The purpose of this study was to explore the influence that social class identity has on the emerging professional identities of novice teachers. The study argues that schooling in the UK is classed in terms of its history, outcomes and processes, and as a result, situates teaching as a form of ‘class work’. Given the strong arguments for situating teaching in this way, this thesis seeks to increase our understanding about the way class actually works in relation to teachers’ identities and the impact this has on their work as teachers. This study was qualitative and longitudinal in nature and used semi-structured interviews as the main method of data collection. A group of eleven novice teachers were followed over a two year period as they both learnt to become teachers on a postgraduate initial teacher education programme and then one year later after most had started teaching in secondary schools. The thesis begins by examining the complexities of the heightened, emotive and fiercely debated issue of class and draws strongly on understandings that locate class in contemporary Britain as being about culture as well as social structures. It recognises that whilst the emerging professional identities of teachers are heavily shaped by life experiences prior to becoming a teacher, new and varied teaching experiences have the capacity to impact on the way teachers see themselves and their understandings of their work in schools. Using data rich stories of six of the novice teachers to exemplify the wider sample, this thesis illustrates the ways in which classed identity shapes novice teachers’ early understandings of schooling and becoming a teacher. It demonstrates that class really does matter for novice teachers but that it plays out in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. In particular, the thesis draws on the notion of social class boundaries and the way in which teaching often involves the crossing of these. The crossing of class boundaries is identified as being a central feature of the novice teacher experience. It is argued that class boundary crossing creates tensions for novice teachers not least because their own class identities are called into question and troubled by this process. One feature of this process is that many novice teachers recognise teaching as ‘class work’ and additionally understand that the cultural capital they bring to this context may not be equally valued in all educational settings. This can result in a class identity acting in restrictive and constraining ways. Whilst some novice teachers are bound by their class identities, others are able to play strategically with their class minimising the disadvantages of a perceived lack of appropriate cultural capital. This study suggests that the ability to know how and when to strategise is itself classed, a coping mechanism employed by middle rather than working class novice teachers. The study concludes by examining the implications of these findings for novice teachers and their preparation for work in schools. It argues that the classed identities of teachers need to be explicitly examined in a supportive and reflexive manner within initial teacher education.

Submitted by Adriana Alves Rodrigues (aalves@espm.br) on 2018-10-04T19:10:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ppgcom - maria beatriz portelinha.pdf: 1579910 bytes, checksum: f9e9693605864fac4e3b48ab0d8a1adb (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Alves Rodrigues (aalves@espm.br) on 2018-10-04T19:11:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ppgcom - maria beatriz portelinha.pdf: 1579910 bytes, checksum: f9e9693605864fac4e3b48ab0d8a1adb (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Debora Cristina Bonfim Aquarone (deborabonfim@espm.br) on 2018-10-04T19:11:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ppgcom - maria beatriz portelinha.pdf: 1579910 bytes, checksum: f9e9693605864fac4e3b48ab0d8a1adb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-04T19:11:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ppgcom - maria beatriz portelinha.pdf: 1579910 bytes, checksum: f9e9693605864fac4e3b48ab0d8a1adb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-23 / The subject of this thesis is the meaning attributions to popular classes’ everyday food consumption. The consumption, as a social and cultural phenomenon, allows us to investigate society’s ways of life and the meaning attributions given by its members to everyday life. As food consumption, specifically, the meanings are constantly built and materialized into practices, whether due the physical needs or the desire of doing so. By associating food consumption to social classes, specific eating manners become noticeable within each social group having its own eating habitus, revealing traces of their social dynamic. The meanings attributed to consumption are built by the collective, in a way that the culture and socialization manners affect the individual’s ways of thinking, felling and acting, affecting also their lifestyle and their identity formation. The consumption preferences and taste, influenced by the habitus and the individual’s lifestyle, are objects of negotiation between individual’s perceptions and collective knowledge, as a negotiation between individual and society. From that, our aim in