This article advances a gender-conscious conception of relational education emanating from the Taking Boys Seriously longitudinal participatory action research initiative in Northern Ireland. The study is grounded in the voices and experiences of boys from disadvantaged communities who have been disengaged, disinterested, or excluded from school.…

This collaborative autoethnography (Bochner and Ellis, 2016) has created a space for three women academics from working-class heritage, navigating the liminal and temporal space of the COVID-19 pandemic within a post-1992 Higher Education Institution, to explore the social relations of one Higher Education Institution and confront their lived…

Research has highlighted that engagement with science is highly gendered and that the masculinised culture of science makes it difficult for many girls/women to engage. Meanwhile, a growing body of research has explored the potential of out-of-school spaces to provide more equitable engagement opportunities. In this paper, I examine engagement…

This paper discusses a piece of qualitative research that explored the narratives of a group of mature women when they discussed influences on their post-16 educational decisions. This encompasses their initial vocational education and training (VET) and their choice to study higher education (HE) programmes in England. The research draws on Nancy…

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…

This case explores the use of feminist memory work with working-class women social science students, who narrated and interpreted what helped and hindered them to study at university. Gender and class sensitive, this method involves participants writing stories and then narrating them to other group members who collectively analyze the body of…

Habitus dislocation is a much debatable term. By presenting life-histories of working-class adolescents, this article argues (i) that not all upwardly mobile working-class adolescents experience habitus dislocation and, (ii) that habitus dislocation has its roots in the self-initiated ruptures that face some of those who want to be upwardly mobile…

Background: Scholars of children's literature have been investigating portrayals of females and racial groups for several decades, yet few have examined depictions of social class. Research on social class depictions in children's literature is needed in order to identify books that affirm children's class identities and offer…

This article examines the intersection of race, gender, class, and academic success through an ethnographic case study in a Texas charter high school. The 98% working-class, Latino student population was exposed to an array of stigmas ascribed to their persons based on negative social stereotypes of race, ethnicity, gender, and class due to the…

Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1947/1964) phenomenological notion of the "threads of intentionality" that tie subject and object together meaningfully and Pierre Bourdieu's (1986, 2000; Bourdieu & Waquant, 1992) reflexive sociology and constructs of "habitus," "field," "capital," and "nomos," we theorize social class-sensitivity in literacy…

Children's experiences and understandings are often marginalised in discussions of their own television viewing. Moreover, rarely is attention paid to the meaning children make "from" and "with" the ideas and images in media, much less in horror movies. This inquiry examines the horror media talk of a preschool girl in a poor…

In Finland, the financial status of a family does not in general place any restrictions on a person's studies. However, in spite of equality of opportunity, class as a cultural and social issue is a significant factor guiding the education of young people. In the article, I analyse women with a working-class background studying at university,…

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…

This study examines change and the conditions of change in the masculinity of Olli, a working-class Finnish school boy. It explores "respect" as a status bound to masculine reputation, resources for obtaining respect in gendered identity work, and the negotiation of power in peer relations. I discuss how a "banal balancer"…

Patssi Valdez, one of the most influential yet understudied female artists of the Chicana/o movement, was the only original and long-term female member of the 1970s art collective Asco. Through the visual discourses of pachuca glamour and punk, Valdez negotiated and exploited the gendered ideologies that visually put her at the center of the…