EDUCATION AND LEARNING:
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
Wednesday, 25th September 2013
University of Surrey
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
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Programme Quick Reference
09:00-09:45
Registration and Refreshments
Lecture Theatre Lower
Concourse
09:45-10:00
Welcome and introductions
Lecture Theatre E
10.00-11.30
Parallel Session 1
Various
11.30-11.45
Teas / Coffee
Lecture Theatre Lower
Concourse
11.45-13.15
Parallel Session 2
Various
13.15-14.00
Lunch and viewing of posters
Lecture Theatre Lower
Concourse
14.00-16.00
Parallel Session 3
Various
16.00-16.15
Teas / Coffee
Lecture Theatre Lower
Concourse
16.15-17.00
Keynote address: Heather Mendick, Brunel
Lecture Theatre E
University
17.00-17.30
Wine reception (sponsored by Palgrave) and
Lecture Theatre Lower
launch of Contemporary Debates in the
Concourse
Sociology of Education
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Full Programme
09:00-09:45
Registration and refreshments
Lecture Theatre Block Lower Concourse
09.45-10.00
Welcome and introductions (Rachel Brooks)
Lecture Theatre E
10.00-11.30
Parallel Session 1
Stream 1: Space, place and education
Lecture Theatre E
Chair: Chair: Rachel Brooks
‘Christopher Columbus Syndrome’: (re-)discovering the links between class, spatial mobility
and education
Sol Gamsu, King’s College London
Empire at the Margins. Education and governing in borderland China through ethnographic
eyes
Peidong Yang, University of Oxford
Sociologies and geographies of education: what does a geographical perspective bring to an
understanding of the Sociology of Education?
Johanna L. Waters, University of Oxford
Stream 2: Higher education (I)
Lecture Theatre B
Chair: Richard Waller
Habitus Transformation and Hidden Injuries: Successful Working-class University Students
Wolfgang Lehmann, The University of Western Ontario
Understanding friendship and learning networks of international and host students using
longitudinal Social Network Analysis
Bart Rienties and Eimear Nolan, University of Surrey
Gendered experiences of studying on Access courses to Higher Education
Anna Piela, Hugh Busher, Nalita James, Anna-Marie Palmer, University of Leicester
Stream 3: Inequalities in and out of school
Lecture Theatre H
Chair: Mark McCormack
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Social mixing and non-normative gendered, classed and raced performances in the urban
school: the ‘misfits’
Sumi Hollingworth, The Institute for Policy Studies in Education (IPSE) London Metropolitan
University
Extra-curricular education and the institutionalisation of classed resources: the case of
classical music
Anna Bull, Goldsmiths, University of London
Culture and deaf education: is culture accessible for deaf pupils?
Mariana Koutská, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
11.30-11.45
Teas / Coffee
Lecture Theatre Block Lower Concourse
11.45-13.15
Parallel Session 2
Stream 1: Technology and the construction of knowledge
Lecture Theatre E
Chair: Mark McCormack
We need to talk about tech - towards a deliberate sociology of education and technology
Neil Selwyn, Monash University
A consideration of knowledge structures in Technology-Enhanced Learning:
A Bernsteinian analysis of the TPACK framework
Ian Kinchin, University of Surrey
The Intellect, Comparison, and Comparative Education
Terri Kim, University of East London
Stream 2: Higher education (II)
Lecture Theatre B
Chair: Rachel Brooks
Social Justice in HE: discourses and identities in the work of student ambassadors as ‘role
models’
Clare Gartland, Institute of Education and University Campus Suffolk
The impact of tuition fees on students’ higher education choice
Kate Byford, Brunel University
Students, Power and Politics: the role of students’ unions within contemporary higher
education
Rachel Brooks, Kate Byford and Katherine Sela, University of Surrey and Brunel University
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Stream 3: Race and ethnicity
Lecture Theatre H
Chair: Heather Mendick
Shared Discursive History: Finding Spaces for Black or Ethnic Minority Role Models
Patricia Alexander, Goldsmiths, University of London
The failings of anti-racist education in the 21st Century or how the ‘N word’ became a joke
Julia Bennett, Manchester Metropolitan University
Experiencing mathematics in New Zealand secondary schools: the complexities of social class
and ethnicity
David Pomeroy, Cambridge University
13.15-14.00
Lunch and viewing of posters
Lecture Theatre Block Lower Concourse
14.00-16.00
Parallel Session 3
Stream 1: Informal and work-focused learning
Lecture Theatre E
Chair: Anne Chappell
Learning to move, speak, look and touch in work-based learning settings: a new method to
make visible the minutiae of educator: learner interactions
Clare Kell, Cardiff School of Social Sciences
Recontextualisation and the shaping of vocational knowledge
Jim Hordern, Institute of Education, University of London
Private higher education in the UK: experiences and perceptions of executive and academic
staff
Sarah Barnard, Loughborough University
Stream 2: The sociology of education policy
Lecture Theatre B
Chair: Rachel Brooks
Heterarchical governance: a case study of British education trends in collaboration, federation
and competition
Andrew Wilkins, University of Roehampton
Equality and private schooling: Is there a public good in the private sector?
Ruth Boyask and Jennifer Lea, Plymouth University
A Doxic Parentocracy in the Era of Educational Restructuring: The State, the Family and
Education in Contemporary Italy
Paola Ravaioli, University of Bologna
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Too Great Expectations of Education – not educating our way out of recession
Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen, University of Greenwich
Stream 3: Gender and sexuality
Lecture Theatre H
Chair: Mark McCormack
The Changing Experiences of Bisexual Male Adolescents
Max Morris, Durham University
The construction of gendered identities in the music technology classroom
Victoria Armstrong, St. Mary’s University College
Degrees of Masculinity: Social class and gendered identities amongst male undergraduate
students
Richard Waller, University of the West of England, Bristol and Nicola Ingram, University of Bath
16.00-16.15
Teas / Coffee
Lecture Theatre Block Lower Concourse
16.15-17.00
Keynote address: Stars in their eyes? Celebrity, Youth and
Sociology of Education, Heather Mendick, Brunel University
Lecture Theatre E
Chair: Mark McCormack
17.00-17.30
Wine reception (sponsored by Palgrave) and launch of
Contemporary Debates in the Sociology of Education
Lecture Theatre Lower Concourse
Organisers
Rachel Brooks, University of Surrey
Co-Organisers
Kalwant Bhopal, University of Southampton
Mark McCormack, Durham University
Wine Reception Sponsored by Palgrave
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ABSTRACTS
Parallel Session 1
Stream 1: Space, place and education
‘Christopher Columbus Syndrome’: (re-)discovering the links between class, spatial mobility
and education
Sol Gamsu, King’s College London
Over the last decade, there has been renewed interest in the role of space in educational contexts,
(Butler and Hamnett, 2007; Taylor, 2009; Holloway et al. 2010). Recent literature has focussed on
the role of spatial mobility in higher education choice and how this is affected by social class
(Clayton, Crozier, Reay 2009; Holdsworth, 2006, 2009; Hinton 2011). Holdsworth (2009) notes the
importance of understanding the historical context of student mobility when exploring the
contemporary experience of students staying at home for university. In this paper I extend this focus
by examining earlier sociological literatures on the relationships between social class and spatial
mobility in secondary and higher education (Eden, 1959; Musgrove, 1963; House et al., 1968; Bell,
1968). Their older findings share significant similarities with more recent research albeit in different
contexts. This is particularly true for both experiences of working class students studying at
university at home (Eden, 1959; Christie, 2007), and in the context of secondary and sixth form
students travelling across cities to attend a locally prestigious school or college (Hall, 1974; Watson
and Church, 2009). Whilst this is not the re-discovery of identical experiences, the persistence in
student experience of socio-spatial class divisions in education indicates the limits of contextual
changes to schools, universities and the cities in which they are situated. In theoretical terms, this has
implications for how spatial mobility and social class are conceptualised, as contemporary social
theory must account for the persistence of spatial class relations as well as radical changes.
Empire at the Margins. Education and governing in borderland China through ethnographic
eyes
Peidong Yang, University of Oxford
The theoretical concern with the relationship between education and state-building seems a
perennially fascinating one, and can be traced back to as early as Plato’s writings. Especially since
the rise of the modern nation-state, the role of education in constituting the nation/people has been
even more prominent. Following this line of thought, this paper offers ethnographic interpretations of
education and the education system as technologies of governing and sovereignty maintenance in the
context of a remote ethnic minority community in contemporary borderland China.
Using some (if) fragmented ethnographic examinations of the domain of education in a small village
located in the mountainous areas of China’s borderland province Yunnan, I argue that the
compulsory mobility demanded by the educational progression system primarily serves as a powerful
distance-demolishing technology and hierarchy-establishing technology, creating in the peripheral
citizens’ minds a consciousness of their own position and place within an imagined
community/polity to which they become and remain loyal. In addition to the structural coincidence
between the educational hierarchy and geo-politico-economic hierarchies, the recent ‘educational
resource integration’ policy in China further demands a centripedal mobility so that the students are
constantly ‘on the go’ in order just to attend schools. In areas where enormous ‘frictions of terrain’
stand in the way of the reach of sovereign power, arguably this compulsory centripedal educational
mobility plays a vital role in holding national subjects together at an ideological level. Echoing
Foucault, thus, I argue that education is an effective ‘technology of power’ in the Chinese state’s
governing of remote borderlands.
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Sociologies and geographies of education: what does a geographical perspective bring to an
understanding of the Sociology of Education?
Johanna L. Waters, University of Oxford
This paper considers the recent resurgence of interest, amongst human geographers, in the sociology
of education, and the consequent growth of academic research in the area. It critically examines this
emergent body of work, with a view to answering the following key question: what (if anything)
does a geographical perspective bring to broader understandings of the Sociology of Education? It
does so in light of a recent ESRC/AHRC benchmarking review of human geography, which
concluded that ‘UK human geography is empirically and conceptually innovative, diverse [and
vibrant]... [It] is radically interdisciplinary in its projects, partnerships and publications...It absorbs
new insights and is in a state of constant re-invention’ (ESRC, 2013). To what extent, this paper
asks, do these conclusions apply to work on education in human geography (particularly in the UK)?
Following a critical analysis of the extant literature, it argues that geographers frequently do provide
a distinctive perspective on education in contemporary society by, amongst other things,
foregrounding the importance of spatial relationships and attendant mobilities. Empirically,
geographers have examined a range of topics (at different scales and in different national contexts),
from school choice and gentrification to international student mobility and the internationalisation of
higher education. Theoretical and methodological interventions by human geographers in educationrelated subjects are often quite diverse and thought-provoking. The paper draws some common
threads between, and understandings within, this work; in an explicit attempt to clarify and highlight
a unique geographical contribution to debates around education. Finally, I conclude with a
consideration of how such a geographical perspective might enhance future work on sociologies of
education, and vice versa.
