Social class, identity and the 'good' student: negotiating university culture.

Social class, identity and the 'good' student: negotiating university culture. Through the use of narrative portraits this paper discusses socialclass and identity, as working-class university students perceive them.With government policy encouraging wider participation rates fromunder-represented groups of people within the university sector,working-class students have found themselves to be the objects of muchresearch. Working-class students are, for the most part, studied asthough they are docile bodies, unable to participate in the constructionof who they are, and working-class accounts of university experiencesare quite often compared to the middle-class norms. This paper exploreshow working-class students see themselves within the university culture.Working-class students' voices and stories form the focus of thispaper, in which the language of 'disadvantage' is dealt withand the ideologies of class identity explored. Keywords social class higher education communities working-class students non-traditional student barriers to participation ********** In a postmodern and post-Marxist world, theories about class havebecome increasingly complex and conflicting, and there has been a shiftaway from using class as a theoretical framework for research (Calhoun,1996; McGregor, 1997; Skeggs, 1997; Weedon, 1999). While social classhas historically been a 'central theme within educational andsociological theorising, research and analysis' (Archer et al.,2003), writers such as Milner (1999, p. 7) suggest a shift away fromclass as a theoretical framework has occurred because of 'anincreasing preoccupation with the cultural effects of other kinds ofcultural difference--gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality'. As hooks(2000) says, class nowadays is the 'uncool subject'. In herview, 'It's the subject that makes us all tense, nervous,uncertain about where we stand' (p. vii). In these circumstances,it should be hardly surprising that class analysis of our social andpolitical institutions is often dismissed as 'dogmatic,ideological, or deluded' (Aronowitz, 2003, p. 18).Accordingly,matters of class power are 'sanitized and its powerful effects onthe life chances of working-class students is denuded or madeinvisible' (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005a, p. 8). In response, we share McGregor's (1997, p. 2) view that it is'impossible to understand Australia or the lives of Australianswithout reference to class'. Throughout this study, the category ofclass resonated repeatedly for us as we spoke to students about theirlives and experience. We acknowledge that issues associated with socialclass and access to education 'play an important role in ensuringeither the reproduction of (middle-class) privileges or (working-class)disadvantages' (Archer et al., 2003, p. 5). McGregor (1997, p. 39)sums this up: Schools in working-class suburbs, attended largely by working-class children, tend to channel their pupils into working-class jobs; the proportion of children who leave school as soon as they can is high; expectations of going to university are low; as a consequence, few working-class boys, and even fewer working-class girls, complete a university education. Thus, while class may have become a part of our cultural andpolitical 'unconsciousness' (Aronowitz, 2003, p. 25) we wantto argue that it remains a salient and powerful category inunderstanding the cultural processes of advantaging and disadvantagingof students in education. Skeggs (1997, p. 7) explains [Class is] a major feature of subjectivity, a historical specificity and part of a struggle over access to resources and ways of being. Class ... is central to us all, even if we do not feel impeded by it or choose not to recognize it, or to avoid it through disidentifications and dissimulations. In a modest way we want to contribute to this conversation byexploring the stories of a small group of working-class students on aregional university campus in Western Australia. Our purpose is tolisten to and make sense of how working-class students understand andexperience issues of class and identity formation in the context of auniversity setting. In this article we want to do three things. We wantto provide a brief overview of the research and the context in which thestories are told. We want to outline some of the key theoretical ideasinforming our views about class and education. Finally, we move on toexamine a number of student stories in order to better understand howclass is constituted 'not in a crude or deterministic way, but asit is expressed through and embodied in language, behaviour andrelational practices' (Smyth et al., 2006, p. 122). The study The research study focused on the experiences of universitystudents from low socio-economic backgrounds. Its purpose was tounderstand what set of conditions helped students to continue theireducation, remain at university and study successfully. Participants hadall gained entry to university through an 'alternative'(non-traditional) entry route provided by one of the university'sbridging programs. All students had survived the difficult first year,and all were into their second or third years of study. There is a long history of inequality of access to universityeducation in Australia. Figures suggest that when inequalities aredefined simply in terms of access, there has been no reduction in socialgroup inequalities in Australia over 20 years (Clancy & Goastellec,2007). The link between educational underachievement and social classhas been made by Smith (2003) and Peck (2001), and is reflected