Working Class Pupils Research Articles

Cultural capital, accountability and equity: Time for a rethink?

I grew up on free school meals and now work as a school improvement adviser. In this article, I address discontinuities within my 'support and challenge' role, a role that can be constrained by educational policy enacted within a performative and panoptic culture of fear. Successive governments have concerned themselves with promoting equity through education, but discourses of levelling up and narrowing the attainment gap have yet to properly tackle inequalities. This article draws on Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital to explore how pupils, especially working-class pupils, continue to be left behind and dehumanised thanks to a performative culture that pervades policy in school improvement and accountability. The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned research in 2019 on high-performing countries whose governments promote an equitable education system. These jurisdictions use collaboration as opposed to competition to achieve equitable educational outcomes, while our government favours accountability rather than collaboration to drive up school standards. I argue that the next government has the power to use such research on the benefits of collaboration rather than competition to genuinely improve outcomes for working-class pupils.

Poverty, affect and breaking the cycle: Implementing a ‘vulnerability unit’ in a white working-class community school

Schools serving communities experiencing poverty continue to be challenged as to how to best meet the needs of their pupils. This article documents how educators in one school in Wales developed and implemented a ‘vulnerability unit’ – called The Bridge – which centred on trusting relationships to improve the educational experience for primarily white working-class pupils. In the United Kingdom, the white working class remains the lowest performing socio-economic group. To make sense of the ‘emotional archive’ of the vulnerability unit and how subjects were constituted in this school space, I draw on theories of affect. The investigation considers affective relationships as not only integral to fostering inclusive practices but also closely aligned with physical and social spatiality within the community school. I argue The Bridge is a dynamic space which informs the participants' relationships with themselves and each other. With this in mind, the article contributes to research on the importance of affect and space to inclusive education and pastoral support.

Jolly Good Show, Sir

In this poem the author explores a difficult mentoring session he had with a group of white male working-class pupils who were at risk of being permanently excluded from their secondary school. He describes and analyses the specific context which gave rise to the poem and explains why he found writing a poem a salutary experience.

The role of Intergenerational Relationships in Challenging Educational Inequality: Improving Participation of Working-Class Pupils in Higher Education

ABSTRACTAnalysis of data on school leavers in the UK points to considerable inequality in access to higher education. This is particularly acute in Scotland where access to the most competitive courses remains extremely difficult for those young people who are first in their generation to try and enter university or from low-income households. Programs to address this issue have had varied approaches framed around policy ambitions to “close the attainment gap” or “raise aspirations.” However, research has argued that these approaches have largely conceptualized the problem at an individual rather than structural level (Cummings et al., 2012; Gorard, Beng, & Davies, 2012). The Intergenerational Mentoring Network is an ongoing research and development project which recruits retired professionals as volunteer mentors and matches them with 15–18 year old secondary school pupils from lower-income areas of the city. This paper draws from research within this project to demonstrate the difficulties these young people face surrounding their interaction with very different social and cultural worlds, of which they have limited understanding and very restricted access. The paper illuminates the crucial role that intergenerational relationships can play in supporting young people in their journey into higher education. These are roles that, collectively, are enabling more young people to move into university and professional careers and through increasing social mobility are challenging inequality.

The story of Stepney Words

In 1971 a young teacher was sacked from a London East End school after publishing a book of poetry written by its working-class pupils who acutely observed the sights and people’s struggles around them. In an unprecedented move, the school children and those from neighbouring schools went on strike to demand the reinstatement of their teacher. That teacher, Chris Searle, who went on to be one of the most radical and internationalist educationalists, has begun to write his memoirs in terms of the way poetry influenced him and he, in turn, used poetry as part of his educational practice. This is an excerpt from the memoirs which gives his account of life at Sir John Cass and Redcoat School, the publishing of Stepney Words and the way in which the public reacted to it. It reflects the history and changing nature of working-class London and the influence, in practice, of cultural tensions thrown up by ‘the 1960s’.

