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In 2019 Ofsted introduced cultural capital (CC) into the Early Years Inspection Handbook and defined it as 'essential knowledge' related to 'educated citizenship'. This paper investigates Ofsted's use of CC to critically examine the potential implications for early years work. Due to the feminised nature of early years work, a critical feminist approach is engaged to explore the potential impact of introducing CC into the regulation of the sector. This paper examines the differences between Ofsted's use of CC, CC's theoretical origins, and analyses sector responses. Our contention is that how Ofsted have employed CC may represent 'symbolic violence' against the working-class women working in the early years, by further devaluing their habitus and sustaining the stratification of society through forms of capital. This paper is the first to interrogate CC in Ofsted's early years documentation, and will have an international impact for any countries following UK education practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how nursing education both exemplifies the contradictions of neoliberalism alongside its seemingly all-encompassing influence. We conduct a feminist critical policy analysis to trace the histories of nursing as a feminised vocation located outside the academy, and how this is reflected in recent policy. We then critically explore widening participation and social mobility in relation to nursing education, and demonstrate how a discourse of fairness is used to justify market solutions. The 'special case' of nursing is considered through an analysis of how 'the nurse' as subject is constituted in education policy discourse. Our discussion focuses on the effects of these reforms and demonstrates how historical discourses that centre on women as carers are assimilated into the 'neoliberal social imaginary'. The paper's scope is both local – the gendered history of nursing education in England – and global – the force of neoliberal globalisation in education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social reproduction theory names at least two distinct traditions, one of which has a long history in educational research. Social reproduction theory in education emerged out of a concern with education's relationship to capitalist inequalities. By contrast, social reproduction feminism developed out of feminist interventions regarding the role of women's unpaid care-work in the reproduction of capitalism. In this paper, we suggest that the renewed energy surrounding social reproduction feminism provides an opportunity to revisit social reproduction theorizing in education. We review the fields' histories and ready the ground for an integrated framework. At the heart of this integration is a feminist analysis of reproductive labor in its contradictory relationship to capitalism. Expanding the analysis from the reproduction of capitalist relations to the reproduction of life under capitalism, this approach avoids the pitfalls of determinism and attends to students' participation and teachers' work in the contested labor of social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses events at Kingsmead School, Hocknwy, in the aftermath of head teacher, Jane Brown's refusal to take children to a ballet of Romeo and Juliet. The paper explores the ensuing struggle over space, governance and gender within the centext of LEA power after LMS. It analyses different levels of governance direct, midway and at a distance, and explores the relationship between these levels and developed legal powers. The paper links Hackney's techniques of governing, and school supporters' acts of resistance, to their competing spatial representations of Kingsmead Highlighted are discourses of ridicule, excessive sexuality, kingship, community and parents rights, as well as techniques of discipline, law, and fortification. Finally, the paper explores the conflict in terms of the production of lesbian feminist space, and considers the centrality of gender to the events that occurred. [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]

This paper seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieu's work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieu's theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post-structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieu's work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieu's theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieu's oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt ( McNay, 1999 ; McLeod, 2004 ) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self-hood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to critique the concepts of 'teacher professionalism' and 'professional identity' as they are currently manifest in the field of teaching and teacher education from two related feminist perspectives. In the first instance, feminist critiques of liberal democracy are drawn upon to expose the gendered assumptions which underlie dominant conceptions of the 'professional' teacher. Particular attention is paid to the now dominant view of the teacher as a rational and instrumental actor, and its gendered dimensions are explored. Second, the gender dualisms which reside at the heart of the concept 'teacher professionalism' are identified and discussed. The discussion is then widened to examine the role of gender politics in shaping the epistemological premises upon which teacher professionalism is developed and its more formative role in the exploitation of women teachers' labours. Drawing upon examples of current feminist research and my own preliminary empirical data, the paper concludes by presenting an alternative conceptual framework for assessing the gendered nature of identity formation in teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper chronicles the struggles in Queensland education to have the educational disadvantages of girls included on the agenda. The new right policies of the Queensland government have precipitated a powerful anti-feminist lobby Nonetheless, the government and the education department have been 'forced' into at least formulating an Equal Opportunity policy for girls (and boys') While the policy is weak and departmental commitment limited, some progressive teachers have been able to 'use' the policy to implement progressive practices. In a more general sense, the paper looks at the usefulness or otherwise of such policies which have developed out of a liberal feminist framework While not denying their worth, the paper also argues that women's issues have to be fought for in the context of a broader social agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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' demonstrated success. The role of these binaries in the reproduction of a paradoxical relationship between gender and achievement is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Olive Banks' work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least 'fashionable' aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills' contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in participation and achievement patterns mark a turning point for girls in schooling and place female empowerment squarely in the public domain. Using data from a longitudinal study of girls, this paper looks at female empowerment by exploring the relationship between the production of female subjectivity and the processes operating in social spaces. Findings relating to aspirations for girls’ future careers are placed within a context of decile school ratings, and from those findings insights are offered about how the rhetoric of ‘girl power’ is lived and spoken into existence in relation to categories of social class. By examining how schooling, family and classed processes weave through hopes and dreams, the intent is to contribute towards a line of discussion about the shaping of female subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-sex education for girls constitutes a focal point around which issues of gender, choice and educational decision-making coolesce My concern is not to enter the debate about the merits of single-sex education for girls per se, but to examine the relationship between discourses of feminity and discourses around single-sex schooling to see how they interact in the choice of single-sex schools by girls and their parents In this paper, I explore the ways in which aspects of feminist poststructuralist theory can be used to offer a more dynamic and complex account of the processes of school choice than that assumed by neo-liberal theorists The theory I develop is illuminated by interviews with three girls and their parents, from different social-class backgrounds, at the point at which they were making decisions about secondary school to apply for A focus such as this enables me to do two things firstly, to develop a more adequate understanding of the relationship between gender and educational decision-making, and secondly, to critique the underlying theory of instrumental rationality, and its relationship to school choice, which has underwritten the marketisation of education in Aotearoa/New Zealand [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the work and effects of gender reform in schools through the use of feminist post-structuralist theory. Focusing on the discourses designed to enhance girls' post-school options, it examines the ways in which teachers and students, particularly girls, write, read and rewrite these discourses and on the basis of this suggests some new directions for researching, theorising and practicing gender reform in schools. In particular, it raises questions about the ways in which feminist pedagogies in schools deal with the female body, difference, pleasure and pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper overviews part of a wider study of femmist teachers, born and educated in New Zealand in the years immediately following World War Two The method used is life history analysis, which explores 'biography, history and social structure.' The first part discusses the post-war educational context through analysing contradictions in curriculum policies and expectations for girls' education and exploring the relevance of these to the resurgence of feminism as a mass social movement amongst 'educated' women of the time. The second part presents two case studies of the school experiences of two New Zealand women who have, as adults, become educators and come to identify themselves as feminists. The focus of the case studies is on the strategtes those women developed to deal with the contradictions in their lives and to trace the beginnings of their political radicalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

In 2016 the world witnessed a consolidation of a western brand of political 'populist authoritarianism' that is anti-globalisationalist and creates 'shared objects of loathing' in the popular imagination. This article engages with the implications of this affective and masculinist 'post-truth' era for higher education and analyses the narratives of teacher educators who teach compulsory classes based on inclusion and diversity. The article uses the work of feminist, Indigenous and queer theorists to explore gendered responses to pedagogical encounters recounted in the data. We offer a reading of these experiences that links white male objections, particularly around the teaching of gender and race, to the growth of neoconservatism that precipitated the contemporary rise of populist authoritarianism. The pedagogical encounters we explore reflect the notion that the Australian white male is a figure who is brought undone by allowing the subaltern to speak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how higher education is being conceptualized as part of a neo-liberal ‘feminist’ social change project in the post-imperial context of the Arab Gulf. Challenging the tendency to essentialised treatments of gender and women in Muslim countries, it makes visible the diverse experiences and views of a particular group of Gulf purposively sampled women – students, graduates and academics – as it explores how they are situating themselves against available feminist narratives, how they are seeing themselves as citizens and political actors, and how higher education’s spaces and constraints are mediating these processes. A conflicted picture emerges, of mass higher education helping provide women with radical ideas and ambitions, and helping to make public demands and assert self-representation, while their freedoms to act are limited by underlying hegemonic structures that are still predominantly male and against which women variously rationalize their strategic conformity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Judith Butler’s philosophical writings on identity have provided inspiring, if occasionally ‘troubling’, ways of rethinking gender. A key contribution has been the challenge to conventional social constructionist ideas and thinking on subjectivity. In developing a paradigm of performativity, Butler’s work takes us beyond the territory of identity secured in much previous feminist poststructuralist debate. She does so in part by providing an ontological critique—a type of ‘queering’ if you will—of such seemingly knowable categories as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘girl’ or ‘boy’. In addressing the radical interruption in identity theorising offered in Butler’s writing, we consider the arresting claim that identity is