Curiosity and careers: Female working-class students’ experiences of university

ABSTRACT

Many studies have highlighted the limited ‘opportunity structures’ of working-class undergraduates. However, there have been few studies exploring how students’ agentic internal conversations mediate societal structures. Internal conversation is a reflexive process in which thoughts and decisions are considered in relation to social circumstances. This article seeks to further understandings of this reflexivity with 10 female working-class students. Theorisation using internal conversation emerged as an area of interest during interviews where journeys into higher education were narrated, within a larger study about engagement with assessment and feedback at university. Transcripts were analysed through Archer’s morphogenetic approach to agency with the internal conversational phases of ‘discernment’, ‘deliberation’ and ‘dedication’. Analysis indicated that participants demonstrated elements of both ‘autonomous reflexivity’ and ‘communicative reflexivity’. Future studies should further explore the interplay between ‘agency for change’ and ‘agency for stability’ in the desire for upward mobility while simultaneously seeking to maintain existing social contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Female
• working class
• university
• academic success
• internal conversation
• reflexivity

Acknowledgments

The author thank the editor Claire Maxwell and peer reviewers of this article for their thoughtful and detailed feedback. I would also like to thank Pam Woolner and Laura Mazzoli-Smith for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a PhD studentship from the University of Wolverhampton.

Notes on contributors

Sam Shields

Sam Shields is a Lecturer in Education at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests are assessment and feedback and widening participation in higher education.