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

The university experiences of working-class women undergraduates are explored in this article, by drawing on Archer’s (2003) Critical Realist concept of internal conversation. The internal conversation is the process by which agents reflexively confront their social circumstances, a process in which thoughts and decisions are mediated in relation to social structures. Archer (2003, p. 104) contends that as subjects we are involuntarily placed within society: ‘as ever, we make ourselves and our history, but not under the times and circumstances of our choosing.’ The subject’s ‘life project’ (or ‘modus vivendi’ – please see Archer, 2003, pp. 148–150) is impacted by different enablements or constraints dependent on their involuntary placement in society. Consequently, Archer’s (2003) work on the agentic internal conversation with three phases of ‘Discernment-Deliberation-Dedication’ has been identified as a way of understanding the wishes of subjects, alongside their behaviours as: ‘reflexive agents can sometimes foresee the impediments that certain projects would encounter and thus can be deterred from pursuing them. Equally, they may anticipate the ease with which other projects could be advanced’ (Archer, 2003, p. 6). A subject’s agentic response to the enablements and constraints that they encounter in the pursuit of their ultimate concern can lead to transformation (morphogenesis) or reproduction (morphostasis).

Table 1. Participants.

Name	Age	Ethnicity	Children	Walking distance to university	HE entry a personal challenge	HE entry an academic challenge	First person in family to go to university	Degree subject
Aisha	22	Asian British	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Counselling psychology
Claire	20	White British	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Psychology and Early Childhood Studies
Hannah	19	White British	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Psychology
Charvi	18	Asian British	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Psychology
Dee	40	White British	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Creative Writing
Jasmine	18	Asian British	No	Yes	No	No	No (older sister went first).	Psychology
Farrah	27	Asian British	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Psychology and Early Childhood Studies
Elena	27	Eastern European	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Psychology
Shireen	20	Black British	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Social Care and Early Childhood Studies
Gillian	30	African	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Health Studies

Critical Realism has received growing interest as a way of addressing the interplay between structure and agency in order to understand university students’ experiences (Bovill, 2012; D’Silva & Pugh, 2021). Archer’s (2012) study explored the internal conversations of Sociology undergraduates at an elite English University. Archer (2012) identified the majority of her participants as being from socio-economically advantaged backgrounds. Archer (2012, p. 322) critiqued her own study in relation to the ‘the small numbers coming from working-class backgrounds.’ In response to this, she suggested: ‘any future attempt to correct this … at a different university with a more socially representative intake would simultaneously introduce concomitant variations in other student characteristics: especially student grades at A-Level and the proportion schooled in the private sector’ (Archer, 2012, pp. 322–323). This article offers a limited contribution to addressing this gap in our understanding of the internal conversation through a small study of women undergraduates from working-class backgrounds.

The number of university entrants from working-class backgrounds has increased. The total number of entrants to higher education in the UK in 2017 was 533,890, and 82% of those were domiciled in the UK (437,789) according to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS, 2017). The End of Cycle Report from UCAS for 2017 showed that the number of young people from areas with a lowentry to higher education was 13.8%, up 0.2 percentage points from the previous year. However, when compared to the figures for entrants from backgrounds who were most likely to go to university, the gap had actually increased by 0.8 percentage points. 53.1% of entrants were from backgrounds most likely to go into higher education, which was a 1% increase on 2016. Thompson (2017, p. 751) contends that ‘opportunity structures are to be understood dynamically and relationally … educational expansion – including increased working-class participation – produces “social congestion” (Brown, 2013), … and restricts opportunities for the most vulnerable’. Neves et al. (2017) also note that those from socio-economically advantaged backgrounds have benefitted from the massification of higher education to a greater extent than those from poorer financial backgrounds. Hence, whilst the number of students from working-class backgrounds in universities has increased, they remain a minority group within the higher education sector.

In addition to being less likely to go to university, working-class students are also disproportionately concentrated in the lower ranking institutions according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA, 2018). This ranking of higher education institutions reflects a pattern of social stratification with lower ranking institutions typically being associated with those from widening participation backgrounds (Leathwood & O’Connell, 2003). Widening participation consists of practices which aim to remove barriers to university access. Such initiatives are not specific to the United Kingdom. In France, it is the public universities which offer non-selective programmes to enable the ‘new bacheliers’ (first-generation students) from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to pursue higher education (Bodin & Orange, 2018). Likewise in the USA, working-class students and minority-ethnic students are disproportionately participating in community college education, rather than becoming members of the elite Ivy League institutions (Espinoza, 2012).

Working-class women tend to have more interrupted educational histories than their middle-class counterparts (Reay et al., 2002) and are more likely to be mature students compared with men (UCAS, 2018). Female working-class experiences of university are also particularly likely to be combining studying with caring responsibilities (Fuller, 2018). It has been noted that when working-class female students attend university, there is often a focus on the financial stability that it will bring to their own families in the longer term (Reay, 2003). Working-class female undergraduates are therefore more likely to be mature students, attend less prestigious institutions, have caring responsibilities and have strong economic motivations for studying in comparison to their more advantaged counterparts.

A range of theoretical concepts have been used to try and explain the differences in university experience for working-class students in comparison to their middle-class counterparts, such as Habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), Rational Choice Theory (RCT) (Boudon, 1974) and Poststructuralism (e.g. Elkins & Hanke, 2018). The next section of this article will briefly outline the main ways in which these three theoretical approaches explain differences in university experience in relation to social class and gender, as well as identifying potential limitations in the explanatory power of these concepts. The article will then move on to consider how the internal conversations of Margaret Archer’s (2003) Critical Realism can further develop our understanding of classed and gendered experiences of university.

Habitus

Bourdieu’s work on habitus (alongside his concepts of Capital and Field – please see Edgerton & Roberts, 2014, for a detailed discussion) has been seminal in theorising the experiences of working-class students (e.g. Bathmaker et al., 2016; Davey, 2009; Lehmann, 2012). Briefly elucidated, the concept of habitus is related to the disposition of the individual, and it is understood to be influenced by family background, as well as past and present experiences. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) offers a bridge between structural and agentic factors to try and understand working-class students’ experiences of university. The concept of habitus has been used to understand how different cultural dispositions of women and/or working-class students shape decisions about, and experiences of, university study (recent examples include Clark et al., 2015; Daniel & Watermann, 2018; Liu, 2019).

However, habitus has been critiqued for only explaining unconscious behaviours and being socially deterministic, rather than addressing conscious decision-making (Mutch, 2004; Reay, 2004; Sayer, 2005). Sayer (2005, p. 29) comments ‘Bourdieu (like many social theorists) ignores a mundane but crucial aspect of our lives: our “internal conversations” … going beyond thinking about what we are doing to other, often more serious matters’. Researchers have tried to address this limitation through adopting a ‘Bourdieu Plus’ model by using the additional conceptual tool of Archer’s (2003) internal conversation (Forbes & Maxwell, 2018; Maxwell. & Aggleton, 2014). However, one of the challenges researchers face when trying to combine Archer’s work with that of other theorists is the limited references she makes in her work to the concepts of others (Mutch, 2004) although her later work (Archer, 2007, 2012) addresses some of these critiques. Nevertheless, Archer’s critical realist theory is gaining increasing attention as a way of conceptualising agency in a more voluntaristic manner than habitus (Clegg, 2016; Gunnarsson et al., 2016; Vogler, 2016) or Boudon’s (1974) primary effects.

Rational choice theory (RCT)

Moreover, there have been parallels drawn between Bourdieu’s habitus and Boudon’s (1974) primary effects in rational choice theory (RCT) (Thompson, 2019). Boudon’s primary effects are related to the social background of the individual influencing academic attainment, and these are mediated by ‘differences in family cultural endowments, attitudes and interests’ (Thompson, 2019, p. 147). However, much of RCT has focused on secondary effects which explain the cost/benefit analysis made by working-class students in deciding whether to go to university. Boudon’s (1974) seminal work on educational inequalities is popularised using rational choice theories to understand the impact of social background on differential patterns of access to higher education (e.g. Becker & Hecken, 2009; Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997; Hatcher, 1998). For example, the recent study by Häuberer and Brändle (2018) noted that social background shapes how the ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ of education are perceived by individuals. They contend that individuals use the information that is available to them, about the potential costs and benefits of an additional educational certificate to rationally decide if this is an investment worth making. One of the key criticisms that is levelled at RCT is that it does not necessarily indicate the extent to which behaviours, and actions, align with the wishes of individuals (Sullivan, 2006).