Stream 2: Higher education (I)
Habitus Transformation and Hidden Injuries: Successful Working-class University Students
Wolfgang Lehmann, The University of Western Ontario
As the numbers of working-class students at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding
of the different ways in which they consolidate their working-class habitus with the middle-class
culture of the academic field. Drawing on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of
working-class students at a large, research-intensive Canadian university, I focus on the experiences
of those participants who fully embraced, became integrated and achieved academic success at
university. They not only spoke about gaining new knowledge, but also about growing personally,
changing their outlooks on life, growing their repertoire of cultural capital, and developing new
dispositions and tastes about a range of issues, from food to politics and their future careers. Yet, the
interviews also reflect a complex and complicated mix of allegiances to and dismissal of their
working-class roots, as many recognize this transformative process as having made relationships
with parents or former friends and peers more difficult. The paper concludes with a discussion of the
implications for working-class students who increasingly distance themselves from the class culture
in which they grew up, but who are still likely to find themselves in adult situations in which they are
perceived as cultural outsiders.
Understanding friendship and learning networks of international and host students using
longitudinal Social Network Analysis
Bart Rienties and Eimear Nolan, University of Surrey
As an increasing number of students are opting to study abroad, it is important to understand how
international students interact with each other and host students. Most cross-cultural literature on
adjustment processes take a static perspective, measuring psychological and socio-cultural
adjustment at one point in time, or compare adjustment processes for a short period of time. In this
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study, we will take an innovative approach of longitudinal dynamic social network analyses,
whereby we compared the social network developments of 484 international and 107 host students at
ten (pre-post) different time intervals across five modules during a Bachelor and post-graduate
business programme. International students from 58 nationalities were present, primarily from
Confucian Asian and Eastern European countries.
Substantial differences were found how international and host students built friendships, which
changed dramatically over time. Multiple regression quadratic assignment procedures across 30
social networks indicated that 26 times the Chinese network proxy was a significant predictor,
followed by same co-nationality proxy (14) and GLOBE proxy (9). However, our findings give
substantial support that teachers can actively encourage cross-cultural interactions in- and outside the
classroom as 26 times the group division significantly predicted the 30 social networks, whereby the
Betas on average where three times as large as the proxies for cultural background, indicating that
working together in groups for a substantial period can be a powerful bridge between different
cultures.
Gendered experiences of studying on Access courses to Higher Education.
Anna Piela, Hugh Busher, Nalita James, Anna-Marie Palmer, University of Leicester
This paper focuses on gendered experiences of female students enrolled on Access to Higher
Education courses in the time of adult student funding cuts (BIS 2010) and increased emphasis on
creation of knowledge economy (EU 2010). It draws from 12 focus groups conducted as part of a
larger study of Access courses in the East of England, and is supplemented with statistical data
collected through questionnaires. Across 6 colleges where we conducted our research, the participant
sample was overwhelmingly female (70%), many in low paid-employment or unemployed, with the
majority of women being mothers and some of them single parents. Most participants juggled
extensive study, work or/and childcare commitments. Our aim is to throw light on the ways in which
gender shapes their educational experiences sbetween enrolment and completion of the Access
course; in particular, how a new identity of a learner emerges along other identities (i.e. those of a
parent, partner, worker, child, friend), and how this affects students’ lives and perceptions of self
(Brine and Waller 2004)
We argue that complex intersecting experiences of gender and class, as well as marital and parent
status, whilst often putting the participants under considerable strain, may paradoxically have
empowering effect on students’ learning experiences. Whilst female participants undergo a period of
confusion, reflexivity and risk (Beck 1998) related to managing an increased number of identities
and consequently demands on their time, they are able to skilfully navigate these contradictory roles.
Through participation in Access, they gradually reforge their social lives and often collectively create
hybrid communities of practice (Wenger 1998 & 2000).
Stream 3: Inequalities in and out of school
Social mixing and non-normative gendered, classed and raced performances in the urban
school: the ‘misfits’
Sumi Hollingworth, The Institute for Policy Studies in Education (IPSE) London Metropolitan
University
In my research I explore social mixing in the ‘super diverse’ context of the urban school. That is, the
possibilities for friendship formation across social class, ethnic and gender divides. I argue that
school-based subcultural performances are implicated in the normative production of social class and
race and gender, creating (race, class and gender) boundaries between different friendship groups,
which thus constrains the possibilities for social mixing. However, focusing on the ‘ordinary’, ‘non
spectacular’ (Roberts, 2011) and overlooked students outside of subcultural affiliation, those I term
the ‘misfits’, encounters students who do not ‘fit’ the ‘monoglossic’ gender-sexuality order (Francis,
2010), and furthermore, embody a ‘unpredictable’ (Wessendorf, 2010) or unconventional class and
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racial Otherness that is not easily read. Through analysis of the discursive production of identities
and friendships, I argue that this space, where there is a disruption of overt classed, raced and
gendered performances, becomes a more fertile site for social mixing to occur.
Extra-curricular education and the institutionalisation of classed resources: the case of
classical music
Anna Bull, Goldsmiths, University of London
A recent all-party parliamentary group interim report on on social mobility “Seven Key Truths about
Social Mobility” (2012) suggests that equal opportunities and take-up of extra-curricular learning
and development is an important area to examine in relation to social mobility. Drawing on ongoing
research into young elite classical musicians, this paper examines youth classical music as a key site
of extra-curricular learning, describing the vast ecology of institutions and funding structures which
support these musical practices. Following Bennett et al’s (2008) findings that classical music is
indeed a firmly middle-class pursuit in the UK, I examine the accrual and institutionalisation of
classed resources (Skeggs, 2004) which is occurring in these youth music sites; in particular, how
cultural capital and its associated qualities of confidence and entitlement in the form of musical
‘talent’ are accumulated and stored.
Culture and deaf education: is culture accessible for deaf pupils?