inAustralian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) figuresthat suggest a strong link between low socio-economic status and lowrates of participation in university (DEST, 2001). Our study was locatedwithin a community that is struggling with various aspects ofdisadvantage, including both low socio-economic status and lowparticipation and retention rates at all levels of education. In thesurrounding suburbs, the percentage of people who possess a degreequalification ranges from 1.8 per cent to 3.3 per cent of thepopulation, compared with the Australian average of 8.2 per cent (DEST,2001). Our intention was to look behind the statistics to develop asnapshot of some of the ways that students from working-classbackgrounds experience university education so that we might begin tobetter understand the landscape of low educational achievement in areasof social and economic disadvantage. Conscious of the exclusory nature of educational research andpolicy that objectifies and pathologises working-class students, webelieved that it was important to give students a voice through theresearch. Shacklock and Smyth (1997, p. 4) explain that 'in tellingof stories of life, previously unheard, or silenced, voices open up thepossibility for new, even radically different, narrations of lifeexperiences'. We are mindful of the debilitating consequences ofpathologising and individualising practices that view working-classstudents as 'disadvantaged', 'vulnerable' or'at risk' (Shields et al., 2005, p. 9). The problem with thiskind of labelling is that it shifts the focus from the 'largersociopolitical contexts' in which students experience education(McLaren, 1995, p. 153). For us, critical ethnography is one researchmethodology that tackles some of these issues by focusing on theperspectives of insiders (the students) in the context of the broadersocial, political and economic circumstances shaping students'lives (Carspecken, 1996; Smyth et al., 2006). In the words of Quantz(1992, p. 462), 'critical ethnography's contribution ... liesprincipally in its ability to make concrete the particularmanifestations of marginalized cultures located in a broadersociopolitical framework'. Our enquiry, therefore, invited studentsto share their stories of how they came to be at university, and what itwas like for them once they got there. The research was designed to be open ended and exploratory. Weasked a number of conversational questions such as: How did you come tobe at university? What's it like for you? What do you like anddislike? What about your friends? Did they come to university? If not,why not? What makes you different? What's different in your lifenow? We embarked on the project with no explicit expectations about whatwould emerge from students' stories, except that we were looking atelements in their experiences that led to their continued engagement. Itturned out that social class emerged as a very strong theme instudents' stories, with their past lives as working-classyoungsters continuing to shape their present experiences of university.Experiences of schooling, interactions with teachers, and familyexpectations were consistent narrative threads. Social class--some theoretical perspectives We take as our starting point McLaren and Farahmandpur's(2005b, p. 74) observation that the issue of class has been'overlooked' as a consequence of the turn to identity politicsin contemporary social and economic analysis. Like McLaren andFarahmandpur (2005b), we are not interested in subordinating race,ethnicity and gender to class struggle. Rather, we are interested inunderstanding how capitalist social relations constitute these'different yet equally important struggles' (McLaren &Farahmandpur, 2005b, p. 84). In short, we want to investigate the roleof class in constructing different educational experiences for differentclasses of students. Althusser picks this up when he highlights that'within capitalist society, education is an apparatus of the state,attempting to reproduce the conditions of capitalist production'(cited in Archer et al., 2003, p. 7). In this paper, we draw onBourdieu's understanding of class to illuminate how the process ofreproduction occurs through institutions such as education. Bourdieudescribes the norms and practices of particular social classes using theconcept of 'habitus' (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977;1996).This focus allows for a highly nuanced analysis of thecomplexities of day-to-day experiences of social class: an analysis thatis 'more subtle ... a kind of forensic, detective work, whichinvolves tracing the print of class in areas where it is faintlywritten' (Savage , 2003, p. 536).As Ball (2006a) explains,it's all about how 'class is achieved and maintained andenacted rather than something that just is!' (p. 8). Of particularinterest for our research are Bourdieu's concepts of institutionaland cultural habitus that describe the norms and practices ofinstitutions and of particular social classes. Bourdieu suggests the interaction between objective structures(such as universities) and personal experiences or histories (such asthose of students entering universities) that culminates in aperson's acquired habitus. In other words, continuing interactionsbetween objective structures and personal experiences continually shapeand modify our habitus and continue to shape further experiences. Reayet al. (2001, p. 3) suggest that institutional habitus 'can beunderstood as the impact of a cultural group or social class on anindividual's behaviour as it is mediated through anorganisation'. They highlight how in mainstream education theknowledges of the white middle class are valued over all otherknowledges, and that therefore 