Poststructuralism

Conversely, the individual has been the focus in poststructural accounts of working-class university experiences. Poststructural studies have raised our awareness of underrepresented voices within elite higher education institutions (Elkins & Hanke, 2018; Goodwin, 2002) and women in higher education more broadly (Allan et al., 2010; Archer et al., 2001; Eddy et al., 2017), and this work has been significant in contributing to theorising differences. Critical Realism has been critiqued for having ‘ignored rather than engaged’ with poststructuralist thinking (Sayer, 2000, p. 30). However, there are commonalities between these two very different theoretical positions, including both being open to diversity and plurality (Sayer, 2000). Nevertheless, there is significant theoretical discord between poststructuralism and Critical Realism in their understandings of agency.

Poststructural understandings of agency are critiqued by Critical Realists because of the premise that language is independent of the meanings and interpretations of subjects, making it difficult to explore the desires and wishes of subjects. Clegg (2016, p. 504) describes poststructuralism as being underpinned by a belief in the ‘primacy of the discursive and denial of a pre-discursive self’ and therefore not having the theoretical resources to explore the ‘potentiality of active human agents’ (Clegg, 2016, p. 502). Sayer argues that ‘the reduction of the subject to a position in discourse … [is] utterly incompatible with critical social science’ (2000, p. 177). In contrast to poststructuralism, Critical Realism identifies agents as exerting their ‘personal powers to formulate projects and to monitor both self and society in the pursuit of their designs’ (Archer, 2003, p. 298). Consequently, Critical Realism is receiving growing interest as a way of addressing the balance between structure and agency in order to understand students’ experiences (Bovill, 2012; D’Silva & Pugh, 2021).

Internal conversation

Archer’s theorisation of the internal conversation is that it is the process by which agents reflexively confront their social circumstances. Archer (2003) identified examples of individuals engaging in personal projects of social mobility through her analysis of internal dialogues (she conducted exploratory studies – with university students (2012) and members of a local community (2003; 2007)). The data in this article is theorised using Archer’s work to exemplify the different insights that using an ‘internal conversation’ lens may provide in exploring the university experiences of working-class women. This article attempts to do this by focusing on the thought processes of the participants that come to light during their narratives where they discuss their journeys into higher education.

Study context

The participants were studying at a low-ranked UK higher education institution, which was in the top decile of institutions taking participants from areas with low entry to higher education rates (HESA, 2018). The institution had been a polytechnic prior to receiving university status in 1992. The 10 participants all attended the main city campus.

The participants ranged from 18 to 40 years of age. Five of the participants were classed as ‘mature’ students entering university after the age of 21. Four of the participants were Asian British, three of the participants were white British, one participant was Black British, one participant was Eastern European and one participant was African. Nine of the participants lived within walking distance of the university. Two participants lived with their husbands and children and two with male partners, four participants lived with their parents, one participant lived in Halls of Residence (but her family also lived locally) and one lived alone.

An understanding of social class which incorporated social, economic and cultural factors was used to define the sample post-hoc. Socially, the participants were more likely to be characterised as working class as they had ‘chosen’ to live at home and attend a local institution. This was for a mixture of reasons: the practicalities of moving to a new geographical region for participants with families and relationships, the financial concerns about the cost of living away from home, the comfort of having family close by and the reassurance of having childhood friends that were attending the same institution. The participants could be characterised as having parents with ‘routine occupational’ backgrounds according to the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) (Rose & Pevalin, 2003); additionally, participants identified economic challenges experienced by their families. The ‘cultural turn’ (Crompton, 2003) in social-class analysis has highlighted the insufficiencies of economic and material categories. Cultural practices both differentiate and reproduce social-class inequalities (Bottero, 2014; Crompton, 1996). The participants in this study had less cultural familiarity with higher education as they were generally the first people in their immediate family to attend university. Please see Table 1 for an overview of the participants.