Mariana Koutská, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Culture and cultural issues are crucial for new curricula across the European countries. There are
subjects related to multicultural education and cultural diversity, key competences asking pupils to
understand cultural values of different nations and prospective outcomes demanding children to
know about our cultural heritage. Moreover, this transformation goes hand in hand with a boom of
programs offered by cultural institutions specially targeting children-visitors. However, are those
cultural institutions accessible also for deaf pupils? Are those programs open to children who have
sign language as their mother tongue? And finally, are deaf pupils a part of the target group?
I will try to respond to these questions as well as present my research focused on the
accessibility of cultural institutions for deaf pupils in the Czech republic, France and Sweden.
First, I will compare education systems in those countries with closer attention to special needs
education and schools for deaf. Secondly, I will focus on the issue of culture and cultural institutions
in deaf pupils education together with different measures of accessibility
practicable by public institutions. The aim of the last part of my paper is to introduce results of my
research targeted on how are the Czech, French and Swedish museums accessible for deaf pupils.
Parallel Session 2
Stream 1: Technology and the construction of knowledge
We need to talk about tech - towards a deliberate sociology of education and technology
Neil Selwyn, Monash University
One of the defining features of education over the past thirty years has been the on-going
development of digital technology. Digital technologies of all shapes and sizes are now embedded
into the everyday fabric of contemporary education. Digital technologies now play an integral role in
many aspects of teaching and learning across the life course - from the growing use of iPads in
kindergarten classrooms, via online learning systems in schools and universities, to the use of open
resources and mobile learning in the workplace.
Digital technologies have also come to underpin professional work practices and effectiveness
indicators in education, through tools such as performance management systems and international
league tables. Indeed, despite its complexity, digital technology use is now an expected but largely
unremarkable feature of the educational landscape. This paper will make the argument that the
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increasing normalisation of digital technology within the mainstream of contemporary education
urgently requires sociology of education to pay closer (and more deliberate) attention to the
technological. In contrast to the occasional (and often accidental) treatment of the topic in the past,
the paper will outline a number of emerging issues, themes and concerns relating to digital
technology and media which need to feature prominently in the collective consciousness of
contemporary sociology of education.
A consideration of knowledge structures in Technology-Enhanced Learning:
A Bernsteinian analysis of the TPACK framework
Ian Kinchin, University of Surrey
The TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) framework proposed by Koehler and
Mishra (2009) is a tool to focus consideration of the interacting elements of technology, content and
pedagogy, supporting the development of technology-enhanced learning. The typical two
dimensional representation of the TPACK framework portrays a mono-layer of possible interactions
between three main elements. A perceived weakness of the framework is that it does not consider the
forms taken by knowledge (Howard and Maton, 2011). This is addressed by applying a Bernsteinian
perspective (Bernstein, 1999), which provides a mechanism to enhance the utility of the framework
by revealing underlying knowledge structures (Kinchin, 2012).
Adding this structural dimension to the TPACK model allows for the better alignment of the
evolution of e-learning to other contemporary theories of learning and curriculum development such
as Bernstein’s sociology of education (e.g. Czerniewcz, 2010), and Ausubel’s assimilative learning
theory (e.g. Kinchin, Lygo-Baker and Hay, 2008). This is achieved by considering the multiple
perspectives that the authors cited above would describe respectively as, “interactive discursive
planes” or “complementary knowledge structures”. As a mono-layer, the framework hinders
meaningful exchange of information resulting from the linear nature of the knowledge structures
involved – causing ‘knowledge blindness’ (Maton, 2013), leading to a ‘non-learning outcome’
(Kinchin, Lygo-Baker and Hay, 2008). The explicit recognition of the essential underpinning
provided by pedagogy addresses the call made by Clegg, Hudson and Steel (2003: 51) to re-focus
attention “away from the functionality of e-learning environments back to the core relations between
students and teachers”.
The Intellect, Comparison, and Comparative Education
Terri Kim, University of East London
Much of the major works in intellectual history entail comparative inquiries. Durkheim wrote:
‘Comparative sociology is not a special branch of sociology; it is sociology itself’ (1983, p. 157). C.
Wright Mills also wrote: ‘Comparisons are required in order to understand what may be the essential
conditions of whatever we are trying to understand’ (Mills, 1970, p. 163). From this starting point,
this paper is concerned with the aims and values of doing comparisons and comparative education.
This will be explored through core epistemic dichotomies: i.e. The local and the global; the
established and the outsider; the positive and the normative; and the public and the private:
boundaries of political communities. I think such binary relations are entailed in all comparative
educations. The paper will examine published academic works and biographies of some of the major
intellects that have shaped the intellectual agendas for comparisons and for comparative education.
The paper will first discuss the binary relations, forming boundaries in doing comparisons and
comparative education. It will re-view the position of a ‘stranger’: inside outsider or outsider within
(Kim, 2010), drawing on the ‘phenomenology of home’ (Steinbock, 1995) and ‘existential tourism’
(Madison, 2010; Urry, 2002). The paper will then offer a critical analysis of unequal power relations
in forming and shaping new comparative knowledge. These power relations are visible in the
biographic narratives of selected distinguished mobile intellects and also in the institutional structure
of knowledge (re)production in higher education. In conclusion, the paper will discuss the
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relationship between comparative knowledge and positional knowledge as a way forward to do
comparative education morally and politically.
Stream 2: Higher education (II)
Social Justice in HE: discourses and identities in the work of student ambassadors as ‘role
models’
Clare Gartland, Institute of Education and University Campus Suffolk
Employing university students as ambassadors to work with school pupils is common practice within
Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the UK and in other developed countries. The assumption that
ambassadors are ‘role models’ for pupils is ubiquitous. There is however, no educational research
that explores what is being learnt in these relationships, whether ambassadors are ‘role models’ and
what they actually contribute to promoting inclusive HE access.
