Gill Crozier

‘Strangers in Paradise’? Working-class Students in Elite Universities

This article draws on case studies of nine working-class students at Southern, an elite university. 1 It attempts to understand the complexities of identities in flux through Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and field. Bourdieu (1990a) argues that when an individual encounters an unfamiliar field, habitus is transformed. He also writes of how the movement of habitus across new, unfamiliar fields results in ‘a habitus divided against itself ’ (Bourdieu, 1999a). Our data suggest more nuanced understandings in which the challenge of the unfamiliar results in a range of creative adaptations and multi-faceted responses. They display dispositions of self-scrutiny and self-improvement — almost ‘a constant fashioning and re-fashioning of the self ’ but one that still retains key valued aspects of a working-class self. Inevitably, however, there are tensions and ambivalences, and the article explores these, as well as the very evident gains for working-class students of academic success in an elite HE institution.

‘Fitting in’ or ‘standing out’: Working-class students in UK higher education

Drawing on case studies of 27 working-class students across four UK higher education institutions, this article attempts to develop a multilayered, sociological understanding of student identities that draws together social and academic aspects. Working with a concept of student identity that combines the more specific notion of learner identity with more general understandings of how students are positioned in relation to their discipline, their peer group and the wider university, the article examines the influence of widely differing academic places and spaces on student identities. Differences between institutions are conceptualised in terms of institutional habitus, and the article explores how the four different institutional habituses result in a range of experiences of fitting in and standing out in higher education. For some this involves combining a sense of belonging in both middle-class higher education and working-class homes, while others only partially absorb a sense of themselves as students.

Different Strokes for Different Folks: Diverse Students in Diverse Institutions--Experiences of Higher Education.

In the context of widening participation policies, polarisation of types of university recruitment and a seemingly related high drop‐out rate amongst first generation, working class students, we focus on the provision offered by the universities to their students. We discuss how middle class and working class student experiences compare across four different types of higher education institution (HEI). Exploring differences between the middle class and working class students locates widening participation discourse within a discussion of classed privilege. We conclude that, whilst there is a polarisation of recruitment between types of universities, there exists a spectrum of interrelated and differentiated experiences across and within the HEIs. These are structured by the differential wealth of the universities, their structure and organisation; their ensuing expectations of the students, the subject sub‐cultures, and the students’ own socio‐cultural locations; namely class, gender, age and ethnicity.

White middle class identities and urban schooling

Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: The White Middle Classes in the Twenty-First Century - Identities Under Siege? 2. White Middle Class Identity Formation: Theory and Practice 3. Family History, Class Practices and Habitus 4. Habitus as a Sense of Place 5. Against-the-Grain School Choice in Neoliberal Times 6. A Darker Shade of Pale: Whiteness as Integral to Middle Class Identity 7. The Psychosocial: Ambivalences and Anxieties of Privilege 8. Young People and the Urban Comprehensive: Remaking Cosmopolitan Citizens or Reproducing Hegemonic White Middle Class 9. 9. Values? Reinvigorating Democracy: Middle Class Moralities in Neoliberal Times Conclusion: Appendix 1: Methods and Methodology Appendix 2: Parental Occupations and Sector Appendix 3: The Sample Families in Terms of ACORN Categories References

White Middle-Class Parents, Identities, Educational Choice and the Urban Comprehensive School: Dilemmas, Ambivalence and Moral Ambiguity.

At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle‐class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state‐run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’, and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents’ perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle‐class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform ‘the good/ethical self’ while ensuring the ‘best’ for their children.

Parents and schools: partnership or surveillance?

