AARE conference paper: BLA02263

Student work-in-progress - sole authored

Derek Bland

QUT

Centre for Language, Literacy & Diversity in Education

Faculty of Education

Victoria Park Road

KELVIN GROVE

Qld 4059

This study is taken from a work in progress towards completion of a Master of Education (Research) thesis which examines how university students from low SES backgrounds were influenced by the views and behaviours of their peers in senior secondary schooling and upon entry to a tertiary course. Using Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and habitus, the study explores whether the students' backgrounds, experiences and values have affected their decision-making in regard to educational options. The strategies the students have developed to survive and succeed in the process of transition from school to university will be investigated. This presentation reports on some initial findings from interviews conducted to develop a contemporary picture of the experiences of low SES students in adapting to the peer culture of secondary schools and a large tertiary institution. In particular, this paper discusses the concept of cultural suicide in relation to the successful transition from school to university of low SES students.

This paper is based on an, as yet, incomplete thesis by the author for the Master of Education by Research. The major purpose of this research was to examine the senior secondary school and early university experiences of low socio-economic status (low SES) students who have achieved some amount of academic success. This would help inform tertiary access and support programs for low SES students by shedding light on the participants' various coping strategies, particularly the ways they dealt with their immediate peer environments.

In particular, this study investigated:

• the barriers experienced by low SES students in engaging with education;
• the effects of peers and significant others on their educational decisions;
• the enabling strategies that assisted in their pursuit of higher education;
• the process of adjusting to a new educational environment at university; and
• the use of the concept of cultural suicide to explain the experiences of low SES students choosing educational pathways.

This paper will focus particularly on the question of cultural suicide (McLaren,1989; Tierney, 1999), which proposes that students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds must make a clean break from the communities and cultures in which they were raised in order to achieve academic success. Academic success, for the purpose of this paper, is defined as completing Year 12 and commencing an undergraduate course. Transition, in the context of this research, is the period covering senior secondary school, that is, Years 11 and 12, through the first semester of university. However, as the research considered exposure to role models, opportunities, and experiences that influenced students in their decision-making at this time, it was also important to consider the earlier experiences which may also have affected them.

The research attempted to reveal and reconstruct the meanings of school and university experiences of the participant group through a dialogic process. For this purpose, a variety of interview techniques was used, specifically small focus groups, individual interviews, and on-line discussion. A total of twelve students, drawn from a university access and support initiative for low SES students, volunteered to take part in the research. The research group consisted of ten females and two males, aged between 18 and 24. Their stages of enrolment ranged from first year to the final year of a four year degree. They were enrolled in various courses, with five of the students undertaking Education degrees and three enrolled in double degrees.

In this paper, I will firstly discuss briefly the central concepts in which the research was grounded and, second, explore the themes that developed from the interviews with the participant group, while also further considering the relevant literature. The major themes are the basis of a common trajectory that became apparent during the analysis of the data. This trajectory is illustrated in Figure 1 and forms the starting point for further discussion.

The social reproduction theories of Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) provided the main foundation for the research, in particular, the concepts of "cultural capital" and "habitus". Harker, Mahar and Wilkes (1990 in Webb, Schirato & Danaher, 2002) defined cultural capital as "culturally-valued taste and consumption patterns" which act as "a social relation within a system of exchange" and include such symbolic capital as prestige, status and authority (p. 22). Habitus is "a system of internalized dispositions" resulting from socialization processes and therefore related to social position (Schubert, 1999, p.101), and results in a view of the world and one's place in it, manifesting itself, among other ways, in physical demeanour (Dumais, 2002, p. 45). For Bourdieu, habitus is the key to understanding the mechanisms that "educational systems employ to reproduce existing social relations in students (Webb et al., 2002, p. 114). Transposed to the field of institutions, habitus can be identified through relationships with their communities and through the disposition of staff (Reay, David & Ball, 2001).

For individuals, habitus is inclusive of class, family and individual experience (Wells, 1997, p. 423). It has been described as "a rich interlacing of past and present" (Reay et al., 2001, para. 1.2), resulting in a view of the world and of one's place in it (Dumais, 2002, p. 45). Although the deterministic nature of habitus is contested, Bourdieu himself, according to Webb et al. (2002), believed it would doom low SES students to failure as they would not be able to hide their working-class, and therefore redundant, backgrounds due to their lack of cultural capital and their general disposition. On the other hand, Desmarchelier (1999, p.282) believed it possible to develop a new habitus through the acquisition of "cultural capital" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). However, each commentator agreed that adaptation of habitus is possible to a greater or lesser extent, even though considerable effort (Zevernbergen, 2001, p. 214), or a turning point (Hodkinson (1999, p. 259), may be necessary to achieve this change.

