The Ambiguities of Conformism

Academic Students in FE

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3238653
AutoresJames Avis (0000-0002-7404-938X, autor correspondente)
Ano1985
Volume33
Fascículo4
Páginas708-740
Data de publicação1985-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-954x.1985.tb02446.x
OpenAlexW2066377829
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas8

The paper examines the way in which some students in non-advanced further education (NAFE) make sense of and understand that experience. This is placed in the context of the current significance of NAFE. No general attempt is made to comprehend the total range of student orientations, but the paper 'closes in' on the experience of particular students. It adopts a qualitative approach, informed by the cultural studies tradition which asserts that we should take seriously what people say without losing sight of structural relations. This approach gives insights into both cultural productions and the specific forms that students utilise in making sense of their college experience. The cultural forms point back towards the school, forward to the world outside education, and draw on cultural resources of family, race, class and gender. It is part of the paper's project to discuss these cultural processes and consequently heavy reliance is placed upon material derived from student accounts. Student accounts concern cultural responses to educational experiences of college, forms of curriculum and teacher relations. Whilst within these responses lie moments of creativity there will also be continuities and disjunctures with other cultural forms. The paper focuses on so-called conformist students and illustrates the pre-emptive nature of such a description. Detailed consideration of students accounts reveals a more complex and contradictory picture. The paper stresses the significance of subjectivity in relation to cultural forms and argues that it is through these that we can grasp the connection between processes of 'reproduction', 'resistance' and 'accommodation

Class (philosophy) · Context (archaeology) · Creativity · Cultural reproduction · Curriculum · Epistemology · Pedagogy · Relation (database) · Resistance (ecology) · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Education Systems and Policy · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Higher Education Research Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology