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The role of 'class strategies' in policy formation is sometimes unseen as plans are unrealised in practice over long periods of historical time. 'Subterranean class strategies' are an extension of existing work on class to consider 'class work' on policy in the 'long unenacted'. Using the example of emergency feeding in a national crisis, the stark difference in school meal planning for post-World War 2 emergencies when compared to the COVID-19 crisis is discussed. Through an analysis of archival records, it is shown that 'subterranean class strategies' - the devaluation of school catering expertise by the army and the private sector, the lack of co-operation of independent schools, and localisation and privatisation - diminished the role of schools in emergency feeding. The paper concludes by considering how the concept of 'subterranean class strategies' could inform work on educational think tanks, privatisation and subsumption, and intersectional areas such as race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of ‘self-determination’ and ‘hard work’ found within interviews with a group of young people in Manchester, England. The author suggests that moments of apparent contradiction within the interviews have much to offer, particularly when analysed in relation to discussions of inequality and political economy. Data from this paper show that while the young people mostly spoke about work choices in primarily individualistic ways, they used the recession as a means to acknowledge that acquiring jobs simply cannot just be about ‘choice’ or working hard, but is also configured by the market and structural inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the salience of sport in the lives of eight-year-old and nine-year-old South African primary school boys. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I argue that young boys' developing relationship with sport is inscribed within particular gendered, raced and classed discourses in South Africa. Throughout the paper I show differences and durability of meanings across the social sites that affect and position blacks, white, boys and girls. It is argued that young boys' early association with sport is centrally about identity and doing sport, or at least establishing interest in sport is one important way in claiming to be a real boy. The findings have implications for the call by the South African Government to get the nation to play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the contradictions of neoliberal education reform and its companion, the self-made aspirational subject, are embodied by Sir Michael Wilshaw, former headteacher of Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, East London, through his leadership practices. Wilshaw creates powerful mobility and morality tales that pave over the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in the academies programme and Mossbourne’s approach. Drawing on a larger study of Mossbourne, the paper focuses on how raced and classed pathological discourses are mobilised and inverted both by Wilshaw and policy rhetoric, cultivating compliance through a belief in the aspirational subject capable of transcending social structures. The paper argues that neoliberal academy reforms are not about autonomy, but the imperative to comply with centralised policy demands at the expense of democratic participation and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores the conceptual limitations of the bully discourses that ground UK anti-bullying policy frameworks and psychological research literatures on school bullying, suggesting they largely ignore gender, (hetero)sexuality and the social, cultural and subjective dynamics of conflict and aggression among teen-aged girls. To explore the limitations of bully discourses in practice, the paper draws on a pilot, interview-based study of girls' experiences of aggression and bullying, illustrating how friendships and conflicts among the girls are thoroughly heterosexualized, en-cultured and classed. Drawing on girls and parent interview narratives, I also trace some of the effects of bully discourses set in motion in schools to intervene into conflicts among girls. I suggest these practices miss the complexity of the dynamics at play among girls and also neglect the power relations of parenting, ethnicity, class and school choice, which can inform how, why and when bullying discourses are mobilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, scholarship on international students has generally focused on flows from non-western economies to the main English-speaking destination countries (such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia). In contrast, we draw on a qualitative study of 85 UK students who have either completed or are considering undertaking a degree programme overseas. We found that, in opposition to a common image of 'international students', UK students are not overtly motivated by 'strategic' concerns. Instead, they are seeking 'excitement' and 'adventure' from overseas study and often use the opportunity to delay the onset of a career and prolong a relatively carefree student lifestyle. Despite these ostensibly 'disinterested' objectives, however, UK students remain a highly privileged group and their experiences serve only to facilitate the reproduction of their privilege. The paper calls for a more critical analysis of the spatially uneven and socially exclusive nature of international higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of feminist pasts has been largely ignored in the history of education. This paper suggests that the historical sociology of Olive Banks provides fresh starting points for future research exploring the relationship between the history of social and political movements and a reassessment of contemporary and historical forms of 'radical education.' The article proceeds to use group biography to explore a municipal socialism that has been over-ridden in historical memory by the classic political histories that take the view from Westminster and Whitehall. In so doing it seeks to show the contribution of six educator activists who were participants in the making of a metropolitan political elite emerging from the association between feminism, socialism and the labour and trade union movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions have received increasing attention in educational circles in the last decade. Drawing on Bourdieu, feminist scholars use emotional capital to illustrate the ways gendered inequalities can compound the disadvantages of social class. This paper examines relationships within childcare services in Australia, showing how emotional capital functions as a resource for staff. Data from interviews with childcare staff illustrate key aspects of emotional capital, such as reflexivity, resilience and embodiment. Findings show that investing in emotional capital is the key to a long-lasting commitment to childcare work, and should be valued accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Privileged benefaction in elite schools and the moral dilemmas, contradictions and power politics involved are the focus of this paper. The notion of ‘the gift’ provides our analytical lens. We concentrate on two girls’ schools – one in South Africa and one in England. These were both built, in various ways, on the British model of public schooling. These schools pride themselves on their gifting practices. We offer a broad overview of the different local and global manifestations of and justifications for these practices as they occur in these schools and in the transnational organisations of which the schools are members. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the changing relationship between origins, education and destinations in mobility processes. The meritocracy thesis suggests the relationships between origins and education and between origins and destination will weaken while the relationship between education and destinations will strengthen. Comparing data from the 1991 British Household Panel Survey and the 2005 General Household Survey, we test these associations for men and women. We find that the relationship between origins and education and origins and destinations has weakened for both sexes. While these findings are supportive of the meritocracy thesis, they are not, however, evidence of a secular trend towards merit-based selection. Contrary to the thesis, we also find the association between education and destinations has weakened for men and women. The relationship between education and destinations is more complicated than is often assumed and the role of meritocratic and non-meritocratic factors in occupational success needs to be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The retreat from social class within the sociology of education has been accompanied by the intensification of socio-economic and cultural inequalities. This paper seeks to draw upon cultural analyses of social class by addressing a classificatory shift of white English working-class males, who have moved from an ascribed primary socio-economic status to an embodied aesthetic performance. We examine the reconfiguration of social class within state schools and historical and contemporary shifting images of white working-class males within the education literature. We suggest the need to engage with a multi-dimensional explanatory frame in order to understand how working-class young men now inhabit a new cultural condition in the post-colonial urban space of inner-city schools. This shift is best captured by exploring the simultaneous articulations of multiple categories of difference – including class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and generation – in relation to contemporary representations of social class. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, a 'cultural turn' in the study of class has resulted in a rich body of work detailing the ways in which class advantage and disadvantage are emotionally inscribed and embodied in educational settings. To date, however, much of this literature has focused on the urban sphere. In order to address this gap in the literature, this paper focuses on the affective evaluations made by teachers employed in rural and remote Australian schools of students' families, bodies, expectations and practices. The central argument is that moral ascriptions of class by the teachers are powerfully shaped by dominant socio-cultural constructions of rurality that equate 'the rural' with agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyse working-class mothers' narratives of social interactions among parents at their children's schools. A special focus is paid to the emotions that arise in such interactions and their role in the reproduction of class. A narrative analysis of six stories of white, working-class mothers of compulsory school aged children was carried out. The study is set in Iceland, which gives a unique opportunity for classed and gendered analysis of parental communities as the country is at the forefront of gender equality in the world. Additionally, the compulsory school system is still relatively unsegregated. Findings show that the parental communities reproduce the symbolic violence endured by the working-class mothers within the field of education. Accounts of resistance and anger are present in some of the accounts but affective responses such as inferiority and shame are all-encompassing and contribute to the reproduction of class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface for the July 2008 issue of the "British Journal of Sociology of Education" is presented.

This article draws on an analysis of the narratives of Australian young Muslim women to explore their higher education experiences and aspirations. The article aims to explore the notion of agency employed by Muslim female university students in relation to the ways they discover their own capabilities along their deployment of available financial, cultural and social resources under cultural and structural constrains. The women's accounts suggest that pursuit of higher education is highly perceived as a key to girls' success and economic independence in the present precarious neoliberal environment yet concerns over Islamophobia and gender and racial discrimination which may curtail employment opportunities are present. The research findings also suggest that educational outcomes entail complex forms of negotiation, bargaining and resistance, stressing the ways in which class, gender, ethnicity and religion interrelate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how educational transitions in Hong Kong are concurrently classed processes and practices, and how learner identity is developed and negotiated in an education system that prizes English as capital. Through the lens of habitus, the connected but distinct autobiographical accounts suggest that the stronger the insulation between the home and the school, the keener an individual’s sensitivity may be towards class distinction in adapting to a new field. Learner identity associated with academic success is potentially negotiable and self-sustained through determination, self-regulation, and reflexive strategies, rendering the availability of resource support less important for working-class students’ identity development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children, and schools, are potent symbols of victimhood in industrial disasters. In the case of historical industrial disasters such as Aberfan and Flixborough, and in terms of preparation for future industrial disasters under Control of Major Accident Hazard regulations, communities are seen as passive responders to accidents. Moreover, following industrial accidents, communities are frequently accused of culpability or profiting from the disaster. There is hence a double pathologisation in play, with communities seen as comprising passive victims and manipulative survivors. Using an historical approach, the official accounts of the Aberfan and Flixborough industrial accidents are challenged with a focus on schools and children. Rather than being passive victims of these accidents, schools and children demonstrated agency in terms of their tacit knowledge, reporting potential accidents and recording their consequences. This provides a lens through which to interrogate current policy on industrial safety as it relates to schools and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores Pakistani and Bangladeshi young men’s experiences of schooling to examine what inclusion/exclusion means to them. Qualitative research was undertaken with 48 Pakistani and Bangladeshi young men living in areas of the West Midlands, England. The young men highlighted three key areas: the emergence of a schooling regime operating through neo-liberal principles, the recognition of class difference between themselves and teachers, and their awareness of how racialization operated through codes of masculinity. In conclusion, it is argued that research on issues of inclusion/exclusion should be cautious when interpreting new forms of class identity through conventional categories of ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article, through looking at mothers’ modes of engagement with their children’s education, proposes an integrative analytical approach to the study of the making of mothers, mothering, and motherhood. The article presents and brings into dialogue four different bodies of anthropological and sociological literature: mothering as a form of care work, anthropological work on child-rearing in different cultural settings, sociological studies of the class negotiation of home–school boundaries, and the theoretical and empirical literature on consumption in post-industrial society. Bringing together ideas of care, culture, class, and consumption into one analytical framework is crucial for attending to, in holistic fashion, the complex ways in which mothering, in different social–cultural contexts, is perceived and practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]