In summarizing their accounts of their interactions with educational environments, the following major points were raised:

• the participants were isolated from the mainstream school peer groups, either by rejection or self-imposition;

• for some, this sense of isolation sharpened their ambition and provided some motivation to succeed educationally;
• identifying with a selected, small group of like-minded friends of similar background has been a positive strategy
• the support and encouragement of a key significant other has been crucial.
• the negative impact of both the habitus of some schools and peer expectations compounded the difficulties imposed by low income;
• the participants were highly motivated and determined to succeed;
• negative experiences became a driving force;
• education became a "salvation" for a number of the participants; and
• university provided a more accommodating educational and social experience than secondary school for most of the students.

The analysis of the interviews with the research participants showed that, rather than reflecting the narratives of resistance and the interactions of subcultures, such as reported by Connell, Ashenden, Kessler and Dowsett (1982) in Making the Difference and Willis (1977) in Learning to Labour, the students appeared to be unaware of class, the presence of sub-cultures, or cultural conflict as such. They were, however, vocal about the economic, rather than cultural, divide that mostly separated them from their mainstream peers, and they possessed a sense of isolation or marginalisation from their peers. Peer influence, for these students, was mostly indirect, provoking feelings that led the participants towards decisions about education. Moreover, although specific friends had a profound influence on the decision-making of some of the participants, in both negative and positive ways, their influence was also mostly indirect.

Regardless of his seemingly deterministic predictions, Bourdieu (1992) suggested that the habituses of agents, in interacting with a given field, in this case education, find "in a definite trajectory within the field under consideration a more or less favourable opportunity to become actualized" (p. 105). In analyzing the interviews, a number of points emerged suggesting such a trajectory, or a pattern of development that, whilst complex and varied, can be simplified to four basic and interrelated stages. The suggested trajectory moves from exclusion, whether enforced or self-imposed, to educational success, defined for this purpose as gaining entry to a tertiary course. These developments were shared in various ways by all the participants, and comprised the following four major elements.

Firstly, they were excluded, sometimes by choice, from mainstream peer groups in their schools. Second, engagement in education served as not only a distraction, but a potential source of salvation or mobility - a solution to their domestic and/or social problems and a means of self-improvement. Third, mobility through geographical relocation or individual re-orientation created opportunities for change and personal development. Finally, the participants were able to gain access to higher education to partially realise their ambitions. Figure 1 illustrates this common trajectory.

This model is, of course, a considerable simplification of the shared experiences of the students. In reality, the order of events for some individuals may not be consistent with the order of these stages. Also, the time differential is not taken into account in this schema and it is likely that some of the stages may have occurred simultaneously for some participants. It does, however, serve to illustrate commonalities in the ways the students have interacted with the field of education.

This outline is useful in discussing the research questions and in exploring the barriers faced by the participants and the enabling strategies that helped them to make the transition into higher education. In discussing the above outline, it is first necessary to consider the secondary schools attended by the participants, in terms of institutional habituses and their congruence with the students' own familial habituses. In considering the ways in which schools interrelate with their communities, Reay et al. (2001) applied the concept of habitus to institutions. In this model, schools and colleges have identifiable habituses incorporating practices which mutually shape and reshape the institutions with their students, their communities and the wider socio-economic cultures of their catchment areas.

As anticipated by Apple (2000, p. 241), the imposition of middle-class standards and values permeated the participants' schools and, therefore, shaped the habituses of those schools. In a form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu & Passeron. 1977) these schools created policy, such as uniform codes, that failed to acknowledge the realities of the low SES students who comprised a major cohort of the schools. An example of such marginalizing practice was given by a participant (interview) who attended a "disadvantaged" school in a working-class area. As she told it, certain students were selected to greet the Prime Minister who was on an official visit to the school. Student were initially selected for this honour by the Principal and then in consultation with his chosen "elite", who, according to the student, "were the rich bitches and I just felt, no that's so wrong, how dare they like characterise people, like neat presentation and stuff". The student rationalised the need for the school to ensure that the selected students were of neat appearance, however, she also highlighted the fact that the selected students were representative of a privileged minority of students. Through its selection process ("smart school uniform and being a straight A student"), the school effectively denied the opportunity for poorer students to meet their national leader and refused to allow the majority students to represent the school. In her way, she also understood that it was due to education funding policies that this discrimination occurred: "But the thing with (that school) is they're trying to be too much like a private school - they're trying to make it actually compulsory that you wear your formal uniform when you have sport at school .... I think it's just the problem that they are trying to get so much government funding that they're trying to sell it hard like a private school. It just leaves all the socio-economic children far behind."

It could be expected that private schools would exhibit a more middle-class habitus, and those described by some participants exhibited such a disposition in their expectations of and relationships with the students. For instance, even achieving the highest honour for her year, the Dux award, and presumably through this achievement demonstrating a close affinity with the ultimate aim of education systems, was not sufficient for one student to be accepted as a suitable student for such a school (focus group 3). The habituses of the schools were generally reflected in the divisions among the student peer groups, with low SES students being excluded from the mainstream. Such socio-economic divisions created feelings of isolation for the participants in the formative years of schooling. For most of the research students, however, the peer situation did improve to some extent in their final year of study, partly because the uninterested or less academically-inclined students had left school, and partly because of additional encouragement from teachers and friends.

Into these school and peer environments, the participants took their familial habituses. Brown and Lauder (1997, p. 190) believed that economic capital was necessary for those without cultural capital to invest in education. Indeed, low family income limited the participants' choice of school to attend regardless of the quality of education offered. Being from low income and sole parent families, the participants generally found they had little in the way of cultural capital, however, the families of some were prepared to invest their minimal economic capital in promoting their children through education (interview, focus group 1). Those students who were deprived of family support found work to provide the economic capital and supportive others to provide encouragement to invest in their education.

Many of the participants shared a feeling of alienation from their peers, failing to obtain the acknowledgment from peers that Kroger (1989) and others, for instance Wyn and White (1997), believed essential in the development of adolescents' identity. Such alienation, as reported by the participants, would appear to belong to both the categories identified by Epstein (1998), namely anomie and psycho-social, as their alienation was based, for most of them, on both their situation within the social structure and their own feelings of detachment. However, even though they were aware of the socio-economic divisions in their schools, they did not express views that would demonstrate an awareness of sub-cultures, such as identified by Willis (1977) and Connell et al. (1982). Some participants' statements showed evidence of passive resistance in their schools, such as that attended by one student (interview) who described the general attitude of her peers to academic ability as leading to marginalisation.

If, as defined by McCarthey & Moje (2002) identity is a consequence of social and institutional interaction, it would suggest that the generally negative interactions of the participants should have a negative consequence for their identity development. Indeed, for some of the students, the long-term effects they have observed in themselves would support this proposition. One student (focus group 2), for example, stated that she was still trying to overcome her inability to communicate reasonably in both social and personal relationships, and believed the cause of this difficulty to be in her earlier interactions with hostile peers.

Despite the nature of their schools and peer groups, these students acquired cultural capital, many acknowledging the efforts of individual teachers in this endeavour. In fact, over 50% of the participants praised particular teachers for their role in directly motivating them and providing a high degree of care. These teachers usually stood out as positive role models, in contrast to the unaccepting habituses of the schools. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the high proportion (42%) of the participant group enrolling in an Education course at university, although this is not abnormal for low SES students generally, as noted by Postle et al. (1997). In their Australian study, they observed that the "relatively small proportion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, who do make it to university", tend to be concentrated in less prestigious areas such as Education" (p. 83).

Whilst there may have been some direct influence of teachers, that of the participants' peers would seem to be far less direct and, in many cases, produced reactions in the participants that led them to turn to education as a source of refuge and a means of self-improvement. Through focusing on education, they thus appear to have oriented themselves in a way that resembles the altering of habitus as supposed by Desmarchelier (1999). Desmarchelier considered that the acquisition of cultural capital through education could enable socially mobile students estranged from their significant others to develop new facets of self and an altered habitus. Furthermore, Delpit (1997, p. 583) believed that, through gaining knowledge of the "culture of power", the rules and codes on which power is predicated could be learned as a "second language". The trajectories of the participant group would seem to affirm the possibilities of changing one's habitus, although, according to Webb et al. (2002, p. 24), Bourdieu believed the habitus of working-class students would disqualify such students from educational success as they would signal their unsuitability through their words and actions.

The question then arises: was the apparent change in the habitus of the participants due, at least in part, to the acquisition of cultural capital conferred by their schools? Regardless of their relationships with their schools, the schools offered each of them the opportunity to interact with the field of education as a refuge from domestic and/or social tensions, and a means of self-improvement and social mobility. Although habitus is unique to each individual (Wells, 1997, p. 423), it inclines agents to make "a virtue of necessity" (Bourdieu in Webb et al., 2002, p. 42). Perhaps, therefore, this is one explanation for the association each of the students made with the field of education.

All of the participants used education as a deliberate choice for self-improvement and, for some, a refuge. For all, education was seen as the most accessible means of upward mobility or deliverance from their domestic and social difficulties. As such they became like Willis's (1977) "ear'oles" and Walker's (1987) "Three Friends" in that they became school compliant. These are the type of students who, as stated by Valentine, Skelton and Chambers (1998, p. 24), are able to get on with their lives whilst dealing with their personal social, cultural and financial pressures.

This strategy concurs with Bamber and Tett (2001) who, using Bourdieu's concept of habitus for their study, stated that working-class students must "critically examine and change some of the underlying assumptions on which their lives have been built" (p. 10). Indeed, the research group appeared to have been relatively reflexive, making deliberate attempts to change their habitus and many finding solace in education. One student, for example, stated that she did not "want to get stuck in the whole barefoot and pregnant at an early young age sort of thing you see happening in little country towns" (interview).

The general view of the schools' peer structures was of a mainstream peer group and a disparate group of 'others'. Some of the students deliberately isolated themselves from their peer groups and some of the students sought out specific friends whom they felt were more appropriate to their own aims and interests. Friends, for most of the students, appear to have been strategic considerations rather than merely social companions, with one student (interview), for example, choosing some friends at school for the sake of "not being a loner" and then appearing to discard them once she commenced university. Others chose friends specifically on the basis of their academic inclination, or as one participant (interview) described them, "the nerds" of her school, with whom they did not have to be concerned about obtaining good grades. Those who had friends from more affluent families also seemed generally to find them to be temporary relationships which dissolved when the student overstepped the unspoken rules of social place. For instance, the student (interview) who mentioned the Prime Minister's visit told of, having contrived to be photographed with him, lost her two best friends in that instant because she was not considered by them to be worthy of the privilege. This was a severe blow as their parents had substituted for hers following her family's break-up.

Such events proved to be turning points in the students' individual development. Like Desmarchelier, Hodkinson (1999, p. 259) claimed that habitus can be modified by new experiences, and may change radically at a turning point that can be self-initiated or forced. It appears that mobility, either through re-orientation of individual thinking or through physical relocation, has proven to be a turning point for most of the research group. A number of the group reported that a move to another school provided opportunities for a positive change in their social and educational lives.

The comments of some of the students regarding their school peers demonstrated a certain disdain which might also indicate the changed nature of their habituses, as shown by, for instance, the specific selection of friends and distancing of themselves from other peers. Students who had been "looked down on" by peers were now taking a judgmental view of them, commenting disparagingly, for example, on the school "drop outs" and those who took up vocational education course.

Connell et al. (1982 p. 109) considered academic success meant breaking with class practices, and McDonald (1999) stated the path to autonomy necessitated distancing from their community. Similarly, Desmarchelier (1999, p. 282) predicted that social mobility through education would entail estrangement from significant others. In confirming these views, some students appeared judgmental not only of their peers but of family members. For example, one student (interview) spoke of an elder sister who "didn't have any aspirations to do anything, I mean, she left home at 16 and started having babies". Likewise, another participant (interview) rebuked her brother who had "dropped out half way through Year 12 and has not done much study and he's exactly the kind of person I was trying to avoid myself becoming".

Cultural suicide (McLaren,1989; Tierney, 1999), proposing that students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds must make a clean break from the communities and cultures in which they were raised, was believed to be a prerequisite for educational success among working-class students (McLaren,1989, p.215; Tierney, 1999, p. 83). This raises the question of whether this was the case for the research participants. McDonald (1999, p. 18) stressed that there is no class without class consciousness and that class consciousness "rather than patterns of income distribution" is at the centre of class experience. As noted above, the students appeared to be very aware of economic divisions in their schools and peer groups, however, they did not seem to be aware of cultural differences affecting these divisions. Neither did they demonstrate any consciousness of class, with their references to working-class experiences being limited to financial matters. McLaren (in Munoz, 2002, p. 9) provided a broad concept of working-class, including "white-collar workers whose conditions are similar to those of manual workers". Even though the students' families would meet this definition, the students did not meet McDonald's (1999, p. 18) three dimensions of working-class consciousness; that is, affirmation of the dignity of work, experience of community, and opposition to middle-class individualism. In fact, their relationship to the last criterion would appear to be inverted by the participants so that they would fail McDonald's test of class-consciousness and could not be considered "working-class" from that perspective. On the other hand, perhaps cultural suicide had occurred at a point in their educational experience that went un-noticed by the participants. This situation may have been such as anticipated by Gee (1996, p. 25) and McLaren (in Rizvi, 2002, para. 5) who believed schools were promoting middle-class values of quiescence, placidity and compliance. Where this may be considered to be an act of symbolic violence visited upon the participants, for the research group, it seems to have no cultural dimension. This is not to deny the reality and depth of these experiences, nor the immediate and long-term negative affects of many of them, but rather to question whether they, in retreating into education, had performed an act of cultural suicide.

