Effectiveness,Difference and Sociological Research

This article addresses Making the Difference (Connell et al., 1982) as a research project, in the specific context of Australian education and Australian sociology. It argues that the form of its research and writing have been as influential as the argument itself, and illustrates these themes by comparing that project of the early 1980s with two more recent Australian projects of the late 1990s. It is suggested that Making the Difference was successful in illustrating class and culturally based inequalities in the form of Australian schooling, and in illuminating some gendered processes of that schooling, but that its proposal for an 'organic working class curriculum' was difficult and utopian in conception, and quickly overtaken by broader interests in school 'effectiveness', and political moves to 'third way' policies rather than class war. It is argued that the Queensland New Basics project illustrates some of the lessons of engagement and communication offered by Making the Difference , and also the pragmatism of this new political context; and that the longitudinal 12 to 18 Project attempted to build on insights about class and gender of the earlier work, but with attention to some of the limitations of the type of focus on class of that work.     

Inclusion,exclusion and marginalisation

This article considers issues relating to the marginalisation and inclusion of pupils in a secondary school. It takes the perspective of a teacher researcher examining her everyday teaching in such a school. It has a particular focus on some black boys learning French. The article critically examines the social norms that (a) define the relations between teachers and pupils within classroom situations, (b) guide the researcher's relationship to the researched. It draws on recent psycho-analytical theory in providing an account of how children in school construct their own identity with particular reference to ethnicity and gender     

The impact of social capital in socio-emotional competencies of Spanish and immigrant adolescents from the Southeast of Spain

How important is the role that the different social institutions play in adolescents’ emotional development? This study alludes to the social capital framework to explain the influence that the family, school and peer relations have on the social-emotional competencies (SEC) of adolescents, immigrants and locals living in Southeastern Spain. Three social capital and socio-emotional competencies assessments scales were used in the study with 1614 pupils from 7 secondary schools. The results show that: (1) The social capital is a predictive and explanatory factor in adolescence. (2) The social relations that influence the SEC the most are those developed at school, followed by peer relations and, lastly, the family. (3) Spanish and Romanian teenagers show higher social capital and more SEC than Moroccans. (4) There are SEC gender differences among the Spanish group. (5) An immigrant school puzzle is observed in the Moroccan teenagers group who value school the most. (6) The family’s low emotional influence, particularly among Moroccan women, suggests that there is a deterioration of the institution and the existence of inter-generational differences. According to the results, schools remain a privileged space for SEC intervention programmes.     

The impact of social capital in socio-emotional competencies of Spanish and immigrant adolescents from the southeast of Spain

How important is the role that the different social institutions play in adolescents’ emotional development? This study alludes to the social capital framework to explain the influence that the family, school and peer relations have on the social-emotional competencies (SEC) of adolescents, immigrants and locals living in Southeastern Spain. Three social capital and socio-emotional competencies assessments scales were used in the study with 1614 pupils from 7 secondary schools. The results show that: (1) The social capital is a predictive and explanatory factor in adolescence. (2) The social relations that influence the SEC the most are those developed at school, followed by peer relations and, lastly, the family. (3) Spanish and Romanian teenagers show higher social capital and more SEC than Moroccans. (4) There are SEC gender differences among the Spanish group. (5) An immigrant school puzzle is observed in the Moroccan teenagers group who value school the most. (6) The family’s low emotional influence, particularly among Moroccan women, suggests that there is a deterioration of the institution and the existence of inter-generational differences. According to the results, schools remain a privileged space for SEC intervention programmes.     

Recognition and Realisation Rules in Acquiring School Science ‐‐ the contribution of pedagogy and social background of students

This study investigates the difficulties students encounter in problem solving in the area of sciences. Contrary to usual approaches of a fundamental psychological basis, the research takes into account the sociological processes of learning and transmission in both the family and the school. The aim of the study is to see the extent to which the students have recognition and realisation rules in the micro‐context of problem solving (specific coding orientation) and to find out the reasons which may underlie their difficulties. Thus the data obtained are related to social class, race and gender and also to pedagogic practices (differing in power and control relations) and school science achievement in high level cognitive competencies. They are also related to children's cognitive level. The results show a strong relation between social class and specific coding orientation to problem solving. The relation is also strong for race and weaker for gender. Specific coding orientation is also strongly related to cognitive development and science achievement. These relations differ for the variables according to realisation and recognition rules and their various indices. The study shows the positive influence of pedagogic practice, which constitutes a crucial finding to pedagogic change.     

We don’t play with gays,they’re not real boys … they can’t fight: Hegemonic masculinity and (homophobic) violence in the primary years of schooling

Whenever masculinity and school violence are considered in South African research, the focus is often on the high school. In this paper, we consider a different direction by drawing on Connell’s (1995) concept of hegemonic masculinity to understand the workings of power and violence amongst a group of South African primary school boys. Little is known about how forces of hegemonic masculinity operate to shape every day gender relations amongst younger boys. Against this background, this paper focuses on a particular group of boys, between 10 and 13 years old, who attend a ‘black’, working-class primary school in South Africa. In addition, they identify themselves as ‘real boys’, where being a ‘real boy’ is inextricably linked to violent ‘performances’ of hegemonic masculinity on the school playground during break time. The paper explores how these boys use forms of violence to claim control of the playground space and to exclude, marginalise and denigrate the other group of boys whom they construct as ‘unmasculine’ and ‘gay’. The findings raise implications for ways of curbing the violence, such as working with the boys to promote non-violent interpretations of performing, being and becoming a ‘real boy’.     

Girls negotiating sexuality and violence in the primary school

Girls’ vulnerability to sexual violence and harassment is a recurrent theme in much of the literature on schooling in sub‐Saharan Africa. Within this research, girls are often framed as passive victims of violence. By drawing on a case study, this paper focuses on 12 to 13‐year‐old South African school girls as they mediate and participate in heterosexual cultures that are simultaneously privileging and damaging. Set against the wider social context where violent gender relations are key to the building blocks of patriarchy, the paper examines how heterosexuality underscores the formation of femininity as girls engage with and participate with each other and boys in informal school relations. To this end, Butler's concept of the ‘heterosexual matrix’ is deployed to examine how girls navigate the wall of male power, where the ‘real’ expression of femininity is embedded within heterosexuality. The paper explores girls’ investment in heterosexual cultures in the school playground and on ‘dress‐up Friday’ to examine how gender power inequalities and violent relations manifest. In expanding the analysis of heterosexuality to primary school contexts, the paper broadens the focus of school‐based gender and sexualities research in sub‐Saharan Africa to address a neglected area of younger girls’ femininity and their active agency. The paper argues for the importance of addressing primary school girls, femininity and the power of heterosexuality through which relations of inequalities operate.     

Issues of Power,Masculinity, and Gender Justice: Sally's story of teaching boys

Despite calls for a more nuanced approach to issues of gender and equity that recognizes how broader relations of gender and power continue to produce injustices for many females, essentialized accounts expressing concern about boys’ poor educational performance remain the most common refrain in dominant equity discourses across Western contexts. This common refrain characteristic of current large scale gender reforms, such as Australia's parliamentary inquiry into the education of boys, Boys: Getting it right, is driven by a standards rather than social justice focus and thus creates silences around issues of gender injustice, power, and constructions of hegemonic masculinity. In this paper, I present “Sally's” story as a disruption of these silences. Sally is a young English teacher at “Penfolds College”, an all boys Catholic school in a large urban centre in Queensland (Australia). Her story, in illustrating how particular boys draw on broader discourses of masculinity to sexually harass and intimidate her, highlights the inadequacies of dominant public and policy discourse in terms of its failure to locate boys’ educational issues within broader contexts of inequitable gender relations.     

Latino expectations of communicative competence: A focus group interview study

Drawing on Martin, Hammer, and Bradford's (1994) work on intercultural communicative competence, this investigation explored Latino expectations of communicative competence using focus group interviews. Like the Martin et al. (1994) study, communicative competence was examined in four contexts — intracultural‐social, intracultural‐task, intercultural‐social, and intercultural‐task. Results indicated overall support for seven of Martin et al.’s (1994) eight behavioral categories. Data from focus group interviews in this study suggested an additional competence category specific to task contexts as well as some emic behaviors not identified in the Martin et al. (1994) investigation.     

Family learning and the socio-spatial practice of ‘supportive’ power

Family learning has been an important mode of education deployed by governments in the United Kingdom over the past 20 years, and is positioned at the nexus of various social policy areas whose focus stretch beyond education. Drawing on qualitative research exploring mothers’ participation in seven different family learning programmes across West London, this paper looks at how this type of education is mobilised; that is, how mothers are ‘encouraged’ to participate and benefit from this type of programme. Framed by a neo-liberal policy climate and Foucauldian writings on governmentality and surveillance, we explore how participating mothers are carefully ‘targeted’ for this type of learning through their children and through school/ nursery spaces, and how programmes themselves then operate as a supportive social space aimed at facilitating social networks, friendship and personal development linked to positions of gender, ethnicity, class and migrant status. It is the socio-spatial workings of ‘supportive’ power and power relations that enable family learning to be mobilised that ensures its popularity as a social policy initiative.     

