Class experiences: A lifelong educational journey to political consciousness
- Publisher:
- Institute for Education Policy Studies
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2020, 18, (2), pp. 30-69
- Issue Date:
- 2020-09-13
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This paper features the first-hand ‘lived’ experiences of one current
university researcher on how social class across his lifelong
educational journey has impacted his political dispositions. Written in
an autobiographical style, the paper examines four successive life
phases, beginning with working-class life in East London in the
1950s, failure at the eleven-plus exam and experiences in a secondary
modern school. Phase two examines the shift to middle-class
educational milieu – attendance at a private school, a grammar
school and then a teacher training college in the early 1970s. Phase
three features the beginnings of class consciousness during secondary
teaching in working-class schools in the UK and Australia, followed
by post-graduate studies in radical education and teaching in prisons.
The final phase features political dispositions in teaching and
managing adult literacy programmes in Technical and Further
Education (TAFE) and then university research. The article indicates
how, for this researcher, early life working-class experiences are
embodied in later life political dispositions and how this is atypical of
the life world of most university academics. The paper argues for the
centrality of social class in educational research as the key to
understanding power in society and redressing educational
inequalities and inequities.
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