Diane Reay grew up in a working class, coal mining community before becoming an inner city, primary school teacher for 20 years. She is now a Visiting Professor at the LSE and Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge. Her main research interests are social justice issues in education, Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory, and cultural analyses of social class, race and gender. Her most recent book is Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes Policy Press, 2017.
This is an edited collection of research studies in education that work with Bourdieu. The papers... more This is an edited collection of research studies in education that work with Bourdieu. The papers in a rich variety of ways implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, make the case for a Bourdieusian analysis of education. The vital lesson from Bourdieu’s scholarship they all adopt, through one means or another, is that empirical research can be a powerful tool for breaking through the taken-for-granted, everyday assumptions about the purposes and practices of education. At the core of all these papers is the attempt to achieve a truer knowledge of how education works, the ways power operates in and through the educational system, and whose interests it serves. Despite doing this in very different ways, and drawing on diverse aspects of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework, what they all clearly illustrate is that Bourdieu is extremely useful for thinking with.
In this book Diane Reay, herself working class turned Cambridge professor, brings Brian Jackson a... more In this book Diane Reay, herself working class turned Cambridge professor, brings Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden’s pioneering Education and the Working Class from 1962 up to date for the 21st century. Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes rich, vivid stories from working class children and young people. It looks at class identity, the inadequate sticking plaster of social mobility, and the effects of wider economic and social class relationships on working class educational experiences. The book addresses the urgent question of why the working classes are still faring so much worse than the upper and middle classes in education. It reveals how we have ended up with an educational system that still educates the different social classes in fundamentally different ways, and vitally - what we can do to achieve a fairer system.
Decades of neo-liberal reforms have established a market in secondary schooling, where 'choice' a... more Decades of neo-liberal reforms have established a market in secondary schooling, where 'choice' and 'diversity' are expected to drive up standards and maximize individual responsibility. This is known to favor middle class people. But what of those middle classes deliberately choosing ordinary and even 'low performing' secondary schools for their children? What are their motives, and how do they experience the choice? What is it like for the young people themselves? Where do they end up? And what does all this show us about contemporary white middle class identity and its formation? This study offers some answers to these questions. Based on detailed fieldwork with parents and children, it examines 'against-the-grain' school choices, looking in particular at family history, locality, the nature of 'choice' itself and associated anxieties, relationships to other ethnic groups and to whiteness, and the implications for democracy. The book highlights an inescapable acquisitiveness but also more hopeful dimensions of contemporary white middle class identity.
This book provide a clear and authoritative picture of `how the welcome expansion of higher educa... more This book provide a clear and authoritative picture of `how the welcome expansion of higher education has been accompanied by a deepening of educational and social stratification and the emergence of new forms of inequality' . Drawing on a large-scale study involving 500 applicants to university, it makes extensive use of quantitative and qualitative data in order to analyse the complex process whereby students across class, gender ethnicity and age move into higher education. It provides a succinct analysis of the current paradoxical situation in the UK, where mass participation in higher education has seen the class `gap' widening rather than shrinking, producing a system which is `neither equal nor common for all'
This book reveals the central importance of the work of mothering in the reproduction and mainten... more This book reveals the central importance of the work of mothering in the reproduction and maintenance of class inequalities. It demonstrates how class is played out in the educational work and support that is primarily the province of women. It is based on a substantive ethnographic study of two London primary schools and focuses on mothers of year five children. Developing a feminist reworking of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, the book argues for a more sophisticated understanding of social class, one that recognises difference and diversity within social classes as well as between them.
This article draws on case studies from abroad to illustrate what to
avoid and what to promote in... more This article draws on case studies from abroad to illustrate what to avoid and what to promote in the quest for a socially just educational system. It first looks at the range of goals different countries have pursued in relation to education. It then focuses more closely on policies in a range of European countries, that have inhibited or enabled greater educational equality, with a specific focus on England as a negative case study of what to avoid when pursuing greater educational equality. It concludes by drawing lessons from abroad to inform debates in Ireland around how to achieve greater social justice in education.
The orthodoxy within the field of education, and amongst politicians and policymakers, is to expr... more The orthodoxy within the field of education, and amongst politicians and policymakers, is to express concern about educational inequalities whilst failing both to engage with many of the main drivers of inequality, and to grasp the complex and dynamic interplay of educational structures, processes and practices. Educational inequality is not one thing but an intricate and complicated amalgam of many different factors. The dominant political view regarding education is one that accepts the efficacy of the market, and does not question the consequences of the preoccupation with performativity and outcomes for learning processes and pedagogy (Warmington, 2015). Furthermore, there has been a general endorsement rather than challenge of social mobility as the main mechanism of social justice in education, an acceptance of private schools, and an influential movement within the discipline that promotes the notion of knowledge as power rather than any strong concern with analysing and understanding the workings of power within education. I will focus on all these trends and their consequences for educational inequalities, taking a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together insights from sociology and psychology as well as education. However, first I will examine the issue of measurement in relation to educational inequalities.
The publication of Bourdieu and Passeron's Reproduction had a mixed response. On the one hand the... more The publication of Bourdieu and Passeron's Reproduction had a mixed response. On the one hand the work was criticised for its determinism and pessimistic prognosis of the possibilities of educational change and, on the other hand, praised for its complex analysis of the relationship between education and class inequalities, and the workings of class domination through the educational system. This paper explores the reception Reproduction, and its companion text The Inheritors received before examining the contribution they have made, and continue to make, to understandings of social class inequalities in education. It argues that the work has continuing significance in contemporary England just as it had in 1960s France. As well as examining the relevance of Reproduction for the twenty-first century, it also focuses on the potential of Bourdieu and Passeron's analysis for enabling animated and agentic conceptualisations of educational and social reproduction by drawing on recent case-study data from English schools. However, it also argues that the lack of sufficient questioning of the dominant educational code, as well as the absence of any moral dimensions of class culture make their study a work in progress which needed the insights of Bourdieu's later work to bring its analysis to fruition.
This article deploys insights from Michael Young's 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy to cha... more This article deploys insights from Michael Young's 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy to challenge the dominant ideology of meritocracy in contemporary British society. It draws on ethnographic research in schools over a twenty-five year period to illustrate the damage the illusion of meritocracy inflicts on children and young people, but particularly those from working class backgrounds. It argues that the consequences of the pretence of meritocracy are to be found in everyday practices of testing, hyper-competition and setting, and beyond the classroom in the designation of predominantly working class schools as 'rubbish schools for rubbish learners'. It concludes that, beyond the negative consequences for working class learners, there are wider consequences for British society, exacerbating social divisions and encouraging the growth of distrust, prejudice, envy, resentment, and contempt between different social groups.
I have spent my whole life in 'class', first as a working-class girl and then as a primary school... more I have spent my whole life in 'class', first as a working-class girl and then as a primary school teacher, and later as an academic. My academic career spans over twenty-five years taking the work of Pierre Bourdieu to the limit. Taking Bourdieu's work to the limits is to engage with his research affectively as well as intellectually, to recognise our own social and academic positioning in the same powerful way he recognised and worked with his own autobiography (Bourdieu, 2007). It also requires the deconstruction and reconstruction of his concepts in relation to our own distinct experiences. In this article I attempt to tease out the many different and antagonistic embodiments of the relationship between a habitus and a field, taking myself as a case study. I am going to focus on two fields: the working-class coal-mining community of my childhood and youth, and the educational system. The difficult thing is not to rise in the world, but, while rising, to remain oneself-Jules Michelet (1846)
This paper examines the relationship of working-class feminist academics to the Academy. Bourdieu... more This paper examines the relationship of working-class feminist academics to the Academy. Bourdieu (1990: 155) argues that 'resistance can be alienating and submission liberating such is the paradox of the dominated and there is no way out of it'. Our paper interrogates this tension between resistance and submission from the perspective of four educationally successful working-class women who have become academics. The paper starts with an overview of the state of the Academy at the beginning of the 21 st century before addressing the conundrum articulated in earlier work by one of us (Reay 1997) that, for women from working-class backgrounds, success is often configured as, or feels like, failure. Building on this earlier work, the paper develops and reflects on four central themes: the dilemmas of belonging within higher education, the challenge of continuing class exclusions, the oppressive and exploitative class relations that remain and are rarely recognized or addressed, and finally the difficulties around sustaining 'authentic' and meaningful relationships with the still working-class. We conclude with questions and suggestions about what possibilities exist for those of us who grew up working-class to put into practice Bourdieu's injunction to be organic intellectuals.
This article looks at the consequences of COVID-19 for English education and the injustices it ha... more This article looks at the consequences of COVID-19 for English education and the injustices it has illuminated. Homeschooling under the pandemic has revealed significant inequalities of class and race. The article maps these, particularly in relation to online learning and the differential class and racial access to education during the school lockdown. Drawing on R.H. Tawney, it then explores the barriers raised by the pandemic for socially just education in the future, and the possibilities opened up.
