RIESGO DE CRÉDITO

Introduction

Education has traditionally offered a rich terrain for sociologists interested in class, and in recent years, with the emergence of what Mike Savage describes as a ‘new kind of cultural class analysis’, there has been widespread engagement with educational practices as a

means to explore how class is lived and understood by individuals (Ball 2003; Savage 2003). Notably, it has been argued that the educational practices of the middle-class have provided a key site for class relations to be played out.

The aims of this chapter are as follows. Firstly, to evaluate the literature on educational classed practices inspired by the conceptual framework provided by Pierre Bourdieu. The chapter traces some of the key

themes and perspectives that have dominated the recent agenda for understanding class through the study of educational practices. In particular, I will focus on the emphasis on parents’ and students’ educational decision-making. The chapter identifies key problems with the way in which educational classed practices have been articulated through a Bourdieuian paradigm. The chapter explores how these issues may be addressed within the context of my own empirical research. My case study makes a distinctive contribution to the field, and moreover, explores issues which have been neglected within what has become the dominant educational classed practices paradigm mapped out largely by Stephen Ball and Diane Reay (1998; 1998a; 2000; 2004; 2005).

Focusing on literature that has spanned school choice and university decision-making, this chapter discusses themes which extend across the body of work. First, it considers how middle-class parents are

represented, and in particular how their intervention and involvement is treated within the literature. Second, it explores how the university decisions of young people have been conceptualised as classed choices.

The literature reviewed here focuses on the way in which Bourdieu, and specifically the concepts of habitus, capital and field, has offered a framework in which to address ‘class’. In working with these concepts, the research is marked by a clear movement away from class as labels to affix to individuals, towards class as implicit and embedded within both the ordinary and significant decisions of everyday life.

Nevertheless, and as I contend in chapter one, definitions remain

‘contested and confusing’. In the emergence of a new model of class as defined by practices, there is an unwillingness to abandon the

traditional vocabulary of class. Instead, the classed practices project stands in parallel, running alongside and continually rubbing against the classical legacy.

As I concluded in the previous chapter, further work is needed to understand what lies behind the quiet dominance of what Savage defines as the ‘particular-universal’ middle-class. The transition from school to university provides rich terrain in which to explore classed practices during a period of flux. These practices are being enacted at a time when the traditional routes from university to a middle-class

career have become less certain. As I will discuss below, the choice of university takes on ever more significance. For these reasons, perhaps more than any, education offers the site in which to explore how this quiet dominance is played out. I decided therefore that the field of education would enable me to explore how the middle-class make, and make sense of their decisions. As such, the practices of parents and

students provide a means to explore their responses to a dynamic field. Furthermore, in addressing educational practices, the thesis engages with the principles and vocabulary of the new class model.

Educational practices within a context of higher education

expansion and differentiation.

In order to understand these classed practices in relation to the field, let me now sketch out the main characteristics of the United Kingdom’s higher education system in the early twenty-first century. The transformation in higher education has been profound: once the preserve of the male-dominated elite, the United Kingdom is now

considered to have a system of mass higher education. From the policy prescriptions which emerged from the Robbins report of 1963, the

expansion of higher education provision remains an important policy of successive governments, with a regular restatement of commitment to ‘increase participation towards 50 per cent of those aged 18-30’ (DfES 2003). Higher education is no longer seen as an exclusive privilege for the few, and taken at face value, participation statistics offer some measure of success: only 2.7% of 18 year olds went on to higher

education in 1938, compared with a ‘young participation rate’ of 31.6% in 2006. (DfES 2006).

However, if one measure of success of the policy to widen participation may be claimed through sheer volume of participation, such rates provide only a small piece of the jigsaw and give no indication of the diverse and differentiated nature of that participation. Behind the rhetoric of government policy is a fragmented and deeply-structured field. Masked by the relentless drive towards mass participation, the field of higher education is chaotic, but at the same time enduringly hierarchical: a jumble of institutions offering qualitatively very different rewards and experiences for its students. Furthermore, the vocabulary

associated with ‘university’ has become too blunt and too crude an expression of what is in fact a highly diverse and disparate experience.

