This paper draws on a three-year critical ethnography which interrogated intersections of social class, school and identity in an urban Irish community. The focus here is on the psycho-spatial disidentifications, inscriptions and class fractioning enacted throughout the school and community of Portown by a cohort of succeeding students from this…

This paper examines post-primary school choice processes in the urban Irish working-class community of Portown. Here, there is an awareness of hegemonic neoliberal ideals and how school choice becomes a significantly classed space characterised by market ideologies and structural inequality. This critical ethnography explored the world through…

Young people in Irish schools are required to choose whether to sit secondary exam subjects at higher or ordinary level. This paper draws on a mixed methods longitudinal study of students in 12 case-study schools to trace the factors influencing take-up of higher level subjects within lower secondary education. School organisation and process are…