this study is to think the relations between food consumptions and the meanings built in its practices, investigating its relation with identity construction in a media society. We base our study in theories of authors who articulate the consumption to social relations as Bourdieu, Barros and Rocha, García Canclini, Martín-Barbero, Slater, Landowski, Barbosa and Fischler, to verify the meaning attributions about food consumption and how they are related to the everyday life of popular classes. By means of in-depth interviews with decision makers from families of those classes we investigated the eating consumption and media practices of those individuals, verifying how it relates to their lifestyles. Synthetically, we noticed that the eating consumption practices are related to the demands of their everyday practices and their cultural and social identities. The association between feeding and social class reveled different manners of food preparation, behavior, purchasing strategies and food preferences, with social condition stablishing itself as a category that guides their actions. / O tema desta pesquisa é atribuição de sentidos ao consumo cotidiano de alimentos pelas classes populares. O consumo, como um fenômeno social e cultural, permite-nos investigar os modos de vida de uma sociedade e os sentidos por ela atribuídos ao seu cotidiano. No consumo de alimentos, mais especificamente, os sentidos são constantemente construídos e materializados em práticas, seja pela necessidade fisiológica desse consumo ou pelo desejo de realizá-lo. Ao associar o consumo de alimentos a diferentes classes sociais, modos específicos de alimentação se tornam visíveis com cada grupo social possuindo um habitus alimentar próprio e revelando traços de sua dinâmica social. Os significados atribuídos ao consumo são construídos na coletividade, de modo que a cultura e os modos de socialização influenciam nos modos de pensar, sentir e agir dos indivíduos, influenciando em seu estilo de vida e na constituição de suas identidades. As preferências de consumo e o gosto, influenciados pelo habitus e pelo estilo de vida dos indivíduos, são objetos da negociação entre as percepções individuais e os saberes coletivos, sendo uma negociação entre o indivíduo e a sociedade. A partir disso, o objetivo do estudo é pensar as relações entre o consumo de alimentos e os sentidos construídos em suas práticas, investigando sua relação com o processo de construção identitária de indivíduos em meio a uma sociedade midiática. Apoiamo-nos nas teorias de autores que articulam o consumo às relações sociais, como Bourdieu, Barros e Rocha, García Canclini, Martín-Barbero, Slater, Landowski, Barbosa e Fischler, para verificar as atribuições de sentido no consumo de alimentos e como estes se relacionam ao cotidiano das classes populares. Por meio de entrevistas em profundidade com decisoras de compra de famílias dessas classes, investigamos as práticas de consumo alimentares e midiáticas desses indivíduos, verificando como estas se relacionam a seus modos de vida. Sinteticamente, verificamos que as práticas de consumo alimentares de nossas entrevistadas estão relacionadas às demandas práticas cotidianas e a suas identidades culturais e sociais. A alimentação associada a classe social revelou diferentes modos de preparo, comportamento, estratégias de compra e preferência por alimentos específicos, com a condição social estabelecendo-se como uma categoria que orienta suas ações.

This dissertation investigates the nature by which social class membership and identity figure in judgements of transition institutions for the citizens of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. Using a unique dataset and a series of novel conceptual frameworks, it argues that social class is, in effect, an operationalisation of socioeconomic risk and vulnerability-a premise from which several important implications derive. Drawing on social identity theory, it presents and tests a model of self-conceptualisation, grounded in the belief that individuals variously identify with their social classes, depending on their perceptions of shared socioeconomic risk. From this, it follows that strong identifiers should derive more relevant information about the emerging market system from class-level economic experiences, and therefore accord these cues greater weight in judgements about transition institutions. Beyond testing this theory of interpersonal variation, it invokes signal detection theory from cognitive psychology to determine whether cross-group differences in economic vulnerability are responsible for observed class differentials in reliance on class-based economic cues. It then takes a wider view of class-based economic cognition by considering how the process of transition, itself, influenced the evaluative calculus of post-communist citizens. Building on cognitive mobilisation theory in political science, it is posited that on-going exposure to the prevailing economic system endows these citizens with the ability to link their class-level economic experiences to the effects of the market mechanism. The analysis largely supports the constituent hypotheses, as well as the larger notion that perceptions of shared socioeconomic risk led social class experiences to figure prominently in the minds of post-communist citizens.

