Resisting education: A capital idea

Year: 2016

Author: Newton, Steven

Type of paper: Refereed paper

Abstract:
This study reports the findings of doctoral research exploring the factors influencing the continued resistance of formal education by students attending an Alternative Education Program (AEP) in Queensland, Australia. The study focuses on seven youth in an AEP that offers intervention for student’s aged 10 -15 exhibiting behaviours inconsistent with school success: truancy, non-compliance, vandalism, and physical and verbal abuse.Zweig (2003) argues that marginalised or ‘at-risk’ youth, have needs alternate to mainstream youth, and therefore require education that is alternate to mainstream. Within Australia many terms are used to label alternative education programs, with the term Alternative Education Programs (AEPs) commonly perceived as programs for behaviourally challenged students (de Jong & Griffiths, 2006). The study reveals that the capitals valued in mainstream schooling, “allowing certain people to succeed, based not upon merit but on the cultural experiences “(Wacquant, 1998, p. 216) may be similarly privileged within AEPs. This suggests that far from offering an alternative pathway to educational success, these programs contribute to the existing inequities of mainstream schooling (Connor, 2006).The main research question is, what role does social capital play in the enactment of resistance to formal education by students attending alternative education programs? Pierre Bourdieu’s relational concepts of field, habitus and capital and the work of resistance theorist Paul Willis (1977) are central to this study, creating understandings regarding the emergence and maintenance of resistant student identities. Examined through a Bourdieuian lens, acts of resistance are generated by habitus, while the exact form of the resistance is shaped by the intersection of field and capital.Analysis indicates that the AEP is layered with multiple social fields in which attempts are made to legitimise particular forms of capital. The teacher’s reliance on legitimised capitals is in direct contrast with the students’ preference for un-legitimised capitals. Acts of resistance are interpreted as reactions to the privileging of one form of capital over another. A case study design was employed including interviews, focus groups and class observations as the different capitals students and teachers bring with them, create a social struggle that manifests as acts of educational resistance and therefore this research holds both social and educational implications (Stake 1995; Yin, 2009).

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