Left out until they drop out: how young people negotiate social value in school

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research aimed to examine how young people negotiate positive social value within an institution which continually stratifies them, and to consider the impact that category memberships such as social class and gender may have on the negotiation of value. Social value is negotiated by pupils in two key ways; amongst their peers and from the institution. The research took place within a Scottish comprehensive high school with a randomly assigned cohort of pupils. This setting was a particularly suitable one, because while the goal of modern secondary education in the UK is for all children to have an equal opportunity to learn (UK Government, 2018), 12.2% of pupils in the UK nevertheless leave school with no qualifications (OECD, 2018), and many others leave school feeling worthless (Whittaker 2008; 2010). Using a longitudinal, ethnographic method, the school careers of the pupils were closely observed for four years. A hybrid deductive and inductive data coding process was employed and the resulting analyses focussed upon four organising themes: institutional practices, socio-economic status, gender, and peer-on-peer recognition. The analysis within each theme integrates three levels of influence: the institution, the classroom, and individual pupil educational career trajectories. This range of analysis allows for the consideration of multi-layered perspectives, ranging from broad, institutionally-defined factors such as academic streaming, through classroom-level practices such as discipline, to fine-grained analyses of pupil experiences through detailed vignettes of observed behaviour. The research extends and informs current social psychological theories by analysing dynamic pupil responses in a naturalistic setting over an extended time period, in a manner that complements existing research traditionally using more static methods such as experiments and surveys. Taken together, the analyses demonstrate the pivotal role of the institution in determining social value systems of recognition and, critically, the educational outcomes of some of the most vulnerable pupils. Keywords: value, institution, socio-economic, gender, ostracism, recognition,