Educational transitions experienced within a context of
wide and growing inequalities such as Eng... more Educational transitions experienced within a context of wide and growing inequalities such as England result in very different transition experiences to those experienced by young people growing up in relatively equitable societies with strong communal links. Transitions of working class young people in England are beset with competition, individualism and low expectations. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, the article argues that working class transitions to university reveal the failure of the English educational system to provide anything like a level playing field to support working class young people who are seen to be educational successes. Focusing on those working class young people who are particularly successful by gaining access to elite universities the paper argues that even this small select group face discrimination, set‐backs, and a degree of social exclusion. The paper concludes that the vast majority of working class young people, including many of those who are the most academically successful have very different transitions to higher education, and experiences within it, from their middle and upper class peers.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 02680930110054335, Nov 10, 2010
ABSTRACT Working-class relationships to education have always been deeply problematic and emotion... more ABSTRACT Working-class relationships to education have always been deeply problematic and emotionally charged, inscribing academic failure rather than success. In this paper I briefly explore both the history of those relationships and representations of the working classes within dominant discourses, before moving on to outline some of the consequences of contemporary educational policy for working-class subjectivities. I do this by drawing on data from three research projects: one on higher education choice; one on transitions to secondary schooling; and a third on assessment in primary schools. However, working-class relationships to education cannot be understood in isolation from middle-class subjectivities so I also try to begin to map out some of the unconscious aspects of class that implicate both middle- and working-class subjectivities.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0954025022000010695, Jul 2, 2010
... Shaun's Story ... David's brother Dean goes there, my cousin Paul and this kid, Joh... more ... Shaun's Story ... David's brother Dean goes there, my cousin Paul and this kid, John, all these kids I know from off my estate, they all go there. and: It's good to go somewhere where you've got lots of older kids looking out for you and that's what I'll have at Sutton Boys'. ...
abstract The author, a Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinator in an inner city primary school in ... more abstract The author, a Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinator in an inner city primary school in North London describes an Equal Opportunities project that involved working with boys in a single sex group. The project sought to address theoretical concerns around sex stereotyping, peer group hierarchies and the greater level of alienation from the educational system boys seem to experience at primary stage. The article evaluates the effectiveness of the project to raise awareness and support change in relation to a number of significant ...
This is an edited collection of research studies in education that work with Bourdieu. The papers... more This is an edited collection of research studies in education that work with Bourdieu. The papers in a rich variety of ways implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, make the case for a Bourdieusian analysis of education. The vital lesson from Bourdieu’s scholarship they all adopt, through one means or another, is that empirical research can be a powerful tool for breaking through the taken-for-granted, everyday assumptions about the purposes and practices of education. At the core of all these papers is the attempt to achieve a truer knowledge of how education works, the ways power operates in and through the educational system, and whose interests it serves. Despite doing this in very different ways, and drawing on diverse aspects of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework, what they all clearly illustrate is that Bourdieu is extremely useful for thinking with.
In this book Diane Reay, herself working class turned Cambridge professor, brings Brian Jackson a... more In this book Diane Reay, herself working class turned Cambridge professor, brings Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden’s pioneering Education and the Working Class from 1962 up to date for the 21st century. Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes rich, vivid stories from working class children and young people. It looks at class identity, the inadequate sticking plaster of social mobility, and the effects of wider economic and social class relationships on working class educational experiences. The book addresses the urgent question of why the working classes are still faring so much worse than the upper and middle classes in education. It reveals how we have ended up with an educational system that still educates the different social classes in fundamentally different ways, and vitally - what we can do to achieve a fairer system.
Decades of neo-liberal reforms have established a market in secondary schooling, where 'choice' a... more Decades of neo-liberal reforms have established a market in secondary schooling, where 'choice' and 'diversity' are expected to drive up standards and maximize individual responsibility. This is known to favor middle class people. But what of those middle classes deliberately choosing ordinary and even 'low performing' secondary schools for their children? What are their motives, and how do they experience the choice? What is it like for the young people themselves? Where do they end up? And what does all this show us about contemporary white middle class identity and its formation? This study offers some answers to these questions. Based on detailed fieldwork with parents and children, it examines 'against-the-grain' school choices, looking in particular at family history, locality, the nature of 'choice' itself and associated anxieties, relationships to other ethnic groups and to whiteness, and the implications for democracy. The book highlights an inescapable acquisitiveness but also more hopeful dimensions of contemporary white middle class identity.
This book provide a clear and authoritative picture of `how the welcome expansion of higher educa... more This book provide a clear and authoritative picture of `how the welcome expansion of higher education has been accompanied by a deepening of educational and social stratification and the emergence of new forms of inequality' . Drawing on a large-scale study involving 500 applicants to university, it makes extensive use of quantitative and qualitative data in order to analyse the complex process whereby students across class, gender ethnicity and age move into higher education. It provides a succinct analysis of the current paradoxical situation in the UK, where mass participation in higher education has seen the class `gap' widening rather than shrinking, producing a system which is `neither equal nor common for all'
This book reveals the central importance of the work of mothering in the reproduction and mainten... more This book reveals the central importance of the work of mothering in the reproduction and maintenance of class inequalities. It demonstrates how class is played out in the educational work and support that is primarily the province of women. It is based on a substantive ethnographic study of two London primary schools and focuses on mothers of year five children. Developing a feminist reworking of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, the book argues for a more sophisticated understanding of social class, one that recognises difference and diversity within social classes as well as between them.
This article draws on case studies from abroad to illustrate what to
avoid and what to promote in... more This article draws on case studies from abroad to illustrate what to avoid and what to promote in the quest for a socially just educational system. It first looks at the range of goals different countries have pursued in relation to education. It then focuses more closely on policies in a range of European countries, that have inhibited or enabled greater educational equality, with a specific focus on England as a negative case study of what to avoid when pursuing greater educational equality. It concludes by drawing lessons from abroad to inform debates in Ireland around how to achieve greater social justice in education.
The orthodoxy within the field of education, and amongst politicians and policymakers, is to expr... more The orthodoxy within the field of education, and amongst politicians and policymakers, is to express concern about educational inequalities whilst failing both to engage with many of the main drivers of inequality, and to grasp the complex and dynamic interplay of educational structures, processes and practices. Educational inequality is not one thing but an intricate and complicated amalgam of many different factors. The dominant political view regarding education is one that accepts the efficacy of the market, and does not question the consequences of the preoccupation with performativity and outcomes for learning processes and pedagogy (Warmington, 2015). Furthermore, there has been a general endorsement rather than challenge of social mobility as the main mechanism of social justice in education, an acceptance of private schools, and an influential movement within the discipline that promotes the notion of knowledge as power rather than any strong concern with analysing and understanding the workings of power within education. I will focus on all these trends and their consequences for educational inequalities, taking a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together insights from sociology and psychology as well as education. However, first I will examine the issue of measurement in relation to educational inequalities.
The publication of Bourdieu and Passeron's Reproduction had a mixed response. On the one hand the... more The publication of Bourdieu and Passeron's Reproduction had a mixed response. On the one hand the work was criticised for its determinism and pessimistic prognosis of the possibilities of educational change and, on the other hand, praised for its complex analysis of the relationship between education and class inequalities, and the workings of class domination through the educational system. This paper explores the reception Reproduction, and its companion text The Inheritors received before examining the contribution they have made, and continue to make, to understandings of social class inequalities in education. It argues that the work has continuing significance in contemporary England just as it had in 1960s France. As well as examining the relevance of Reproduction for the twenty-first century, it also focuses on the potential of Bourdieu and Passeron's analysis for enabling animated and agentic conceptualisations of educational and social reproduction by drawing on recent case-study data from English schools. However, it also argues that the lack of sufficient questioning of the dominant educational code, as well as the absence of any moral dimensions of class culture make their study a work in progress which needed the insights of Bourdieu's later work to bring its analysis to fruition.
This article deploys insights from Michael Young's 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy to cha... more This article deploys insights from Michael Young's 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy to challenge the dominant ideology of meritocracy in contemporary British society. It draws on ethnographic research in schools over a twenty-five year period to illustrate the damage the illusion of meritocracy inflicts on children and young people, but particularly those from working class backgrounds. It argues that the consequences of the pretence of meritocracy are to be found in everyday practices of testing, hyper-competition and setting, and beyond the classroom in the designation of predominantly working class schools as 'rubbish schools for rubbish learners'. It concludes that, beyond the negative consequences for working class learners, there are wider consequences for British society, exacerbating social divisions and encouraging the growth of distrust, prejudice, envy, resentment, and contempt between different social groups.
