Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1: The Class Feeling -- Introduction -- Being Educationally Successful and Working Class -- Claiming Working Class as an Identity Label -- The Structure of the Book -- References -- 2: Success, Class, and Masculinities -- Introduction -- Class -- Working-Class Boys: Resistance, Conformity, and Ordinariness -- Sensitive Approaches to Researching Working-Class Young Men -- Locality and Class -- Masculinities -- The Dominant Construction of Masculinity in Educational Research -- Hegemonic Masculinity and the Trait Approach -- Alternative Understandings of Contemporary Masculinities -- Concluding Comments -- References -- 3: Negotiating with Bourdieu -- Introduction -- Bourdieu's Theory of Practice: Habitus, Field, and Capital -- Agency and Determinism: A False Dichotomy -- Subjectivity and the Habitus: Countering Allegations of Determinism -- The Generative Habitus -- Habitus Interruptions -- Abandoned Habitus -- Reconfirmed Habitus -- Reconciled Habitus -- Destabilised Habitus -- Institutional Habitus -- Summary and Conclusion -- References -- 4: Researching with Working-Class Teenage Boys: A Working-Class Feminist Approach -- Introduction -- Researcher Positionality -- Class Affinities -- Being an Adult and a Former Teacher -- Gender -- Methods -- Social Interactions -- Visual Methods -- Video-Elicitation -- Plasticine Model-Making -- Ethical Considerations -- Concluding Comments -- References -- 5: Systemic Social Segregation -- Introduction -- Location, Location, Location -- Cherryhill -- Greenville -- School Road -- Cranview -- Hillvale -- Cloisters -- Townside -- Castleton -- Pupils Living in Each Area -- The School Context -- The Importance of Institutional Habitus -- The Secondary School: St. John's -- School Overview -- First Impressions -- School Ethos

Much educational research on working-class boys has focused on their failure and lack of aspiration. However, there has been little research on working-class boys' experiences of success. The very idea of being educationally successful and working class is problematic, as success has been argued to be dependent on the abandonment of aspects of working-class background. This article highlights the difficulties that some working-class grammar school boys face in reconciling their identity with educational success. For these boys the issue of identity is complex and there is a conflict between their identity, based on their class background, and their identity as an aspiring student. Using Bourdieu's theory of habitus, this article explores the complexities associated with identities that are developing in social fields different from those in which they originated, and discusses how this impacts emotionally on working-class boys.

Setting the scene for the analysis / Aina Tarabini and Nicola Ingram -- Working class educational failure : theoretical perspectives, discursive concerns, and methodological approaches / Diane Reay -- Student aspiration and transition as capabilities for navigating education systems / Trevor Gale and Stephen Parker -- Transition from primary to secondary education in a rigidly tracked system : the case of Flanders / Simon Boone, Marie Seghers and Mieke Van Houtte -- Working-class boys and educational success in a socially divisive secondary education system : lessons from Belfast (Northern Ireland) / Nicola Ingram -- Framing youth educational choices at the end of compulsory schooling : the Catalan case / Aina Tarabini, Marta Curran, Alba Castejón, Alejandro Montes -- Choosing the right track : educational decisions and inequalities within the Italian educational system / Marco Romito -- Social class, institutional habitus and high school choices in Turkey / Çetin Celik -- National framing and local reframing of students' transition to higher education in France : limitations and pitfalls / Agnès van Zanten, Alice Olivier, Anne-Claudine Oller, Katrina Ulhy -- Preparatory course market and access to higher education in Finland : pocketful or pockets-full-of money needed? / Kosunen, Sonja, Ahtiainen, Hanna & Töyrylä, Marju -- Higher education students as consumers? : evidence from England / Rachel Brooks and Jessica Abrahams -- Social inequalities in educational choices : transitions and aspirations in Europe / Nicola Ingram and Aina Tarabini

