The educational policies of 1860s Britain came into being as a result of the interplay between social, economic and political conditions, and the changing discourses of childhood and education that arose from them. While essentialised conceptualisations of 'the child' had existed since the early Enlightenment period, it was not until the…

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…

Scrutinising disproportionate media and political attention provided to the ills of the 'white working-class', this article examines the framing of their apparent underachievement in education policy and discourse in early post-Brexit vote England. In a political context dominated by anti-immigration and nationalist rhetoric, this article aims to…

'One day a poster announcing the preparatory course at the university appeared in a village. Pokusa [surname, "desire" in Polish] was among the first to enrol. He was accepted after passing an exam. Now he is one of the best students! -- All you need is a good will -- he explains.' That is how a local newspaper in 1953 encouraged peasant…

This article focuses on the prevailing discourse in the enactment of governmental curriculum policy via the leadership practices of school management teams (SMTs). Based on qualitative research in three selected working class schools, the article explores how the working class context positions schools in distinct ways to enact curriculum policy.…

Recent 'obesity' preventions focus heavily on children, widely regarded as the future of society. The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) is a flagship government programme in England that annually measures the Body Mass Index (BMI) of children in Reception (aged 4-5) and Year 6 (aged 10-11) in order to identify 'at risk' children and…

In this article I deal with the Polish discourse generated by academics facing a reform of higher education. My primary interest is to what extent their statement enables or disables emancipatory practice. I point out that the structure of academics' prevalent discourse in the face of education-factory reform makes liberation impossible.…

In this article I present a discussion about the purpose of education of, for and with black, working class, young women within an inner-London, twenty-first century college, and explore the complex and imperfect ways that educational purpose translates into educational practice. I discuss the respective value of two contrasting discourses of…

This paper examines the relationship between 'aspiration' and identity as rendered within discourses of power. Focusing on the deeply ingrained values of a group of 23 white working-class boys from South London (aged 14-16), the research critically considers the conception of power within a neoliberal era which produces both new subjectivities and…

Much of the literature on social class and language study in schools argues that for middle-class parents and their children, languages are chosen for their capacity to offer forms of distinction that provide an edge in the global labour market. In this paper, we draw on data collected from interviews with parents and children in middle-class…

The global rise of 'neo-populism', culminating in the election of the populist Republican candidate Donald Trump to the US presidency, has been accompanied by a notable backlash and resistance to what has been categorised as governing/dominating 'elites', including HE academic institutions. Populist critiques centre on a perceived climate of…

This paper draws on a three-year critical ethnography which interrogated intersections of social class, school and identity in an urban Irish community. The focus here is on the psycho-spatial disidentifications, inscriptions and class fractioning enacted throughout the school and community of Portown by a cohort of succeeding students from this…

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 article engages with Archer's call to further research on reflexivity and social change under conditions of late modernity (2007, 2010, 2012) from the perspective of existing work on reflexive discourse in the language disciplines (Silverstein 1976, Lucy 1993). Drawing from a linguistic ethnography of the networked trajectories of a group of…

Localized understandings of adolescent romantic relationships are needed to expand our knowledge of the diversity of adolescent romantic experiences and to challenge negative discourses of adolescent heterosexual relationships. This study explored the constructions of intimacy of 20 adolescent men and women in romantic relationships from one…