'the education system is sociallyand culturally biased, and this is played out in the relations betweenstaff and students' (Reay et al., 2001, p. 5).Thus institutionalhabitus legitimises the dominant values and the prevailing culturalcapital of society (Lareau, 2000). Bourdieu and Passeron (1977; 1996) argue that people are culturalbeings with different patterns of thought, beliefs and perceptions. Weact, interact and respond to our particular world or class in the waythat we understand its meaning; we are a product of our culturalhabitus. For Bourdieu and Passeron (1996, p. 9), '[e]very societyhas some form of educational process of "pedagogic action"(PA) whereby this is achieved ... [through] symbolic violence'.Pedagogic action involves the use of a particular type of reward andpunishment system in order to maintain power. All cultures have theirown forms of pedagogic action and it is through this action that thedominant class stipulates, amongst other things, who is to be taught, bywhom, and in what ways. Of particular relevance to our research is how such processesperform both the inclusion and exclusion of students in universities.Specifically, we focus on 'the manner in which the ... middleclasses colonise areas of economic and social life' (Preston, 2007,p. 61). Because universities tend to be middle-class institutions,orientated towards middle-class values (Green, 2003), those valuesbecome normalised and 'natural'. Class bias shapes pedagogies,so, for example, 'heated exchange' can be frowned upon in aclassroom dominated by middle-class values, whereas ' those of usfrom working-class backgrounds may feel that discussion is deeper andricher if it arouses intense responses' (hooks, 1994, p. 187).Green (2003, p. 83) suggests that universities value such things as'linear, argumentative, audienceless, academic prose' and a'self-reflexive' middle-class voice, none of which is typicalof interactions in working-class communities. Green (2003, p. 83)elaborates: '[c]ommon sense' assumptions about the teaching of writing, like the assumption that clarity and conciseness are universal values and desirable goals across communities, may not be true for those from different social classes, ethnic groups, or a variety of communities. This suggests how students from working-class backgrounds bringwith them a different cultural habitus from the normalised middle-classhabitus of the university, and so are more likely to feel (and be)excluded. This is where Bourdieu's (1977, p. 47) understanding ofcultural capital helps us to explain the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from the different social classes by relating academic success, i.e., the specific profits which children from the different classes and class fractions can obtain in the academic market, to the distribution of cultural capital between the classes and class fractions. This starting point implies a break with the presuppositions inherent both in the commonsense view, which sees academic success or failure as an effect of natural aptitudes, and in human capital theories (p. 47). Furthermore, there is an assumption that working-class studentswill aspire to becoming more like their middle-class counterparts inregards to behaviour, attitudes, dress, language and lifestyle throughuniversity education. In other words, working-class students areexpected to leave behind their class backgrounds and'assimilate' into a new elite social class (Green, 2003, p.84). On this count, MacKenzie (1998, p. 345) argues that there is a muchgreater need to understand the sense of 'alienation, embarrassment,self-doubt, intellectual excitement, struggle, compromise, andgrieving' that informs the experiences of working-class students.To explore the habitus of the university is to uncover some of themechanisms that 'educational systems employ to reproduce existingsocial relations in students' (Webb et al., 2002, p. 114). In otherwords, the objective structure of the university continually shapes andstructures the educational experiences of students engaging with theinstitutional habitus (Robbins, 1993), and provides a mechanism forensuring that class order or position is maintained. The followingdiscussion attempts to illuminate these processes, using narrativeportraits created from research data. We draw on the stories of 20working-class university students to show the interplay of cultural andinstitutional habitus. Students' experience of social class So far we have argued that through socialisation in a particularcultural habitus, young people learn and reproduce their own culturalhabitus through practices that conform to the dominant cultural habitus(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1996).We see this process at work in thefollowing narrative portrait of Brian (a pseudonym). Brian's storywas particularly rich in detail and insight about the masculine natureof working-class culture. Brian's narrative, Part One: school and work I went to school in Tasmania. I left after Year 10. Year 11 and 12, that wasn't even a consideration. I knew even before I left school, my future was probably to spend a few years on unemployment and then I'd go work in the foundries where Dad worked, and then become a man. Going to uni just wasn't on the cards for us, the kids I went to school with. The bosses' kids went to uni but we didn't. They got the cars and we borrowed ours. I knew that once I turned 18 I could go to work in the foundry and earn good money. It's really mixed up with the identity of who you are as the man: part of the image of being a bloke. Most of the kids I knew started drinking from an early age because that's what you did, and then once you got old enough