Negotiating and contesting 'success
Discourses of aspiration in a UK secondary school
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2919279 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Konstanze Spohrer (0000-0003-0555-0397, Liverpool Hope University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 411-425 |
| Publication date | 2016-05-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0159-6306 • E-ISSN: 1469-3739 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01596306.2015.1044423 |
| OpenAlex | W1591242916 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
| References cited | 37 |
The need to ‘raise aspirations’ among young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds has been prominent in UK policy debates over the last decade. This paper examines how this discourse is negotiated and contested by teachers and pupils in a Scottish secondary school. Interviews, group discussions and observations were analysed by drawing on Foucauldian discourse analysis. The analysis exposes contradictions and silences inherent in dominant discourses of aspiration, most notably the tension between the promise and the impossibility of ‘success’ for all. It is argued that attempts to reconcile this tension by calling on young people to maximise individual ‘potential’ through attitude change silence the social construction of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. The paper concludes with suggesting ways in which schools could embrace the contradictions underpinning dominant ‘raising aspiration’ discourses and adopt a more critical-sociological approach in working with young people
Aesthetics · Critical discourse analysis · Disadvantaged · Discourse analysis · Impossibility · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Silence · Social science · Sociology · Underpinning · Education Systems and Policy · Gender Studies · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
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How the enduring rhetoric of “raising aspirations” affects the higher education choice support offered to vocational students in an English further education college
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Dying to live
Disciplining the conduct of young people in compulsory education policy and practice
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Road capitals
Education reform
Discourse
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
Captured by the Discourse? The Socially Constitutive Power of New Higher Education Discourse in the UK
Introduction
The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault
Powers of Freedom
From Washington Heights to the Raploch
Emotional geographies of young people's aspirations for adult life
Successful subjectivities? The successification of class, ethnic and gender positions
Policy enactments in the UK secondary school
Gifts, talents and meritocracy
The value of non‐participation in higher education
Captured by the Discourse? Issues and concerns in researching ‘parental choice‘
Social mobility, a panacea for austere times
White working-class male narratives of ‘loyalty to self’ in discourses of aspiration
Living Contradictions and Working for Change
Educating for Futures in Marginalized Regions
Changing the Subject
New Labour’s citizens
Unruly practices
From expectations to aspirations
Education, opportunity and the prospects for social mobility
Researching Society and Culture
Using Foucault's Methods
Post-Foucauldian governmentality
Blair's Children
Equity, markets and the politics of aspiration in Australian higher education
Young people's uses of celebrity
Countering and exceeding 'capital
Negotiating and contesting 'success
New Labour's Teenage Pregnancy Policy
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,6 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |