Inspired by the Foucault’s observation that ‘People know what they do, they frequently know why they do what they do, but what they don’t know is what what they do does’ (Foucault, cited in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983, p. 187),  I am seeking to understand better what is happening in English schools in respect of a group classified as ‘disadvantaged’, with a focus specifically on teachers’ responses to these individuals. 

The research questions for my PhD study are: How is ‘disadvantage’ understood by teachers in secondary schools? How is this understanding reflected in their response to ‘disadvantaged’ students? And what are the effects of this understanding on the teachers and the way in which the school operates?

The word ‘disadvantaged’ is used in English schools to describe those students eligible for free school meals (and thus the payment of additional money in the form of ‘Pupil Premium’ to their schools) because of low family income (2015).  However, in common usage, the word also carries with it a range of associations and judgements linked particularly to issues of social class, ethnicity, and conceptualisations of good parenting.  Whilst the government investment into the Pupil Premium has established this group of students as a priority focus for schools’ external accountability, the gap in attainment between these students and their peers has persisted (Education Policy Institute, 2020). 

Much of the existing research in the area has focused on identifying deficits that the students categorised as disadvantaged present in the school setting, and on assessing the effectiveness of a range of interventions to address these issues.  My study, however, informed initially by Bourdieu’s ideas of ‘reproduction’ (1990), turns the focus back on the practices of schooling, and seeks to discover, through empirical enquiry, how teachers understand the ‘disadvantage’ of their students within their school setting, and how this construction of ‘disadvantage’ shapes their response to their students.  Foucault’s conceptualisation of power relations and subjectivity (Ball, 2013) are used to inform my understanding of the way in which things come to be the way that they are within the institutions of schooling.  I am also using the insights of other poststructural theorists to explore the ethical struggles of teachers who find themselves trying to ‘do the right thing’ in response to the perceived needs of their students, often caught in seemingly impossible places of tension and dilemma, subject to conflicting forces.  The ethical responses of teachers are being considered using Derrida’s concept of the aporia, ‘the contradictory double imperatives’ (Allan, 2008), that can be identified as embedded in school practices, alongside Levinas’s concern to ‘see the face of the other’ (Edgoose, 2001) as a framework of ethical responsibility. 

Whilst the data were gathered in English schools, the problematisation of the term ‘disadvantaged’ in the study encompasses a broad range of intersecting issues of diversity relevant across international contexts, including social class, ethnicity, cultural capital, and the ways in which the process of schooling positions students, teachers and parents as subjects.

The research is underpinned by a social constructionist approach, which steps back from the idea of being able to get inside social reality, and instead tries to understand how that reality might be brought into being (Holstein and Gubrium, 2008). This has been done by conducting interviews with schoolteachers directly involved in addressing disadvantage, as they perceive it, within the everyday world of their school. I have also gathered policy documentation in the form of strategy documents to address the ‘disadvantage gap’ in attainment, which are required by government to be produced and made publicly available by every state school. Following ethical clearance from my university ethics committee, the field work was carried out using semi-structured interviews with 22 teachers in all, across five different state secondary schools in the Midlands area of the U.K. The teachers ranged in teaching experience from 3-33 years and taught in a range of subject areas. Some had a specific responsibility for ‘disadvantaged’ students in their schools. All interviews were conducted online using Zoom, and lasted between 20 and 45 minutes. The decision to interview online was determined by the fact that school visits were not allowed during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interviews were transcribed and shared with the participants for checking. The interviews were structured around a set of question prompts which encouraged the teachers to explain which students in their classes they identified as disadvantaged and why they regarded them as such. The teachers were asked whether they thought there were aspects of their subject that they thought might affect disadvantaged students differently from others. They were also asked how they responded to the needs of disadvantaged students in their lessons and were encouraged to describe a specific lesson or activity to illustrate this. Analysis of the interview data is ongoing, using the idea of teacher ‘work’ (i.e. the work they ascribe to themselves in their encounters with disadvantaged students) as a frame for analysis.

The recurring theme is of teachers trying to ‘do the right thing’ as they struggle with contradictory imperatives, subject to, and part of creating and perpetuating, a range of discourses related to disadvantage. Four types of self-attributed teacher work have been identified within the data analysis: seeing, sorting, saving and transforming work. ‘Sorting’ work revolves around the paradoxical perception of this ‘disadvantaged’ group as both the same and different to their peers. The effects of policy directives in creating subjects are apparent in the ways in which this group of heterogenous students acquires a collective identity within schools. Whilst the identification of the group as disadvantaged is seen as for the students’ benefit, it nevertheless can invoke an essentialism which ‘others’ some students. ‘Seeing’ work has emerged as integral to the way in which the discourse of disadvantage becomes embedded into the school system. Effects of a performative assessment-driven system (Ball, 2003), in which the attainment of disadvantaged students is monitored by inspection bodies, is reflected in teacher’s everyday practices which ensure the constant visibility of this group, e.g. colour-coding on registers and prescriptive seating plans. Whilst claiming to respond to students as individuals, teachers nevertheless are deeply enmeshed in practices which, in seeking not to ‘overlook’ students, result in a constant ‘looking’ that reinforces categorisation. ‘Saving’ work runs through the responses that invoke deficit discourses of poor parenting, a lack of ‘cultural capital’, and perceived lack of value for education. Accounts include examples of the emotional labour expended in the attempt to rescue students from lives marked by deficit. ‘Transforming’ work can be identified in the discourse of aspiration constantly cited in the responses of the teachers. Teachers wrestle with the need to change their students to make them ‘acceptable bodies’ (Youdell, 2006) within the schooling system.

Allan, J. (2008). Rethinking Inclusive Education: the Philosophers of Difference in Practice. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Ball, S.J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18, 215-228. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. 2nd edition. London: Sage. Department for Education (2015) Supporting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils: articulating success and good practice. London: DfE [online]. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-the-attainment-of-disadvantaged-pupils Accessed 27.01.23. Dreyfus H., Rabinow P. (1983). Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics: Michel Foucault. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edgoose, J. (2001) Just Decide! Derrida and the ethical aporias of education, in: G. Biesta & D. Egéa-Kuehne (eds), Derrida & Education. London, Routledge. Education Policy Institute (2020). Education in England Annual Report 2020. E.P.I. [online]. Available from: https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/EPI_2020_Annual_Report_.pdf Accessed 27.01.23. Holstein, J. and Gubrium, J. (2008) ‘Constructionist impulses in ethnographic fieldwork’. In Holstein, J. and Gubrium, J. (eds), Handbook of Constructionist Research. New York: Guilford. Youdell, D. (2006) Impossible Bodies, Impossible Selves. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.