The Neoliberal Rhetoric: White Working-Class Boys’ “Underachievement” in the United Kingdom—A Nexus of Aspiration, Masculinity, and Class Within the Habitus

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Gender, Class, Activism, Parental Involvement, and Academic Achievement in International Contexts

Abstract

Non-migrant, white working-class boys continue to be one of the lowest attaining groups in the United Kingdom’s educational system (Strand, 2008) and, in wider society, this ethnic group remains less socially mobile than ethnic minorities of similar class backgrounds (Platt, 2007). Embedded within the analysis of social identities in schooling, this study of aspiration, masculinity and class leads me to two main questions, specifically: 1) How can work using gender and class paradigms foster understanding the relationship between adolescent male identity, academic engagement and student motivation in education? 2) How does the study of how gender and class are weighted in the habitus shed light on conceptions of ‘underachievement’ and ‘aspiration’?

Author

• Garth Stahl, University of South Australia