I have spent my whole life in 'class', first as a working-class girl and then as a primary school... more I have spent my whole life in 'class', first as a working-class girl and then as a primary school teacher, and later as an academic. My academic career spans over twenty-five years taking the work of Pierre Bourdieu to the limit. Taking Bourdieu's work to the limits is to engage with his research affectively as well as intellectually, to recognise our own social and academic positioning in the same powerful way he recognised and worked with his own autobiography (Bourdieu, 2007). It also requires the deconstruction and reconstruction of his concepts in relation to our own distinct experiences. In this article I attempt to tease out the many different and antagonistic embodiments of the relationship between a habitus and a field, taking myself as a case study. I am going to focus on two fields: the working-class coal-mining community of my childhood and youth, and the educational system. The difficult thing is not to rise in the world, but, while rising, to remain oneself-Jules Michelet (1846)
This paper examines the relationship of working-class feminist academics to the Academy. Bourdieu... more This paper examines the relationship of working-class feminist academics to the Academy. Bourdieu (1990: 155) argues that 'resistance can be alienating and submission liberating such is the paradox of the dominated and there is no way out of it'. Our paper interrogates this tension between resistance and submission from the perspective of four educationally successful working-class women who have become academics. The paper starts with an overview of the state of the Academy at the beginning of the 21 st century before addressing the conundrum articulated in earlier work by one of us (Reay 1997) that, for women from working-class backgrounds, success is often configured as, or feels like, failure. Building on this earlier work, the paper develops and reflects on four central themes: the dilemmas of belonging within higher education, the challenge of continuing class exclusions, the oppressive and exploitative class relations that remain and are rarely recognized or addressed, and finally the difficulties around sustaining 'authentic' and meaningful relationships with the still working-class. We conclude with questions and suggestions about what possibilities exist for those of us who grew up working-class to put into practice Bourdieu's injunction to be organic intellectuals.
This article looks at the consequences of COVID-19 for English education and the injustices it ha... more This article looks at the consequences of COVID-19 for English education and the injustices it has illuminated. Homeschooling under the pandemic has revealed significant inequalities of class and race. The article maps these, particularly in relation to online learning and the differential class and racial access to education during the school lockdown. Drawing on R.H. Tawney, it then explores the barriers raised by the pandemic for socially just education in the future, and the possibilities opened up.
Educational transitions experienced within a context of
wide and growing inequalities such as Eng... more Educational transitions experienced within a context of wide and growing inequalities such as England result in very different transition experiences to those experienced by young people growing up in relatively equitable societies with strong communal links. Transitions of working class young people in England are beset with competition, individualism and low expectations. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, the article argues that working class transitions to university reveal the failure of the English educational system to provide anything like a level playing field to support working class young people who are seen to be educational successes. Focusing on those working class young people who are particularly successful by gaining access to elite universities the paper argues that even this small select group face discrimination, set‐backs, and a degree of social exclusion. The paper concludes that the vast majority of working class young people, including many of those who are the most academically successful have very different transitions to higher education, and experiences within it, from their middle and upper class peers.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 02680930110054335, Nov 10, 2010
ABSTRACT Working-class relationships to education have always been deeply problematic and emotion... more ABSTRACT Working-class relationships to education have always been deeply problematic and emotionally charged, inscribing academic failure rather than success. In this paper I briefly explore both the history of those relationships and representations of the working classes within dominant discourses, before moving on to outline some of the consequences of contemporary educational policy for working-class subjectivities. I do this by drawing on data from three research projects: one on higher education choice; one on transitions to secondary schooling; and a third on assessment in primary schools. However, working-class relationships to education cannot be understood in isolation from middle-class subjectivities so I also try to begin to map out some of the unconscious aspects of class that implicate both middle- and working-class subjectivities.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0954025022000010695, Jul 2, 2010
... Shaun's Story ... David's brother Dean goes there, my cousin Paul and this kid, Joh... more ... Shaun's Story ... David's brother Dean goes there, my cousin Paul and this kid, John, all these kids I know from off my estate, they all go there. and: It's good to go somewhere where you've got lots of older kids looking out for you and that's what I'll have at Sutton Boys'. ...
abstract The author, a Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinator in an inner city primary school in ... more abstract The author, a Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinator in an inner city primary school in North London describes an Equal Opportunities project that involved working with boys in a single sex group. The project sought to address theoretical concerns around sex stereotyping, peer group hierarchies and the greater level of alienation from the educational system boys seem to experience at primary stage. The article evaluates the effectiveness of the project to raise awareness and support change in relation to a number of significant ...
Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Jul 6, 2007
The concept of student voice is problematic. This paper considers two different traditions which ... more The concept of student voice is problematic. This paper considers two different traditions which theorise the notion of voice. The first is located within critical sociological studies of youth identity, drawing upon the notion of the often silenced voices of the marginalised,“Othered” or subordinated as a means of exposing oppressive power relations. The paper outlines an alternative theorisation of student voice we call, following Bernstein, the sociology of pedagogic voice. Bernstein's distinction between voice and message ...
This paper reports on the discussion at a recent 'salon' on feminist agency. The views of the two... more This paper reports on the discussion at a recent 'salon' on feminist agency. The views of the two invited speakers, who raised concerns about the impact of post-modernism on political projects, are reported. The content of the general discussion around subjectivity, agency and structure are then set out. The group struggled with the possibilities and limitations of theory in these areas. In discussing how feminist theory might be taken forward, the group stressed the centrality and necessity of collectivities as enabling resistance and other expressions of agency. The group felt that further exploration and analysis of the notion of and feelings of selfhood are necessary to adequately conceptualize individual and collective agency, and the way in which structure inflects such agency and collectivities. Such work would also need to attend to issues of 'difference' such as social class and ethnicity, and to the emotional and/or psychic dimension involved in our construction of agency and selfhood.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 09540250120051178, Jul 2, 2010
... Although the focus has been on 'the others' within masculinity, black and white wor... more ... Although the focus has been on 'the others' within masculinity, black and white working-class boys (Willis, 1977; Sewell, 1997), it is the ... that she could not contemplate them as friends because they were 'too boring', while in one of the focus group discussions, Jodie, Debbie and ...
Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes rich, vivid stories from working class children... more Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes rich, vivid stories from working class children and young people. It looks at class identity, the inadequate sticking plaster of social mobility, and the effects of wider economic and social class relationships on working class educational experiences. The book addresses the urgent question of why the working classes are still faring so much worse than the upper and middle classes in education. It reveals how we have ended up with an educational system that still educates the different social classes in fundamentally different ways, and vitally-what we can do to achieve a fairer system.
This article draws on case studies from abroad to illustrate what to avoid and what to promote in... more This article draws on case studies from abroad to illustrate what to avoid and what to promote in the quest for a socially just educational system. It first looks at the range of goals different countries have pursued in relation to education. It then focuses more closely on policies in a range of European countries, that have inhibited or enabled greater educational equality, with a specific focus on England as a negative case study of what to avoid when pursuing greater educational equality. It concludes by drawing lessons from abroad to inform debates in Ireland around how to achieve greater social justice in education.
Executive Summary The appropriation of 'social justice'by the Right has seen the idea o... more Executive Summary The appropriation of 'social justice'by the Right has seen the idea of social injustices in education increasingly regarded as the responsibility of the individuals suffering the injustice rather than the collective responsibility of society.'Social justice','choice'and 'diversity', whilst sounding progressive, positive and beneficial, have worked discursively to sanction and exacerbate inequalities and have been part of a growing trend in the privatization and marketisation of education. But research shows the ...
The publication of Bourdieu and Passeron’s Reproduction had a mixed response. On the one hand the... more The publication of Bourdieu and Passeron’s Reproduction had a mixed response. On the one hand the work was criticised for its determinism and pessimistic prognosis of the possibilities of educational change and, on the other hand, praised for its complex analysis of the relationship between education and class inequalities, and the workings of class domination through the educational system. This paper explores the reception Reproduction, and its companion text The Inheritors received before examining the contribution they have made, and continue to make, to understandings of social class inequalities in education. It argues that the work has continuing significance in contemporary England just as it had in 1960s France. As well as examining the relevance of Reproduction for the twenty-first century, it also focuses on the potential of Bourdieu and Passeron’s analysis for enabling animated and agentic conceptualisations of educational and social reproduction by drawing on recent cas...
This article examines the problem of the wider economic and political context for any project aim... more This article examines the problem of the wider economic and political context for any project aimed at achieving a fairer educational system. The consequences of the current status quo can be seen in diminishing funding and rising inequalities. The author argues that the answer lies not in tinkering with an unjust education system but rather in big, bold initiatives that are transformative rather than incremental.
Ball, Stephen and Cardoso, Clementina Marques and Vincent, Carol and Thrupp, Martin and Reay, Dia... more Ball, Stephen and Cardoso, Clementina Marques and Vincent, Carol and Thrupp, Martin and Reay, Diane and Neath, J. Samantha (2003) Local Spaces of Interdependence between schools: the English case. National Report, Changes in Regulation Modes and Social ...
