You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
Schools are not just places where knowledge is transmitted — they are powerful sites where identities are formed, negotiated, contested, and sometimes imposed. The AQA specification requires you to understand how education shapes class identity, gender identity, and ethnic identity, and how pupils' identities affect their experiences and outcomes in the education system. This topic draws together many of the themes covered in earlier lessons and requires you to think about how class, gender, and ethnicity intersect in the formation of identity.
Key Definition: Identity refers to an individual's sense of who they are — their understanding of themselves in relation to others. Identity is not fixed; it is socially constructed through interactions with others and shaped by social structures such as class, gender, and ethnicity.
Social class profoundly shapes pupils' experiences of education, not only through material and cultural factors (see Lessons 2-3) but also through the formation of class identities. The way pupils understand themselves as working class or middle class — and the way the education system responds to these identities — has a significant impact on educational outcomes.
Archer et al. (2010) conducted research with working-class young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds and found that many experienced a fundamental tension between their class identity and the identity required for educational success. The education system, Archer argues, operates with a narrow definition of the "ideal pupil" that is implicitly middle class — confident, articulate, interested in "high culture," future-oriented, and willing to defer gratification.
For many working-class pupils, performing this kind of middle-class identity felt inauthentic and disloyal to their family and community. Instead, they invested in alternative sources of identity and self-worth, particularly through consumer culture. Archer described how some working-class pupils constructed "Nike identities" — using branded clothing, trainers, and accessories to establish status, self-worth, and peer recognition.
These "Nike identities" served several functions:
However, these identities brought pupils into conflict with schools (which enforced uniform policies and viewed consumer culture as inappropriate) and detracted from educational engagement. Archer's work shows how the education system's failure to recognise and value working-class identities can push pupils away from learning.
Reay (2001, 2006) drew on Bourdieu's concept of habitus — the deeply ingrained dispositions, attitudes, and ways of seeing the world that are shaped by class background — to explore how class identity affects educational experiences.
Key Definition: Habitus (Bourdieu) refers to the internalised dispositions, tastes, and taken-for-granted ways of thinking that individuals acquire through socialisation within their social class. It shapes how people perceive and respond to the social world, including the education system.
Reay studied working-class students who had gained places at elite universities and found that they experienced profound feelings of being "out of place" and "not belonging." They described feeling like "a fish out of water" — aware that their accent, cultural knowledge, social skills, and habitus marked them out as different from their predominantly middle-class peers.
This experience created a painful "emotional labour" — working-class students had to constantly monitor and modify their behaviour, suppress their natural ways of speaking and acting, and perform a middle-class identity in order to fit in. Some managed this successfully but felt they had lost something of themselves in the process. Others withdrew or dropped out, unable to reconcile their working-class identity with the demands of the university environment.
Reay's work highlights that educational mobility is not simply a matter of qualifications — it involves a transformation of identity that can be psychologically costly and socially isolating.
Evans (2009) studied working-class pupils in an inner-city school and found that teachers frequently told pupils to be "ambitious" and to "aim high." However, the definition of ambition used by the school was implicitly middle class — it meant aspiring to professional careers, university education, and social mobility. Working-class pupils who aspired to skilled trades, local employment, or community-based careers were seen as lacking ambition, even though their aspirations were realistic and meaningful within their own communities.
This reveals the class bias embedded in educational discourse — the education system values certain kinds of aspiration (those associated with middle-class trajectories) while devaluing others.
Schools are key sites for the construction and performance of gender identity. Research has shown that different versions of masculinity and femininity are produced, reinforced, and challenged within the school environment.
Mac an Ghaill (1994) conducted an ethnographic study of masculinity in a secondary school (The Making of Men) and identified several distinct versions of masculinity:
| Group | Characteristics | Relationship to Education |
|---|---|---|
| Macho Lads | Valued physical toughness, fighting, and sexual conquest; rejected intellectual pursuits | Anti-school; saw academic work as feminine and therefore threatening to their masculinity |
| Academic Achievers | Valued academic success and were comfortable being studious | Pro-school; managed to combine academic identity with a secure masculine identity |
| New Enterprisers | Valued vocational skills, business, and technology | Engaged with school on their own terms; saw vocational subjects as compatible with masculinity |
| Real Englishmen | Middle-class boys who affected a casual indifference to school while actually working hard | Strategically engaged; maintained an effortlessly successful image |
Mac an Ghaill's study is important because it shows that masculinity is not a single, fixed identity — it is plural and contested. Different groups of boys construct different versions of what it means to be male, and these versions have different implications for educational engagement and achievement. The "Macho Lads" are the most educationally disadvantaged because their version of masculinity is fundamentally incompatible with the values of the school.
Connell (1995, 2005) introduced the concept of hegemonic masculinity — the dominant form of masculinity in any given context that subordinates both femininity and alternative forms of masculinity. In many schools, hegemonic masculinity emphasises:
Key Definition: Hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995) is the culturally dominant ideal of masculinity in a given context. It defines what a "real man" should be and subordinates alternative masculinities (e.g., academic, gay, or sensitive masculinities) as inferior.
Boys who conform to hegemonic masculinity may resist academic engagement because working hard is seen as "feminine" or "gay." This helps explain why boys — particularly working-class boys — underachieve, and why the gender gap in achievement is widest in subjects associated with literacy and communication (traditionally coded as feminine).
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.