The purpose of this study was to understand how White students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds (operationalized as students who are both low income and of the first generation in their family to attend college) experience and navigate social class during college. This was a qualitative research study employing a phenomenological research methodology. A critical theoretical lens was used to illuminate systemic issues of power and privilege related to social class present in the experiences of these participants. This study was guided by the following research question: How do White, low SES students experience and navigate social class during college? Participants in this study had many similar experiences to one another related to their social class. However, there also existed a variety of individual differences in how students understood and experienced their social class during college. Overall, participants expressed a limited awareness of their social class growing up, but all became keenly aware of it during college. In particular, during college, students became aware of how their own social class differed from the dominant middle class to upper class social class represented on campus. Participants minimized the salience of social class as an aspect of their identity with many of them expressing that they did not want their social class to define them. While participants largely did not feel as if social class was an important aspect of their identity, it became clear through their stories that this aspect of their identity influenced how they viewed themselves, the world around them, and their higher SES peers in college. For example, participants readily acknowledged the frustration and resentment that set them apart from their college peers. The students who participated in this study exhibited ethics of hard work, self-sufficiency, and financial responsibility. These values and attitudes also were evident in students' practices and behaviors (e.g., their judicious spending habits, their long hours working for pay). It also became clear that the long hours most participants in this study worked in order to afford college meant missing out on opportunities for involvement in activities outside of the classroom. Finally, participants' experiences interacting with their high SES peers played a pivotal role in their awareness of their social class during college. Participants were often frustrated by the attitudes, values, and behaviors of their higher SES peers, and for some, these social class differences led to social isolation. Overall, these findings illuminate a variety of issues and areas for concern, directly related to social class, experienced by low-income, first-generation college students in higher education.

This thesis examines the effects of de-industrialisation on the lives of adult learners attending adult education programmes in the former coal mining and steel working communities of County Durham. It presents the outcomes of a qualitative study of life history stories which are 'person centred'. Focusing on the subjective experiences of learners, both past and present, was an appropriate way in which the learner voice could be heard as well as helping to understand their experiences and views on the effects that de- industrialisation has had on their lives, and if lifelong learning was improving their life chances. The importance of social class and gender in configuring and understanding adult learner experiences are critical factors whilst, at the same time, the collective resources of these working class communities have been systematically undermined. Furthermore, the provision of publically funded adult education has declined dramatically since the 1980s. Through the prism of learners' lives the study explores experiences of employability skills programmes and community adult education programmes on shaping the position, disposition and identity of learners who have experienced a major trauma to their communities, their families and themselves. Ontological insecurity, a product of de-industrialisation, has a critical impact on the lives of these adults. The thesis adopts Hirschman's (1970) framework of 'Exit, Loyalty and Voice', originally used to frame the responses of workers confronting the possibility of job losses in a firm, as a way of understanding the reactions of adult learners to the impact of de-industrialisation on communities. In Hirschman's framework the relationship between exit, loyalty and voice followed a distinctive pattern. Loyalty, for example, was the opposite of voice, as people in a firm stayed silent in order to be saved from job loss. In this study, loyalty to the community has enabled individuals to benefit from support and community provision, which has given them a lifeline for survival and a step on the way to finding a voice. Exit, in the original framework, involved proactive workers getting 'ahead of the curve' by finding alternative employment before others. In this study, employability skills training - as a resource for exit - does not deliver. Instead, it systematically demoralises individuals and undermines their capacity to act. It involves churning learners between welfare and more training programmes and, where and when available, into short-term work. The overall impact has resulted in the social exclusion of these learners from the labour market and from the community - the opposite of agency. It is argued that this is a paradox given that social and economic inclusion was an aim of lifelong learning policies. The thesis challenges the claim of neoliberal ideology that purports to promote the freedom of individuals to determine their own fate. Those attending employability skills programmes are expected to find solutions to structural problems, and are subjected to coercive methods through psychological interventions that are expected to bring about attitudinal behaviour changes to achieve employability. It is argued that this is a paradox given deficient labour market conditions which are beyond the control of the learner. Attention is given to public sector community adult education that once offered liberating models of adult education, but have now been subjected to the logic of neoliberal governmentality. This is creating new 'subjectivities' for educators, who are being coerced to deliver learning for the economy rather than social purpose education. What has emerged is a new role of the employability trainer.