This paper has as its focus the interaction between school pupils and student ambassadors during
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) related outreach activities at two contrasting
HEIs. In particular it explores the complex processes of dis/identification that take place between
pupils and ambassadors in different learning contexts. The study deploys ethnography and draws on
approaches from across the social sciences to trace discourses surrounding ambassadors and explore
how ambassadors’ and pupils’ social positioning impacts on relationships, individual subjectivities
and processes of dis/identification.
The paper highlights the complexities of processes of identification and reveals as simplistic
assumptions in policy and practice that ambassadors will necessarily become role models who ‘raise’
pupils’ ‘aspirations’. Shared learner and subject identities are seen to ‘intersect’ with pupils’ and
ambassadors’ gendered, ethnic and cultural identities, either enabling or constraining identification
processes. The different learning contexts are significant to these processes, some highlighting
differences between pupils and ambassadors and others supporting these relationships. Findings
indicate that when ambassadors work collaboratively with pupils and share other aspects of their
identities, pupils identify closely with them. In this way ambassadors can contribute to disrupting and
challenging pupils’ gendered, raced and classed trajectories in HE within STEM and other subject
areas.
The impact of tuition fees on students’ higher education choice
Kate Byford, Brunel University
Since September 2012, higher education (HE) institutions in England have been able to set tuition
fees of up to £9,000 per year for undergraduate courses. This combined with student quotas has
caused uncertainty over the future size and composition of the student population in the HE sector.
The tuition fee reforms are suggested to make students’ choice more meaningful and create a “higher
education sector that is responsive to student choice, that provides a better student experience and
that helps improve social mobility” (BIS, 2011:8). The extent to which this can be achieved has been
widely debated, with concerns raised that the reforms will exacerbate inequalities regarding access
and choice. Whilst the government has set-up an Independent Commission for Fees to measure the
impact of the increased fees on student participation levels, little research has yet been undertaken to
explore the impact of the fees on students’ HE choices. To develop knowledge in this area research is
being undertaking to explore the extent to which increased fees are influencing students’ institution,
subject and mode of study choices. Furthermore, the research is exploring the types of information,
advice and guidance (IAG) are students accessing in their decision-making process and how they are
rationalising their decisions. The mixed methods research is London based, and involves students
aged 17 to 20 that have applied to HE in the 2013/14 UCAS cycle. This paper will provide an
overview of the research project, and share some of the initial findings that have emerged.
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Students, Power and Politics: the role of students’ unions within contemporary higher
education
Rachel Brooks, Kate Byford and Katherine Sela, University of Surrey and Brunel University
The role of students’ unions has undergone significant change over recent years. In large part, this is
due to wider changes in the higher education sector which have tended to emphasise the role of
prospective students as active choosers within a marketplace and encourage higher education
institutions to place more emphasis on student engagement and representation as a means of
improving the quality of the learning experience. Students’ unions have come to assume an
increasingly important place within this new landscape. Nevertheless, to date there has been little
research on the role of student leadership within UK higher education institutions. To start to redress
this gap, this paper discusses emerging findings from a national project, funded by the NUS and the
Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. It draws on a UK-wide survey of students’ union
sabbatical officers and a series of focus groups with students and higher education staff in ten case
study institutions to explore: (i) the nature of the student leadership role (focussing on the
perceptions of both students and staff); (ii) relationships between students’ leaders and senior higher
education managers; (iii) and the impact of students’ unions on policy and practice within high
education institutions.
Stream 3: Race and ethnicity
Shared Discursive History: Finding Spaces for Black or Ethnic Minority Role Models
Patricia Alexander, Goldsmiths
In this paper I will develop the concept of 'shared discursive history' to understand how Black or
Ethnic Minority (BEM) teachers create relationships with pupils who they think of as culturally
similar. My work disrupts naive ideas of 'culture matching' which essentialise and fix BEM teachers.
I will draw on data from an ongoing doctoral study of eight BEM teachers in London schools who
view of themselves as 'role models'. My study focuses on how they make sense of this position. I
have interviewed participants twice and analysed these interviews discursively, looking at how they
position themselves and their pupils. These teachers express a strong desire to support their students
in overcoming negative constructions of their cultural identities, and the implications of these for
them as learners. They also work to create spaces to reinscribe these identities positively. I will argue
that they do this by using an idea of shared discursive history, drawing on empathy, language and
advocacy to connect to their students and imagine alternative 'realities'. In looking in detail at two
case studies from the data, I will show that shared discursive history is performative, in that it enacts
specific subjectivities and invokes specific histories; and that, while it often enables a powerful and
emotive relationships for teachers, it can also produce resistance and conflict for them.
The failings of anti-racist education in the 21st Century or how the ‘N word’ became a joke
Julia Bennett, Manchester Metropolitan University
Does the type of anti-racist education offered in majority white schools adequately address the ways
in which young people construct, perform and experience racism? Our research on racism in
secondary schools in the North West of England suggests there is a disconnect between
understandings of racism in the corridor (or playground) and the classroom. The schools that
participated in our study described how anti-racist education is covered through the teaching of
history, RE, Citizenship and Personal and Social Education. However, although many of the young
people within these schools had understood from this that racism is ‘wrong’, this does not necessarily
translate into a rejection of casual racism, which their accounts suggest is in fact a widespread aspect
of youth culture in these ‘white highlands’.
