Pupil Class Identities

Question 1

Habitus

Answer 1

Refers to the ‘dispositions’ or learned, taken-for-granted ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class

School has a middle class habitus

Question 2

Symbolic capital

Answer 2

Those with middle-class habitus and have been socialised into middle class preferences and tastes are deemed to have worth or value

Question 3

Symbolic violence

Answer 3

Defining the working class and their tastes and lifestyles as inferior, symbolic violence reproduces the class structure and keeps the lower classes ‘in their place’

Question 4

What did archer find in relation to habits

Answer 4

Working- class pupils felt that to be educationally successful, they would have to change how they talked and presented themselves

Question 5

Nike identities

Answer 5

Symbolic violence led working class to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and value
Pupil identities were also strongly gendered

Archer found working class pupils investment in Mike identities was not only a cause of their educational marginalisation by the school, also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle

Question 6

Nicola Ingram (2009)

Answer 6

Two groups of working class carholicbboys of highly deprived neighbourhood - one group had passed 11 plus exam and gone to a grammar school while the other group had failed and gone to a local secondary school
Grammar school boys experienced a tension between the habitus if their working class neighbourhood and of their middle school

Question 7

Sarah Evans (2009)

Answer 7

21 working class girls from south London.
Evans found that they were reluctant to apply to the elite universities such as oxbridge