Marie-Pierre Moreau

Graduates' employment and the discourse of employability: a critical analysis

In a context of considerable changes in the labour market and higher education sector in the UK, a discourse of employability has become increasingly dominant. Universities are urged to ensure that they produce ‘employable’ graduates, and graduates themselves are exhorted to continually develop their personal skills, qualities and experiences in order to compete in the graduate labour market. Drawing on a study of ‘non‐traditional’ graduates from a post‐1992 inner‐city university in England, this paper offers a critical appraisal of the discourse of employability. In contrast to assumptions of a level playing field in which graduates’ skills and personal qualities are the key to their success in the labour market, social class, gender, ethnicity, age, disability and university attended all impact on the opportunities available. It is argued that the discourse of employability, with its emphasis on individual responsibility and neglect of social inequalities, has potentially damaging consequences for these graduates.

Balancing paid work and studies: working (‐class) students in higher education

Engagement in paid work during term‐time amongst undergraduates in England has increased in recent years, reflecting changes in both higher education funding and labour market policy. This article draws on research with students in a post‐1992 university to explore undergraduate students’ accounts of combining work and study during term‐time and the various strategies they employ in their attempts to balance the two. Many of the students in this study may be described as ‘non traditional’ entrants, and attention is paid to the ways in which students’ accounts reflect issues of social class. It is argued that the transfer of responsibility for funding university study from the state to the individual student and their families, and the lack of attention paid to the demands of term‐time work in higher education and institutional policy, risks reinforcing and exacerbating inequalities.

Making sense of the glass ceiling in schools: an exploration of women teachers’ discourses

There is extensive evidence of a ‘glass ceiling’ for women across the labour market. Though schools have widely been described as ‘feminized’ work environments, the under‐representation of women at school management level is well established. Based on a study of women teachers’ careers and promotion in the English school sector (in early years, primary and secondary schools), this paper draws on a critical discourse analysis of 44 individual interviews conducted with women teachers to explore their views of the ‘glass ceiling’. Despite significant evidence of the barriers to management positions faced by women teachers, interpretative frameworks drawing on discourses of individualization and personal choice are most prominent among these to make sense of the low proportion of women in school management. However, the paper also identifies the existence of alternative discourses recognizing the existence of gender inequalities.

Imagining the Mathematician: Young People Talking about Popular Representations of Maths.

This paper makes both a critical analysis of some popular cultural texts about mathematics and mathematicians, and explores the ways in which young people deploy the discourses produced in these texts. We argue that there are particular (and sometimes contradictory) meanings and discourses about mathematics that circulate in popular culture, that young people use these as resources in identity making as (non-)mathematicians, negotiating their meaning in ways that are not always predictable, and that their influence on young people is diffuse and nevertheless important. The paper discusses the discourses that prevail in some of the popular cultural images of mathematics and mathematicians that came up in our research. We show how mathematics is represented as a secret language, while mathematicians are often mad, mostly male and almost invariably white. We then explore how young people negotiate these discourses, positioning themselves in relation to mathematics. Here we draw attention to the fact that both those who continue with mathematics after it ceases to be compulsory and those who do not, deploy similar images of mathematics and mathematicians. What is different is how they respond to and negotiate these images.

Constructions of Mathematicians in Popular Culture and Learners' Narratives: A Study of Mathematical and Non-Mathematical Subjectivities.

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular cultural texts, we argue that popular discourses overwhelmingly construct mathematicians as white, heterosexual, middle‐class men, yet also construct them as ‘other’ through systems of binary oppositions between those doing and those not doing mathematics. Turning to the analysis of a corpus of 27 focus groups with school and university students in England and Wales, we explore how such images are deployed by learners. We argue that while learners’ views of mathematicians parallel in key ways popular discourses, they are not passively absorbing these as they are simultaneously aware of the clichéd nature of popular cultural images.

Care in academia: an exploration of student parents’ experiences

While student parents now represent a significant proportion of the higher education population in England, this group has been given limited consideration in policy circles. Using a social constructivist and feminist theoretical framework, this paper draws on a research project investigating the role of higher education policies in supporting student parents in England. It focuses on findings from 40 interviews conducted with student parents enrolled on university programmes. It shows that, in the context of the default construction of the university student as carefree, student parents often describe their experience of navigating academia as a struggle, in which time-related, financial, health and emotional problems prevail. However, the stories they tell also emphasise the benefits associated with their dual status. By doing so, they resist the discourse of deficit typically applied to ‘non traditional’ students and produce a counter-discourse that disturbs the long-lived binary opposition between care and academia.