This paper argues that ‘partnership’ is an essential part of the marketization of education. Whilst the market fragments and promotes individualism, ‘partnership’ promotes involvement, commitment and responsibility. It is, though, an involvement, commitment and responsibility based on individual vested interest; a necessary prerequisite to protect ones ‘investment’. In harnessing this, control upon the individual is exerted. ‘Partnership’ is presented here as double‐edged for both parents and teachers. Whilst parents may call teachers to account, ‘partnership’ acts as a form of control upon parents. Employing ‘surveillance’ as a conceptual framework, the nature and purpose of ‘partnership’, together with its management by teachers, is discussed. The paper argues that partnership serves as a device for monitoring parents and engendering what Foucault describes as ‘disciplinary power’ which is ensuring that parents learn to be ‘good’ parents as defined by the teachers and adopt a set of values that match t...

Family matters: a discussion of the Bangladeshi and Pakistani extended family and community in supporting the children's education

This paper looks beyond an individualised type of parental involvement and discusses the role of the extended family in relation to school. We draw on the different social capital theories to explain its implications and also to discuss its efficacy. Our focus is on the Bangladeshi community and the Pakistani community in two towns in the North East of England. British South Asian parents are variously accused of having too high educational expectations of their children or not being interested at all and that Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents in particular have no or limited relationships with their childrens schools. In this paper we demonstrate that parental involvement in these two communities resides not simply in the hands of the parents but within the wider family. We challenge the deficit model of British South Asian families as indifferent to the education of their children and we identify the potential resource of the extended family.

Re-invigorating democracy? : White middle class identities and comprehensive schooling

Recent research on social class and whiteness points to disquieting and exclusive aspects of white middle class identities. This paper focuses on whether ‘alternative’ middle class identities might work against, and disrupt, normative views of what it means to be ‘middle class’ at the beginning of the 21st Century. Drawing on data from those middle classes who choose to send their children to urban comprehensives, we examine processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’ in order to uncover some of the commitments and investments that might make for a renewed and reinvigorated democratic citizenry. The difficulties of turning these commitments and investments into more equitable ways of interacting with class and ethnic others which emerge as real challenges for this left leaning, pro-welfare segment of the middle classes. Within a contemporary era of neo-liberalism that valorises competition, individualism and the market even these white middle classes who express a strong commitment to community and social mixing struggle to convert inclinations into actions.

'The trouble is they don’t mix’: self‐segregation or enforced exclusion?

This article draws on a two‐year study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of South Asian parents and their children’s views on the school experience (Parents, Children and the School Experience: Asian Families’ Perspectives – Grant Reference: R000239671). The article focuses on an aspect of the young people’s school experience and reports that teachers constructed the students’ behaviour in terms of ‘Asian gang culture’. Teachers frequently criticised the South Asian students for not mixing with their white peers, not going on school trips, and not participating in extra‐curricular activities. The authors discuss this in relation to notions of integration, teachers’ perceptions of gendered and ethnic differences and issues of symbolic violence. The emphasis was on the students integrating into the dominant culture: in terms of conforming and knowing their place. In this sense the young people do not see a place for themselves. Ethnocentrism together with racist harassment serves to relegate the young people to the margins, where they have little choice but to remain, not least for fear of their safety.

‘There's a war against our children’: black educational underachievement revisited

This paper focuses on the educational experiences of a group of African Caribbean and mixed ‘race’ young people from the perspectives of their parents. The discussion is set within a national context where children of African Caribbean origin are one of the lowest achieving minority ethnic groups in the UK and are disproportionately one of the highest ethnic groups of children excluded from school. The parents recount a pattern of cumulative negative experiences which for many of the children results in academic underachievement and becoming demotivated to learn, by a system that they feel has rejected them, or imposed exclusion. The story is hardly new but it provides important further evidence that schools need to tackle head‐on factors such as low teacher expectations and negative stereotyping of young black people and their contribution to black underachievement. I dread to see my children grow. I know not their fate. Where the white girl has one temptation, mine will have many. Where the white boy has every opportunity and protection, mine will have few opportunities and no protection. It does not matter how good or wise my children may be, they are colored. When I have said that, all is said … (Lerner, 1972, p. 158, cited in Hill‐Collins, 2000, p. 196) I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (Martin Luther King, Jr, 28 August 1963, cited in Ladson‐Billings, 1994, p. 30)