Prior to 1992, the United Kingdom’s higher education provision was comprised of two relatively distinctive types of institution, with polytechnics typically focussing on teaching and offering vocational degrees. Universities, in contrast, were research-led, concentrating on traditional, academic subjects and ‘high status’ vocational subjects such as medicine and law. Despite the removal of what is termed the ‘binary divide’ in 1992, the field of higher education remains stratified in terms of the perceived quality and status of institution. The higher education field is now site to a battle between elitism and accessibility, and those divisions remain, even if the territory has become murky and its lines unclear.

The educational practices of parents and students are widely seen as a response to a higher education system which has expanded and

diversified. Despite the removal of the so-called binary divide, university provision remains hierarchical, with ‘old’ universities

synonymous with ‘good’, ‘proper’ and ‘traditional’ institutions. In the transition from an elite system to a mass system of higher education, the middle-classes are said to be ‘intensifying efforts’ towards securing advantage for their children amidst fears of increased competition (Ball 2003). Middle-class practices are being played out alongside the

diversification and ‘massification’ of the university system. According to Ball, parents are engaged in ‘planning and futurity’ to provide their children with ‘positional advantage’, as the return on a university education is no longer assured (ibid). A dominant research theme

argues that in the unravelling of the relationship between education and the labour market, middle-class parents and their children will mobilise cultural, economic and social capital to gain the competitive edge. Thus, with an increasingly ‘anxious’ middle-class (ibid), university

participation, and particularly participation at ‘elite’ universities,

provides the means for middle-class reproduction of existing advantage.

The question of how middle-class students dominate the more

prestigious universities stands in stark contrast to policy rhetoric which continues to endorse the value of higher education and its universal benefits. The relationship between holding a degree and its return in the labour market is embedded within an official discourse premised on the growing needs of a knowledge-based economy. The widening participation agenda is based on a promise of advantages for the economy, society and individual students, and the present

Government’s White Paper (2009) sets out a vision of upward social mobility gained through ‘better jobs and fairer chances’, with graduates claimed to earn ‘on average comfortably over £100,000 more than a similar individual with just A-levels’ (Education and Skills: Widening Participation in Higher Education’ (2008).

However, this promise of financial and labour market rewards from a university education has not been accepted uncritically. As the first generation of fee-paying students graduate into a precarious labour market, the benefits of a degree are subject to both popular and academic challenge. There is now a widespread perception that a

degree is not ‘enough’. The possession of an undergraduate qualification is not in itself the means to secure access to purported labour market rewards. As Power and Whitty contend, ‘these blanket assertions ignore the extent to which particular kinds of higher education confer

differential advantages’ (2008), and similarly Brown and Lauder call into question the apparently universal rate of return on a graduate

qualification, which they argue masks differences between graduates (2004). Similar points are made from the analysis of graduate incomes by Machin and Vignoles (2005). What this research highlights above all

is the very variable returns from a degree in opposition to the policy rhetoric of university offering uniform benefits.

That the degree is not sufficient to ensure access to a ‘middle-class’ career challenges the dominant discourse of the last two decades of higher education expansion. With an overcrowded labour market the rewards from a degree are now more closely linked to individuals’ possession of ‘elite credentials’ denoted by their subject or institution. Having explored the correlations between a degree and its financial returns in the labour market, the research (referred to above) contends that the classification of degree, subject and awarding institution serve to differentiate the benefits available to the individual. Holding a

particular degree from a specific university offers individuals the competitive edge, which is now an ‘essential commodity that must be fought through the mobilisation of all the financial, cultural and social capital that families can muster…..’ (Brown & Lauder 2006: 50). Thus it is argued that lost in the drive towards ‘mass’ participation is the reality of a labour market that offers finite rewards, and with credentials

conferring value only in relation to the extent that others do or do not possess them. The returns on a degree are relative and contingent rather than a universal good.

