Most new students experience school to university transition as challenging. Students from backgrounds with little or no experience of higher education are most vulnerable in this transition, and most at risk of academic failure. Emotion appears implicated in the differential way in which first-generation students and students with family…

There is widespread international concern about post-16 participation rates in science, with women's under-representation constituting a particular issue. This paper contributes to these debates through a novel, critical examination of the role of masculinity within boys' negotiations of science aspirations. Drawing on a UK longitudinal study of…

This case study narrative examines the circumstances underlying problems of residency in an affluent Midwest suburb experiencing an unexpected influx of working class African American students. Dilemmas engender a cultural mismatch between teachers and students and discomfort with African-American males. In a controversial climate where students…

Empowering settings are important places for people to develop leadership skills in order to enact social change. Yet, due to socio-cultural constructions of childhood in the US, especially constructions around working class and working poor children of Color, they are often not seen as capable or competent change agents, or in need of being in…

In the United States, one is born into a family that can be identified as working class, middle class, or affluent--divisions that denote status and power, as defined by access to resources. This article explores the relationships between social class membership and a wide array of personal and social daily life experiences. It concludes with a…

This article contributes to the growing social realist literature in the sociology of education. A world systems approach is used to explain the shift to the various forms of localisation, including the emphasis on experience in the curriculum, as a strategy of globalisation that contributes to the decline of universal class consciousness and…

In working class education, one of the primary goals in addition to basic literacy was the formulation of class-based interpretations of society. In the late 19th and early 20th century, as literacy programs began to filter into the lives of proletariat, an attempt to expand the definition of literacy past basic reading and writing skills…

Resistance is typically framed around the experiences of youth with oppression within institutions and through "intersecting" systems of domination. Resistance among those who benefit the most from current institutional arrangements, like students attending elite schools, has rarely been considered in how resistance is theorized. This postcard is…

This article explores social class and gender differences in entry to the two main higher education sectors, universities and institutes of technology, among school leavers in Ireland over the period 1980-2006. A rational choice perspective is adopted, with participation hypothesised to reflect the costs and benefits attaching to attending the two…

As the numbers of working-class students at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which they consolidate their working-class habitus with the middle-class culture of the academic field. Drawing on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a large,…

University expansion in higher education has been hierarchically differentiated. There is some concentration of certain social profiles in some degrees of study, so social composition between degrees can vary considerably. This article describes in terms of social composition 10 degrees of four public universities in the metropolitan area of…

This paper argues that working-class widening participation in education is not necessarily new. While it can be argued that it was established in the late twentieth century as a concept and government strategy, aspects of its origins can be traced back to movements such as the mechanics' institute movement, first established by the 1850s. Such…

The United States Administration on Aging (2011) predicts that over the next forty years the number of people 65 and older will double and the number of people 85 and older will triple. Meanwhile, technology is becoming more and more important in our everyday lives. The ubiquitous presence of technology in our lives is evidenced in daily…

Background: Education researchers are paying increasing attention to student activism and to the social production of school spaces. Few studies, however, have brought these two concerns together to examine how student activists work to rebuild school spaces in line with their political commitments. In the present study, I address this gap at the…

Sociologists of education have explored the relationship between students' postsecondary aspirations and their propensity to get "cooled out" in community colleges. However, researchers have directed little attention to students whose aspirations remain stable over long periods of time or to the different roles that college degree goals…