The societal construction of ‘boys’ underachievement’ in educational policies: a cross‐national comparison

Through the example of what is now known in a large part of the Anglo‐saxon world as the boys’ underachievement debate, this paper explores the construction of gender issues, which underpins educational policies in England and France. It argues that the formation of particular questions as ‘policy issues’ bears limited relation to what happens on the ground, yet is contingent on societal contexts. For example, while England and France share similar patterns in terms of the differential achievement of boys and girls, in the former the boys’ underachievement debate is prominent, but in the latter it is non‐existent. This supports the view that the emergence of the boys’ underachievement debate is not related to a ‘grounded reality’. Rather, the debate appears embedded in the discursive construction of gender and education and, more generally, of notions of citizenship and equality/difference. These findings provide a strong case in favour of a reflexive approach to equality matters in educational policy making. They also suggest that the analysis of what is constructed as a key issue in policy circles represents a rich terrain for feminist analysis, and they highlight that national frameworks continue to structure the thinking on equality issues.

New media, old images: constructing online representations of women and men in science, engineering and technology

This paper looks at online representations of women and men in science, engineering and technology. We show that these representations largely re/produce dominant gender discourses. We then focus on the question: How are gender clichéd images re/produced online? Drawing on a discursive analysis of data from six interviews with web authors, we argue that there are two reasons why their awareness of gender issues does not always translate into website content. First, web authors think of themselves as working within either journalistic or scientific cultures, and draw on associated criteria, which exclude gender equity, to make content decisions. Second, they construct distinctions between representation and reality, judging representations on their ‘empirical realism’ (how accurately they represent a reality seen to exist outside the text), foreclosing considerations of their productive power. Finally, we draw on interview data with young people to show that these constrain the meanings made by web users.

Mathematical images and identities: entertainment, education, social justice

In the UK and many other countries, mathematics is an unpopular subject. Fewer people continue with it into post-compulsory education and many of those who do continue do so because they need the subject rather than because they actively enjoy it. Research shows that the image that mathematics has does not represent something appealing to most young people or something which they feel is compatible with their ‘‘identities’’ (Boaler, Wiliam, and Zervenbergen 2000; Picker and Berry 2000). This research study looks at the ways that popular cultural images of maths and mathematicians influence the relationships that young people form with the subject. In contrast with mathematics, popular culture has a growing influence on young people and there is a clear need to ‘‘ponder the role of school in the ‘age of desire’ . . . [and] to contemplate the purposes of schooling if the distinctions between advertising and entertainment diminish’’ (Kenway and Bullen 2001, 7). This is the first major research within mathematics education focusing on popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians and attempting to map their effects. As well as looking at the ways that discourses of mathematics and mathematicians are deployed by learners, the study explores how these are gendered, classed and raced. As well as textual data, data have been collected through a questionnaire survey, as well as interviews and focus groups conducted with 15 to 16 year-old school students and second and third year undergraduates in mathematics and the contrasting disciplines of media studies, English and sociology. In the ongoing analysis several areas are being focussed on, including: the relationship between representations of mathematics and learners constructions of the subject; the contrasting masculinities within fictional narratives of mathematicians, the role of popular culture in people’s educational decision-making generally and specifically those that relate to mathematics (and the role of the neoliberal context in this); how people understand juxtapositions of the popular, the everyday and the mathematical; the ways that learners negotiate their ideas about the absoluteness of mathematics and the pedagogic possibilities of working with popular culture (see www.londonmet.ac.uk/mathsimages for more information).

Lone parents’ experiences as higher education students: learning to juggle

but neither was completely open about sexual identities. AOUME focused on heterosexual relationships; other sexual identities were a choice and not accepted. CSE provided definitions or scientific information for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) identities, and discussions ended after the diverse sexualities were defined. Both programmes lacked in teaching equality for sexual and gender identities. AOUME emphasised girl empowerment; a girl was empowered by saving herself for her future husband and submitting herself to her future husband. According to AOUM educators, girls are in control of how others perceive them, and they are at fault for teen pregnancy, rape, and sexual abuse. CSE ideology emphasises gender equality but the teachers did not clearly express this equal opportunity. Educators stereotyped and reestablished neotraditionalist gender norms; the man is the provider and the woman performs womanly duties and is subservient to her husband. In the conclusion, Kendall states that the current sex education programmes have failed us and need to be reformed. Sex education curriculum need to start with open communication between all forces involved, policy-makers, teachers, researchers, curriculum specialists, and administrators. For community support, parents and community members should have an open discussion about teen sex and sex education. According to Kendall, a more democratised approach in the classroom would be more effective. Students can think critically and make decisions related to sex and sexuality topics. Students and teachers would create the curriculum based on the topics that students are interested in researching and discussing. Student involvement would guarantee that they were receiving the information needed about sex. Although a more democratic approach to sex education could be more effective, how can educators eradicate sexism that arises in conversations and ensure that students are truly taught what they need to know about sex? Overall, this book is an exceptional comprehensive collection of the sex education curriculums and the impacts or lack of impact they have on students. Kendall’s analyses of the sex education curriculums provide empirical evidence for educators and policymakers to form necessary changes to sex education in their schools. Kendall’s analyses challenge the beliefs held by those who support AOUME or CSE curriculums. This book is recommended for policy-makers, educators, administrators, and curriculum specialists who seek guidance for implementing a sex education programme that is democratised and free of bias in the areas of gender, class, race, and sexuality.