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This paper employs sociological literature on risk and the commodification of education to explain current schooling practices in a context of increased concerns about students’ behaviour and results on standardised tests of achievement. Drawing upon teacher and student learning practices in three school sites in south-east Queensland, Australia, the article reveals how specific tests, packages and programmes have been employed as technologies of governance to minimise the risk of adverse student behaviour, maximise student outcomes on standardised tests, and provide teachers with discrete learning experiences construed as improving such outcomes. The sum total of these foci is the construction of education as an increasingly ‘risky business’ which employs a myriad of products and tests to manage perceived and actual risks. The paper also reveals how these products and processes constitute student misbehaviour and inadequate teacher and student learning as ‘risk objects’ requiring constant interve...

This paper explores the different ways that primary school teachers in Uganda navigate the boundary between school science and everyday knowledge in the context of a centrally mandated curriculum innovation. The paper is based on a study of the pedagogic practices of 16 teachers in eight Ugandan primary schools that were selected on the basis of having a track record of either high or low academic achievement in the public primary school‐leaving examination. The official primary school curriculum in Uganda prescribes that science be taught in an integrated form, including integration between science subject knowledge and everyday knowledge. The strategies that teachers in the study adopted in relating science to everyday knowledge was a key feature that differentiated between pedagogic practices in the high‐performing and low‐performing schools. In high‐performing schools, teachers recruited everyday knowledge as a resource for learning science as a specialised discourse; whereas in the low‐performing sch...

This paper examines the effect of school social class composition on pupil learner identities in British primary schools. In the current British education system, high stakes testing has a pervasive effect on the pedagogical relationship between teachers and pupils. The data in this paper, from ethnographic research in a working class school and a middle-class school, indicate that the effect of the ‘testing culture’ is much greater in the working-class school. Using Bernsteinian theory and the concept of the ‘ideal pupil’, it is shown that these pupils’ learner identities are more passive and dominated by issues of discipline and behaviour rather than academic performance, in contrast to those in the middle-class school. While this study includes only two schools, it indicates a potentially significant issue for neo-liberal education policy where education is marketised and characterised by high-stakes testing, and schools are polarised in terms of social class.

This paper examines the ways in which British Chinese pupils are positioned and represented within the popular/dominant discourse of teachers working in London schools. Drawing on individual interviews from a study conducted with 30 teachers, 80 British Chinese pupils and 30Chinese parents, we explore some of the racialised, gendered and classed assumptions upon which dominant discourses around British Chinese boys and girls are based. Consideration is given, for example, to teachers’ dichotomous constructions of British Chinese masculinity, in which British Chinese boys were regarded as ‘naturally’ ‘good’ and ‘not laddish’, compared with a minority of ‘bad’ British Chinese boys, whose laddishness was attributed to membership of a multiethnic peer group. We also explore teachers’ constructions of British Chinese femininity, which centred around remarkably homogenised representations of British Chinese girls as ‘passive’ and quiet, ‘repressed’, hard‐working pupils. The paper discusses a range of alternativ...

The ways in which young boys, masculinity and academic achievement intersect to impact upon boys' disposition to and experience of schooling is relatively under-researched. Drawing on data from an ethnographic exploration into children's gender and sexual identities in their final year of primary school (aged 10/11), this paper sets out to illustrate how the discourses of hegemonic masculinity operate to shape and form boys' learner identities. The first half of the paper explores the processes and strategies by which different boys' negotiate the tensions between the perceived feminisation of academic success and/or 'studiousness', and the need to project a coherent and stable hegemonic masculinity. The remainder of the paper examines the increasing pressures of hegemonic masculinity upon high-achieving boys, and the extent to which some boys managed to carve out and maintain alternative masculinities. The implications for current and future interventions and initiatives, directed at boys' attitudes and ...