Methodology

Semi-structured interviews

The data set of semi-structured interviews (Curtis et al., 2014; Mann, 2016) with 10 working-class women participants is used in this analysis. The data set used for this analysis is part of data collected for a wider piece of research focusing on the assessment and feedback experiences of first-year undergraduates (Shields, 2015). The study included a pilot study and a main study consisting of 24 semi-structured interviews, a questionnaire and documentary analysis of reflective writing. A key finding from the wider study had been about the impact of assignment feedback on emotions. This led to my interest in undertaking a theoretical thematic analysis in relation to Archer’s theory of internal conversations because desires and wishes are central to how the individual prioritises and chooses a personal project (see Burkitt, 2012, for a detailed discussion of how Archer theorises emotion). This article reports on data deriving from the first part of the interview schedule which explored the students’ journeys into higher education.

Informed consent

The interview questions could be described as narrative life story research focusing on the past, present and future (Cousin, 2009; Lillis, 2001), and a two-step process was taken to gain informed consent. The participant information sheet explained that the project was interested in understanding students’ experiences of engaging with assessment and feedback, and as part of this, the study wanted to explore participants’ journeys into higher education. To check that participants did not feel pressurised into taking part in the interviews, a copy of the interview schedule was sent to participants prior to the interview via email. This gave participants the opportunity to withdraw from the interview in a non-confrontational manner if they felt uncomfortable with the interview questions. The study did not offer any incentives to participate other than a complimentary cup of coffee from a university café. After participants had agreed to participate in the interviews, I focused on developing a rapport during the interview process.

Rapport

Informal conversation with participants ahead of the recorded interview was an opportunity to develop a rapport through chatting. Not only was this ‘pre-interview chat’ important for developing rapport, Oakley (1981, p. 49) states that there is ‘no intimacy without reciprocity’, meaning that unless the interviewer shares their own identity and experiences with the interviewee, it is unlikely and unfair to expect them to share this information about themselves. However, this attempt to develop a rapport with the participants should not be mistaken for an equal distribution of power with the interviewer–interviewee relationship. The British Sociological Association (BSA) statement of ethical practice (British Sociological Association, 2017) acknowledges that there are disparities in power relationships between participants and researchers and therefore calls for research to be conducted with trust and integrity. Mero-Jaffe (2011, p. 244 in Mann, 2016, p. 232) argues that member-checking is ‘a conscious attempt to readjust the “balance of power between the interviewer and interviewee”’. Three participants from this data set chose to member check their transcripts. Subsequently, participants from the whole study were invited to discuss the overarching thematic analysis of the data, which five students chose to do, one of whom is a participant who features in this article. The opportunity to discuss the overarching analysis was to ascertain if participants perceived that their voice had been accurately reflected.

Voice

Feminist research principles express a commitment to sensitively broadcasting the ‘voice’ of those being researched (Ramazanoglu, 2002). The participants in this study could be characterised as a subordinate group whose voices had not been heard, meaning that the ‘evaluator becomes the conduit for making such voices heard’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 26). However, the idea of ‘giving voice’ has been problematised by a number of researchers. For example, Ellsworth (1989, pp. 309–310) indicates that we should recognise ‘voices’ as being ‘partial and partisan’. I am also mindful of Fine, M.’s (1992) comment about ‘naivety’ in trying to offer an account of the voices of participants. Therefore, my theorised thematic analysis of the participants’ voices in relation to internal conversation is a subjective one based on my own ‘readings’ of the data and is shaped by my own experiences and world view.

Morphogenetic approach to agency

In theorising the data, Archer’s morphogenetic approach to agency was drawn upon. In this case, ‘agency leads to structural and cultural elaboration, but is itself elaborated in the process’ (Archer, 1995, p. 247, 2000). ‘Morphogenetic’ derives from Greek and means a change in shape or form.