Inside the ‘blackboard jungle’

The 1950s saw a wave of depictions of threatening male working-class adolescents in English novels, films and cartoons. However, these texts must be contextualised not only as part of the well-documented 1950s moral panic about youth but in relation to the popularized psychological concepts of the ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ child and the increasing implementation of progressive educational ideas that artificially limited working-class pupils’ horizons. This makes this period not only another reiteration of the perennial moral panics about the rising generation that Geoffrey Pearson has documented, but an emergence of a new way of conceptualizing youth.

Context and Implications Document for: Raising the achievement of white working class pupils: good practice in schools

This guide accompanies the following article: Kirstin Lewis and Feyisa Demie. Raising the achievement of white working class pupils: good practice in schools. Review of Education, DOI:10.1002/rev3.3037

Raising the achievement of white working class pupils: good practice in schools

This research identifies strategies that schools have used to raise achievement among white working class pupils in multiracial schools. The methodological approach comprises case studies of schools and focus group interviews to ascertain the views of teachers, parents and children about strategies that worked to raise achievement. The study identifies a number of successful strategies for promoting the achievement of white working class pupils including strong leadership; an inclusive curriculum that meets the needs of white working class pupils; engaging parents and breaking the cycle of low aspiration; supporting pupils through extensive use of teaching assistants and learning mentors and specific support for language development. The transition between primary and secondary school was also managed carefully so that support for white working class pupils continued in a similar vein. This study also highlights that where achievement for white working class pupils was best, headteachers either had white working class roots themselves or a deep commitment to the issues of white working class communities. There were also many people from the local community working at the case study schools who were role models to children. Implications for policy and practice are given in the final section.

Children’s Literature and Capitalism: Fictions of Social Mobility in Britain, 1850–1914 by Christopher Parkes (review)

Reviewed by: Children’s Literature and Capitalism: Fictions of Social Mobility in Britain, 1850–1914 by Christopher Parkes Jane Rosen (bio) Children’s Literature and Capitalism: Fictions of Social Mobility in Britain, 1850–1914, by Christopher Parkes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. This book is an interesting contribution to the valuable series Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature produced by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by Kerry Mallan and Clare Bradford. Christopher Parkes’s premise is that the child emerged from the Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century both as a victim of capitalist society and as a threat to it. This he claims is because the image of the child as exploited cheap factory labor and existing in deep poverty and misery led to the perception of capitalism as harsh and unsympathetic. As a result of this the child victim was a threat to it, making it vulnerable to forces which might attempt to destroy or replace it. He attempts in this book to assess the ways in which Victorian and Edwardian authors developed narratives that redefined the relationship of the child to [End Page 258] the marketplace and allowed it a more acceptable place in capitalist society, rendering the threat harmless. He argues that this was done by equating the spirit of capitalism with the spirit of childhood, and examines various authors, looking at the way in which both phenomena are defined by their common attributes of curiosity, invention and ingenuity. Parkes looks at the role of nineteenth and early twentieth century children’s literature, as well as of texts that represent childhood and children, in reconfiguring the child so that it cannot be a victim of capitalist society. He reassesses the dominance of British romanticism’s idea of childhood as separate and apart from capitalist society. As he puts it: “It has caused us to focus almost exclusively on what capitalist society has done to the child rather than what the child has done to the capitalist society” (7). He begins his analysis with a historical overview of the subject of the employment of young people, both male and female, in the nineteenth century, looking at the changes in employment practice which eventually allowed those with aptitude to pursue their ambition and to use their talents in order to achieve some social mobility. Further, the exigencies of the capitalist system required alterations to the profession’s management and recruitment, leading to changes in the education and qualifications required for certain roles. According to Parkes, one result of this was a move away from upper-class and major public school educated Civil Service officials to middle-class minor public school educated ones. This was obviously due to the overriding need of the expanding industrial capitalist system for a more educated workforce in general and for a practical and technically efficient middle-class hierarchy of overseers. Parkes continues by looking at two works by Charles Dickens, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. He draws the reader’s attention to one of the themes in David Copperfield, the assumption that family business is the moral center of the economy, a theme that reflected the ideology of the time. Parkes asserts that Dickens shows in both novels that working-class children are not able to develop or even discover their natural talents as they are too involved in laboring for the family business. He points to Dickens’s place in the arena of British history, describing it as a time when there was a transition from family to corporate capitalism, thus necessitating the family’s use of the child’s talents in order to survive. Through the analysis of David Copperfield’s road in life and the close examination of Uriah Heep’s role in the novel, Parkes is able to show [End Page 259] that Dickens believes that social mobility is only possible for children born into solvent family businesses. He notes Heep’s experience in a charity school designed to turn working-class pupils into cheap and humble exploited labor. Heep recognizes the mixed message taught in the school, which also disseminated the idea of social mobility. When Parkes discusses Great Expectations he reiterates the danger to capitalist society...

Cambio Curricular en las Escuelas Inglesas: la Educación de la Infancia de la Clase Obrera

Este artículo presenta un resumen y análisis político de cambio curricular en las escuelas inglesas, con un enfoque particular sobre cómo se educa a los niños de la clase trabajadora. Primero se examina brevemente, el período comprendido entre 1870 (en la educación primaria obligatoria) y 1945 (escuelas secundarias para todos), y luego en mayor detalle las importantes reformas progresivas hasta la década de 1970. Por último, se examina el período de la Ley de Reforma de la Educación de 1988, discutiendo el contraste y la interacción de las políticas neoliberales y neoconservadoras. Se examina el impacto de rendición de cuentas en los alumnos de la clase trabajadora, y en particular sobre el incremento del número que crecen en la pobreza. El artículo trata de ofrecer conceptos e ideas para dar luz sobre lo que está sucediendo en otros sistemas educativos, aún en la diferencia de cronología y políticas especificas.

School Segregation and Math Achievement: A Mixed-Method Study on the Role of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

BackgroundIn educational research on children's academic performance, few topics have received more attention than the consequences of school segregation and the impact of self-fulfilling prophecies. However, virtually no research has investigated whether self-fulfilling prophecies account for the impact of school composition on academic achievement.Purpose & Research ObjectivesThis study aims to integrate research on the effects of school segregation with that on self-fulfilling prophecies by examining the mediating role of teacher expectancies regarding the impact of school composition on pupils’ math achievement. First, we investigate whether teachers’ teachability expectations are related to the socioe-conomic and ethnic composition of the school. Second, we investigate whether and how the effects of school composition can be explained by self-fulfilling prophecies. Because it is theorized that teacher expectancies might have an impact on pupils’ academic achievement through pupils’ perceptions of control over their achievement, we investigate the role of pupils’ sense of academic futility.Sample & Research DesignQuantitative data from a survey of 2,845 pupils and 706 teachers in 68 Flemish (Belgian) primary schools and qualitative data obtained through in-depth interviews with 26 teachers in five schools are analyzed. A complementary mixed- method design is used: Findings from the quantitative data are strengthened and illustrated with qualitative data.ResultsThe multilevel analysis shows that teachers’ teachability expectations are lower in schools with a high share of nonnative and working-class pupils and that these teachability expectations have an indirect impact on pupils’ achievement through pupils’ feelings of academic futility. The qualitative analysis reveals that the low teacher expectations in these schools are largely triggered by alleged linguistic deficiencies and problematic language use of the pupils and that school staff persistently communicate their preference for Dutch mono-lingualism to pupils.RecommendationsThe results of this study indicate that socioeconomic desegregation may not be needed if it is possible to reform schools with a larger share of working-class pupils. Schools that produce more favorable teachability expectations are recommended. In particular, teachers’ attitudes and beliefs regarding pupils’ linguistic backgrounds might be the focus of educational reforms.

Des filles conformistes ? Des garçons déviants ? Manières d’être et de faire des élèves de milieux populaires

La question de la scolarisation différentielle des sexes a d’abord été posée dès les années soixante-dix sous l’impulsion de mouvements de recherche d’orientation féministe. Il s’agit alors de tenter de rendre visible la place « paradoxale » des filles dans l’école. La recherche a travaillé à apporter des explications aux différentiels de réussite entre l’un et l’autre sexe ; les comportements de docilité, de sérieux, d’adaptation pour les unes et les attitudes de perturbation, d’agitation pour les autres se sont vus conférer une valeur explicative majeure. Or, comme nous tenterons de le montrer dans cet article, il ne semble pas que le couple dichotomique conformité versus déviance puisse rendre raison de tout ce qui se joue pour les filles et les garçons de milieux populaires, dès lors que l’on analyse leurs conduites en classe. Nous proposons de mettre en œuvre, pour cet article, ce que nous appelons une analyse relationnelle de la différence des sexes. Ce mode d’analyse des conduites en classe nous permettra d’éclairer les processus et les dynamiques en œuvre, processus complexes qui conduisent à une actualisation, dans la classe, des usages des corps, des gestes, des voix et des pairs sexués.

Why Does the Ethnic and Socio-economic Composition of Schools Influence Math Achievement? The Role of Sense of Futility and Futility Culture

Although a number of studies in many countries have investigated the impact of the ethnic and socio-economic composition of schools on academic performance, few studies have analyzed in detail how and why compositional features matter. This article presents an examination of whether pupils' sense of futility and schools' futility culture account for the impact of ethnic and socio-economic status (SES) composition of schools on the academic achievement of their pupils. Multilevel analyses of data based on a survey of 2,845 pupils (aged 10-12 years) in 68 Flemish primary schools revealed that higher proportions of immigrant and working-class pupils in a school is associated with lower levels of math achievement in both immigrant and native Belgian pupils. However, by analyzing at a deeper level, by taking control variables into account, our study found that the ethnic composition of the school no longer had a significant effect on pupils' achievement, while the SES composition still did. Most importantly, our results indicated that the remaining impact of SES composition can be explained by pupils' sense of futility and schools' futility culture. The implications of these findings for educational policy are discussed.

White working class achievement: an ethnographic study of barriers to learning in schools

This study aims to examine the key barriers to learning to raise achievement of White British pupils with low‐income backgrounds. The main findings suggest that the worryingly low‐achievement levels of many White working class pupils have been masked by the middle class success in the English school system and government statistics that fail to distinguish the White British ethnic group by social background. The empirical data confirm that one of the biggest groups of underachievers is the White British working class and their outcomes at each key stage are considerably below those achieved by all other ethnic groups. One of the main reasons for pupil underachievement, identified in the case study schools and focus groups, is parental low aspirations of their children’s education and social deprivation. It is also perpetuated by factors such as low‐literacy levels, feelings of marginalisation within the community exacerbated by housing allocation, a lack of community and school engagement, low levels of parental engagement and lack of targeted support to break the cycle of poverty and disadvantage, a legacy of low aspiration that prevents pupils from fulfilling their potential across a range of areas. The study concludes that the main obstacle in raising achievement is the government’s failure to recognise that this group has particular needs that are not being met by the school system. The government needs to recognise that the underachievement of White British working class pupils is not only a problem facing educational services but profoundly a serious challenge. Policy implications and recommendations are discussed in the final section.

‘I don't think that does leave you, because it's about where you come from’: Exploring Class in the Classroom

This article examines a teacher identity through the context of class background and habitus. It considers the significance of class transition, probing how a teacher's working-class history informs and helps define the emergence and consolidation of a teacher identity – to shape what is called here a particular ‘teacherly self.’ It explores some of the difficulties the working-class actor may experience on entering a largely middle-class profession. This transitional experience has generally gone by the term upward mobility, but the word mobility, with its largely favourable connotations of positive movement, is substituted for the notion of transition, which suggests a more complex and complicated process. The article shows how a working-class background informs class practice; in particular, how a class structure of feeling shapes attitudes and approaches to working-class pupils and their needs. By using oral history methods and aspects of narrative theory, the article seeks to underline how the continued significance of class finds complex expression in British culture.