to work in the foundry then you tried to match the other guys who were the veterans. The most interesting and disturbing feature of Brian'snarrative is what it exposes about the limited life chances that resultfrom his working-class male habitus. In the setting he describes, shapedby social class divisions and gender identities, education in the formof institutional habitus re-inscribes the demarcation between those withpower and those without. Those with power, 'the bosses'kids', are in a position to retain power because they can go touniversity. For kids like Brian, university was just 'not on thecards' and they now face futures that are likely to becircumscribed by a lifetime of work in the foundry. We see how thehabitus of the school and that of the broader working-class communityhave together resulted in a view of the world, and of Brian's ownplace in it, that is manifest in his own and the other kids'cultural behaviour (Dumais, 2002). We saw similar evidence of the impact of institutional habitus onthe behaviour of other students. This was apparent in the way they madedecisions about their futures. Three strong patterns are seen in thenarratives of these students:' people like us don't go touniversity'; 'people like us don't fit in atschool'; and 'people like us aren't good enough to sitthe exams'. Pauline, Marie, Nadine and Scott: people like us don't go touniversity Pauline comes from a low socio-economic background. Her high school was not only low socio-economic but extremely rough so there was no push for further education; students just got in and got out. At her school, if you weren't in the top 10, you weren't encouraged to go on at all. There was no encouragement at all for her or students like her beyond getting her achievement certificate at the end of Year 10. Marie's experience was slightly different, though the outcome: leaving early: was the same. Marie, also from a working-class background, wasn't encouraged at school even though she had straight A-grades. So rather than go on to further study she left with her girlfriends after third year (aged 15) and got a job. Marie thinks if she had been a boy she would have stayed on, but nobody suggested that she should. Again, in the area where Nadine grew up there was no thought of going on at school, everyone just got out and got a job. It took her a long time to realise that she could go to university. Scott's experience was similar. The teachers at his school just wanted him to get out of there and to get a job. These stories show how the students' social class backgroundscircumscribe their life chances, and how habitus is working to reproduceexisting social relations. Each case illustrates the argument thateducational processes employ a particular system of rewards andpunishments that work to sustain the pre-existing power relationsthrough 'symbolic violence' (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1996, p.9). In some of these examples the reproduction of power relationsrelates not only to individuals but also to the whole institution. Thusworking-class schools appear to restrict their practices so as toperform certain processes of socialisation for their pupils that lead tolimited aspirations. As a consequence, according to Ball (2006b, p. 39),students and their families are constrained by 'the parameters ofpolitical possibility and acceptability'. This was the case forPauline, where in her 'extremely rough school' only the top 10students received any encouragement to go on after Year 10. InMarie's case, while her aspirations emulated those of her peers,her decision to leave was endorsed by the fact that no-one from schoolencouraged her to stay even though she was a top student. Nadine andScott shared similar experiences of institutional practices, whichserved to limit their aspirations and exclude them from the benefits ofuniversity education. These practices reflect the meta-narratives ofeducation that 'bind [students] even more tightly into systems of... inequality' (Levinson & Holland, 1996, in Alexander et al.,2005, p. 3). What is interesting for us is that inequality is brought about whenstudents' futures are bound by their social class habitus, ratherthan shaped by their individual abilities or aspirations. When schoolfailure is blamed on the individuals because of their class affiliationsit contributes to a 'deficit' form of thinking thatpathologises students and predisposes many students to disengage fromschooling (Shields et al., 2005). Such practices are expressed indiscourses that frame the experiences of students and teachers, andsustain the idea that existing power relations and associatededucational inequities are natural and just (Shields et al., 2005).Thisprocess can be seen in the discourses at play in the narratives of Bec,Franci and Kath. Bec, Franci and Kath: people like us don't fit in at school Bec was a transient child. When she did turn up to school she often had no shoes, no lunch and no pencils. While she thinks the teachers should have been glad she was in their classroom, in fact they used to tell her off because she didn't look like the other students. Franci also failed to fit in at school but for a different reason. She thinks it was because her mum was a single parent. She also failed every maths test in her life. The teachers finally just put her at the back of the class and told her not to disturb anybody else and just stay there. Because of this she thought she was too stupid to go to university, because of what happened at school. Interestingly, Kath discovered that sometimes even if you do the 'right thing' you still get into trouble. She found that for students like her (she is Indigenous) it could sometimes be detrimental to know anything, because you ended up with a clip around the ear. Here, not fitting in because of a 'deficit' attributesuch as being a transient child, or the child of a single parent, or anIndigenous child who knows more than she ought to, has led to thesestudents being pathologised as problems in the classroom and broughtabout their exclusion. Again, institutional habitus works to bring aboutexclusion from education. The challenge, according to Shields et al.