In this article the authors explore the notion of 'common good' in relation to adult education. They do this by drawing upon the experiences of working-class family members who were both social learners and autodidacts, and who engaged in learning for their own sake and for what they believed to be the common good. The authors use diaries, letters…

This paper is about social class and the teaching profession. While class has long been a core focus in the Sociology of Education, little attention has been paid to how it is conceived and enacted in the context of the professions, including teaching. While research in the area is increasing, we know relatively little about "the daily class…

Past decades have seen increased emphasis on graduate employability as a driver of higher education policy. In the Australian context, employability discourses in the public domain have become inflected with anti-intellectual sentiment, serving to reproduce the perception that the humanities and social sciences are of less value to graduates'…

Higher education should be a social good for everyone and, despite the intentions of university policy on inclusion and diversity with schemes on widening participation, the truth is that for working-class students, university is still a place where they encounter prejudices and feelings of exclusion. This article uses the method of…

Based on the life and educational histories of sixteen high-achieving, working-class girls applying to high-tariff universities, this paper rekindles debates about the role of agency within the decision-making process of young people who might not otherwise be expected to apply to such institutions. It draws on Margaret Archer's theorising to…

The Bolivian Marxist René Zavaleta (1937-1984) is considered Bolivia's most notable political thinker of the 20th century, an eminent figure in Latin American Marxism, since he produced critical thought anchored in the concrete history of our societies, and developed a set of theoretical and conceptual approaches relevant to understanding the…

Despite efforts to foster a more equitable gender representation, Australia's higher education sector and workforce continue to be highly segregated. This article focusses on the gendered experiences of first-in-family (FIF) students--many who are from low-socioeconomic communities--transitioning to Australian universities. In terms of the…

Affect and habitus are used in the paper to harness the intermingling of race and class in the young people's everyday identity practices at school, as they aspire to embody 'Black excellence'. This paper draws on ethnographic data collected with working-class Black-British young people aged between 16 and 18. Through the careful management of…

This study examines how first-generation (FG) college students make meaning of their social class during their first-year of college. As a method, photovoice allowed for the creation of a rich set of data using student photos and accompanying narratives, through which three key themes were derived: (a) broken American dream, (b) honoring family…

This text aims to demonstrate the contribution of working-class mothers to supporting their children at school and the social factors that determine the effectiveness of the practices these mothers adopt in their efforts. The mothers' involvement in education is a complex and demanding work. It entails practices directly related to schooling, such…

Results from a growing body of correlational and qualitative research have illustrated the ways in which students who are poor or working class manage their social class identities in higher education. Strategies of class code-switching (e.g., altering language) and disassociation (e.g., hiding status) were commonly used by students to manage the…

This article presents the results of two projects exploring the experiences of working-class students in elite colleges. The first project is a nation-wide study that included 19 focus groups with 183 program participants of a condonable loan program, and additional interviews and focus groups with non-scholarship students, professors and…

Precipitated by a recent policy focus on diversifying Ireland's homogeneous teaching profession, there is an emerging research base focused on the experiences of teachers from under-represented groups. However, the life stories of teachers from lower socio-economic groups remain underexplored. Responsive to the mostly atheoretical nature of…

This article aims to deepen understanding of the assets within working-class academics (WCA). It is organised into three themes: 1) Class Solidarity, 2) Supporting Students, and 3) A WCA Pedagogy. Within Class Solidarity, the study reveals class unity demonstrated through shared experiences and joint efforts in creating spaces for working-class…

Sociological research has long been interested in inequalities generated by and within educational institutions. Although relatively rich as a literature, less analytic focus has centered on educational mobility and inequality experiences within graduate training specifically. In this article, we draw on a combination of survey and open-ended…