The ‘morpho’ element is an acknowledgement that society has no pre-set form or preferred state: the ‘genetic’ part is a recognition that it takes its shape from, and is formed by, agents, originating from the intended and unintended consequences of their activities’. (Archer, 1995, p. 5)

The morphogenetic approach to agency is one of the ‘active agency’ (Archer, 2003, p. 299) as it focuses on what a subject cares about most and how the subject makes their commitments accordingly. This approach to agency is important for understanding desires and actions: ‘… participating in active role-making … This is the key to what different persons make of their initial involuntary placement as social agents and what they do as voluntary Social Actors’ (Archer, 2003, p. 121).

Archer (2003, 2007, 2012) argues that the internal conversation is the process by which agents reflexively confront their social circumstances to make decisions about their modus vivendi (life project), and she identifies four modes of reflexive internal conversation. Archer (2003, 2007, 2012) contends that all subjects have one dominant mode of reflexivity. First, the ‘autonomous reflexive’ makes decisions independently and ensures subordinate concerns do not impede their commitment to their ultimate concern. Second, ‘communicative reflexives’ reach decisions through a ‘thought and talk’ approach with trusted interlocutors, with their ultimate concern typically being ‘friends and family’ and all other projects being subordinated to this. Third, the ‘meta-reflexive’ is critical of society and will make decisions based on addressing their concerns and dissatisfactions with society. Finally, the ‘fractured reflexive’ is an individual who finds no relief in their internal conversation to help them to move forward with their life project; instead, they are ‘stuck’ and unable to make progress towards their ultimate concern (please see Archer, 2012, p. 318 for a useful brief tabular summary).

In Archer’s (2000) morphogenetic approach to agency, the different modes of reflexive internal conversation move through three stages: Discernment – Deliberation – Dedication (DDD). When a subject considers a new life project, a number of possibilities may be raised and this is the ‘discernment’ phase highlighting the agent’s desires and wishes. At the second stage of the internal conversation – ‘deliberation’ – the subject considers one of these possibilities answering the question of ‘is it worth it?’ with a ‘yes’ (please see Archer, 2000, p. 236). Finally, the ‘dedication’ phase considers how the life project is being managed on a practical and emotional level. As the life project nears completion, a new cycle of DDD starts as the next steps towards a new life project or a new phase of the life project begins (Archer, 2003).

This study has applied Archer’s (2003) three phases of internal dialogue to theorise the meaning-making of participants. The ways in which the participants told their stories reflected their thought processes, doubts and motivations, and this strongly resonated with Archer’s (2003) phases of internal conversation as a way of understanding the data. This theoretical thematic analysis should not be conflated with the participants themselves consciously moving through a three-step process of internal dialogue. Archer herself contends,

the expectation is not that subjects themselves will see their internal conversation in terms of a debate about objective worth for this would be illegitimately to impose the way the world is upon our knowledge about it and deliberations towards it. (2000, p. 237)

The first stage of ‘discernment’ related to two themes in the data in relation to developing personal projects: ‘career aspirations’ or ‘doing it for me’ (the self). The second phase of ‘deliberation’ considered one theme of ‘intellectually engaging academic study’. The third phase of ‘dedication’ reflected on a ‘commitment to studying’. However, the internal conversational phase of ‘dedication’ also centred on ‘the dovetailing of home and relationships with the personal project’. This indicated a particular mode of reflexivity within the internal conversation – communicative reflexivity. Communicative reflexives focus on ensuring that any concerns or projects are not at the expenses of the ultimate concern – ‘family and friends’. Furthermore, a sub-theme of ‘emotional support’ was related to the importance of familial relationships in the participants’ higher education journeys and reflects the ‘thought and talk’ with trusted interlocutor approach of communicative reflexives. The thematic analysis indicated that participants’ internal conversations focused on both ‘agency for change’ and ‘agency for stability’ in relation to the different modes of reflexivity Archer (2003) identifies. The process of agency for change (morphogenesis) was apparent through the openness to new experiences and career opportunities resonant of autonomous reflexivity. However, counter to this, the participants were also interested in reproduction of their existing contexts (morphostasis) through the dovetailing of their family priorities with university which is typical of communicative reflexivity.

