In this paper we offer a unique contribution to understandings of schooling as a site for the production of social class difference. We bring together the rich body of work that has been conducted on middle-class educational identities, with explorations of the centrality of the feminine in representations of class difference from the field of…

This paper explores the educational and migrational pathways which a number of middle-class women from Bangladesh took as they grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. It draws on qualitative research, conducted between July and November 2011, with highly educated Bangladeshi women who migrated to Britain in the early 2000s. French Sociologist Pierre…

Despite increasing rates of university attendance among women, a significant gender gap remains in socialisation and educational processes in Japan. To understand why and how gender-distinctive socialisation processes persist, this study aimed to examine both middle-class and working-class mothers' beliefs about gender, education, and children's…

Existing international research suggests that widespread performative pedagogy has contributed to producing educational inequalities for "disadvantaged" learners. There have also been calls for alternative pedagogies, which can be characterised as child-centred. This paper analyses pupils' hierarchical positioning in a contemporary,…

Despite growing numbers of singles, the idealization of marriage and child rearing remains strong, pervasive, and largely unquestioned. Guided by life course perspective, the purpose of this article was to examine familial and societal messages women receive when not married by their late 20s to mid-30s. Using descriptive phenomenological method,…

A phenomenological case study by Counsell (2007) explored and investigated the phenomenon of what happened as Florida's A+ Plan intersected with the life histories of one beginning African American female third grade teacher and one veteran White female third grade teacher at demographically different school communities in one Florida school…

More research needs to examine how novice teachers successfully negotiate multiple ideologies with others in ways that allow them to construct preferred teaching identities. This qualitative study addressed that need by investigating how one high school English teacher negotiated contradictory ideologies related to writing instruction at her…

This qualitative, phenomenological study was conducted to explore the lived experiences of 12 Afghan women enrolled in higher education institutions in Afghanistan. The objective was to develop an understanding of the participants' perceptions of the factors that led to their enrollment in higher education and the factors that inhibit Afghan women…

The goal of this study was to illuminate the educational experiences of one of the least researched immigrant groups--African girls. I relied mainly on narratives of four African immigrant girls in public high schools to elucidate how these girls defined their learning environment. Out of school observations were used to supplement in-depth…

Building on previous research in which we provided an opportunity for female college athletes to construct their own photographic portrayals, this study explored young female athletes' perceptions of the college athlete photographs. Fifty-two girls participated in focus group interviews where they viewed and discussed the images. The young…

This paper explores the ways physical and health education is justified in two school settings: a private girls' school and a co-educational government school located in the same Australian city. Physical and health education policies and interview material with teachers are drawn on to explore the meanings taken up by the schools. Whilst similar…

This article demonstrates how life history methods can be used to trace preservice teachers' emergent ethics toward teaching for equity and social justice. Through qualitative analyses of 10 European American, middle-class, female preservice teachers' life history interviews, access to diverse individuals and diverse materials was identified as a…

Twelve white middle-class women who had been severely sexually abused as children by a family member were asked to provide a narrative of their abuse and discuss their subsequent remembering and forgetting of these experiences. Most claimed they had undergone periods during which they had not recalled their abuse, but also claimed that they had…

Both lifelong learning and community are central to the mission of the National Federation of Women's Institutes (WI). Their website, for example, states that the WI aims to educate women to enable them to provide an effective role in the community, to expand their horizons and to develop and pass on important skills--key elements of lifelong…

Life history interview tracked the movement of five middle-class women attending classes through a continuing education center for women. The center facilitated their movement through developmental stages but hampered their movement between stages, their abandonment of old social roles, and their construction of new roles. (BJV)