Class Clashes: A Critical Ethnography of School Choice, Social Class, and Identity Constructions in an Irish Post-Primary School

• In Event: Educational Research in a Time of Transformation: Perspectives From Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland

Abstract

This paper draws on a critical ethnographic study of school choice and social class in the context of an Irish urban post-primary school. It explores the sociocultural co-construction of student identities in a world mediated by classed positioning, power oriented inscriptions and neo-liberal discourses of success and sameness. An emergent and recurrent theme of this study is the (mis)representation of working class spaces and most particularly working class schools and students. In this instance I propose to discuss both the internal and external co-constitutive nature of classed identities, the centrality of stratification by social class in an increasingly vigorous education marketplace, some inconsistencies in the policy field and some implications for future policy emerging from this study.

Authors

• Kevin Cahill, University College Cork

• Kathy Hall, University College Cork