Emerald Studies in the Sociology of Education – serie

Providing a historical development of the UK education system and its policies, Alex McInch offers insight on how structural decisions impact how working-class pupils view and navigate the educational field. This ethnographic investigation explores topics such as compensatory educational policies, including Free School Meals, and how these attempt to close the attainment gap between the working and middle classes.This timely book is a welcome addition to the current literature on working-class schooling in the UK and comes at a time when British society has never been more divided on a number of social issues. The landmark theories of French Socio-Philosopher Pierre Bourdieu provide a fitting framework in which to understand how young working-class people currently orientate towards education in post-industrial Britain.Also presenting thought-provoking arguments on how we need to think differently about social class in the UK, rather than using current reductionist models, this book is of interest to anyone currently working in policy, academia or education with an interest in social inequality and its supplementary effects.

At a time when concerns about sexual violence, online harms and the efficacy of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) frameworks are at the forefront of public discourse, this book offers a timely and necessary intervention. Presenting the concept of ‘safe uncertainty’ as a transformative framework for understanding adolescent intimacies and relationships, authors Setty and Hunt critique current deficit models in relationships and sex education in place of a more nuanced engagement with digital intimacies, online sexual learning and sex media, healthy relationships, gender and consent.Traditional approaches to RSE, while well-intentioned, can reduce complex social and emotional dynamics to simplistic binaries, leaving young people ill-equipped to navigate the inherent ambivalences and ambiguities of intimacy and relationality. Drawing on original research and case studies from the authors’ practice, this text demonstrates how safe uncertainty acknowledges ambiguity and ambivalence as integral parts of relationships and intimacy and involves creating environments where young people can explore their perspectives and experiences without fear of judgment or rigid moral or legal solutions. Aligned with a broader need for relational, developmental and contextual approaches to understanding adolescent intimacies, Setty and Hunt explore how this framework encourages educators, policymakers and researchers to move beyond knowledge-transfer models and instead focus on equipping young people with the skills to navigate uncertainty in ways that promote emotional resilience and ethical decision-making as sexual citizens.Connecting the concept of safe uncertainty with critical debates on consent, gender and digital culture, this timely contribution bridges gaps between research, practice and policy on both a national and an international scale.

Private schooling continues to be a divisive issue. In Britain, there has been a rapid expansion of overseas branches being opened by elite British private schools. Private Schools and Cultural Capital offers insight into the workings of private schools that continue to provide an advantage for their students. Author Rachel Louise Stenhouse reports on the role played by teachers’ social and cultural capital in reproducing privilege in private schools and how this capital is transmitted to students through their preparation for application to elite universities.Drawing on data from interviews with teachers, observations of lessons and teachers’ own reflections to provide an insight into the workings of one private school in England, Stenhouse contributes to an understanding of how private schools are able to continue to reproduce the privilege that their students enjoy. Using the theories of Pierre Bourdieu as a fitting framework in which to understand how private school privilege is reproduced, the chapters also provoke discussion about the prominence of “cultural capital” in the Ofsted school inspection framework and the role played by teachers in private schools in developing cultural capital in their students.A timely addition to the literature on private school advantage, this is a compelling resource for international readers working in policy, academia, or education with an interest in social inequality and in particular the workings of private schools.