Working-Class Boys and Educational Success: Teenage Identities, Masculinities and Urban Schooling

252 Pages·2018·2.768 MB·English

by  Nicola Ingram

Palgrave Studies
in Gender and Education
Working-Class Boys
and Educational Success
Teenage Identities, Masculinities
and Urban Schooling
Nicola Ingram
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
Series Editor
Yvette Taylor
School of Education
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, UK
This Series aims to provide a comprehensive space for an increasingly
diverse and complex area of interdisciplinary social science research: gen-
der and education. Because the field of women and gender studies is
developing rapidly and becoming ‘internationalised’ – as are traditional
social science disciplines such as sociology, educational studies, social
geography, and so on – there is a greater need for this dynamic, global
Series that plots emerging definitions and debates and monitors critical
complexities of gender and education. This Series has an explicitly femi-
nist approach and orientation and attends to key theoretical and method-
ological debates, ensuring a continued conversation and relevance within
the well-established, inter-disciplinary field of gender and education.
The Series combines renewed and revitalised feminist research meth-
ods and theories with emergent and salient public policy issues. These
include pre-compulsory and post-compulsory education; ‘early years’ and
‘lifelong’ education; educational (dis)engagements of pupils, students
and staff; trajectories and intersectional inequalities including race, class,
sexuality, age and disability; policy and practice across educational land-
scapes; diversity and difference, including institutional (schools, colleges,
universities), locational and embodied (in ‘teacher’–‘learner’ positions);
varied global activism in and beyond the classroom and the ‘public uni-
versity’; educational technologies and transitions and the (ir)relevance of
(in)formal educational settings; and emergent educational mainstreams
and margins. In using a critical approach to gender and education, the
Series recognises the importance of probing beyond the boundaries of
specific territorial-legislative domains in order to develop a more interna-
tional, intersectional focus. In addressing varied conceptual and method-
ological questions, the Series combines an intersectional focus on
competing – and sometimes colliding – strands of educational provision-
ing and equality and ‘diversity’, and provides insightful reflections on the
continuing critical shift of gender and feminism within (and beyond) the
academy.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14626
Nicola Ingram
Working-Class Boys
and Educational
Success
Teenage Identities, Masculinities
and Urban Schooling
Nicola Ingram
Department of Educational Research
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
ISBN 978-1-137-40158-8 ISBN 978-1-137-40159-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40159-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934460
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Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time coming, and many people have given me
support and encouragement along the way, from when I carried out the
research through to crafting my PhD thesis, and eventually to the point
of finalising this manuscript. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude
to the young men who participated in this study, for their time, and for
their willingness to be open with me about their lives. I enjoyed the dis-
cussions immensely and learnt a lot in the process, prompting me to
reflect on my own experience as a teacher and what I could have and
should have done better. I’d also like to thank the staff in the two schools
for allowing me to access the daily life of the institution and for welcom-
ing me to their classrooms.
Throughout the research process I had invaluable guidance from my
supervisors, Paul Connolly and Andy Biggart at Queen’s University
Belfast, and benefitted from the supportive postgraduate research culture
in the Education Department. In the time since finishing the PhD I have
been lucky to have encountered the most amazing women in academia,
who have inspired, and continue to inspire, my intellectual thinking, and
who give me confidence to keep going in a world where many of us don’t
comfortably belong. Thanks to Jessie Abrahams, Kim Allen, Kirsty Finn,
Lisa McKenzie, Kirsty Morrin, Diane Reay, and Jenny Thatcher for doing
academia differently, and for your friendship and class solidarity.
v
vi Acknowledgements
And finally, I’d like to thank Keith Gildart for giving me the final shove
to complete this book at the point when I was going to give up. It really
was easier than I thought, but maybe it is better for having marinated for
five years!
This book is dedicated to my parents, Mary Hughes (nee O’Hara) and
Philip Hughes, who can’t be thanked enough for their lifetime of love,
support, and encouragement (and for never reining me in).
Contents
1 The Class Feeling 1
2 Success, Class, and Masculinities 15
3 Negotiating with Bourdieu 47
4 Researching with Working-Class Teenage Boys:
A Working-Class Feminist Approach 81
5 Systemic Social Segregation 99
6 Congruent and Discordant Habitus 135
7 Negotiating Habitus 169
8 Conclusion 203
References 223
Index 237
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Bourdieu’s generative theory of practice 58
Fig. 5.1 Kenny’s prison model 130
Fig. 6.1 Henry’s different sides, different colours 143
Fig. 6.2 Brendy’s rabbit and the carrot 153
Fig. 7.1 Mick’s two sides 175
Fig. 7.2 Me, the smick 182
Fig. 7.3 Me, the hippy 183
Fig. 7.4 Ronan’s protective helmet 185
Fig. 7.5 It’s me but hidden 185
Fig. 7.6 Jonty’s fringe 188
Fig. 7.7 Treated like shit 190
Fig. 7.8 Confused dot com 192
Fig. 7.9 Liking things that are different—music and art 196
ix
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Typology of habitus interruptions 65
Table 5.1 Deprivation and achievement information for Slievemor wards 106
Table 5.2 Pupils living in each area 111
Table 6.1 An overview of ‘successful’ boys interviewed at St. John’s 139
Table 7.1 An overview of pupils interviewed at St. Matthew’s 171
Table 8.1 Typology of the boys and their habitus 208
xi