a type of ‘doing’ that is only made manifest at the point of action. To explore the theoretical, empirical and political issues at stake, we draw especially upon Butler’s writings on identity and ally this to some of our own ethnographic research on gender, youth and schooling. Here, we explore young people’s compulsion to enact and display stylised forms of gender embodiment, and the spectacular enactments of transgression that can elicit a practice of gender dissimulation. Our focus is upon the subversion, regulation and embodiment of gender identities and its implications for the sociology of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the question of how to interpret the relation between the production of subjectivity and the effects of different forms of schooling. Two kinds of problem are explored. The first is the immediate empirical and historical one of understanding how gender and class subjectivity takes shape and is embodied by Australian secondary-school students. This is investigated through close readings of interviews with two young people who are participants in a qualitative, longitudinal study of Australian secondary-school students—the '12 to 18 Project'. The article thus examines the developmental and longitudinal aspect of identity formation, and addresses the impact of feminism on gender change. The second problem is how to theorise the subjectivity–schooling relation, and this is explored through an analysis of the interactions between individual biographies and the aspirations and discursive practices of different schools. After considering some contemporary approaches to subjectivity, the discussion proposes a return to Bourdieu's notions of habitus and social field and, through an analysis of the two case studies, illustrates how habitus is formed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the present time, youngsters. develop gender identities in a context in which contradictory discourses exist on femininity and masculinity. They have to accommodate both the fact that gender is an important structuring category in society and the fact that many people currently consider gender inequality to be undesirable. This article argues that an understanding of the ambivalences in current discourses on gender provides the key to the development of more effective feminist strategies in education. This tenet is illustrated by means of interpreting the data of two studies on recent curricular experiments---one on women's history and one on information and computer literacy-in which girls and boys in secondary education talked and wrote about their views on gender equality/ inequality and the meaning thereof in their personal lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case-study related to gender education policy and explores notions of identity and difference in relation to gender and ethnic minority status within the context of Australian schooling. This has been discussed through an examination of education policies related to gender. Feminist theorizations of identity as shifting and unessentialized offer a range of insights most relevant to schooling. In this article, these understandings have been explored most specifically in relation to Australian ethnic minority women and girls whose status as women, ethnic minority and, most often, working class leads many to attribute to them notions of compounded disadvantage and a consequential eagerness to relinquish their subject locations. This assumed eagerness is attributed more so to ethnic minority adolescent schoolgirls because of the understanding of culture clash which has permeated education policy. The construction of ethnicity in Australia has a limited commonality with the blackness and the racism so often referred to in feminist literature concerned with identity and difference.

Sociology as a discipline, like a number of other social science and humanities disciplines, has experienced considerable fracturing of its theoretical and epistemological underpinnings, and a related growth but also fragmentation in the kinds of empirical research carried out. In this article the author endeavor to illustrate some of the recent concerns of; and changes to, sociology, sociology of education and women's studies, as well as some sense of the impact of those changes over recent decades, by means of an auto/biographical account of a career as a teacher and researcher within the fields of sociology, education and women's studies. Feminist reconceptualisations of the concept of career have noted that thinking of careers as orderly and rational does not always helps to understand the complexities of women's lives. One of the strengths of auto/biographical accounts is that they enable both writers and readers to ground regional, national and global changes in individual identities, trajectories and perceptions. As sociology has dissolved into cultural studies, political economy and social geography, it has also excluded many of its more practical and empirical concerns. This has been all the more so as the growing trends towards post-modernism rejects any notion of abstract or overarching theories.

This article is an attempt to apply a systematic use of theory to gender inequalities in education. It expands on the tenets of liberal, radical, and socialist feminist perspectives to account for differential gender outcomes in terms of educational access, attainment, and field of study choices. The State emerges as a key actor regulating and promoting educational processes and outcomes, and the perspective that most accurately captures the State's practices is socialist feminism. There has been a recent convergence in feminist thought toward the meshing of ideological and material elements in the explanation of women's subordination, bringing closer than ever the radical and socialist feminist perspectives. These perspectives detect severe limits in the State's ability to improve women's conditions while groups outside the State, particularly women-run organizations, are identified as the most likely sources of significant educational change and thus social change, in the interests of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship of teacher to the State during the first decades of this century. It argues that teachers had a particular ideological, political and economic role within the State. It takes issue with the recent studies of Ozga & Lawn which have invested teacher's trade union militancy with an anti-statist politics. This article employs a different approach to explain teachers' politics, especially those of feminist teachers. Exploring the objective and subjective relationship of teachers to the State, the article concludes that teachers' strategies were statist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]