In Connell et al. (1982), the dilemma facing one working-class adolescent is recounted as, in order to become an academic achiever, he has to break with family relationship patterns and isolate himself from the kind of interactions with peers that build solidarity. The difference here with the research group is that they seem to lack any inclination towards solidarity with their working-class peers. Acts of cultural suicide, then, may have happened but would not appear to be the kind of dramatic and terminal act suggested by the concept. Perhaps a more fitting explanation can be found in the work of Bourdieu (in Webb et al., 2002) who suggested that, in order for symbolic violence to take effect, students must in some ways collude with the process through accepting their place in the school culture. He proposed the concepts of illusio, or being caught up in and by the game and believing it to be worth playing, and misrecognition, where the situation feels like second nature. These concepts appear to be exemplified by many of the comments and attitudes displayed by the participants in this study.

In McDonald's view (1999), young people in contemporary society must act with a calculative attitude, weighing risks and possibilities, as they negotiate community, networks of opportunity and subjectivity to become "entrepreneurs of self" (p. 121). As with the concepts of illusion and misrecognition, this also would seem to require an acceptance of the middle-class competitive striving (Connell et al, 1982) promoted by many contemporary schools (Apple, 1996), in contrast to the cooperative coping observed in working-class culture. The participants have demonstrated the necessary sense of agency to be considered such contemporary entrepreneurs, consciously choosing education as a resource for self-improvement. McDonald (1999) believed education to be of great importance to disadvantaged youth in opening up possibilities denied to their parents. At the same time, however, he acknowledged that mobility and distancing from their communities were requirements of the path to autonomy. Again, the research group, in the main, has typified this view.

Mostly through their own agency in mobility then, the participants entered a new institutional setting, where, although the literature would mostly define the institutional habitus of universities as alien to low SES students, the participant group appeared to no longer feel like outcasts. Wells (1997, p. 243) stated that habitus, as well as being unique to each individual, incorporates social class and individuals can also share a group habitus (Wells, 1997, p. 243). As such, habitus can influence decisions and aspirations, according to Bourdieu (in Webb et al., 2002, p. 42). This may help to explain the clustering of low SES students in the humanities areas, particularly in Education and Health. The participant group, for example, includes only two science students: one whose choices were limited by family dictates; and one, who at the time of interview was considering a move from his Engineering course to secondary teaching. Four of the other students were studying Education degrees, whilst all the others were intending to use their qualifications to obtain positions relating to human rights work.

The research students have been beneficiaries of the drive by universities for increased representation of socio-economically disadvantaged students (Higher Education Council, 1996). As some observers (Tinto, 1987, p. 58; Ramsey et al., 1998, p. 55) have stated, a sense of belonging and strong peer networks would appear to be essential for non-traditional students to make a successful transition to university. Also, as posited by Pargetter et al. (1998), these elements needed to be embedded in the first few weeks of the university experience. In fact, through the socialising processes of the access and support program offered by the institution, these participants felt they had been provided with this opportunity. For instance, one participant (interview) claimed the orientation event gave her encouragement by introducing her to an instant peer network of people like herself who possessed very little, but could still make a success of their studies. As stated by Thomas (2002), such friendships make it easier for low SES students to cope on low incomes, knowing, for instance, that they will not be pressured into such things as costly social activities, and that their need to take on paid work is the norm, rather than a problem. For these students, it seems, the university's institutional habitus provided a reasonable match with their familial habituses (Thomas, 2002a). Certainly, they found a supportive peer group and, mostly, were able to make friends immediately.