Findings and discussion

Discernment – career aspirations

The participants’ initial conversational phase of discernment began with a sense of contextual discontinuity. They were experiencing dissatisfaction with their social situations, and their thought processes had begun to seek to address this through the possibility of entering higher education. This contextual discontinuity was reflected in the way participants identified gaining a degree as opening up new or further career opportunities. Seven of the 10 participants had a strong sense of studying as a personal project which would have transformative potential for their future occupations. For Farrah, this contextual discontinuity came from boredom with her occupation and her experience of other career possibilities:

I just started working and continued through that. Now I fancy a career change. Erm kind of bored in what I do … And then throughout your life certain things change and you want to do something for a right reason and it’s the same with me. Like I’ve done some voluntary work in schools and I’m still not too sure if I would want to go into teaching, but I want to find out more like why children behave the way they do. (Farrah, 27 years old).

Farrah had discerned that the route to a more interesting career was through becoming a graduate, also indicating that becoming an Educational Psychologist was another idea that she was considering. Gillian too had experienced a sense of contextual discontinuity as she wished to seek fulfilment outside of her role as a parent. Now, with both her children at primary school, her thoughts had turned to realising her career aspirations through going to university:

I married young and was still doing my GCSE’s [in Botswana, Africa]. I did not go back to full time study and I had my son almost immediately after that … I chose Health Studies which is great actually because looking at the job opportunities I have with this one it’s more. (Gillian, 30 years old)

The participants’ personal projects were a voluntary attempt to increase life satisfaction through actively undertaking a new role. Archer (2003) describes this type of reflexivity as ‘autonomous’. Autonomous reflexivity is indicative of the ‘contextual discontinuity’ the participants had experienced. They wished to embark on a personal project which challenged their current socio-cultural horizons. Clegg (2016) identifies that ‘autonomous reflexives’ are orientated towards mobility. Not all of the participants had had internal conversations which had started with dissatisfaction with occupational opportunities.

Discernment – ‘Doing it for me’

For the three participants that did not cite occupational aspirations as their reason for wanting to go to university, their contextual discontinuity stemmed from personal events in their lives and a desire to focus on ‘the self’, for example: ‘Therapeutic, I’m doing it for me’ (Dee, 40 years old); ‘multicultural environment to make friends’ (Elena, 27 years old). Again, these comments indicated an attempt to undertake a new role voluntarily to increase their satisfaction with life. The participants ‘had all shown a readiness (if not a desire) to move away from their initial context of involuntary placement’ (Archer, 2003, p. 212). Archer argues that regardless of what the project may entail, ‘this involves a judgment of worth about the project and a judgment of our emotional attraction to it’ (2000, p. 232). A key aspect of the internal dialogue after a personal project has been identified is the conversational phase of ‘deliberation’ to ensure that the project will be sustainable and that participants will derive satisfaction from undertaking their project.

Deliberating – Intellectually engaging academic study

For the participants in this study, alongside their initial discernment of personal projects about occupational aspiration (or improving their life socially or mentally), the deliberation phase involved considering if the degree subject being chosen could offer participants the enjoyment of intellectual engagement. All 10 participants made comments about their interest and curiosity in the subject that they were studying. The ‘deliberation’ process is exemplified by internal dialogue, such as ‘Does it really matter? … of course it matters’ (Archer, 2000, p. 236). For the autonomous reflexive individual, there is a need to embrace a course of action that is both ‘satisfying and sustainable’ (Archer, 2003, p. 257).

Well I did it at sixth form and it was something different and it really interested me. (Charvi, 18 years old)

I just thought it would be interesting not like English because I had to do that at GCSE and … and Psychology actually really interested me. (Claire, 20 years old)

I think it was something I was interested in because when somebody would behave in a certain way I would think what determined them to behave in such a way. So I would go through books or look online whatever. (Elena, 27 years old)

Studying a subject that the participants enjoyed offered a significant opportunity for finding pleasure through studying, and this in turn facilitated a level of motivation to make this a sustainable course of action. The deliberation process had focused on ways in which studying would be an ‘enablement’, rather than a ‘constraint’ (Archer, 2000). Archer’s theoretical concepts of ‘enablements’ and ‘constraints’ is supported by McGhie’s (2017) findings which identified that whilst successful and unsuccessful first-year university students can find the subject content challenging, students who successfully make the transition are more likely to work harder and use independent studying techniques to understand and engage with a subject. Bovill (2012, p. 689) contends that those displaying autonomous reflexivity will define courses of actions independently and ‘operate at a distance from their social context’. Autonomous reflexivity was apparent as all 10 participants described how they undertook an independent study.

