Young children's social class identities in everyday life at primary school:The importance of naming and challenging complex inequalities

This article explores young children’s social class identities in the context of a Scottish primary school, highlighting the ambivalent institutional discourses around ‘diversity’ and social class in the school context. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with 5- to 7-year-olds, it shows the emotional and embodied aspects through which social class differences are performed in the children’s intra- and intergenerational interactions, and the implications for the children’s relationships and experiences in school. The study shows that practitioners need to name and address social class differences, in intersection with gender, race and ethnicity, and involve young children themselves in discussions about identities and inequalities. </jats:p

Exploring young children’s social identities: performing social class, gender and ethnicity in primary school

This thesis explores how young children perform their social identities in relation to social class, gender and ethnicity in primary school. In doing so, this study contributes to a growing body of literature that recognises the complexity and intersecting nature of children’s social identities, and views children as actively performing their social identities within discursively shaped contexts. The study operationalizes intersectionality as a sensitising concept for understanding the particular ways in which social class, gender and ethnicity are performed differently in different contexts, and for conceptualising the categories of social class, gender and ethnicity as constitutive of and irreducible to each other. An eight-month long ethnography was conducted in an urban Scottish primary school with young children (aged five to seven). Data were generated mainly from participant observation in the classroom, lunch hall, playground and other spaces of the school, interviews with children and staff, and from gathering a range of texts and documents (e.g. legislation and school displays). The findings of the study show that social class, gender and ethnicity intersect in the complex ways in which children perform their social identities. Particular identities are foregrounded in specific moments and situations (Valentine, 2007), yet the performing of social identities is not reducible to either social class or gender or ethnicity alone. In addition, age, sexuality and interpersonal relationships (e.g. dynamics of ‘best friends’, conflicts between dyadic and triadic groups, family relationships) all intersect within children’s social identities in particular moments. Thus, social identities need to be understood as deeply contextual, relational, and mutually constitutive. Emotions play a significant role for how social identities are invested with meanings and values and produce complex dynamics of belonging and being different. The study highlights the importance of the educational setting, the policy and legislation context and wider social inequalities for shaping the discourses within which children perform their social identities. Tensions and ambiguities – e.g. between ‘diversity’ and ‘inequality’ – in the relevant policies and legislations fail to address the different underlying dimensions of social justice in relation to social class, gender and ethnicity, and these tensions are reflected in staff’s discourses and practices, resulting in the foregrounding of certain aspects of diversity and the silencing of others. This study also highlights how through performing social identities in certain ways, wider social inequalities become manifest. Children are aware of and contribute to powerful discourses of social stereotypes and inequalities. Children also engage in the ‘politics of belonging’ (Yuval-Davis, 2011) by constructing dynamics of ‘us’ and ‘them’, engaging in processes of ‘othering’, and drawing boundaries around certain forms of belonging. The findings of this study emphasise the need for both a reflective practice in educational settings, as well as for policies and legislations to acknowledge and address the complex, intersecting nature of children’s social identities and the multiple dimensions of social justice

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Delivery of Education to Children Under Five

This study provides a detailed review of available evidence on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the policy responses to it, on the education of children under five in Scotland. It details how these impacts have been unevenly distributed and experienced differently by children under five who face disadvantages based on socioeconomic exclusion, disability, race/ethnicity, and other intersecting inequalities. The report is based on a comprehensive, systematic desk-based review to provide an in depth analysis of the most recent and relevant national and international, qualitative and quantitative research reporting on these issues

Children’s rights to education:Where is the weight for children’s views?

This paper analyses the views and preferences of children and young people who experience barriers when attempting to engage with schools and schooling. It specifically considers processes of formal and informal exclusion and the manner in which ‘stigmatised’ children are treated within a system that’s attendance to children’s rights is, at best, sketchy and at worst - downright discriminatory. The paper poses a number of critical questions concerning the extent to which the views of children are given due weight in decision-making processes in schools, whether the background a child comes from affects the way school staff listen to them and whether school rules act as a barrier or enabler for children’s rights. In turn, these questions are related to what educational processes might look like that place due weight on the views of children, what cultures create barriers to listening in practice, and what we can learn from children’s overall experiences. The paper presents findings from a participatory empirical peer research project (funded by a Carnegie Research Incentive Grant and the University of Edinburgh Challenge Investment Fund) conducted with and by young people in schools in Scotland and the north of England. This paper is innovative as it is the product of collaborative working between academics at the University of Edinburgh, staff at Investing in Children and the young researchers who co-authored this article for publication