Session Information
19 SES 03, Learners' Perspectives of Performativity and Identity Construction (part 1)
Symposium, continued in 19 SES 04
Time:
2009-09-28
14:00-15:30
Room:
JUR, HS 17
Chair:
Bob Jeffrey
Discussant:
Patricia Thomson
Contribution
In this paper I want to examine how perceptions of academic success and failure help to frame particular constructions of childhood within the context of an English secondary school. In particular I intend to explore the ways in which assessment and the structure of the curriculum embed certain normative assumptions about the academic or intellectual competencies of students at particular stages of their lives at school. Drawing on examples from a recent ethnographic study of the social construction of age in an English secondary school, I develop the argument that these assumptions about academic performance make up part of the construction of what it means to be a ‘child’ at different points in the pathways through English secondary education.
By looking at the day-to-day lived experiences of children in Years 7 to 9 (roughly 11 – 13 year-olds), here I examine how acting one’s age ‘appropriately’ – or successfully negotiating accepted notions of age identity - at school involves achieving particular levels (or grades) in a particular order within particular years. Those who fall too far behind, or reach too far ahead, present problems for the taxonomic order that structures the assessment regime for academic work. In turn, this has implications for broader notions of what it means to be a child in Year 7,8, or 9 in terms of academic performance, knowledge, and perceptions of intellectual and social competencies.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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