Dedication – commitment to studying

In the internal conversational phase of ‘dedication’, participants had thought through the challenges they had in finding time and space to study. Their actions, as outlined below, emphasised how this internal dialogue had translated into behaviours reflecting their commitment to studying. The ‘lone individualism of autonomous reflexives’ (Archer, 2003, p. 259) is apparent in their single-minded actions as a response to their internal conversations:

There’s usually kids everywhere in my house [child care arrangements for young nieces and nephews] so usually I lock myself in my room. (Charvi, 18 years old)

I’m a really organised person, so I don’t find it hard to cope with day to day running of going to work and coming to uni. Work allow me to do my work when it is pretty quiet, as long as I’m doing their work and completing it they’re alright - so I’m fine. (Farrah, 27 years old)

It’s fine because he [partner] works full time and so he’s out all day and I’m at lectures but then I can go home and know I’ve got a few hours to get stuff done …. (Claire, 20 years old)

Charvi, Farrah and Claire’s comments highlight the task orientation that is typical of autonomous reflexivity as the participants engaged in ‘self monitoring to ensure proficiency’ (Archer, 2003, p. 265). Hannah and Dee’s responses to their assignment feedback is also indicative of this self-monitoring:

I’ll put as much effort as I can in … I think if you put the work in then you get the grade that you want. (Hannah, 19 years old)

Most of it [formative feedback] was upbeat … [but] ‘there are a few points that I think you would like to consider’ and different things I could pick up on … (Dee, 40 years old)

It was apparent that the participants were prioritising their university study, and ‘dedication’ seems an apt way of theorising this. Woodfield et al. (2006, p. 3) contend that ‘much of the literature in this area seems to accept that the learner identity of females is one which leads girls and women to work harder and more consistently’. A Canadian study shows that older female students demonstrate high levels of application (Carney-Crompton & Tan, 2002). A more recent Portuguese study also indicates that mature students are motivated, ready to learn and have clearly defined goals (Santos et al., 2016). However, for nine of the participants, this is where the internal conversations demonstrating autonomous reflexivity ended, as much of the dedication phase of internal conversation was arguably akin to communicative reflexivity.

The dovetailing of home and relationships with the personal project

A large aspect of the ‘dedication’ phase focused on agency for stability, rather than agency for change. The personal projects of studying in relation to occupational aspirations (or ‘the self’) were maintained through a focus on contextual continuity with home and relationships, which was reflective of a position resonant with ‘communicative reflexivity’, rather than ‘autonomous reflexivity’.

It’s not far away from my home and I’d got a long-term boyfriend so I didn’t want to move too far away. (Claire, 20 years old)

I know it’s local but I just wanted to come here because all my friends are here.

(Jasmine, 18 years old)

The women focused on remaining as agents for stability in relation to the ‘comfort’ (Archer, 2003, p. 203) of being able to maintain existing relationships. Their internal conversations had defined their personal projects through a voluntary collaboration with some level of contextual continuity with their current social situations. In addition to maintaining relationships, studying locally meant that they could all attend university easily which meant minimal disruption with their home lives. An excerpt from Farrah’s transcript below highlights the contextual continuity she has achieved through dovetailing home, work and university:

It’s close to home. I mean I’m still living with my parents plus it’s close to work as well, you know it’s Wandsall [pseudonym] Council - it’s half an hour drive and everything fits you know. (Farrah, 27 years old)

For the communicative reflexive ‘cognitively, contentment entails a judgment by a subject that her personal condition is acceptable’ (Archer, 2003, p. 202). This means that the strong dedication to family and their current social context has to not be significantly impacted by a new course of action. The analysis of the interview data suggested that the women participants were happy with how they balanced their desire to study at university, with a maintenance of their home lives and familial relationships. Archer (2003, p. 202) argues that ‘society’ places no obstacles in the way of those who want to prioritise friends and family, especially when this is tied to no aspirations towards ‘social advancement’.

