Working-Class Boys and Educational Success

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. The Class Feeling

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 1-14

3. Success, Class, and Masculinities

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 15-45

4. Negotiating with Bourdieu

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 47-80

5. Researching with Working-Class Teenage Boys: A Working-Class Feminist Approach

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 81-98

6. Systemic Social Segregation

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 99-134

7. Congruent and Discordant Habitus

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 135-168

8. Negotiating Habitus

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 169-202

9. Conclusion

   • Nicola Ingram

   Pages 203-221

10. Back Matter

    Pages 223-244

    PDF

This book examines the complex relationship between working-class masculinities and educational success. Drawing on a small sample of young men attending either a selective grammar or a secondary school in the same urban area of Belfast, the author demonstrates that contrary to popular belief, some working-class boys are engaged with education, are motivated to succeed and have high aspirations. However, the structures of schooling in a society where working class-ness is seen as feckless, tasteless and cultureless make the processes of becoming successful more challenging than they need to be. This volume reveals the unique processes of reconciling success and identities for individual working-class boys, and the important role schools have to play in this negotiation. Highly relevant to those engaged in teacher training in socially unequal societies, this book will also appeal to practitioners, sociologists of education, scholars of social justice and Bourdieusian theorists.

• education
• schooling
• teaching
• teenagers
• secondary school
• education and identity
• working class boys
• urban schooling
• schooling belfast

“The book provides insight into the complex relationship between social class and education. … Working-Class Boys and Educational Success makes a valuable contribution to the literature on class, education, and identity. … Ingram’s work pushes scholars and educational administrators to think more critically about inequality and how to combat such issues in the school environment.” (Erica Morales, Boyhood Studies, Vol. 12 (1), 2019)

“In Working class boys and educational success, Nicola Ingram vividly brings to life the struggles and conflicts faced by white working class boys as they strive for educational success in an educational system stacked against young people like them. Combining compelling ethnographic portraits with a powerful and innovative adaptation of Bourdieu's concept of habitus, she weaves a convincing and sophisticated narrative of class inequalities in 21st century Britain.” (Diane Reay, University of Cambridge, UK)

“Ingram vividly shows the complexities and tensions that play out in multiple ways for a group of white working-class teenage boys in Northern Ireland crossing different cultural boundaries. What is so profound about this book is the way Ingram interweaves the pressures on these young men to be educationally successful, but to also remain a part of one’s own community and maintain a working-class culture, which is so often seen as deficient by others. Nicola Ingram’s book is an important, fresh contribution to the long history of sociological studies on white-working class boys.” (Michael R.M. Ward, Swansea University, UK)

“Nicola Ingram vividly brings to life the struggles and conflicts faced by white working class boys as they strive for educational success in an educational system stacked against young people like them. Combining compelling ethnographic portraits with a powerful and innovative adaptation of Bourdieu's concept of habitus, she weaves a convincing and sophisticated narrative of class inequalities in 21st century Britain.” (Diane Reay, University of Cambridge, UK)

“In this rich and poignant book, Ingram pushes forward Bourdieusian theory to unpick the complexities of how working-class young men reconcile their educational success and identity across conflicting fields of home and school. Conceptually and methodologically innovative, this work will particularly appeal to sociologists of education and anyone concerned with social justice in schools.” (Louise Archer, UCL, UK)

“Avoiding the discipline's tendency towards either lionising or lamenting working-class boys, this book is a welcome breath of fresh air. Taking advantage of an astute command of Bourdieu's social theory, Ingram delivers an all too rare analysis of working-class ‘success’ in educational settings and all its attendant implications. This book is a must read for all those who knew (and those who didn't!) there had to be more to working class life than the predominant focus on boys' educational disengagement. Ingram’s work is an essential contribution to the sociologies of class, education, gender and beyond.” (Dr Steve Roberts, Monash University, Australia)

• Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

  Nicola Ingram

Nicola Ingram is Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at Lancaster University, UK. She is a co-author of Higher Education, Social Mobility and Social Class: the Degree Generation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and co-editor of Bourdieu: the Next Generation. She has published widely on class and gendered inequalities.

Policies and ethics