Students who had been admitted to the university through the same tertiary access program as the participants in previous years, believed they may have helped to initiate some changes to the university's habitus (Bland, 2000, p. 194). Through their involvement in student politics, they had led changes benefiting low SES students, such as policy on childcare fees to reflect the needs of low income parents, introducing text book bursaries, and establishing a large annual budget for fee relief. They also claimed to have changed the politics of the student union, which had for some years been in the control of an "elite" group of ex-private school students. Moreover, they asserted that their collective action was a catalyst in creating a more inclusive student representative body.

It is timely to consider the impact of the university's special access and support program on the participants as it had recently been subjected to restructuring and a massive budget cut, leading to the curtailment of some services and the devolution of others. For instance, the program's drop-in center, which was also the offices of the program staff, was abolished, with students' enquiries being conducted through the main campus student information counter. The drop-in center had also been the meeting place of the program's targeted student association, providing a friendly venue for committee meetings and planning sessions. These have since had to be held wherever space may be available at the time. The drop-in center had been located at the campus where the need seemed greatest and included access to a kitchen, a lounge area, and a photocopier as well as ready and private access to any of the program staff. One student (interview), who had been a frequent user of the drop-in center, said the new arrangements made her feel less comfortable as there were many times when she needed to have "a friendly chat". Knowing that the center and the staff were available when needed was in itself a supportive factor for many students. One participant (interview), for instance, said it made support easier to find than she had expected. Student support, following orientation, has since the restructure become the responsibility of each faculty, with no central role played by the program. Further, levels of support vary between faculties and careful attention has to be paid to the effects on student retention of this change. The level of support provided by the students back to the program, and to each other, in such ways as assisting with events and the students' association, must also be closely monitored to ensure that these essential support mechanisms are not diminished. In fact, this research project was directly influenced by this factor, with fewer students than would normally be expected, based on previous experience, volunteering their time. Furthermore, the likelihood of low SES students standing for positions in the union is, in the view of those who took part in earlier research (Bland, 2000) also likely to diminish unless there is continued support from the university for their own social support group and realistic faculty support. A further consequence of this may be the affect on further changes to the institutional habitus in favour of low SES students.

Although one faculty was known to have put in place a number of strategies to assist low SES students, the culture of that faculty was described by a number of participants (interview, focus group 1) as extremely competitive and elitist. That faculty appeared to present a more exclusive habitus than the university generally, according to the students who had experienced the differences. It is possible that the faculty's well-meant strategies, including welcoming lunches for the low SES and Indigenous students, and the availability of a number of bursaries, further isolated the non-traditional students and reinforced exclusion by being in themselves excusive, rather than challenging the embedded habitus. Such specialised, 'add-on' support activities are examples of the kind of integration model proposed by Tinto (1987) and challenged by Tierney (1999). In such a system, the successful non-traditional student must learn to adapt to the mainstream, rather than the system itself being adapted to reflect the cultural backgrounds of the all the students in a process Tierney called "cultural integrity" (p. 85). Cultural integrity transfers the problem of educational inequity from the student to the institution. Without the adaptation of institutional habitus to include processes of cultural integrity, the necessity for low SES students to commit acts of cultural suicide may apply once again. On the other hand, by honouring the various cultures of marginalised students, as posited by Teirney (2000), "the habitus of students who do not have much in the way of economic or traditional modes of cultural capital is less deterministic and more fluid. Such students are thus able to act as social agents and produce the conditions for change and improvements in opportunity" (p. 85).

This research has used the narratives of a group of low SES tertiary students to examine influences on them as they moved from secondary school to university. The common developments from feelings of marginalisation and personal change to become educationally successful form a trajectory that is imprecise but reflects the ways that they have overcome social and domestic difficulties. Although, in most cases, their individual habituses did not mesh with the institutional habituses of their schools, they were able to gain some of the cultural capital essential for self-improvement through the education system. Their peer groups mostly rejected them although, in some cases, the reverse applied with the participants choosing to disassociate themselves from their peers, and the students turned towards significant others who believed in them.

The indirect influence of peers on the participants was to orient them towards education as a refuge or a means of self-improvement and, in following this path, the students altered their habituses, distanced themselves from their peers and, in some cases, their families, and became "entrepreneurs of self'. This was perhaps an act of cultural suicide but may be explained more appropriately through the concepts of illusio and misrecognition. Having completed their senior schooling, the participants made the transition into higher education where they were introduced to a new and more accepting peer group and, with the assistance of a targeted support program, generally found their habituses more closely matched by that of the institution.

Wyn, J., & White, R. (1997). Rethinking youth. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.