Description:
This chapter locates the classed nature of education within a critical socio-historical framework, and considers how questions of social class are played out not only in the classroom but also at the institutional and the systemic level. Historical and contemporary debates about the nature and purpose of education are used to challenge the status quo, and present an agenda for change. The chapter argues that re-engaging with social class as a key organising concept is necessary in order to understand the nature of contemporary schooling in western neoliberal societies such as the UK, and to re-imagine young people’s relationship with education. This, it is argued, is necessary to re-engage working-class youth in ways that are not only meaningful but also socially and economically just.
Description:
This book provides an inclusive and incisive analysis of the experiences of working-class young people in education. While there is an established literature on education and the working class stretching back decades, comparatively there has been something of a neglect of class-based inequality – with questions of gender, ‘race’ and other forms of identity attracting significant attention. However, events including Britain's 2016 decision to leave the European Union, have thrown social class into sharp focus, both in the UK and elsewhere. Featuring leading thinkers in the sociology of education, this book examines the different ways in which young people relate to various parts of the education system, including different forms of schooling, post-compulsory and university education. They maintain that the issue of social class goes beyond the walls of specific institutions to affect young people in a variety of ways: not only in the UK, but across the globe. This book will be of great value and interest to students and scholars of the sociology of education, working-class youth, and equality of opportunity.
Description:
This chapter provides the backdrop and sets the tone for the book. It begins by scoping out some of the challenges and injustices facing working-class youth, and by highlighting some of the mismatches between the structures and processes of education and the lives of many working-class young people. It then goes on to develop an alternative agenda which, it is argued, is necessary to engage working-class youth in relevant and meaningful ways, and to challenge the dominant structures of schooling and education which systematically disadvantage so many young people. The chapter finishes by proving a brief overview of the chapters which follow, and by highlighting some of the key themes explored in the rest of the book.`
Description:
Drawing on interpretations of Foucault's techniques of power, we explored the discourses and power relations operative between groups of girls that appeared to influence their participation in Physical Education (PE) and outside of school in sport and physical activity (PA) in rural and regional communities. Interviews and focus groups were conducted in eight secondary schools with female students from Year 9 (n = 22) and 10 (n = 116). Dominant gendered and performance discourses were active in shaping girls' construction of what it means to be active or sporty', and these identity positions were normalised and valued. The perceived and real threat of their peer's gaze as a form of surveillance acted to further perpetuate the power of performance discourses; whereby girls measured and (self) regulated their participation. Community settings were normalised as being exclusively for skilled performers and girls self-regulated their non-participation according to judgements made about their own physical abilities. These findings raise questions about the ways in which power relations, as forged in broader sociocultural and institutional discourse-power relations, can infiltrate the level of the PE classroom to regulate and normalise practices in relation to their, and others, PA participation.
Description:
Drawing on interpretations of Foucault's techniques of power, we explored the discourses and power relations operative between groups of girls that appeared to influence their participation in Physical Education (PE) and outside of school in sport and physical activity (PA) in rural and regional communities. Interviews and focus groups were conducted in eight secondary schools with female students from Year 9 (n = 22) and 10 (n = 116). Dominant gendered and performance discourses were active in shaping girls' construction of what it means to be active or sporty', and these identity positions were normalised and valued. The perceived and real threat of their peer's gaze as a form of surveillance acted to further perpetuate the power of performance discourses; whereby girls measured and (self) regulated their participation. Community settings were normalised as being exclusively for skilled performers and girls self-regulated their non-participation according to judgements made about their own physical abilities. These findings raise questions about the ways in which power relations, as forged in broader sociocultural and institutional discourse-power relations, can infiltrate the level of the PE classroom to regulate and normalise practices in relation to their, and others, PA participation.
Description:
This state-of-the-art, comprehensive Handbook fully explores the field of alternative education on an international scale. Alternatives to mainstream schooling and education are becoming increasingly recognised as pertinent and urgent for better understanding what really works in successfully educating children and adults today, especially in light of the increased performance driven and managerially organised economic modelling of education that dominates. For too long we have wondered what exactly education done otherwise might look like and here we meet individual examples as well as seeing what alternative education is when a collection becomes greater than the sum of parts. The Handbook profiles numerous empirical examples from around the world of education being done in innovative and excitingly democratic and autonomous ways from Forest Schools and Home Education through to new technologies, neuroscience and the importance of solitude. The book also sets out important theoretical perspectives to inform us why seeing education through an alternative lens is useful as well as urgently needed. Global in its perspective and definitive in content, this one-stop volume will be an indispensable reference resource for a wide range of academics, students and researchers in the fields of Education, Education Policy, Sociology and Philosophy as well as educational practitioners.