Researching class in the classroom: addressing the social class attainment gap in Initial Teacher Education

The social class attainment gap in education is now attracting an increased level of concern. Despite the efforts of the British New Labour government to address the continuing underachievement of working class pupils in England, there has been little progress. This paper reports on one aspect of a wider research study carried out in an Initial Teacher Education department in which this persistent educational problem was explicitly addressed. In this study student teachers were prompted to explore their own understandings of social class and underachievement by acting as school‐based researchers. The data collected by the student teachers revealed both silence and resistance surrounding social class in educational contexts. They identified social class and underachievement as overlapping constructions that were inextricably linked to the perceptions and practices of the teacher. Importantly, in reflecting on their experiences of the research process the student teachers were able to identify significant implications for their own future professional practice. This paper concludes by emphasising that Initial Teacher Education (ITE) provides an important context in which to raise social class issues and to ensure that student teachers are effectively prepared to recognise and address the institutional barriers to learning faced by underachieving working class pupils.

L'enseignement du dessin dans les écoles centrales (1795‐1802)

The “Ecoles Centrales” were originally created by the Frena Convention in order to contribute to the education of the elite but the art classes were in fact assiduously attended by working class pupils. By confronting the various teaching methods used by art teachers in the “Ecoles Centrales” with those in use at the end of the “Ancien Régime”, we shall study the appropriateness of their teaching methods compared with the aestheticand educational theories prevailing at the turn of the century. We shall also examine whether the art class effectively provided the students’ needs for professional experience. Despite a commonly accepted idea, the teaching methods which originated from the academic tradition are not necessarily incompatible with working doss students. However, if a few teachers set/ lay down the basis for a changing in tìx teaching of elementary drawing by introducing geometry, it is more to rationalise the very first learning steps rather than attempt to implement methods adapted to the graphic training of workers and craftsmen.

The sociology of pupils

In France the sociology of pupils has for a long time been reduced to the study of social inequalities in connection with proximity or distance from teacher expectations. Recent transformations of the educational system, and especially the fact that working-class pupils now attend secondary schools and even higher education in considerable proportions, have brought about a change in researchers' perspectives. Pupils are less defined by their role as élève than by the way in which, as individuals, they construct and make sense of their school experience. This subjective mechanism must, however, be understood by taking into account that in France school institutions and society in general distribute social and cultural resources unequally and thus create what may be called ‘ordeals’ for pupils to overcome.

Race and the Education Reform Act

The abandonment of a commitment to the achievement of social democratic consensus in the Thatcherite project and the emphasis on individualism and the market means that a new source of cultural hegemony has to be sought. It is being attempted by the inculcation of a particular form of nationalism using the family and schools as a vehicle. The exact parameters of what constitutes “Britishness” are achieved by the marginalization of groups and movements that threaten the particular Thatcherite model of the nation and the imposition of a limited, and racist, model of culture. Within education a struggle is developing over content as the government seeks to impose a National Curriculum that reflects its ideology while structural changes hasten the commodification of education. Both the curriculum and structural changes are likely to have a detrimental effect on black and working-class pupils.

SEX, SOCIAL CLASS AND ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN THE EXPECTATIONS OF UNEMPLOYMENT AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL‐BEING OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PUPILS IN ENGLAND

Summary. Studies of the harmful psychological effects of unemployment on young people have typically paid little attention to their psychological well‐being during their final years at school. In particular, there has been little research into the relationship between school pupils' well‐being and their expectations and views about the possibility of becoming unemployed after leaving school. It is possible that those pupils who anticipate unemployment may have lower levels of well‐being, and may thus experience less of a decline in psychological health at the onset of unemployment.The study described here set out to measure two indices of well‐being, psychological distress and anxiety, among fifth and sixth year secondary school pupils. Also measured were their expectations of becoming unemployed, their concern about this, the amount of difficulty they expected to encounter finding a job, and their employment commitment. Comparisons on these variables were made between males and females, middle class and working class pupils, and white, Asian and Afro‐Caribbean pupils. Differences between these demographic categories are reported, along with the associations observed between the well‐being variables and views about future employment and unemployment. Levels of psychological distress and anxiety were found to be as high as those observed in unemployed samples, though were not related to expectations and concern about the possibility of becoming unemployed. A number of possible influences on the psychological health of school pupils are suggested.