The scene is set for families to take part in a competition whose rules are new and the prizes uncertain. The stakes have been raised and the middle-classes are presented through the literature as better able and more willing to engage in the active and strategic working of the system to benefit their children (Ball 2003; Devine 2004; Reay et al 2005). Indeed it is the emphasis on middle-class parents’ strategic response to increased competition which characterises much recent research.

Writing both collaboratively and individually, Stephen Ball, Diane Reay and colleagues have established an impressive presence in the field, and I would like to take up some of the themes raised through their

particular contributions, as well as discussing how their research adds to the ‘classed practices’ research more broadly conceived.

This chapter is thus continuing the discussion which began in the first chapter. Having explored how Bourdieu has driven the contemporary interest in class, this chapter reviews research which has contributed to its development into what Savage terms a ‘new class paradigm’ (2003). Further, in having identified the middle-class as significant players

within the new agenda, this chapter considers how they are represented through the literature.

Education decision-making is a powerful means of viewing how class is lived and experienced by individuals. Moreover, educational decisions bring together the public and private dimensions of class. For example, through university destinations, we see clearly the very public and visible rewards of classed practices. However, through the accounts of decision-making, we hear the stories behind those outcomes.

Consequently, the chapter develops from a broad concern to

understand the middle-class through their educational practices, and in its conclusion, draws together the questions that will be addressed through my own study.

The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. Firstly, I consider how middle-class parents are depicted through the literature, and in doing so I engage with the broader questions raised by Bottero (2004; 2005). Secondly, I consider how the young middle-class are presented through their university decisions. In doing so, I argue that their

representation accentuates the partial way in which Bourdieu has been appropriated.

A uniform representation of the middle-class

The practices of middle-class parents provide the focus for much of the existing research in this field, and even when its concern is on

university decision-making the emphasis tends to be on parents rather than young people. As I will discuss further below, the voices of

middle-class young people are mostly absent from the literature.

Instead, there is a tendency to represent them as embodiments of their parents’ resources, symbols of their parental class location rather than fully-formed and three-dimensional individuals in their own right. Before discussing young people’s university decision-making, let me first explore how their parents are represented through the literature.

Literature on classed practices has its focus on middle-class rather than working-class parents. Indeed, the ‘classed practices’ agenda has been dominated by an interest in the middle-class, and this is an accent which rectifies a previous neglect. However, more than addressing a gap in research, the very notion of class as defined through ‘practice’ is one that sits comfortably and easily alongside the middle-class as

research subjects. The notion of ‘classed practices’ embraces more than habits and routines, and the term carries with it evocations of the

‘active’ as opposed to the ‘passive’ individual. The connotations imbued through classed practices are bound up with a dominant

conceptualisation of middle-class engagement with education. Moreover, this is a relationship that stands in stark contrast to the passivity or refusal which characterises research into working class parents’ educational decision-making, and which is ‘infused by

ambivalence, fear and a resistance to invest too much…’ (Reay & Ball 1997: 89).

As I will discuss below, there is then, an overwhelming emphasis on middle-class parents’ skilful navigation of their children’s pathways through the education system. Dominant arguments are framed within crude binaries of middle-class advantage set against working-class disadvantage; the literature offering what might be described as an overly-homogenous or essentialist version of the middle-class.

Furthermore, particular kinds of middle-class practice are conveyed as general and uniform: for example, in their representation as

knowledgeable decision-makers, and moreover, through practices characterised by certainty and entitlement. Above all, there is a tendency to accentuate coarse differences rather than probe fine distinctions.

Stephen Ball’s study of middle-class educational decision-making has been particularly influential and draws from research across the

educational trajectory (Ball 2003). According to Mike Savage, the study offers ‘a key reference point for future discussion’ (Savage 2003:539). What has been achieved through this research is, in effect, a

convergence of interests in educational inequalities and social class. This has produced fresh contexts in which to explore how class is experienced through practices rather than openly articulated. That Savage acknowledges the significance of this contribution is indicative of the role of educational practices in contributing to the development of the new class model.

Nevertheless, Ball’s research paints broad brush strokes rather than fine detail. Consequently there is a gap and something of a contraction

between the articulated aims and its substance. Although the

subheading of Ball’s study is ‘the middle classes and social advantage’, he acknowledges that his research is focused on the middle-class as more narrowly defined by the ‘salariat’ or ‘service-class’ (2003).

middle-class formation and reproduction….’, and with the ‘examination of class fractions as beyond the scope of this current exercise’ (ibid 190). The subtlety of the footnote is lost amongst the forceful and animated arguments that characterise his work. Nevertheless its

importance should not be overlooked. With the focus of Ball’s study on binary differences, there is a danger of writing out the stories of those whose position in the field is more ambiguous. In effect, the risk is to obscure all but the outer regions of the field, and to therefore expose only its extremes. The middle-class parents illustrated by Ball offer convincing illustrations of privilege to oppose working-class

disadvantage, but they do little to explain the nuances and finer distinctions. Unhelpful oppositions are constructed between the overwhelmingly successful upper reaches of the middle-class set in contrast to the equally undifferentiated working class. In setting up such a construction, Ball in effect ‘writes out’ the huge swathe of those defined through their occupations as belonging to the ‘intermediate’ and ‘lower-middle-class’.

Although Reay makes this distinction, between what she terms as the ‘established’ and ‘novitiate’ middle-class (who it is argued map ‘loosely’ onto Bernstein’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ middle-class), her narrative too is one primarily describing the practices of a unitary middle-class (Reay et al 2005, Bernstein 1996). Unlike Power et al’s use of the Bernsteinian concept of ‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’ frameworks to analyse how ‘old’ and ‘new’ fractions of the middle-class form distinctive preferences for school cultures, very little attention is given to exploring the

differences between Reay’s ‘established’ and ‘novitiate’ middle-class (Power et al 2003). These fractions are said to be determined by ‘family history, capitals, skills and dispositions’, but there is no fine- grained analysis of the parents’ tastes or behaviours beyond their being middle-class. The thrust of Reay’s argument is that the newcomers simply work harder at their middle-class reproduction (2005: 15).

Both Reay and Ball describe their middle-class parents as ‘advantaged’ or ‘privileged’ in opposition to working-class parents’ disadvantage. They draw on Bourdieuian concepts of cultural and social capital to deconstruct notions of generalised advantage, and moreover, to introduce a more complex model of decision-making than that

otherwise offered by rational action theory. However, in the emphasis on the cultural dimensions of decision-making there is limited attention to the underlying economic resources. Perhaps the reluctance to accent the economic is an overly-cautious fear of reducing practices to

reflections of class location. However in their neglect of the economic dimensions of practice, there is a danger of overlooking that economic capital is at the heart of Bourdieu’s account of inequality. Indeed,

although Bourdieu’s aim is to find a way between economic and cultural explanations of inequality, economic capital is at the ‘root’ of all forms of capital, but ‘never entirely reducible’ to it (Bourdieu: 1986: 54). Therefore, economic capital is of primary importance, and as a means of enabling the acquisition of cultural and social capital. However, the relationship between economic and the other forms of capital is not made clear by Reay and Ball, so it has to be an assumption that their middle-class parents’ use of cultural and social capital stems from high levels of economic capital associated with their middle-class occupations.

Consequently, whilst Reay and Ball draw attention to the capital supporting practices which give ‘the edge’, this capital is broadly defined. Whilst drawing on the Bourdieuian terminology of ‘capitals’,