Primary school teaching: A classed and gendered profession - Poetically exploring the narratives of female trainee primary school teachers

Manison Shore, Laura

Abstract

This thesis explores the narratives of middle-class and working-class undergraduate women in their first year as student teachers on the three-year Primary Initial Teacher Education degree at a post-92 university. It simultaneously explores my own classed and gendered experiences as a primary school teacher, leader then HE lecturer through an autoethnographic lens. The thesis is theoretically framed by Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural, economic and social capital and the later concept of emotional capital as theorised by Nowotny (1981) and Reay (2004) as a tool with which to interpret social class.
It examines the extent to which gender and social class impacts ‘choices’ to become primary school teachers and the extent to which that choice is embedded in social and cultural practices and expectations. It draws on the work of Maguire (for example 1995, 2007), Reay (for example, 1997, 2017) and Skeggs (1997) amongst others to examine the historical context of this choice.
The thesis is presented using the methodological tool of narrative inquiry, specifically poetic re-presentation, influenced by the work of Richardson (2003) to present my data. The thesis engages with theories of Other, choice, symbolic violence and possible selves and discusses how these theories contribute to my participants’ conceptualisation of class.
My overarching findings demonstrate how economic capital is the overarching factor in my participants’ conceptualisation of class, and that symbolic violence and its impact on the perception of choice is a central factor in their decision to train to teach primary school children.

Citation

Manison Shore, L. Primary school teaching: A classed and gendered profession - Poetically exploring the narratives of female trainee primary school teachers. (Thesis). University of the West of England. Retrieved from https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9081186

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Mar 1, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 15, 2022
• Keywords: social class; gender; Bourdieu: capitals; symbolic violence
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9081186
• Award Date: Sep 15, 2022