‘Even with higher education you remain a woman’: a gender perspective on higher education and social change in the Toliara region of Madagascar

This article investigates some issues related to gender and education based on a qualitative, empirical study of women in higher education in the Toliara region of Madagascar. The focus is on how women’s participation in higher education has created changes in gender relations, and how these women have succeeded in achieving higher education. In spite of the interviewed women’s more influential social position and individual freedom, we found that the traditional gender expectations and economic expectations from the extended family are still present. Indeed, it appears that with rising social position and individual freedom, the pressure and demands from their extended families increase.     

Teachers' labour,class and the politics of exchange

In this article questions are raised about the adequacy of our theoretical frameworks for analysing teachers as class workers and actors, and as an occupational group. The problem of adequacy stems from using labour process theory and production relations as the only sphere for determining class location and class relations and in doing so fails to capture the complex way in which class relations are formed. Following Marx, the author observes that an adequate framework for conceptualising class must take into account, not only the social relations of production within the sphere of production, exchange, distribution and consumption, but how each mediates and transforms the other. This article focuses upon the sphere of exchange in understanding teachers' social class interests and teachers as political actors. It is argued that recent work on class assets by Wright (1997) and Savage et al (1992 - economic, cultural and organisational - and which the author extends to include social assets, offers a powerful way of understanding the complex nature of production relations and class as it is mediated through the process of exchange. This takes us some considerable distance forward on a much bigger project on developing a coherent theoretical and empirical project on theorising teachers work and social class.     

Spheres of influence: what shapes young people’s aspirations at age 12/13 and what are the implications for education policy?

Young people’s aspirations remain an enduring focus of education policy interest and concern. Drawing on data from an ongoing five-year study of young people’s science and career aspirations (age 10–14), this paper asks what do young people aspire to at age 12/13, and what influences these aspirations? It outlines the main aspirations and sources of these aspirations as expressed by young people in England in the last year of primary school (survey of 9000+ Y6 pupils, aged 10/11, interviews with 92 children and 76 parents) and the second year of secondary school (survey of 5600+ Y8 pupils, aged 12/13, interviews with 85 pupils). We demonstrate how aspirations are shaped by structural forces (e.g. social class, gender and ethnicity) and how different spheres of influence (home/family, school, hobbies/leisure activities and TV) appear to shape different types of aspirations. The paper concludes by considering the implications for educational policy and careers education.     

Constructions of childhood in school: Power,policy and practice in Irish education

This article considers the structuring of adult/child relations in Irish primary schools in terms of the absence of children's voice in much school practice. Drawing on the work of Foucault and Giddens, the article highlights how teacher constructions of childhood are framed within a 'needs' discourse, which precludes consideration of children's rights and status within school. The extent to which children accept or resist such construction is mediated by their age, gender and social class. Policy in relation to according children greater rights of consultation in school, as recommended in recent Irish legislation, will only be effective where teachers and children are afforded the opportunity to consider their relationship in terms of the exercise of power generally between adults and children, with implications for the rights and responsibilities of all parties in the educational encounter.     

'A Special Duty of Care': Exploring the narration and experience of teacher caring

The present article questions our conceptualisation of teacher caring in contemporary Australian society. It draws on media discussions of the school and teachers, and the writer's ethnographic experiences in an urban secondary high school, to explore our expectations of teachers and the ways in which these expectations shape teachers' relations with students. Our discussions about teachers suggest that underlying debates about the responsibilities of teachers are widely shared idealisations of the teacher figure. I suggest that Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and more specifically the development of this concept to talk specifically about an institutional habitus, can inform our understanding of the ways in which these ideals are enacted in a particular educational setting. I explore the ways in which broader social processes of social class and gender interplay and contribute to shaping caring relations between teachers and students through the intermediary structures of a specific high school.     