Since 2010, the language of social mobility has been increasingly utilised by UK politicians from across the political spectrum to denote a commitment to 'fair access' to opportunity in both education and the professions. Within this policy discourse, the default understanding of inequality is premised on a narrow notion of access to elite education and employment positions, where a deeper understanding of the politics of social reproduction and inequality, or any meaningful emphasis on redistribution, is absent. The social mobility agenda is axiomatically an equality of opportunity agenda where the focus is on 'levelling up' those who are considered to be falling behind. Its focus on opportunity to the detriment of outcome thus rules out considerations of structural solutions to inequalities. In this article, we unpack the discourses of social mobility that are prevalent in recent UK government papers and political talk, with a specific focus on the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) in order to consider how these shape policy approaches to education and labour market participation. We argue that the presiding 'race to the top' mentality undermines the very equality that the social mobility agenda claims to be seeking to achieve, and in doing so we implicate the SMC in purveying contradictory understandings of mobility that compound and conceal existing inequalities. Through a focus on graduate employment, we problematise the role of higher education in the promotion of social mobility. We consider the role of employers participating in the Social Mobility Employer Index and expose the contradictions between the performance of social mobility and the reality of corporate practices that entrench social inequalities. Our work underscores the need for a new political conversation about social mobility and a redirection of attendant education and employment policy to focus on dismantling rather than reinforcing social hierarchies.

Since 2010 the language of social mobility has been increasingly utilised by UK politicians from across the political spectrum to denote a commitment to 'fair access' to opportunity in both education and the professions. Within this policy discourse the default understanding of inequality is premised on a narrow notion of access to elite education and employment positions, where a deeper understanding of the politics of social reproduction and inequality, or any meaningful emphasis on redistribution, is absent. The social mobility agenda is axiomatically an equality of opportunity agenda where the focus is on 'levelling up' those who are considered to be falling behind. Its focus on opportunity to the detriment of outcome thus rules out considerations of structural solutions to inequalities. In this paper, we unpack the discourses of social mobility that are prevalent in recent UK government papers and political talk, with a specific focus on the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) in order to consider how these shape policy approaches to education and labour market participation. We argue that the presiding 'race to the top' mentality undermines the very equality that the social mobility agenda claims to be seeking to achieve, and in doing so we implicate the SMC in purveying contradictory understandings of mobility that compound and conceal existing inequalities. Through a focus on graduate employment we problematise the role of Higher Education in the promotion of social mobility. We consider the role of employers participating in the Social Mobility Employers' Index, and expose the contradictions between the performance of social mobility and the reality of corporate practices that entrench social inequalities. Our work underscores the need for a new political conversation about social mobility, and a redirection of attendant education and employment policy to focus on dismantling rather than reinforcing social hierarchies.

This study utilises an innovative creative method of plasticine modelling to explore the identities of local students (those who live in their family home) at the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England. Students created models representing their identity, which were used as a springboard for in-depth discussion. Through drawing upon Bourdieusian theory this article attempts to shed new sociological light on the subject of local student experiences. In much of the literature this is presented as problematic and it is often argued that local students either 'miss out' on the conventional university experience or that they are stuck between two worlds. This paper, however, presents a more complex picture of local students' experiences of inhabiting local and university spaces. The data is analysed through a Bourdieusian lens in which the university and local worlds are seen as fields of struggle, this allows for a nuanced understanding of how students conceptualise their positions and dispositions in relation to both fields. The findings indicate that living at home can be both problematic and of benefit to the working-class students in particular. Despite being immersed within two somewhat contradictory fields they can sometimes develop various strategies to enable them to overcome any internal conflict. In this article we draw uniquely upon Bhabha's concept of a third space to expand upon Bourdieusian theory, arguing that a 'cleft habitus' is not always negative and can be a resource for some in their attempts to negotiate new fields.

Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; Illustrations; Contributors; Introduction: setting the scene; Part I Getting in: higher education access and participation; 1 Admissions, adaptations, and anxieties: social class inside and outside the elite university; 2 Struggling for selfhood: non-traditional mature students' critical perspectives on access to higher education courses in England; 3 How meritocratic is admission to highly selective UK universities?; 4 Patterns of participation in a period of change: social trends in English higher education from 2000 to 2016.