Becoming Educated: Young People's Narratives of Disadvantage, Class, Place and Identity

by John Smyth, Peter McInerney

Overview

Becoming Educated examines the education of young people, especially those from the most 'disadvantaged' contexts. This book shifts the focus to matters such as taking social class into consideration, puncturing notions of poverty and disadvantage, understanding neighborhoods as places of hope and creating spaces within which to listen to young peoples' aspirations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433122125
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	03/20/2014
Series:	Adolescent Cultures, School, and Society , #67
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	174
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Smyth is Research Professor of Education, Faculty of Education & Arts, Federation University Australia, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. He is the inter-disciplinary Research Theme Leader for Addressing Disadvantage and Inequality in Education and Health. His research interests are in policy sociology, policy ethnography, social justice, and sociology of education.
Peter Mcinerney is Research Associate, Faculty of Education & Arts, Federation University Australia, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. His research interests are in forms of school reform that promote social justice.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 Setting the stage: exposing the grand erasure' 1

Becoming infected! 4

Becoming educated as a construction 7

Schooling as a cultural production… but of a particular kind! 8

Developing a 'critical constellation" for the rest of the book 9

2 Going about our research craft: critical researchers as political authors 13

Introduction 13

Putting the critical back into educational research 15

Theorizing our research: an evolving criticality 17

'My place, my school, my world': context matters 20

The political landscape 21

The spatial landscape: place(s) young people call home 23

The educational landscape and profiles of participating schools 25

An extended case study: space, place and identity 27

Research design 28

Research methods 29

Ethnographic interviews 29

Critical ethnographic narratives: representational challenges 30

'It's definitely easier on your nerves going to school here' 32

Concluding remarks 33

3 From deficits and deficiencies to strengths and capabilities: puncturing notions of disadvantage 35

Introduction 35

Poverty, deprivation and exclusion: the material realities of social and educational disadvantage 37

Deficits, deficiencies and differences: what lies behind the label 'disadvantage'? 41

Theorizing social reproduction and educational disadvantage 42

Poverty, disadvantage and education policy in Australia 44

Schools and the perpetuation of educational disadvantage 48

Becoming educated: young peoples' narratives of disadvantage, opportunities and constraints 50

Concluding comments 61

4 Bringing class out of the closet 63

Introduction 63

Why class is important in 'becoming educated' 65

Stepping up to the 'injuries of class' 70

The making over of a 'residualized' school 73

What is a westie? 79

5 Celebrating space, place and neighborhoods 81

Introduction 81

Contesting the deficit discourse 81

Speaking back to pathological views 85

Bringing young people into the conversation 89

From despair to hope 99

Concluding comments 102

6 Identity and capacity to aspire 105

Introduction and positioning 105

'Poverty of aspiration' or 'poverty of opportunity'? 107

Negotiating a learning identity in hard times 110

'Young people as the new public intellectuals' 113

Aspirations and learning identity for 'ordinary kids' 115

a Access to 'opportunity resources' and local immediacy 118

b Possessing and using navigational maps 119

c Opportunities to 'practice navigational capacity' 121

d Precedent setting and capacity to aspire 123

7 Re-framing what it means to be educated 127

Why are we having 'boring, meaningless shit'? 127

Looking for the 'print of class' in the process of becoming educated 131

Confronting and puncturing the 'hands-on' myth 133

Are these really broken communities? 135

Aspirations or imagined futures: are they the same thing, and does it really matter? 137

Some last words…at least for the moment! 140

References 143

Author Index 159

Subject Index 165