The emergence of social capital in low-income Latino elementary schools

Scholars suggest that racial/ethnic and class disparities in school-based social capital contribute to educational inequalities. Previous studies demonstrate that social capital (relations of trust, mutual expectations, and shared values) between parents and schools supports children's development. Yet we know little about the emergence of social capital, that is, the processes through which it develops. In this study, we explore mechanisms of social capital emergence in predominantly low-income Latino school communities. We draw data from an experimental study that manipulated social capital through an after-school family engagement program. Based on interviews and focus groups with participating parents, teachers, and program staff in two elementary schools, we identified four types of interactions that act as mechanisms of social capital emergence: (1) responsive communication; (2) reciprocal communication; (3) shared experiences; and (4) institutional linkage. The article connects these mechanisms to theoretically linked sources of social capital and discusses implications for theory and practice.     

Swedish young people’s after-school extra-curricular activities: attendance,opportunities and consequences

Recent research demonstrates that, along with the family, the peer group and the school environment, extra-curricular activities are important contexts for young people’s educational and social development. This article is the result of a survey conducted with a sample of young people in their last year of compulsory school in Sweden and examines both who has access to the different types of extra-curricular activity and the consequences of their participation in the various programmes. As the results indicate, after controlling for respondents’ class and migrant background, their gender and their health, there are positive and significant associations between participation in certain types of activity (sporting, cultural and religious) on the one hand, and students’ school performance and educational expectations on the other. However, attendance at a less-organised activity (youth recreation centres or fritidsgård) shows a negative association with these outcomes. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the gender, social class and migrant background of students affect their rate of participation in many of these activities.     

Fighting for Desired Versions of a Future Self: How Young Women Negotiated STEM-Related Identities in the Discursive Landscape of Educational Opportunity

In this article, we investigate how the national imperative to increase opportunities for young women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to broaden their participation was taken up locally at two high schools in one school district. Using ethnographic and longitudinal data, we focus on four young women of color (two at each school) as they negotiated STEM-related identities in the discursive and practice contexts of their lives at school. Using Holland and Lave’s concept of history in person, we view the young women as fighting for particular versions of a future self while entangled in discursive and social relations that threatened to position them differently than they wished to be. We find that their fight for future selves was not—for them—with the national narrative about women of color in STEM but with local school narratives that negatively positioned students of color more broadly and remained silent on issues of gender, the intersection of gender and race, and the implications for STEM. High school success in STEM came as a hopeful but potentially fragile byproduct of struggles to differentiate themselves from people like them (other Blacks, Latinas, the poor). Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Individuals and Leadership in an Australian Secondary Science Department: A Qualitative Study

In this article, we consider the complex and dynamic inter-relationships between individual science teachers, the social space of their work and their dispositions towards teacher leadership. Research into the representation of school science departments through individual science teachers is scarce. We explore the representations of four individual teachers to the assertions of teacher leadership proposed by Silva et al. (Teach Coll Rec, 102(4):779–804, 2000). These representations, expressed during regular science department meetings, occur in the social space of Bourdieu’s “field” and are a reflection of the “game” of science education being played within the department. This departmentally centred space suggests an important implication when considering the relationship between subject departments and their schools. The development of an individual’s representation of teacher leadership and the wider “field” of science education appears to shape the individual towards promoting their own sense of identity as a teacher of science, rather than as a teacher within a school. Our work suggests that for these individuals, the important “game” is science education, not school improvement. Consequently, the subject department may be a missing link between efforts to improve schools and current organizational practices.     

Participatory pedagogy for empowerment: a critical discourse analysis of teacher–parents’ interactions in a family literacy course in London

This paper revisits and discusses some of Paulo Freire’s theoretical tenets for participatory education suggested as part of a critical approach to the education of adults. Through data collected during a family literacy programme, the author analyses her discursive interactions as an adult education tutor with parents as learners. These discourse practices are analysed using critical discourse analysis and are discussed against Freire’s principles for participatory pedagogy. The author’s decision to insert the analysis and discussion of her classroom practices within these theoretical frameworks lies on their focus on language and their alleged commitment to the transformation of discursive practices that reinforce unequal power relations in society. The findings of the study indicate the presence of authoritarian discourse that does little to change the power relations within the classroom. The author posits that despite managing to give rise to a discussion of themes related to parents’ advocacy and language awareness in their interactions within their children’s school, a deeper realisation and discussion of these issues was hindered by her failure to challenge the order of discourses present in her interactions with parents. The author concludes by suggesting that there is a need for teachers to closely re‐evaluate the features of their own discourse practices if immigrant parents attending family literacy courses are to be given a voice within the classroom as a first step towards raising their prospects of advocacy and empowerment in wider social contexts.