(2005, p. 1) is to understand how schooling creates and perpetuates images of children in ways that are destructive, in ways that predispose some children to be successful, confident, and engaged, and others to become lower achievers, timid, or aggressive, reluctant, and disengaged. The following narratives further highlight how, through pedagogicaction, working-class students have been denied the benefits ofeducation. These are examples of the ways in which students have beenprevented from sitting the Tertiary Entrance Examinations (TEE),which--in this particular state--form the standard entry route totertiary study. Megan, Jen, Scott and Dylan: people like us aren't good enoughto sit the exams Megan didn't do the TEE because she felt it would bring the school down, and she didn't want to be responsible for that. She was very aware that if she were to sit the exams and do badly, she would bring down both the school and herself because it would make the whole school look bad. Jen was also worried about doing TEE, but in her case it was because on top of it being very hard, everyone told her how stressful it was going to be. Because she knew she would not cope well with the stress, she decided not to do it. Scott was doing fine during Year 12, and was all set to take his exams, but when he did badly in his mocks that freaked him out so he didn't sit the TEE. At Dylan's school, students had the idea drilled into them that if you don't do your TEE you might as well drop out. So Dylan, in an act of resistance, dropped himself out and went to TAFE. These stories speak of how participants were excluded from thebenefits of university education, and highlight the gatekeeping role offormal examinations in performing the exclusion. Students, first, appearto measure themselves against the 'gold standard' provided bythe examination system that separates the learning 'failures'from the learning 'successes'. They then collude in thesorting process by taking matters into their own hands and making adecision to withdraw. Megan puts the school's reputation before herown future. Jen has been told how difficult and stressful exams are, andthis frightens her so much that she decides to opt out. Scott waspanicked by his experience of failure so did not sit for his exams. EvenDylan, though he frames his own script as one of resistance when he actsagainst advice and against the grain by dropping out, also effectivelycolludes in his own exclusion. These different narratives again show thesignificance of institutional habitus in shaping the students'educational experiences in such a way as to ensure that class orderprevails through consent (Gramsci, 1971). Each of these narratives illustrates aspects of the social andcultural biases of the education system, and shows how institutionalhabitus works to legitimise the dominant values of the school community(Reay et al., 2001). Here, institutional habitus results in a sortingprocess that effectively separates out those students who are expectedto succeed from those who are not on the basis of their social classbackground. Students' narratives reveal the presence of naturalisedassumptions about who should go to university, about the kinds ofbehaviours and social backgrounds that make children 'fit' forschooling, and about the effectiveness of examinations to differentiatethose students who deserve to take out the prizes offered by ameritocratic education system. All show how institutional habitus worksto normalise middle-class cultural practices and sort people on thebasis of their social and cultural habitus. As McLaren (2005, p. xvii)says, paraphrasing Marx, 'human beings act on and in the world insituations not entirely of their own making'. These narrativesclearly signal the need to unpick and expose 'the innocence, thekind of unacknowledged normality of the middle class' (Savage,2003, p. 537). Rewriting working-class identities Happily, these stories do not end here. Despite experiencingvarious forms of exclusion as students at school, all the students arenow studying successfully at university. So what happened? Brian'snarrative provides a starting point for understanding some of theprocesses that help individuals to work against the grain ofinstitutional and cultural habitus. Brian's narrative, Part Two: What made the difference? I noticed it all through my school life, even with the peers I'd knocked around with, because I've always been an avid reader. I suppose I could put it down to Mum. I can remember going to the library a lot with her when I was younger and poking around the library and thinking, 'Oh when do I get to grow into the adult section?' So I've known in some sense that I've never fitted in. I could never comprehend why all these boys would want to try and memorise models of cars ... and I'm thinking, 'Why do you want to know that? It's just crazy stuff'. I knew what I needed to do to sort of mix in with everyone, but there was always a better part of me thinking you can only get drunk and get stoned X amount of times and then you've got to start saying, 'What's going on here?' But you gotta fit somewhere. The idea of learning, I just knew ... I don't know ... it was something, well, a part of me. I had