Growing diversity within Higher Education (HE), rather than producing a more inclusive higher edu... more Growing diversity within Higher Education (HE), rather than producing a more inclusive higher education, has resulted in a segregated and increasingly polarised system. In the United Kingdom (UK) we are maintaining, and further strengthening, a university hierarchy built on class and race in which upper and upper middle class pursuit of the educational exclusivity they experienced in private and selective state schooling has relegated both Black and White working classes to the universities that the more privileged do not want to attend. As a consequence, new opportunities for BME students have diminishing value because they are studying in low ranking universities with ‘too many’ students like them. However, this chapter focuses on the role the elite universities, and, in particular, Oxbridge, play in preserving a university system that remains exclusive and excluding at the top of its hierarchy. High achieving Black students struggle to gain admission, while the few BME students, particularly those from working class backgrounds, who do make it to the elite institutions are having to manage a range of challenges. They can experience marginalization, a sense of being ‘out-of-place’ and insidious, as well as more overt, forms of racism. This chapter focuses on the repercussions of being outsiders in a white elite culture, and makes the argument for institutional change.
This article looks at the consequences of COVID-19 for English education and the injustices it ha... more This article looks at the consequences of COVID-19 for English education and the injustices it has illuminated. Homeschooling under the pandemic has revealed significant inequalities of class and race. The article maps these, particularly in relation to online learning and the differential class and racial access to education during the school lockdown. Drawing on R. H. Tawney, it then explores the barriers raised by the pandemic for socially just education in the future, and the possibilities opened up.
Educational transitions experienced within a context of wide and growing inequalities such as Eng... more Educational transitions experienced within a context of wide and growing inequalities such as England result in very different transition experiences to those experienced by young people growing up in relatively equitable societies with strong communal links. Transitions of working class young people in England are beset with competition, individualism and low expectations. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, the article argues that working class transitions to university reveal the failure of the English educational system to provide anything like a level playing field to support working class young people who are seen to be educational successes. Focusing on those working class young people who are particularly successful by gaining access to elite universities the paper argues that even this small select group face discrimination, set‐backs, and a degree of social exclusion. The paper concludes that the vast majority of working class young people, including many of those who are the most academically successful have very different transitions to higher education, and experiences within it, from their middle and upper class peers.
Individuals construct their identities in relation to others, and, in particular, in relation to ... more Individuals construct their identities in relation to others, and, in particular, in relation to understandings of 'the other'. So for Lois Weis (1990: 3) identity can be defined as a sense of self in relation to others. As Bourdieu (2002) asserts, identity is all about difference. David Sibley describes how individuals engage in processes of boundary construction that generate 'stereotypical representations of others which inform social practices of exclusion and inclusion but which, at the same time, define the self'(1995: 5). This relational aspect ...
When degrees were held by less than two per cent of the labour force, they may have been extremel... more When degrees were held by less than two per cent of the labour force, they may have been extremely important for the careers of the qualified men and women but they were too rare to have a major impact on the labour market as a whole. As the number of graduates has grown the degree has become an increasingly common entry qualification for a growing number of high-level occupations. Thus, higher education has played a progressively greater part in the reproduction of the occupationally-based class structure. So it is not surprising that class inequalities have persisted. Nor is it surprising that class differentials among women are just as marked as they are among men (Blackburn and Jarman, 1993, p205).
Much of Bourdieu's scholarship is a process of asking questions, and then working through how we ... more Much of Bourdieu's scholarship is a process of asking questions, and then working through how we might answer them. So, in the spirit of Bourdieu, I have chosen three pressing questions for the 2020s and my talk is an attempt to use Bourdieusian thinking to begin to answer them. Bourdieu is constantly raising questions in his writing and lectures,-on one page I counted 11 question marks! My intention is not really to transmit a complete and closed body of knowledge but rather a manner of thinking, a manner of asking questions.(Bourdieu, Classification Struggles, pg 30)
This paper explores gendered and classed work in the academy entwining autobiography with a wider... more This paper explores gendered and classed work in the academy entwining autobiography with a wider analysis of how gender and class are mobilised in academic hierarchies in the UK. It interrogates the repercussions of an elitist and masculinised academy for, in particular, women and academics from working class and ethnic minority backgrounds, and describes some of the consequences for academic identities of neoliberal new managerialist practices. Drawing on the analyses of Pierre Bourdieu, and that of contemporary feminist academics the paper maps out some of the gendered and classed institutional practices that result in pervasive social injustices within academia.
