This paper is a rejoinder to James Avis' paper: "A Note on Class, Dispositions and Radical Politics" which is, in turn, a critique of the opening chapter of the book "Education and Working-Class Youth: Reshaping the Politics of Inclusion," written by the authors of this article. Here we deal with each of the criticisms raised…

This paper is both a careful analysis of a seminal piece of work in the sociology of education, as well as a passionate plea to revisit with renewed urgency, the way in which education continues to fail unacceptably large numbers of working-class children. Through closely examining the work of Dennis Marsden (with his colleague Brian Jackson) in…

Young people from working-class backgrounds are feeling increasingly insecure in school, and for good reasons. The institution of schooling is being converted into an instrument of neoliberal control. In this paper, I discuss how schools are becoming increasingly insecure places for working-class young people, and how they are responding, and I do…

Australia is indicative of a country that is deeply confused and conflicted around a policy discourse of inclusion that is sutured within an existential context heavily committed to the tenets of neoliberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of higher education, in which the proportion of young people from backgrounds of…

It is no coincidence, that disengagement from school by young adolescents has intensified at precisely the same time as there has been a hardening of educational policy regimes that have made schools less hospitable places for students and teachers. There can be little doubt from research evidence that as conditions conducive of learning in…