Caroline Sarojini Hart presents a radical new paradigm for thinking about the role of education in the development of human flourishing. Aspirations, Education and Social Justice applies Amartya Sen's capability approach to understanding the nature of aspirations, in the light of a critical analysis of policies to widen participation in education. Sen's work is synthesised with key concepts from Pierre Bourdieu to develop an analytical framework for understanding the processes influencing the development and realization of aspirations. Drawing on empirical studies, involving over 1,000 young people, aged 14-19, this text explores the hopes and dreams of these young people for the future. The young people's voices challenge dominant discourses of aspiration, well-being and advantage, and invite readers to rethink their own positions on these issues.

Caroline Sarojini Hart presents a radical new paradigm for thinking about the role of education in the development of human flourishing. Aspirations, Education and Social Justice applies Amartya Sen's capability approach to understanding the nature of aspirations, in the light of a critical analysis of policies to widen participation in education. Sen's work is synthesised with key concepts from Pierre Bourdieu to develop an analytical framework for understanding the processes influencing the development and realization of aspirations. Drawing on empirical studies, involving over 1,000 young people, aged 14-19, this text explores the hopes and dreams of these young people for the future. The young people's voices challenge dominant discourses of aspiration, well-being and advantage, and invite readers to rethink their own positions on these issues.

College Aspirations and Access in Working Class Rural Communities: The Mixed Signals, Challenges, and New Language First-Generation Students Encounter explores how a working class, rural environment influences rural students’ opportunities to pursue higher education and engage in the college choice process. Based on a case study with accounts from rural high school students and counselors, this book examines how these communities perceive higher education and what challenges arise for both rural students and counselors. The book addresses how college knowledge and university jargon illustrate the gap between rural cultural capital and higher education cultural capital. Insights about approaches to reduce barriers created by college knowledge and university jargon are shared and strategies for offering rural students pathways to learn academic language and navigate higher education are presented for both secondary and higher education institutions.

This book presents an edited collection of critical discourse situated in the fields of diversity and inclusion broadly, and more specifically, within the discipline of education. Each chapter articulates the importance of educational diversity in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4. The edited collection presents a grounding narrative of equitable learning opportunities and experiences via interpretivist theoretical frameworks and student-centered methodologies. The combination of these approaches, combined within the strong and scholarly-informed social justice lens, reminds us, that the onus of education is to acknowledge, recognise, respect, and engage with the diverse student cohorts, learning needs, and multiple knowledges and cultures that exist in educational contexts. This edited collection creates a holistic discourse around the experiences, interrogations, and innovations occurring within education communities to foreground deeper and more holistic understanding of the intersectionality of diversity and inclusion existing within the contemporary educational settings.

The book discusses the implications of globalization on education from the perspective of social justice. It looks at two countries — India and the UK — to look at how global economic and cultural processes are mediated through nation states, institutional structures and the aspirations of different social groups. It seeks to resituate the debates around education and social justice in policy, research and public discourse by highlighting the need for a more nuanced understanding of globalization and education. It also demonstrates the effects of economic dimensions — the politics of neoliberalism, and how this has shifted the understanding of state responsibilities and marginalized issues pertaining to the agenda of social justice.

This collection investigates the ways in which boys and young men negotiate neoliberal discourse surrounding aspiration and how neoliberalism shapes their identities. Expanding the field of masculinity studies in education, the contributors offer international comparisons of different subgroups of boys and young men in primary, secondary and university settings. A cross-sectional analysis of race, gender, and class theory is employed to illuminate the role of aspiration in shaping boys’ identities, which adds nuance to their complex "identity work" in neoliberal times.

In recent years there has been growing concern over the pervasive disparities in academic achievement that are highly influenced by ethnicity, class and gender. Specifically, within the neoliberal policy rhetoric, there has been concern over underachievement of working-class young males, specifically white working-class boys. The historic persistence of this pattern, and the ominous implication of these trends on the long-term life chances of white working-class boys, has led to a growing chorus that something must be done to intervene. This book provides an in-depth sociological study exploring the subjectivities within the neoliberal ideology of the school environment, in order to expand our understanding of white working-class disengagement with education. The chapters discuss how white working-class boys in three educational sites enact social and learner identities, focusing on the practices of 'meaning-making' and 'identity work' that the boys experienced, and the disjunctures and commonalities between them. The book presents an analysis of the varying tensions influencing the identity of each boy and the consequences of these pressures on their engagement with education. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical tools and a model of egalitarian habitus, Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration: Educating white working-class boys will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the field of sociology of education, and those from related disciplines studying class and gender.

International Perspectives on Theorizing Aspirations offers new insights and guidance for those looking to use Bourdieu's tools in an educational context, with a focus on how the tools can be applied to issues of aspiration. Written by contributors from the UK, USA, Australia, Nigeria, Jamaica and Spain, the book explores how Bourdieu's tools have been applied in recent cutting-edge educational research on a range of topics, including widening participation, migration, ethnicity, and class. The contributors consider how aspirations are theorized in sociology, as well as exploring the structure/agency debates, before recapitulating Bourdieu's tools and their applicability in educational contexts. A key question running through the chapters is: how does social theory shape research? Including recommended readings, this is essential reading for anyone looking to use Bourdieu in their research and for those studying aspiration in an educational research setting.

"Beginning from a recognition of the fact that, as individuals, the way we think of social justice will depend on our understanding of who we are, Identity, Equity and Social Justice in Asia Pacific Education recognises and responds to the wide range of contextual and cultural perspectives informing notions of social justice across Asia Pacific educational environments. While frequently featuring as a key concept in both policy and practice, social justice is understood differently by educators and policy makers in different nations and regions. Case studies of equality and justice, fairness and equity, within educational institutions of the Asia Pacific, inform innovative contributions here to wider contemporary scholarly and public debates. This book will facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the cultural dimensions of social justice, and allow future researchers to apply new frameworks of understanding that can be expected to be of increasing relevance to educational practice." -- Publisher's website.

The first of the UN Millennium Goals was to reduce extreme poverty and in 2014 it was halved compared to 1990, and now the goal is to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030. The reduction in poverty is, to a high degree, the consequence of the rapid economic development in a few countries, especially China, but in many countries around the globe poverty is still at a high level and is influencing societies’ overall development. It is against this background that this Handbook provides an up-to-date analysis and overview of the topic from a large variety of theoretical and methodological angles. Organised into four parts, the Handbook provides knowledge on what poverty is, how it has developed, and what type of policies might be able to succeed in reducing poverty. Part I investigates conceptual issues and relates concepts to people’s relative position in society and the understanding of justice. Part II shows how poverty has developed. It combines existing empirical knowledge with regional/national understandings of the issue of poverty. Part III analyses policies and interventions with the aim of reducing or alleviating poverty within a national as well as global context. It includes a variety of countries and examples. Finally, Part IV tells us what can be done about poverty; what instruments are available to end poverty as we know it today. This volume will be an invaluable reference book for students and scholars throughout the social sciences, particularly in sociology, social policy, public policy, development studies, international relations and politics.