This chapter investigates the continuing problem of social class in the age of mass higher educat... more This chapter investigates the continuing problem of social class in the age of mass higher education. After a brief overview of the history of social class in higher education, it maps out the contemporary landscape focusing on, but also looking beyond, the statistics. The main part of the chapter highlights the actual experiences of working class students in UK higher education, drawing on data from two ESRC projects of classed experiences of higher education in the 21st century (Reay et al 2005; Reay et al 2010). The massification and democratisation of higher education has led to the admittance of far more working class students, but it has also resulted in a steeply hierarchical and stratified system with working class students, for the most part, clustered in the low status, poorly resourced, institutions (Crozier et al 2009; Stich 2012).
We are a group of feminist academics, all mothers, researching and writing about women in relatio... more We are a group of feminist academics, all mothers, researching and writing about women in relation to families, family structures and forms such as lone-mother families, and in relation to bringing up children and their education in schools. We are concerned to explore, from a feminist perspective, whether and how mothers choose to bring their children up and their relation to their schools. We are all white, relatively privileged women, at different stages of our academic careers and at different levels in the academic hierarchy. We all have ...
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Marsden’s pioneering Education and the Working Class from 1962 up to date for the 21st century.
Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes rich, vivid stories from working class children and young people.
It looks at class identity, the inadequate sticking plaster of social mobility, and the effects of wider economic and
social class relationships on working class educational experiences.
The book addresses the urgent question of why the working classes are still faring so much worse than the upper
and middle classes in education. It reveals how we have ended up with an educational system that still educates
the different social classes in fundamentally different ways, and vitally - what we can do to achieve a fairer system.
avoid and what to promote in the quest for a socially just
educational system. It first looks at the range of goals different
countries have pursued in relation to education. It then focuses
more closely on policies in a range of European countries, that
have inhibited or enabled greater educational equality, with a
specific focus on England as a negative case study of what to
avoid when pursuing greater educational equality. It concludes
by drawing lessons from abroad to inform debates in Ireland
around how to achieve greater social justice in education.
wide and growing inequalities such as England result in
very different transition experiences to those experienced
by young people growing up in relatively equitable societies
with strong communal links. Transitions of working
class young people in England are beset with competition,
individualism and low expectations. Employing Pierre
Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, the article
argues that working class transitions to university reveal
the failure of the English educational system to
provide anything like a level playing field to support working
class young people who are seen to be educational
successes. Focusing on those working class young people
who are particularly successful by gaining access to elite
universities the paper argues that even this small select
group face discrimination, set‐backs, and a degree of social
exclusion. The paper concludes that the vast majority of
working class young people, including many of those who
are the most academically successful have very different
transitions to higher education, and experiences within it,
from their middle and upper class peers.
Marsden’s pioneering Education and the Working Class from 1962 up to date for the 21st century.
Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes rich, vivid stories from working class children and young people.
It looks at class identity, the inadequate sticking plaster of social mobility, and the effects of wider economic and
social class relationships on working class educational experiences.
The book addresses the urgent question of why the working classes are still faring so much worse than the upper
and middle classes in education. It reveals how we have ended up with an educational system that still educates
the different social classes in fundamentally different ways, and vitally - what we can do to achieve a fairer system.
avoid and what to promote in the quest for a socially just
educational system. It first looks at the range of goals different
countries have pursued in relation to education. It then focuses
more closely on policies in a range of European countries, that
have inhibited or enabled greater educational equality, with a
specific focus on England as a negative case study of what to
avoid when pursuing greater educational equality. It concludes
by drawing lessons from abroad to inform debates in Ireland
around how to achieve greater social justice in education.
wide and growing inequalities such as England result in
very different transition experiences to those experienced
by young people growing up in relatively equitable societies
with strong communal links. Transitions of working
class young people in England are beset with competition,
individualism and low expectations. Employing Pierre
Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, the article
argues that working class transitions to university reveal
the failure of the English educational system to
provide anything like a level playing field to support working
class young people who are seen to be educational
successes. Focusing on those working class young people
who are particularly successful by gaining access to elite
universities the paper argues that even this small select
group face discrimination, set‐backs, and a degree of social
exclusion. The paper concludes that the vast majority of
working class young people, including many of those who
are the most academically successful have very different
transitions to higher education, and experiences within it,
from their middle and upper class peers.