Racist language is often heard as part of the ‘banter’ of friendships between BME and white British
students. Even so, many students expressed a difficulty in knowing when to ‘draw the line’ with their
13
use of racist terms as they were unsure who would take it as a ‘joke’ and who would be offended.
From being unambiguously ‘wrong’ when addressed in an RE class, racism becomes contextual in
an everyday setting. Therefore, we are left asking whether anti-racist education within our schools
adequately equips young people with a clear understanding of what racism is and they ways in which
it operates in a contemporary context. We argue that neither is effectively addressed and that new
strategies are needed.
Experiencing mathematics in New Zealand secondary schools: the complexities of social class
and ethnicity
David Pomeroy, Cambridge University
Most academic and policy discourses frame New Zealand’s large and enduring educational
inequalities in terms of ethnicity. The story we are told is that students with Pacific Island and
indigenous Maori ancestry are underachieving relative to New Zealanders with European and Asian
ancestry. Whilst superficially accurate, this story provides an overly simplistic portrayal of New
Zealand’s educational inequalities, largely overlooking issues of social class. The ethnic groups
portrayed as underachieving educationally are also facing challenges on a wide range of socioeconomic fronts.
The study reported in this paper brings the interplay of ethnicity and social class into focus through
an empirical examination of New Zealand Year 9 (age 13-14) students’ mathematics learning.
Around 500 students completed a questionnaire about their experiences of and attitudes towards
mathematics, which also included questions about their ethnicity and various socio-economic
indicators. About 20 of these students also participated in individual or pair interviews which
provided more detailed accounts of their experiences of learning mathematics and of the discursive
‘baggage’ attached to mathematics. Data were analysed within a critical realist framework which
integrated aspects of post-structural discourse theory alongside epistemological assumptions
associated with traditional quantitative analysis.
In this presentation I will discuss emerging findings from this study in relation to political and
academic discourses about educational inequality in New Zealand. I will also highlight differences
between the rhetorical framing of educational inequality in New Zealand and the United Kingdom,
where social class is more frequently discussed.
Parallel Session 3
Stream 1: Informal and work-focused learning
Learning to move, speak, look and touch in work-based learning settings: a new method to
make visible the minutiae of educator: learner interactions.
Clare Kell, Cardiff School of Social Sciences
Physiotherapists use movement- and touch-based interventions to maximise patients’ physical and
psychosocial well-being. Physiotherapy students in the UK spend 1000 hours learning in workplacement settings practising alongside clinicians who have dual roles as educator and therapist. This
paper uses empirical fieldwork data from the observation of naturally occurring placement education
interactions in hospital-based settings to make visible some elements of how the work-based learning
is done. The study conceived learning as social co-participation and placed the minutiae of
interaction participants’ nonverbal communication in the observation frame. Specifically this
ethnomethodologically informed ethnography focussed on the verbal, proxemics (space-based) and
kinesics (eye movement-based) elements of interaction participants’ practices. Collecting this data in
real time without the use of electronic recording equipment required the development of a novel
paper and pencil method. Drawing on the work of the choreographer Laban, and the kinesics studies
of Birdwhistell and Heath, the method offers a new suite of tools for interaction-focused fieldwork
studies. This paper introduces the method and uses it to make visible some consistent practices by
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which physiotherapy placement education is practically accomplished. The data shine a light on the
work-based education of a little-studied healthcare profession and illustrate how their student-present
interaction practices position patients in the role of audio-visual aid for the students to find and
account for the role of physiotherapy in their presenting condition. The paper will also illustrate the
method’s relevance to researchers interested in exploring the work of proxemics- and kinesics-based
nonverbal communication in education interactions.
Recontextualisation and the shaping of vocational knowledge
Jim Hordern, Institute of Education, University of London
The notion of vocational knowledge invites a series of questions relating to how this knowledge is
structured, whether different types of knowledge exist, how such knowledge can be best acquired
and learned, and who should be responsible for defining its value and use. This paper focuses on
‘recontextualisation’, a process that can be considered particularly important for vocational
knowledge, due to the broad spectrum of contexts in which vocational knowledge is produced,
taught, learned and used. Starting from a discussion of the processes that comprise Bernstein’s
recontextualisation, and the related use of the term by Barnett, Young and others working in the
sociology of educational knowledge, workplace learning and learning theory, recontextualisation is
understood here as a socio-epistemic process which is influenced by the interrelation between the
distinct structures of different knowledge types and the social dynamics of vocational education
infrastructure. It is suggested that the overall process of recontextualisation can be disaggregated to
reveal a series of separate elements, which can lead to various forms of ‘split’ recontextualisation
which may affect how the structures and types of knowledge are recognised, selected, appropriated
and transformed in the varying spheres of vocational curricula, pedagogy and practice. Potential
tensions that may affect recontextualisation in vocational environments are thus identified, and some
conditions for reconciling these suggested.
Private higher education in the UK: experiences and perceptions of executive and academic
staff
Sarah Barnard, Loughborough University
Higher education in the UK is witnessing a period of radical transformation and reform. Part of these
changes focus on the types of institutions that provide higher education in the UK - increasingly we
can see policy makers widening the higher education arena to include private providers. Data on
students undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate study at private institutions also demonstrates a
gaining of legitimacy for this subsector of higher education in the UK. For the purposes of this
research private higher education refers to private provision, which is not delivered by traditional,
publicly funded universities. There has been little research on the experiences of staff who work for
these institutions and the paper presented here seeks to address this. Drawing on qualitative
interviews with owners, CEOs, senior management and academic staff, the paper will provide an
overview of the experiences and perceptions expressed in the data collected.
Stream 2: The sociology of education policy
Heterarchical governance: a case study of British education trends in collaboration, federation
and competition
Andrew Wilkins, University of Roehampton
British education is characterized by deregulation and marketization, and has been for some time, as
far back as the 1980s. Today presents a different set of challenges to the scope, content and
arrangement of education provision, especially in the primary and secondary sectors. Despite
increasing numbers of schools converting to academy status (either through choice or bullying from
brokers hired by the DfE) and joining the ranks of ‘publicly-funded independent schools’, the terms
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collaboration and partnership have cemented the government’s commitment to creating joined-up
services (or chains) that expand school-to-school support and link together public and private
organisations in the delivery of education provision. This represents the decisive shift from a
centralist-hierarchical logic to the logic of heterarchical self-organization, multi-agency delivery and
multi-sited cooperation.
In this paper I draw on in-depth case study material of 6 schools situated in London and Norfolk to
explore and compare how education governance is mediated and refracted through trends in
collaboration, federation and competition. Specifically, I highlight the role of key stakeholders, from
school governors, committee members and chairs to cooperative and academy trusts. Borrowing
from critical discourse theory, I explain how governance can be understood in terms of cultural,
pedagogical and political imaginaries competing for hegemony (influence), as compositions of
linguistic/governmental devices geared towards the articulation and translation of particular
community and corporate goals.
Equality and private schooling: Is there a public good in the private sector?
Ruth Boyask and Jennifer Lea, Plymouth University
The increase in private involvement in and development of semi-autonomous state-funded schools
(such as free and academy) are evidence of blurred boundaries between public and private interests
in the school system. Many have argued schooling in the state sector is becoming more like private
enterprise through processes of privatisation. These changes, coupled with the redefinition of private
education so that it includes state-funded schools that are governed by private interests, is resulting in
the expansion of the private sector. Such expansion will inevitably impact upon the school system’s
role in redistributing the good of education. Privatisation has been shown to be a process that largely
undermines the public good through reducing access and increasing social segregation; however, in
this paper we address the other side of the compromise between public and private interests, and
report on research that is investigating the extent of the public good realised through the private
school sector. It is important to understand the nature and quality of the compromise within
established schools that are governed by private interests, providing insight on the limits and
possibilities of education that strives towards a more equal society in new state schools that are more
like private schools.
The findings presented in this paper come from a study on the possibilities for social justice within
privatised schooling funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust. We report on a survey of
fee-paying schools in England which identified schools who express a commitment to equality (in
the sense of either equal relationships within the school and/or relationships of mutuality with groups
outside of the school) in one or more of the dimensions of school governance, curriculum, pedagogy,
intake or outcomes. Unsurprisingly we found these schools are very rare, comprising less than 4% of
the private fee-paying schools in England. The paper presents initial findings that show these schools
realise their commitment to equality in quite different ways. It presents data on the nature of the
internal and external relationships of the schools, and uses this data to evaluate the kinds of equality
promoted through liberalisation from the state.
A Doxic Parentocracy in the Era of Educational Restructuring: The State, the Family and
Education in Contemporary Italy.
Paola Ravaioli, University of Bologna
The rise of policy discourses on parental empowerment and responsibility is one of the most visible
trends of the educational restructuring undergone by many developed economies in the past two
decades.
This paper deals with the case of a country which stands out in the international scenario for the
absence of the theme of parenting in its education policy discourse. To this day, Italy has not seen the
development of either a discourse of parental involvement in schooling or a discourse of parental
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choice of school. Yet, the expectation of parental responsibility for children’s academic achievement
and the recognition of parents’ right of choice are assumptions built deeply into the traditional
features of the education system. Italy provides a case study of what can be described, following
Bourdieu, as a doxic parentocracy: a parentocracy that is incorporated into the institutional and
organisational structures of the education system but is little articulated in a policy discourse on the
parental role and largely goes without saying.
The paper discusses the origins, forms and effects of Italy’s doxic parentocracy with analytic tools
drawn from Foucauldian governmentality approach. It examines its historical emergence as a
political rationality of government of the family. It then explores how that rationality has been
articulated into political technologies and has turned into a regime of truth about the parental role in
education. It finally discusses how Italy’s own variant of educational parentocracy has mediated the
reception in the country of the global trends in neoliberal educational restructuring.
Too Great Expectations of Education – not educating our way out of recession
Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen, University of Greenwich
During the post-war period in the UK, large numbers of working-class youth made a direct transition
from full-time schooling to the workplace. Much of this employment was in manufacturing, either
through time-served apprenticeships lasting several years for entry to skilled trades, or through
unskilled and semi-skilled employment on the shop-floor. Participation in education beyond 16 and
particularly in higher education was restricted to a middle-class minority.
This contribution argues that even though young people’s employment prospects have been seriously
affected by the continued economic downturn, longer term structural changes in the economy need
also to be considered. In particular, the decline in manufacturing employment has not been replaced
by opportunities in a new ‘knowledge economy’, or by para-professionalization in the service sector.
On the contrary, there has been a continued
expansion of low-paid work and ‘proletarianisation of the professions’ as the occupational structure
has turned ‘pear-shaped’ (Ainley and Allen, 2010). Changes in education have disguised this
development. Participation in higher education grew significantly under New Labour with Blair and
Brown claiming globalisation offered ‘more room at the top’ for those who were well qualified –
despite the increase in tuition fees. As a result, high levels of graduate unemployment and
‘underemployment’ now exist. Rather than continue the attempt ‘to educate our way out of
recession’, the Coalition aims to impose a new correspondence between education and the economy
by ‘pricing out’ students from higher education, making GCSE and A-levels more difficult and by
creating (illusionary) apprenticeships (Allen and Ainley 2013).