an understanding of myself that I like learning things. Working in foundries is basic labouring work and you learn certain things and that's it. I knew ... the things I saw happening around me but I wasn't able to articulate, how to speak about them, how to talk about them, and I thought well uni's the place to go to get a better understanding of what is happening. I knew I could do more. Even if I don't go on and teach, there is for me that part that wasn't being expressed before uni. It has touched me, it has brought something out that I knew was there and that I couldn't touch before. Here we see the effects of competing cultural habitus. On one hand,Brian feels the pressure to conform to the masculine working-classculture in order to 'fit in,' while also knowing thathe's 'never fitted in'. But the desire to bring outsomething in himself that wasn't being expressed before providesthe motivation to step away from the constraints of his peer culture andtake the risk of going to university. It is interesting that, likeBrian, other participants spoke of having a long-held ambition to go touniversity and of resisting the expectations of teachers, peers andfamily. For Brian this decision is made possible by the interventions ofhis mother, whose behaviour towards him suggests a different reading ofher son's potential from that of the school and the localworking-class, masculine culture. There is a strong indication instudents' stories that what they have done is mould breaking, inopposition to class, cultural and family habitus, and entailing one oranother form of sacrifice. Elsewhere in his narrative Brian describesthe sacrifices he has made to realise his ambition. His marriagecollapsed, he lived alone in a small rented flat, he had no car, andworked doing night fill at the local supermarket in order to survive. Asa foundry worker, he was much better off financially. These experiences contradict Williamson's (1981) assertionthat social classes have been constructed into categories whoseparticipants or groups of people share particular characteristics thatdistinguish them from other groups of people. Williamson (1981, p. 7)also suggests that once a person is constructed into a particular classthey remain 'objectively definable and largelyfixed/unchanging'. On the other hand, these stories also challengethe position taken by many sociologists since the 1980s that classidentities have weakened. We contend that Savage (2003, p. 536) providesa more appropriate account when he suggests that while there haverecently been 'fundamental social changes' these involve'the re-working rather than the eradication of social class'.It seems that students are shaping rather fluid identities at theintersection of more traditional notions of 'working' and'middle' class, as they engage in an institution that tends tobe colonised by middle-class culture and values (Green, 2003; hooks,1994; Preston, 2007).We see that students' desire to study is oftenembedded in the realities of their working-class identity. Three corethreads weave through their narratives: transformation of life chances(not only for participants but often for their children too); the joy ofdiscovering about themselves and the world; and a desire to work towardsa fairer society. The desire to work towards a 'fair go' for people likethemselves seems to be a particularly strong motivating factor thathelps students to pursue their studies. The following portraits show howparticipants' class backgrounds are at the heart of thismotivation. Dylan, Kath, Bec and Marie: Dreams of 'a fair go' Dylan believes that university changes your life. Because of this, and because he loves teaching and informing people, he would just love to teach at university. He wants to teach people who are like him, those that should not be at university, people from the same background as him. More than anything else, this is what keeps him there. Kath also believes that university is life changing, as it allows you to do and be whoever you want to be. She is now better able to understand the world from the perspective of people like her. She is studying human resources, and the experience of her present work as a casual clerical assistant makes her think that the human resource practices she sees in operation have nothing to do with humans at all. She is excited about being able to change this after she qualifies. Bec, who was a transient child and went to at least 26 schools as a primary-aged student, now wants to be a teacher. She wants to know how to actually build children up and not destroy their lives, specifically children like her. She knows how hard it is for these children just getting to school on time, let alone not having any shoes or lunch. She is very disturbed to see children coming to school because they want to be there, because they've got the hunger for education, who--when they get there--just get told off. This to her is a big motivation to study, because she feels such an affinity with children like these. (Since she shared her dream with us, Bec has become a primary school teacher.) Marie too gets quite passionate about people who are underprivileged. She thinks that, because she is from that background, she gets particularly irritated when people who have never been in that position think they know what it's like. She thinks you only have a really good sense of it when you have actually been there. Marie's degree course is in community development. She would love to work with young people in her local community. She wants to see the tables reversed a little. She says it's about equality. The gap is too wide, and she believes it can actually be bridged a lot more. It's a passion for