In this paper I explore how subjectivity is formed through participation, and non-participation, in learning in sixth form study. Drawing on empirical evidence from a doctoral research study, I bring together theorisations of popular culture with feminist theorisations of subjectivity to explore, and explain, the transgressive tactics sixth form students deploy in their education practices during a second year A Level research module. The paper begins by briefly outlining the changes to 16 – 19 education ushered in by Curriculum 2000. These changes have since been embedded, and refined, in later UK government policies on post-16 education and have been instrumental in producing performative, outcome-oriented learning cultures in sixth forms. Studies have noted the significant impact these cultures have had on young people’s educational experiences (Ball, 2004; Hodgson and Spours, 2005). In wider society, an annual moral panic about declining standards and inflated grades has been produced through a popular media discourse of derision about A Level achievement (Taylor, 2006). These broader discourses impact on students’ perceptions of themselves; they also influence their educational endeavours and relations to learning. However, students are themselves agents within these discourses and I take up Butler’s (1997) notion of discursive agency to explore the innovative ways in which students negotiate their identities within and in relation to these broader discourses. Butler’s theorisation of agency enables me to consider afresh Sfard’s (1998) notion of learning as participation and the main part of the paper includes a detailed exploration of the relations between learning, students’ agency, participation and subjectivity in A Level classrooms. In this main part, I focus on how young peoples’ engagements in learning create spaces for their expressions of agency. I consider how students ‘poach’ from pedagogic space to make space for their own creative engagements with popular culture; and the ways in which they express their social identities and subjectivities through the deployment of transgressive tactics. These engagements complicate considerably what is meant by ‘learning as participation’. To illustrate this, I draw on in-depth interviews with young people and on classroom observation data to consider the complex relations between subjectivity and learning through: • ‘slacker’ politics • tactical reading/textual poaching; • liminal spaces and geographies of desire Drawing on de Certeau (1984) and Foucault (1982) I argue that it is through complex, capillary and subterranean ways that young people find ways of transforming the social-pedagogic-power relations within which they find themselves.

This paper brings together theorisations from Foucault, Judith Butler and de Certeau and applies them to empirical data. The use of de Certeau’s theories is still quite rare in education studies, both in the UK and at international level. This paper begins to address the omission of one who, in other fields, is recognised as a key European thinker. The paper takes advantage of the provision of ‘tools for thinking’ (Mouzelis, 1995) provided by these theorists and uses them to reconceptualise relations between subjectivity, learning and participation in sixth form classrooms. The empirical data is based on case study examples from students taking arts and humanities subjects in two contrasting sixth form institutions. It aims to provide an in-depth and illuminating account of students’ experiences and agency and, in doing so, takes advantage of the rich description (Stake, 2003) and exemplary opportunities (Flyvbjerg, 2001) provided by case study.

This paper is explicitly concerned with exploring the links between theory and empirical research, and it takes advantages of the hybrid theoretical position of education studies in doing so. As such, the paper specifically addressed the theme of the conference. The empirical data is used to argue for the multiple and specific ways in which sixth form students construct their relations with learning. The paper indicates these ways in detail. It does not argue that cases are representative but rather that each case is illustrative, both of the conditions of learning which generate it, and in relation to the way individuals deploy their discursive agency. Nevertheless, some common themes do emerge from the data and these lead to some general propositions about the relations between learning, participation in classrooms, student subjectivities and the wider cultural context.