Stream 3: Gender and sexuality
The Changing Experiences of Bisexual Male Adolescents
Max Morris, Durham University
Research on sexual minority youth has traditionally documented harrowing experiences of
homophobia, harassment and discrimination. These narratives are shown to be particularly
deleterious in educational settings. However, social attitudes towards sexual minorities have greatly
improved in recent years, positively influencing the experiences of both heterosexuals and lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifteen openly
bisexual male youth (aged 16-18) from fifteen sixth forms across the United Kingdom, this article
examines the influence of decreasing homophobia on bisexual youth. Participants had positive
coming out experiences and did not encounter significant discrimination or harassment because of
their sexual identity. For most, coming out at school improved their relationships with peers and
even increased their popularity. Drawing on Anderson’s inclusive masculinity theory, these positive
experiences are attributed to a range of factors, including: the inclusive environments of their schools
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and local cultures, the supportive attitudes of friends and teachers, and the increased visibility of
other LGBT students. Examining the narratives of the two participants who had negative
experiences, this presentation also highlights continued issues for some bisexual youth in schools. It
also contributes to debates about whether sixth forms are more inclusive spaces than secondary
schools for sexual minority youth.
The construction of gendered identities in the music technology classroom
Victoria Armstrong, St. Mary’s University College
Music technology is increasingly viewed as central to the act of composition in UK primary and
secondary schools, with ‘music composition’ becoming synonymous with ‘music technology suite’.
Numerous studies examine the pedagogical issues this raises but less attention has been paid to the
socio-cultural contexts of its use as a compositional medium, a medium purported to have a positive
impact on students’ working processes, and by which compositional ‘success’ is assured for all
pupils. Feminist science and technology studies (STS) has shown the many ways in which
technologies become gendered in wider society, and has highlighted the differential in girls’ and
boys’ computer use within a range of educational settings. This paper aims to challenge what is
perceived as technologically determinist assumptions about the ‘impacts’ of music technology
through a critical exploration of the processes and practices by which technologies become gendered
in the music technology classroom. Drawing on a multimethod empirical study carried out in four
secondary schools over a six-month period with students aged 15-18, this paper reports on the ways
in which gendered discourses are constructed in the music technology classroom through teacher
talk, the construction of expertise, the gendering of music software, and the gendering of the musical
idea. I suggest that taking a wholly digitally mediated approach to music composition is likely to
reproduce and reinforce existing gendered social relations in the classroom thereby failing to
acknowledge the ways in which technologies become gendered in their material use, their symbolic
meanings and their ideological function.
Degrees of Masculinity: Social class and gendered identities amongst male undergraduate
students
Richard Waller, University of the West of England, Bristol and Nicola Ingram, University of
Bath
This paper explores recent changing notions of masculinity in the UK, and the influence of social
class on the process of developing masculine identities for a cohort of young male undergraduate
students. We outline key elements of discourses around the so-called crisis of masculinity identified
by commentators from the mid-1970s onwards, and the moral panic associated with it. We then
consider how contemporary masculinities are experienced by a group of young men at university,
and, employing photographic prompts, look to the public figures they identify as representing
idealised contemporary masculine characteristics. Employing focus group and one-to-one interview
data from a Leverhulme Trust-funded longitudinal study of undergraduates at Bristol’s two
universities (the Paired Peers study), we examine processes of gender specific identity formation by
the young men and identify aspects of difference between working- and middle-class students. We
found the former privileging physicality and retaining a closer link to an idealised ‘traditional’
‘provider’ male role, whilst the middle-class men identified with a broader, ‘composite’ version of
masculinity, incorporating a greater acknowledgment of intellectual abilities alongside physical ones.
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Keynote Address
Stars in their eyes? Celebrity, Youth and Sociology of Education
Heather Mendick, Brunel University
Politicians and media commentators in the UK frequently raise anxieties around young people's
engagement with popular culture, and celebrity specifically. Such anxieties tie into those around the
sexualisation of girls but go beyond this. They range from Labour Minister Barbara Follett's
declaration that we're in danger of being "Barbie-dolled", through Ian Duncan-Smith's suggestion
that "X Factor culture fuelled the riots" to David Cameron saying, on a recent trip to Liberia, that “If
you ask children in the UK, all they want to be is pop stars and footballers”. Alongside this
aspirations have become part of our global policy speak, including President Obama’s (2012)
promise to ‘champion the aspirations of all Americans’ and Australian policy imperatives to ‘raise’
aspirations to widen university participation. In his 2012 Conservative Party Conference speech, UK
Prime Minister Cameron constructed aspiration as the solution to the economic crisis, setting out his
Government’s mission to ‘build an aspiration nation to unleash and unlock the promise in all our
people’. Such calls for youth to 'aspire' circulate in a context of growing educational inequalities and
rising rates of youth unemployment. It is within and perhaps because of this context that Kim Allen,
Laura Harvey and I have secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council to
research 'the role of celebrity in young people's classed and gendered aspirations'. Our work builds
on other studies on young people's educational identities and choices within the sociology of
education by people such as Becky Francis, Heidi Mirza, Louise Archer, Meg Maguire, Rosalyn
George, Stephen Ball and Sumi Hollingworth. Our research is centred on young people and we have
carried out 24 group interviews and 48 individual interviews with students aged 14-17 in six schools
across England. We have also collected data via case studies of 12 celebrities who featured strongly
in the group interviews. In this presentation I will use emerging findings from this study to open up a
discussion about the responsibilities and possibilities for sociologists of education to intervene in
'non-academic' debates about youth, aspiration and education policy.
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