her. We earlier referred to the perception that working-class studentsare often expected to leave their class backgrounds behind andassimilate into a new middle-class milieu (Green, 2003). These storiessuggest a slightly different analysis of aspiration and social mobility,with students from working-class backgrounds seeking the status andpower afforded by middle-class occupations not for their own improvedstatus but rather so they can work to improve the life chances of othersfrom a similar class background. Participants do not see their futuresin terms of becoming middle class but, rather, in terms of givingsomething back to the community to which they belong. These students,all from strong working-class backgrounds, still have a commitment totheir working-class identities and to working-class issues. Theirstories illustrate a continuing loyalty to their backgrounds, and adesire to use their 'middle-class' qualifications andprofessional status, not just as tickets to a better life forthemselves, but also through newly acquired power as a means to offer abetter life for others like them. In short, there is a strong sense ofsolidarity among these working-class students. We have found throughout our research that students repositionthemselves in relationship to the challenges of university education,and that there are parallel changes to their sense of identity. Theeducational journey for the students was interrupted either by rejectingschool and dropping out before their final-year examinations, or bybeing rejected by the school system. Munns et al. (2000, p. 167)describe this as a 'cultural fracture', whereby schooling wasrejected (for whatever reason) but, in our analysis, students whoexperience cultural fracture do not reject future education per se.Schooling rather becomes unfinished business and students actually seeuniversity education as a future possibility. Melucci (1996, p. 49) suggests that even though formal educationhas been interrupted, identity continues and takes the form of a'metamorphosis', being a process involving constant negotiation among different parts of the self, among different times of the self, and among different settings or systems to which each of us belongs. In its various components, identity considered as negotiation involves the capacity to respond to the multiplicity and contradictoriness of the elements of which we are composed at any given moment. In other words, just because formal education is interrupted itdoes not mean that people's identities do not continue to takeshape and evolve. For instance, the students involved in our researchare mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, employed and unemployed,married and divorced. As such, becoming a university student signals achange in identity that requires taking on and experiencing themetamorphosis that Melucci describes above. Similarly, Munns et al. (2000, p. 4) imply that students who enteruniversity through an alternative entry or 'second chance'program are 'reconnecting with education [which] coincides withwider processes of individuals defining and redefining their identitiesin the period between school and universities' (p. 4). Britton andBaxter (1999) reflect that it is not the university experience itselfthat creates changes in identity, but rather changes in the self andidentity are the reasons for attending to the 'unfinishedbusiness' of schooling. It is changes in identity that result inentry into university. While defining identity is subjective, what we doknow is that our students manage to negotiate between different socialand cultural contexts, which allows a redefinition of the self and, asMelucci (1996, p. 51) suggests: Conceptually, it is important to shift from a consideration of identity in terms of either/or to a non-linear perspective which includes the possibility of and/ and. The back-and-forth between these perspectives depends on who asks the question of identity and from which point of view. Posited from this position, rather than having their culturalcapital devalued, students are able to take control of their learning byarticulating their experiences, their lives and their knowledge to'others', thereby opening up the 'possibility ofimagining themselves as agents of their own lives' (Brodkey, 1992,p. 312). Conclusion Our research leads us to the position that social class needs to berevisited as a theoretical category for understanding the culturalprocesses of (in)exclusion in education. In this case study,students' stories clearly show the detrimental effects ofinstitutional and cultural habitus on the life chances of people fromworking-class schools and communities. As McGregor (1997, p. 186)explains: [b]eing in the working-class is a synonym for underprivilege. Working-class people in general earn less than other groups, own less, have a poorer education, have less access to the goods of the society they live in, and have less opportunity for a good life: equal opportunity simply does not exist in Australia. Significantly, the informants in this study demonstrated a capacityto push back against the odds without having to divest themselves oftheir working-class sensibilities. For them, education was not onlyabout individual advancement but directly related to fairness forthemselves, their families and communities. What makes these stories sopowerful is not only the manner in which the students interrupted somestrongly entrenched stereotypes and cultural biases in education butalso renegotiated their own life trajectories and personal biographies.As we heard, this kind of identity work (Wexler, 1992) is not withoutrisk, tension or struggle. 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