This ethnographic case study examines how pupils’ gendered identities are constructed in one rural secondary school in Scotland. It utilises the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to provide theoretical insight into how and why pupils take up particular gendered positions in the school. Data collection is primarily by ethnographic observation, supported by semi-structured interviews. The findings highlight the discursive role of peer interactions in affecting how pupils shape their gendered identities, with boys seen to be more affected by peer influences than girls. Subject choices emerged as the strongest gender-related curricular theme; girls in the school appear somewhat bound by gender norms when making subject choices throughout their school career. Insights into how some pupils and teachers perceive the rural space as a masculine one also emerged in the data. Overt femininity was seen as very much at odds with the rural landscape, meaning that some girls find conflict in how they construct their feminine identity. The findings also suggest that teacher discourse can reinforce traditional constructs of masculinities and femininities, and that some teachers’ understandings of gender rely on binary views of girls and boys. The findings are taken up in the study to make recommendations for policy and practice, and future research. A key recommendation highlights the need for teachers to have deeper and more sophisticated understandings of gender, an area which is currently neglected in both Scottish educational policy and in teacher education programmes. It also recommends that pupils are given the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of how their gender construction affects their educational experiences. Finally, this research calls for further exploration into how young people shape their gendered identities within the rural setting, an area where there is a dearth of research.

Despite the laudable inclusive policies in Scotland such as Getting it Right for Every Child and Curriculum for Excellence, it is clear that some young people still do not experience equal access to educational opportunity. With education at its heart, the Capabilities Approach is a theory of social justice that starts with a commitment to the equal dignity of all human beings and focuses on choice or freedom. Offering an alternative means of measuring wellbeing or advantage rather than the traditional measurements such Gross National Product, the Capabilities Approach, particularly Martha Nussbaum’s list of capabilities, is a useful framework to assess how pupils and teachers in Scotland’s schools are faring. Using complementary sociological and philosophical perspectives and a literary thread of fictional characters from texts taught in Scottish schools, this dissertation shows how Scottish educational policies are deeply concerned with social justice and equity. However, there are barriers standing in the way of equal access to educational opportunity for some young people. As well as individual and micro structures addressed by the Capabilities Approach, macro structures in our society also play a role in perpetuating social injustice. A critical sociological perspective enriches the account by considering the economic and political institutions of society: unequal class structures and possession of the various forms of capital; austerity; precarity; the attainment agenda and the deficit ideology. Bourdieu’s notion of the various forms of capital is threaded through the dissertation, highlighting how possession of capital is advantageous to upper and middle class families whereas lack of capital can be disadvantageous to young people from working class and disadvantaged backgrounds. Bourdieu’s theory of habitus illuminates the inherited reproduction of social conditions and how some young people adapt their choices in accordance with what they think is appropriate for them. Oppressive societal structures and lack of agency can influence and disempower young people but there is scant recognition of this in educational policies. Teachers can and do make a difference in young people’s lives and current educational reforms such as Curriculum for Excellence are aimed at achieving better educational outcomes for all children in Scotland. However, teachers too face obstacles in achieving equality of educational opportunity, such as challenges to teacher autonomy, hegemony, crisis discourse and the attainment agenda. I argue that the Capabilities Approach can shed new light on what teachers, school management teams, local authorities and the government need to do in order to work successfully towards educational equality in twenty-first century Scotland.

This research examines problematic and taken for granted issues in Scottish Secondary Education, from a critical community psychological perspective. Young people are positioned as central to the research, in particular young people experiencing exclusion being the most disempowered group in education, and to fully understand problems they experience the thesis develops a standpoint with young people. Methodologically the research is grounded in a particular approach to praxis. Critical reflection, action and knowledge construction all influence one another cyclically in complex relationships, at times conflicting and at others developing together dialogically and these relationships are embraced and reflected upon carefully. Power and knowledge are viewed as being inextricably linked and knowledge, what is legitimated within a certain frame of reference as ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, is viewed as being constructed by dominant groups with the power to do so. Ethnography was carried out in three educational settings: a mainstream High School; a Special School in a city centre catering for young people experiencing exclusion; and a Youth Project where permanently excluded young people were on an alternative curriculum. Qualitative methods were used in a varied and tailored way for each setting and group of people and included Participatory Action Research and group work with young people, interview and group work with teachers, active participation in settings leading to fieldwork notes, and collection of textual information. Analysis involved careful examination of a wide variety of material, drawing on various methods of discourse analysis. The research material was analysed for the ways in which education made possible and placed limits on legislation, social practices, ways of speaking and ways of being. The assumption that adults must be in control of young people in education was found to be absolute and pervasive, stemming from societal ideas of young people, but also perpetuating them. This emerged throughout my research, from practices in mainstream school to ways of speaking available to adults and young people. Inclusion, while often spoken of in relation to equality and social justice, in practice is often conditional, and is re-positioned in this thesis as a form of control. School exclusion is often described in education as being expelled or suspended, but is repositioned in this research more generally as being excluded from learning and peers, and is argued as inherently problematic. Problematic, institutional, educational discourse is constructed as often placing limits on ways of speaking, such that critical reflection and action within secondary education becomes very difficult for adults and young people. Ways of speaking available to young people are examined and demonstrate that while education imposes particular ways of speaking and being, young people find opportunities to resist and reconstruct. Ways of being are examined, between adults and young people in educational settings, and an account of performance of resistance and compliance between young people and adults is developed. This research draws on a complex and multi disciplinary use of theory, literature, methodology and methods, and in doing so constructs an account of young people’s experiences in education that is based on a standpoint with young people. By grounding the research in the interests of young people, particularly those experiencing school exclusion, it challenges assumptions of dominance and control that have implications for education as a whole and all those operating within.