This paper examines the gender gap at GCSE in eight contrasting English secondary schools, and discusses the reality and rhetoric of classroom interactions, focusing on the views of teaching staff, the perspectives of Year 11 students, and observations of teacher-student interactions in the classroom. In an earlier paper (British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17 (3)), the authors examined the extent to which there was less positive teacher-support for the learning of boys than for the learning of girls, and this issue is reviewed in differing school contexts. Research in this broader context suggests that most teachers believe that they give equal treatment to girls and to boys, particularly in support of their learning, but focus group interviews with students and classroom observation suggest that this is rarely achieved; in most schools, boys appear to dominate certain classroom interactions, while girls participate more in teacher-student interactions which support learning. If the underachieveme...

This paper focuses on parents’ involvement with their child's schooling and the possible influences upon this. At a time when parental involvement is regarded as being highly important to a child's school achievement and given the Government's promotion of the role of parents in education, the conditions should be particularly conducive to involving all parents in this significant role. It will be argued, however, that in spite of increased statutory rights and a changing attitude towards parents by teachers and schools, parents’ social class location continues to have a direct impact upon their ability to intervene in their child's schooling. The paper concludes that increased parental involvement is probably desirable but the nature of this and its operationalisation needs to be carefully thought out.

The paper examines the complexity of West Indian pupils’ adaptations to school. Their situation is such that ability, hard work and a commitment to academic achievement may not be sufficient in the struggle for academic success. West Indian pupils face the additional barrier of staff ethnocentrism, which must be handled without reinforcing the widespread belief that they represent a challenge to teachers’ authority. The size of this task is examined through the use of detailed case studies of pupils drawn from ethnographic research in a single multi‐ethnic inner‐city Comprehensive. The paper describes the strategies which allowed one West Indian pupil to succeed academically, whilst a group of his peers experienced increasingly conflictual teacher‐pupil relations which culminated in academic failure and, in one case, expulsion from the school.

This paper examines the role that social characteristics play in determining the academic success of students who begin university with roughly similar entry grades. The data used were drawn from the administrative records of over 38,000 UK-domiciled undergraduate students from one British university between 1998 and 2009. Results show that the characteristics of entrants have varied only slightly over this period and intake is still largely in favour of ‘traditional’ entrants: namely those from professional occupational backgrounds, the privately educated and those of traditional age. The relationship between background characteristics and eventual academic success also reflects patterns seen at earlier education stages. However, when prior attainment was taken into account, the link between degree outcome and many social characteristics does diminish – notably for students who were privately educated and who came from professional occupational groups. This suggests that once students have overcome barri...

In Britain, educational qualifications gained at school continue to play an important and central role in young people’s educational and employment pathways. Recently there has been growing interest in documenting the lives of ‘ordinary’ young people. In this paper we analyse the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales in order to better document the experiences of those with ‘middle’ levels of school General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment. The overall pattern of school GCSE attainment is one of increasing levels of performance. GCSE attainment is still highly stratified. Girls performed better than boys, and there were some marked differences in attainment for pupils from the main minority ethnic groups. Most notably, parental socio-economic positions are the most important factor. The analyses fail to persuade us that there are clear boundaries that demark a ‘middle’ category of school GCSE attainment. We conclude that sociologists should study ‘ordinary’ young people; however, school GCSE attainment is best understood as a continuum, and measures such as the number of GCSEs or point scores are preferable.

This paper employs Foucauldian theory to consider Islamic boarding school experiences in Indonesia. For some pupils ‘the spirit of education’ – a dimension of pleasure – comes to be highly valued, creating a lifelong passion for the pursuit of knowledge. Two school principals (both pesantren [Islamic boarding school] graduates themselves) articulated strong commitment to the ‘spirit of education’. Yet their respective boarding schools were very poor, not only by western standards but compared with Indonesian public schools, and conditions were austere. The embodiment of pesantren discourse as high academic achievement is illustrated by the example of Khadija – a young female pesantren graduate now studying at doctoral level in the United Kingdom. Explaining the embodied production of the ‘spirit of education’ demands looking at charismatic pedagogy, strict rules, austere conditions and sparse provision of learning resources as regimes of truth and power–knowledge relations that inhere in pesantren as live...

Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working‐class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with first‐generation, working‐class students at a Canadian university to analyze the ways in which these students discuss their reasons to attend and their expectations for university, and the implications of their attitudes for their future success at university. Analysis of the interview data shows how the relatively high and risky investment of working‐class youth in education leads to strong utilitarian and vocational orientations toward university. Although a narrow focus on the career potential of university is generally perceived as problematic, I argue that it may also help working‐class students in their transition to university. Nonetheless, a critical educational process ...

In British Journal of Sociology of Education Volume 29 number 3, 2008, Connolly presented what he termed a 'critical review' of some of our previous work on the relative attainment of male and female students in UK schools. He proposed three general areas for criticism - our use of attainment gaps, our consideration of outcomes other than at specific thresholds, and our querying of the idea of student 'underachievement'. These problems, he claimed, have 'given rise to a number of misleading conclusions that have questionable implications for practice'. However, those of his 'criticisms' with any merit are actually the same as our own conclusions, transmuted by Connolly from our papers that he cites, while his remaining 'criticisms' are based on faulty elementary logic. In case readers have not read our work and were somehow misled by Connolly, we give here a brief reply to each criticism in turn. This matters, because a greater understanding of patterns of attainment and of the nature of underachievement is a precursor to the design of successful initiatives to overcome inequalities in educational opportunity and reward. This is both a practical and an ethical issue.

The student population across world is increasingly reflective of diverse cultures, religions and ethnicities. This rich diversity may become a challenge for educational leaders, teachers, and policy‐makers in the absence of an understanding of diverse sources of knowledge people draw on for directing their beliefs and daily practices. This paper explores the multi‐ethnic context in Britain with a focus on Muslim students in English secondary schools, and argues for drawing on diverse ethnic knowledge sources to inform and enrich approaches towards managing diversity. It discusses the concept of Adab derived from Muslim ethics and philosophy, and debates possible contributions of such conceptual adaptations towards improving educational engagement and performance.

The underachievement of boys has been a focus of intense concern in Australia for over 15 years. Historical analyses suggest that male students’ poor performance has traditionally been attributed to factors external to boys themselves (methods, teachers, texts), deflecting attention from the relationship between masculinity construction and successful engagement with school. This paper turns the focus back, addressing the ways in which gender itself was constructed within hearings held for the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys’ Education. Discursive analysis demonstrates that witnesses to the Inquiry drew upon a series of gender binaries in representing male and female students, and accounting for their relative attainment. These binaries worked to associate masculinity with ‘authentic’ learning, such that the success of male students was naturalised even in the absence of achievement. Conversely, the association of femininity and ‘inauthentic learning’ worked to undermine female students’ demons...

Can an explanation of the origins of social disparities in educational achievement be assisted by a critical examination of Bernstein’s sociology? This central question is approached by a consideration of the status of Bernstein’s socio‐linguistic thesis. The focus is on the nature of the explanations provided. The paper asks: What is the explanatory force of Bernstein’s structuralism? What is the relationship between Bernstein’s sociological explanations and Vygotskian psychological explanations? What are the effects for pedagogy of cognitive socialization mediated by language‐use consistent with Bernstein’s theory? The answers to these questions may pose a challenge for sociologists of education engaged with Bernstein’s sociology.

In the Australian state of Victoria, students from elite independent and Catholic schools dominate entry into elite universities. Nonetheless, there are a small number of schools within the government sector whose students succeed in these terms. Such schools are considered highly academic and entry is very difficult. This paper is based on initial findings from an ethnographic study of one such school. Interview material is used to explore how students understand their school culture, their place within it and its role in facilitating their aspirations. Various student subcultures are introduced, to shed light on how these may facilitate success. It is argued that successful students understand but remain sceptical about the uncomplicated definitions of success and the narrowing forms of schooling that both create and respond to such definitions. Within the context of marketisation, a Government school that creates an academic niche for itself, has little flexibility and, because of this, students learn ...

There is a widely recognised national trend for girls to outperform boys at all levels of compulsory schooling. With few exceptions, however, most recent research has reported that, in relation to academic performance at university, men are proportionately over-represented at the First Class level. A number of general hypotheses have been put forward to explain this phenomenon, including those that assume gender-linked differences in cognitive and/or personality traits. A smaller proportion of research has given explanatory primacy to the broad subject area studied. More specifically, it has been alleged that the over-representation of men within the First bracket is largely a function of a 'compositional effect' whereby men achieve proportionately more Firsts as there are more of them within the First-rich Sciences. Based upon analysis of 1,707,408 students graduating between 1995 and 2002, this paper seeks to provide the most comprehensive exploration, to date, of this effect. It confirms that a substantial proportion of the 'gender gap' can be explained with reference to the male propensity to take degrees in first-rich disciplines.

This paper describes a qualitative study about pedagogic practices in the family. The pedagogic code underlying family practices is characterized and related to specific social groups. Students' achievement is discussed in relation to family and school pedagogic practices. The analysis of family pedagogic practice was based on a model derived from Bernstein's theory. The model considers two main dimensions, the coding orientation and its specific realizations in both the instructional and regulative contexts. It provided indicators of the family discursive context and the form in which knowledges and values are transmitted. The model developed allowed a deep and delicate analysis of the family socializing context. The study showed that families differ in their coding orientation and pedagogic practices, and suggested that there are factors other than social groups to determine family's pedagogic practice. It also suggested that specific familial practices may explain children's differential achievement at...

Among the more relevant questions in educational research is how the governments and policy‐makers in transition countries address the high educational inequality inherited from the past and what policies they develop in order to reduce the strong effects of the background family and the type of school on students' achievements, their aspirations and their chances of succeeding in the most important educational transitions. This paper addresses one of the most topical issues in this area, namely the social selectivity of Czech basic and secondary education. Special attention is paid to the role of ‘multi‐year’ gymnasia. The results of analyses carried out on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2000 study corroborate the initial hypothesis according to which multi‐year gymnasia, introduced into the Czech educational system after 1989, represent one of the main sources of the variation in students' achievements at the end of compulsory education. However, this variation can be almos...

This article considers the notion of ‘underachievement’ as it is applied to pupil performance in school. It argues that rather than being a straightforward concept, underachievement is one where little consensus exists over its definition and measurement. Previous work on underachievement has tended to cluster around two manifestations of the issue. On the one hand, there is the comparative notion of differential achievement—often specifically low achievement—as used in media commentaries and, on the other, there is its definition in psychological research as the discrepancy between an individual's performance on a test of mental ability a subsequent school examination. Using a stricter definition of underachievement that takes into account a range of background as well as academic variables when predicting examination performance, this paper describes the construction of a model for predicting individual performance in future Key Stage 3 examinations. Individuals whose examination performance was then si...

This paper explores Basil Bernstein's insights into education and social class, and in particular the relevance of his work for understanding the British middle class. Bernstein is one of the few sociologists of education to recognise and explore differences and tensions within the middle class. We begin by exploring some of the influences of Bernstein's theorisation of social class in general, and outline his main ideas on the relationship between the middle class and education in particular. We then examine the relevance of his work for research on education and middle-class differentiation through drawing on data from our 'Destined for Success' project. This project traced the educational biographies of 300 young men and women from the beginning of their promising educational secondary school career to their mid-twenties. We argue that the distinctive dispositions and orientations of the 'new' and 'old' middle class proposed by Bernstein are evident within parental preferences for types of school, proc...

This paper examines the long-term association of family socioeconomic status (SES), educational, and labor force outcomes in a regional US longitudinal sample (N = 2264). The results offer insights into the mechanisms underlying the role of family SES in transitions from secondary schooling to early work experiences. It was found that the academic achievement gap associated with SES widens during secondary schooling due in part to course-level tracking. Family SES relates to college enrollment mainly via its association with academic gains in school, but also through family income and father's occupational status. Family SES is weakly but significantly related to adult offspring's earnings but more strongly related to occupational status. Educational qualifications and cognitive skills make independent contributions to the explanation of labor force outcomes. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor and Francis.

There are two general groups of methods of calculating achievement gaps (between groups of students in education) in common current usage, similar to those used to calculate social segregation in space and social mobility over time. Each type of method clearly seems valid to its proponents, yet their results in practice are radically different, and often contradictory. This brief paper considers both of these methods and some related problems in the calculation of achievement gaps, in an attempt to resolve the contradiction. The issue is a relatively simple one, but one with significant implications for social researchers as well as commentators in many areas of public policy using similar indicators of performance.

This paper explores the gender differences in achievements at a variety of levels in secondary schools in New Zealand. Gender differences are shown in relation to English, mathematics and science, but the pattern is not consistent across year levels in the senior school. The relative achievements of girls in single-sex and coeducational schools are explored in detail, with careful controls for the student population differences at the two types of school. When such controls are exercised, the apparent differences between the two types of school reduce to non-significance. Data from a longitudinal study of 37 schools and from the Ministry of Education national database are used.

Whether schools are racist continues to be the subject of intense debate in Britain. Those writing from an avowedly anti-racist stance argue that schools are responsible for the differential treatment of African-Caribbean pupils and that it is incumbent on them to reflect on their existing practices, while their critics writing from an expressed apolitical stance argue that perfectly appropriate professional practices result in badly behaved pupils receiving differential treatment, that African-Caribbean pupils only receive such treatment because they are more likely to misbehave and that there is no need therefore for schools to re-examine their practices. It is suggested that a way out of this impasse is to recognise that differential treatment and bad behaviour are part of a vicious cycle. While accepting that the evidence for racial discrimination in schools is stronger than the critics maintain, this paper argues, however, that we should be cautious in seeing such discrimination as the major factor a...

Private schools in Australia are a large, influential and heavily subsidized sector of secondary education, offering academic and social advantages to their mainly professional and managerial clients. Their influence on patterns of inequality in higher education and career recruitment is usually seen as a function of their homogeneity of intakes and higher resource levels. This paper argues that these factors become important, not through the operation of networks and family allegiances, but because of the way in which private schools exploit the curriculum. Private schools enable families to exercise scholastic power, not only social and political power. But this depends on maintaining an academic curriculum and on the ability of private schools to exploit the cultural values embedded in this curriculum. Success reinforces the authority of the curriculum over all schools, not just private non‐Catholic establishments, and through this a wider influence is exerted over social structure. This argum...

Current unprecedented levels of academic achievement among girls from all classes raise questions about the contemporary experience of girls in general and, in particular, working-class girls who, historically, perform less well. As the relatively low achievement of working-class girls has been associated with family culture and influence, this, in turn, raises questions about girls' experience in the contemporary family. This paper draws on findings from a recent research project and focuses on the contribution of working-class mothers to girls' achievement. Working-class families were defined as either traditional (retaining traditional gender relations) or transitional (challenging traditional gender relations). Factors which were identified as contributing to a 'transitional' life trajectory for a working-class mother might include: the impact of employment, adult education, the women's movement, and/or the experiences of divorce and lone parenting. The author concludes that while neither traditional nor transitional working-class mothers might become greatly involved informal aspects of schooling, it is clear that their relationships with their daughters strongly influence their academic experience. Mother-daughter relation- ship seemed to favour girls' educational achievement in three main and interconnected ways: (a) by emphasising independence, (b) by providing emotional support, and (c) by influencing girls' values in the light of current social change.