Emotional support

A sub theme of maintaining home and relationship ties was the emotional support and encouragement that could be offered by family members and romantic partners.

It’s like getting closer and I was thinking I can’t leave … I’m in a relationship as well … I’m a bit of a wimp, but I like to be independent but have the support of your family as well. (Hannah, 19 years old)

He’s quite understanding when it comes to things like that and he’s probably the one that makes me sit on the computer and do the work. (Claire, 20 years old)

Archer (2003) highlights that those demonstrating communicative reflexivity externalise their decisions about how to proceed with those who share their concerns. In response to some disappointing assignment feedback, Farrah highlights the role her family played in boosting her self-esteem:

I’ve got support to say hang on, don’t give up you know. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend you know to say they’re great because they’ve been like don’t worry because you’ll get there, so you know I’m lucky in that aspect’. (Farrah, 27 years old)

Families and partners offered affirmations that the women could succeed. This finding is supported by Roksa and Kinley (2019) who identified that for students who had families that were providing support, this was a significant predictor in academic success. The findings indicate that the working-class women in this study used their agency in two ways, one to bring about change (autonomous reflexivity), but also to maintain the other aspects of their lives that were most important to them (communicative reflexivity). ‘Going to university’ is a transitional phase of the life course, and further theorisation of how students’ internal conversations may oscillate between different modes of reflexivity during this period is needed, as the analysis in this study is contra to Archer’s (2003) contention that agents have one dominant mode of reflexivity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this article has offered two interrelated arguments in relation to theorising working-class women undergraduates’ experiences of university with the concept of internal conversation (Archer, 2003). First, it is argued that the concept of internal conversation emphasises active agency, individual’s wishes and their understandings of societal constraints (or societal enablements). Therefore, it is suggested that the concept of internal conversation challenges more deterministic understandings of agency, which some have argued characterizes Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). In addition, the concept of the internal conversation considers wishes alongside actions, unlike RCT which typically focuses only on behaviours. Furthermore, internal conversation enables an exploration of active agency, unlike poststructuralist accounts which, due to the primacy given to discourse, are generally more limited in offering accounts of the subject as creative or purposeful. Consequently, it is contended that the concept of internal conversation can facilitate an analysis of working-class women’s sense-making of higher education as they mediate between their wishes and their societal positionings due to exploring their agentic responses to their involuntary placement within society.

Second, this study indicated that participants recognized educational opportunities as facilitating social mobility through increased career opportunities but that these mobility experiences were personalized and contextualised in relation to an individual’s personal priorities. This article has highlighted that the working-class women undergraduate’s competing priorities and values in relation to family and relationships challenged opportunities for occupational upward mobility. Archer (2012, p. 305) states

the costs are in terms of refusing geographical mobility and of rejecting the full extent of occupational advancement offered by higher education. This is a choice, not a default option or fall-back position. It has to be made, it carries a price tag, it is based upon personal commitment and is hostage to it.

Furthermore, the participants in my study were distinctive from Archer’s (2012) Sociology undergraduates, with half of her students being identified as meta-reflexive, often with a global outlook on social mobility. This suggests that theorisation with internal conversation may support additional understandings of the varying levels of transformation and stasis in social mobility for working-class women university entrants. Furthermore, additional exploration of the tensions between ‘agency for change’ and ‘agency for stability’ in desires for both upward mobility and remaining part of existing social contexts should be researched through the concept of internal conversation, as this could potentially offer a new dimension in making sense of working-class women’s experiences of university.

However, this study is a small-scale case study of 10 working-class undergraduates, and the findings are offered with caution and are limited in both their transferability and confirmability; for example, the article does not attempt to extrapolate to any patterns associated with ethnicity; additionally, participants identified as being in heteronormative relationships and therefore the study is unable to offer any analogies to the experiences of LGBTQ+ working-class women undergraduates. Evidently, further research should explore characteristics beyond the interplay of gender and social class to understand working-class women’s internal conversations. Future studies of ‘experiences of university’ are needed to theorise how students’ internal conversations may oscillate between different modes of reflexivity during this transitional phase of the life course.

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.