Explores narratives given by a group of British students on their future career aspirations, attending particularly to diversity. Offers an analysis of the self that is highly fractured, and reveals that inner diversity may account for contradictory student narratives. Suggests implications for an alternative feminist critical pedagogy that…

Drawing on students' literacy autobiographies, this article critiques the premise that academic discourse and working-class identity are not only static but also in complete opposition. The author argues for a more performative theory of class, a theory that would, she explains, recognize that academic discourse creates social class distinctions…

Looking back at the debates about public schooling in the 1820s can be especially important today when Congress seeks to reinscribe the same definitions of schooling that the working class leaders tried to resist in the 19th century. On the platform for the New York Working Man's Party in 1829 was "equal education," a term that meant…

Discusses the importance of teachers' awareness of students' backgrounds and cultures and cites research conducted in Great Britain by B. Tizard and M. Hughes and in the United States by S. Heath to support this belief. (DF)

Examines ways in which current United Kingdom school-choice policies interact with parental pressures on their children to achieve excellence and how these pressures affect the emotional health of their middle- and working-class children as they make the transition from primary to secondary school. Finds serious emotional consequences (exam…

Examines background factors of nineteenth-century education, especially the development of systematic training for elementary school mistresses, and social class. Concentrates on Whitelands College's recruitment of future teachers with reference to their social class. (NH)

This paper draws on a systematic review of qualitative research to explore the resilient mothering practices that young, British, working-class mothers employ to care for their children. The synthesis of studies of UK mothers under the age of 20 demonstrates how young working-class women must mother in impoverished circumstances, at the same time…

Family socialization is a social mechanism of the reproduction of social inequality from one generation to the next. The argument about the "class-specific socialization," which stopped in the 1970s, is being taken up again with this discussion and developed further towards a theory of socio-structural and situation-specific…

Educated Black women are often wrongly viewed as a homogeneous group, obscuring important differences of social class. Black women of different social classes do not face the same route to college. Both race and class operate within urban settings to either create or limit the options and strategies available to Blacks for attaining educational…

Examined personal storytelling of European-American preschoolers from working- or middle-class families as a medium through which they construct autonomous selves. Found that children in both communities had extensive rights to speak of past experiences and limited rights to author experiences. Middle-class communities viewed expressing one's view…

Through a discourse of diversity, specialism, equality and choice, selective schooling is again on the UK education agenda. A previous selection policy operated between 1944 and 1964. The argument that some children are more suited to a vocational education and others to an academic one is evident now and then. This paper focuses on the…

Purpose: This article analyses how higher education institutions (HEIs) have responded to government policy to increase the participation rates of students from lower social classes through their admissions policies. Design/methodology/approach: The article uses documentary evidence and interviews with institutional policy makers to examine HEI…

Interviews with low-income parents revealed that they were aware of the class character of local schools and believed that high-income schools were superior. Ninety-four percent favored social class school desegregation, believing that their children would thereby obtain a better education and better preparation for social interaction in adult…

Using data from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this study examines the social disparity of family involvement. A total of 4,405 students from 140 Hong Kong secondary schools participated in the first cycle of PISA study identifying four types of…

Research literature suggests that adults from working-class minority backgrounds demonstrate authoritarian and coercive tendencies in their choices of disciplinary strategies when compared with adults from middle-class, "white", "Anglo", or "North American" backgrounds. However, in a recent study in New York City,…