This paper explores the role played by part-time Women's/Gender Studies (WGS) courses in women's lives in the UK through interviews with 35 women who were among 8000 students who studied one of the UK Open University's undergraduate interdisciplinary WGS courses between 1983 and 1999. A thematic analysis of these interviews shows how these mainly…

During the last few decades, the South Wales Valleys (UK) have undergone a considerable economic, social, cultural and political transformation, altering youth transitions from school to work. Drawing on a two and a half year ethnographic study, in the paper I concentrate on a group of academically successful young white working-class men aged…

The paper explores the ways girls appropriate gender through actions, gesture and talk to achieve things in primary school science classrooms. It draws on socio-cultural approaches to show that when everyday classroom practices are viewed from multiple planes of analysis, historical, institutional and in the micro dynamics of classroom…

In this article, I explore men's educational experiences and aspirations in the context of UK policy discourses of widening participation and migration. Critiquing discourses that oversimplify gendered access to higher education, I develop an analysis of the impact of masculine subjectivities on processes of subjective construction in relation to…

Two key concepts arising from Butler's work are the heterosexual matrix--the conflation of sex-gender-sexuality which leads to the normalisation of heterosexuality--and performative reinscription--the discursive process by which the marginalised Other brings new meanings to normative identity constructions. While we have found both concepts…

This article reports findings from a study in which 26 girls aged 12- to 13-years-old took part in workshops at a specialist ICT center connected to a school in inner-city London. The girls explored and discussed fashion as presented online, and they produced their own interactive fashion design webpages, making decisions about body shapes, types…

Children's cultural worlds provide them with many different sources of information about gender and work. Early school reader illustrations, for example, are a cultural resource that produces particular meanings about gender, however children may also draw on understandings from other contexts to make their own sense of these representations. The…

This paper explores the emotional resources generated by working class mothers to support their children at school. Analysis of material from qualitative interview research with a range working class mothers will focus on specific accounts of children's school lives to reveal how situated meanings can clash with institutional expectations. By…