This paper undertakes an intersectional analysis of the ways in which socio-economically elite higher education students in Chile reproduce privilege through everyday practices of whiteness and beauty. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews and observations with 20 privileged students at an elite Chilean university, the paper identifies and…

Background: There is widespread agreement that participation in post-compulsory physics needs to be widened and increased, particularly among women and under-represented communities. This paper contributes to understanding of the processes that produce unequal participation, Methods: The paper undertakes a Bourdieusian analysis of longitudinal…

Over the past decade, the author and their colleagues have been carrying out research to try to better understand the factors that shape students' engagement with science, as well as their science and career aspirations. The ASPIRES/ASPIRES 2 studies have tracked a cohort of students in England from the age of 10 to 18, combining large-scale…

"Setting" is a widespread practice in the UK, despite little evidence of its efficacy and substantial evidence of its detrimental impact on those allocated to the lowest sets. Taking a Bourdieusian approach, we propose that setting can be understood as a practice through which the social and cultural reproduction of dominant power…

In spite of the relative success of the Widening Participation policy and strategies to increase the numbers of students from Black and Minority and White working-class backgrounds going to university, universities in Britain continue to be White and middle-class-dominated institutions. We found, in our two-year qualitative Higher Education…

This article contributes to ongoing work that seeks to understand the nature and formation of contemporary academic identities. Drawing on interview data conducted with a sample of "younger" academics within UK universities, it considers how they position themselves (and in turn experience being positioned) in relation to notions of…

Remarkably, little academic attention has been given to the phenomenon of Chinese language schools in the UK. This paper aims to address this important gap in knowledge through the development of a detailed mapping of the population and practise of Chinese complementary schooling in England. The paper draws on ethnographically informed…

This article argues that in Britain dominant educational discourses of "the ideal pupil" exclude minority ethnic pupils and prevent them from inhabiting a position of authentic "success". It suggests that "the successful pupil" is a desired yet refused subject position for many minority ethnic young people--even for…

Discusses how to theorize diverse, working-class male students' masculinities within an inner-city, multicultural context. Data from discussions with boys at one inner-city London school are used to illustrate the boys' complex constructions of culturally entangled masculinities. Examines boys' constructions of "bad boy" masculinities…

Students' post-compulsory pathways and occupational aspirations in the UK have been shown to differ considerably according to gender, social class and ethnicity. School-based work experience provides many pupils with their first significant encounters with the world of work, and is positioned as providing diverse experiences in this regard. Yet…

Argues that higher education is a difficult choice for English working-class students and that the advantages and disadvantages of higher education are unequally distributed among members of different social classes. Presents a study of non-participant Londoners (n=109), ages 16-30, from a range of working-class backgrounds. Includes references.…

British-Chinese pupils are the highest achieving ethnic group in the British education system, and British-Chinese boys performance equals that of girls. This paper investigates aspects of British-Chinese pupils constructions of learning, focusing particularly on subject preferences and their constructions of themselves as pupils. The results are…

The high achievement of British-Chinese pupils in the British education system is established in the official literature, but few studies have asked British-Chinese pupils or parents about the factors contributing to their success. This paper explores value of education as a possible contributory aspect. It investigates the extent to which…