometimes have the opposite effect. Margaret Fuller’s (1984) research on Black girls in a London comprehensive school found that the girls she studied were aware that they were seen as likely low achievers, but their response was to knuckle down and study hard to prove their teachers and the school wrong. This suggests labelling theory is too deterministic: pupils are not simply passive recipients of whatever label they are given.

Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study has not held up well

The Pygmalion study has been heavily criticised. Snow (1969) argued that its measurement and data analysis were seriously flawed, and later re-analysis of the data found implausible IQ scores among the results. A meta-analysis by Raudenbush (1984) found that telling teachers to expect more from some pupils only affected IQ when the information was given in the first week or two of the school year – after that, teachers already knew their pupils and the effect disappeared.

Jussim and Harber (2005), reviewing more than 35 years of research, concluded that self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom are real but usually small, and that teacher expectations mostly predict how pupils do because they are accurate, not because they cause the results.

HOWEVER, the same review found that the effects are larger for low-achieving pupils, pupils from lower social class backgrounds and African American pupils. Those are exactly the groups labelling theorists say are most at risk of negative labels – so the review weakens the strong version of the theory, but supports the idea that labelling can contribute to class and ethnic inequality.

Too much emphasis on teachers

Labelling theory attributes too much importance to ‘teacher agency’ (the autonomous power of teachers to influence and affect pupils). Structural sociologists might point out that schools themselves encourage teachers to label pupils. In some cases entry tests, over which teachers have no control, pre-label pupils into ability groups anyway, and the school will require the teacher to demonstrate that they are providing ‘extra support’ for the ‘low ability’ pupils as judged by the entry test.

Is labelling as common today?

Some critics argue that labelling along social class lines is less likely in schools today. Teachers are trained to avoid stereotyping, schools have equal opportunities policies, and the ‘aspirational’ culture of modern education expects teachers to push every pupil – so a teacher who openly labelled pupils by class would struggle to get away with it.

HOWEVER, as Dunne and Gazeley’s (2008) research above shows, teachers can rely on class stereotypes while sincerely believing that they don’t. Labelling today may be less open than in the studies of the 1960s and 1970s rather than absent.

The Labelling Theory of Education for A-level Sociology: Test Yourself!

How labelling comes up in the exam

Labelling is part of the ‘relationships and processes within schools’ section of the specification, so it comes up on Paper 1 (7192/1), both as a topic in its own right and as evidence in questions on class, gender and ethnic differences in achievement. Recent AQA questions it is directly relevant to include:

• June 2022, 10 marks: Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which relationships and processes within schools may lead to anti-school subcultures. See my worked answer to this question.
• June 2019, 10 marks: Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which processes within schools may affect pupils’ identities.
• June 2019, 30 marks: Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of differences in educational achievement between ethnic groups.
• June 2020, 30 marks: Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of gender differences in educational achievement.

In the essay questions, labelling is usually your main ‘in-school’ explanation, set against home background and material factors. Use the criticisms above for your evaluation – the determinism point (Fuller) and the Rosenthal and Jacobson problems are the ones examiners most expect to see.

Revision bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision bundle, written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification.

Signposting

This post has been written primarily for students studying the education topic, as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology course, although it will hopefully be a useful primer for anyone with a general interest in this subject.

Labelling is one of the main in-school processes students need to understand, alongside setting and streaming, which shows how labels turn into ability groups, and pupil subcultures, which looks at how pupils respond to their labels. For class-based labelling and Becker’s ‘ideal pupil’, see social class and in-school factors.

Students can also use this material to illustrate some of the key ideas of social action theory more generally when they study social theory in more depth in their second year.

For more posts on this module, see the sociology of education page.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Sources

• Abraham, J. (1995) Divide and School: Gender and Class Dynamics in Comprehensive Education.
• Becker, H. S. (1952) ‘Social-class variations in the teacher-pupil relationship’, Journal of Educational Sociology.
• Cicourel, A. V. and Kitsuse, J. I. (1963) The Educational Decision-Makers.
• Connolly, P. (1998) Racism, Gender Identities and Young Children: Social Relations in a Multi-Ethnic, Inner-City Primary School.
• Dunne, M. and Gazeley, L. (2008) ‘Teachers, social class and underachievement’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(5), 451–463.
• Fuller, M. (1984) ‘Black girls in a London comprehensive school’, in Hammersley, M. and Woods, P. (eds) Life in School.
• Gillborn, D. (1990) ‘Race’, Ethnicity and Education: Teaching and Learning in Multi-Ethnic Schools.
• Hargreaves, D. H., Hester, S. K. and Mellor, F. J. (1975) Deviance in Classrooms.
• Haralambos, M. and Holborn, M. (2013) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives.
• Jussim, L. and Harber, K. D. (2005) ‘Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies: knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies’, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(2), 131–155. (Also the source for Raudenbush’s 1984 meta-analysis and Snow’s 1969 critique.)
• Rist, R. C. (1970) ‘Student social class and teacher expectations: the self-fulfilling prophecy in ghetto education’, Harvard Educational Review, 40(3), 411–451.
• Rosenthal, R. and Jacobson, L. (1968) Pygmalion in the Classroom.
• Waterhouse (2004) ‘Deviant and non-deviant identities in the classroom: patrolling the boundaries of the normal social world’, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 19(1).