Description:
This paper tackles what is arguably one of the most pressing and intractable educational issues confronting western democracies and the disengagement and disconnection from schooling of alarming numbers of young people. The paper looks at the policy response in Victoria, Australia, and through ethnographic interviews with a small number of young people; it finds a significant mismatch between the policy intent of re-engagement programmes, and the experiences of young people themselves. It seems that this is an instance of what might be termed policy deafness, a situation that will likely produce devastating consequences unless corrected.
Description:
This paper tackles what is arguably one of the most pressing and intractable educational issues confronting western democracies – the disengagement and disconnection from schooling of alarming numbers of young people. The paper looks at the policy response in Victoria, Australia, and through ethnographic interviews with a small number of young people; it finds a significant mismatch between the policy intent of re-engagement programmes, and the experiences of young people themselves. It seems that this is an instance of what might be termed policy deafness, a situation that will likely produce devastating consequences unless corrected.
Description:
The persistent failure of contemporary policies to improve school retention rates and close the achievement gap between students from low and high socio-economic (SES) backgrounds should be a matter of grave concern. In this article, we set out to show what it means to be educated in a context of disadvantage from the perspectives of young people attending a senior secondary public school in regional Australia. Acknowledging that youth are experts in their own lives, we draw extensively on student narratives of the funds of knowledge and opportunity structures that support and/or constrain education and employment opportunities in low-income neighbourhoods. Although young peoples' stories of hope and agency go some way to undermining the deficit thinking about these students and their families, we argue that the realisation of their aspirations requires institutional support and policies that address the systemic causes of educational disadvantage.
Description:
This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as 'disadvantaged' in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much more complex process by which aspirations are formed, sustained, contested and maintained by young people who regard themselves as 'ordinary' and as being engaged instead in a process of navigating educational opportunities on the basis of resources available to them.
Description:
This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as 'disadvantaged' in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much more complex process by which aspirations are formed, sustained, contested and maintained by young people who regard themselves as 'ordinary' and as being engaged instead in a process of navigating educational opportunities on the basis of resources available to them.
Description:
In enlightened and civilised societies we like to think that the blatantly racist eugenics movement that involved social selection based upon genetic traits is a disgraceful notion relegated to the past; but it seems not, it has just re-emerged in another form through the back door. It is an interesting question as to why social class continues to remain such a verboten topic, and to understand why we need to get inside what is going on. I can get to the essence of my argument quickly through an example from a university colleague: ‘This is bullshit,’ the student muttered under her breath. The tutorial topic assigned for that week was class. I’d kicked things off by asking whether class existed in modern Australia, or whether it was a relic of nineteenth century Europe. Struck by the student’s response, I asked her to elaborate. She did: Look, I went to private school and my Dad’s a CEO and most of his friends are business people. So I guess that’s supposed to make me upper class? But class has nothing to do with it. Going to a private school was my parents’ decision. And my Dad’s friends are just his friends. I suggested that the choice of school – not to mention the capacity to affordthe fees – and her father’s friendship network might have been heavily shaped by their class position. That wasn’t to say there was anything wrong with it, but it did show how our lives are shaped by larger social and economic forces we don’t control. The student was having none of it. It was clear that she’d encountered the notion of class before and found it singularly unconvincing. In her world, everything was simply a matter of individual choice – choices that were unconstrained … [and while] she didn’t actually say it, … class seemed to be an excuse for people who made the wrong choices in life. (Scanlon 2014)
Description:
In this article, the author presents a review of his extended research engagement with disadvantaged young people and their education. He challenges the dominant neoliberal model of school reform based on business values and the ‘managerial school’ as alien to educational values. He introduces various stages of research he and his colleagues have undertaken over the past two decades, showing the importance of an authentic engagement with young people’s lives, the characteristics of schools which reach out to disadvantaged students and the importance of transformative pedagogy and community involvement.