Using a comparative case study, this paper explores the pedagogic practices for regulating behaviour in two Norwegian primary school classrooms with social compositions that become increasingly contrasted due to an increasing school segregation. Based on classroom observations and teacher interviews and using Bernstein's concepts of 'framing' and…

Drawing on interviews we explore the centrality of belonging to rural places, embedded within time, in shaping life as a male reader, regardless of country of origin, or generation. Place theory explored the assemblages of spaces important for 6 boys (10-11 year-olds) from Australia and 6 men (25 year-olds and 60 year-olds) from Sweden in their…

This article examines how educational transitions in Hong Kong are concurrently classed processes and practices, and how learner identity is developed and negotiated in an education system that prizes English as capital. Through the lens of habitus, the connected but distinct autobiographical accounts suggest that the stronger the insulation…

This article considers the understandings of space and place amongst a group of disaffected students within an institution that had been in a state of flux over a number of years. The article explores ways in which students are positioned by institutions into specific spaces, ways in which they use those spaces to challenge authority and ways in…

This article addresses the negotiation of "queer religious" student identities in UK higher education. The "university experience" has generally been characterised as a period of intense transformation and self-exploration, with complex and overlapping personal and social influences significantly shaping educational spaces,…

The impact of participation in adult literacy programmes on learners' identities is examined through an interrogation of their past and current experiences and the assessment of the effect of particular pedagogies. The findings show how learners' positive experiences in their programmes had caused them to re-evaluate their previous understandings…

This paper intends to show the processes and identity negotiations of white working-class boys surrounding their own learner-identity within a "raising aspirations" rhetoric. The current dominant neoliberal discourse, which prioritizes a view of aspiration that is competitive, economic, and status-based, shapes the subjectivities of…

This paper considers whether societal changes are making space for some working-class boys to go against the grain and foster positive reader identities. Drawing on interviews with 30 Australian boys about their experiences at school, Nancy Fraser's social justice framework is used to explore their parity of participation as readers. Responses…

Cultural reproduction is rarely, if ever, theorised through clandestine practices of sexual offending by teachers in the gendered hierarchies of state schools. Drawing upon Freedom of Information requests and other official qualitative data provided by a U.K. teaching council, this article endeavours to explain the form of a gendered cultural…

This article starts from the puzzle that although French elite institutions enjoy extremely positive and attractive images, students from these schools generally choose to conceal their academic pedigree in their daily interactions. We show that, in a context of growing inequalities of access to "grandes ecoles," the strategy of hiding…

There is a large body of research in studies of schooling, particularly ethnographic case studies, which posits that collective action among students undermines engagement in school and contributes to educational inequality. In this paper I review studies of engagement from a social identity theory perspective. To what extent can collective action…

This paper explores the ways in which Arab/Palestinian high school students in Israel negotiate their civic and national identities. The paper draws upon qualitative data that included semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 20 students in an Arab Muslim high school. It focuses on the ways in which they make sense of the notion of…

This article investigates how 15-year-old white and Turkish students in two Inner London comprehensive schools, one in a predominantly working-class area (Millroad School) and the other in a more middle-class environment (Darwin School), construct their identities. Drawing on mainly qualitative data from documentary sources, focus groups and…

This paper examines the effect of school social class composition on pupil learner identities in British primary schools. In the current British education system, high-stakes testing has a pervasive effect on the pedagogical relationship between teachers and pupils. The data in this paper, from ethnographic research in a working-class school and a…

This paper explores the ways in which sixth-form students in Milton Keynes negotiate their identities and the symbolic significance they attach to leisure activities in the process of doing this. The paper draws upon qualitative, young-person-centred interviews with sixth formers in state and private schools. It addresses the investments of sixth…