The Argonauts of postcolonial modernity: elite Barbadian schools in globalising circumstances

McCarthy, Cameron; Bulut, Ergin; Castro, Michelle; Goel, Koeli; Greenhalgh-Spencer, Heather

doi:10.1080/14767724.2014.899137

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…However, only a small number of young women actively mentioned such a desire. While at McCarthy et al (2014)’s elite school, the Barbadian Argonauts were being actively pursued by Ivy League universities and were themselves keen to look to North America for their future, aspirations for Ivy League university admission in our study schools appeared to be driven more by individuals themselves rather than by the schools. Of the four schools studied here, only St George’s and Osler’s websites mentioned they had expertise in advising their students on applying to non-UK universities, with little more being said about this, the focus being instead on how young people will be guided through the UCAS system (the application system for UK universities).…”

Section: Preparing and Producing Cosmopolitan Studentsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Creating Cosmopolitan Subjects: The Role of Families and Private Schools in England

Maxwell

Aggleton

2015

Sociology

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This article examines the ways in which cosmopolitanism is imagined and planned for by 91 young women attending four private (elite) schools in one area of England. Despite many study participants coming from families where parents travelled internationally for business, few had a strong desire to reproduce such orientations in their own futures. Moreover, the elite schools attended placed relatively little emphasis on cosmopolitanism and transnationally mobile futures. For the few English young women doing the International Baccalaureate and/or actively considering higher education abroad, the decision to do so was driven by individual rather than family or social ambitions. Through our analysis we consider further whether cosmopolitanism is a form of (cultural) capital or a quality more embedded within the girls' habitus. The relatively ambivalent attitude to cosmopolitanism found in the study schools ties in to an ethnocentrism which sees an 'English education' as among the most prestigious in the world.

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Section: Preparing and Producing Cosmopolitan Studentsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Creating Cosmopolitan Subjects: The Role of Families and Private Schools in England

Maxwell

Aggleton

2015

Sociology

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“…'Institutional wormholes' (Nespor, 2014) are therefore created and embedded at a regional or global level (see Münch, this volume in his discussion of elite universities). However, elite schools shape and re-articulate their charter, claiming elite-ness usually in relation to the nation state within which they find themselves (McCarthy et al, 2014;Rizvi, 2014;Maxwell & Aggleton, 2016a), although the case of elite schools in Switzerland offers an interesting counter-point to this argument, which is only now beginning to be researched (Bertron, 2016). Research also continues to emphasize how nationally-bounded trajectories into elite labour-market positions remain (van Zanten & Maxwell, 2015;Mangset, 2017;Mangset et al, 2017;Hartmann and Bloch et al, this volume).…”

Section: Practices Of Internationalisation -Summarising Key Findings mentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Spaces—The Reshaping of (Elite) Education Through Internationalisation

Maxwell

2017

Elite Education and Internationalisation

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“…Elite schools and privately funded educational choices have accordingly attracted more attention in the sociology of education, re-energising efforts to research 'up' (Nader, 1974) to better understand vectors of educational advantage and their contribution to disadvantage elsewhere. A recent flurry of activity in this vein has produced a substantial body of work around this problematic, including the 2015 World Yearbook of Education (van Zanten, Ball, & Darchy-Koechlin, 2015), edited collections (Fahey, Prosser & Shaw, 2015a;Maxwell & Aggleton, 2016), ethnographies (for example, Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009a;Kenway & Fahey, 2015;McCarthy, Bulut, Castro, Goel, & Greenhalgh-Spencer, 2014) and special editions in key journals (see Angod, 2015;Kenway & Koh, 2015;Resnick, 2012). This chapter builds a conversation between some of this recent research and broader sociology of education to ask more relational questions of the educational privilege pursued strategically through the affordances of elite schools and private education.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elite and Private Education

Doherty¹,

Pozzi²

2017

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education

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While meritocratic ideals assume a level playing field for educational competition, those who can may seek to tilt the field in their children’s favor to ensure better educational opportunities and the associated life rewards. A growing body of literature is researching “up” to better understand how advantage for some through the choice of elite or private schooling contributes to the relative disadvantage of others. Institutional claims to offering an “elite” education can rest on different logics such as social selectivity by dint of high fees or academic selectivity by dint of enrollments conditional on academic excellence. Private education provided by a non-government entity serves as an alternative to public sector provision for those who can afford it. The global spread of neoliberal metapolicy has fanned a general trend towards privatization. Such logics of social restriction can distinguish the whole school, niche programs of distinction within a school, or tracking practices that pool advantage in particular classes or subjects. While education policy debates wrestle with how to articulate competing ethics of excellence, inclusivity, and equity, elite branding unapologetically resolves these tensions by conflating excellence and exclusivity. To achieve and sustain elite status, however, relies on the extra work of carefully curating reputations and protecting the brand. Recent research has started to ask more difficult questions of educational privilege. Such research helps to understand: the curricular processes and nature of privilege achieved through elite and private educational choices; how such education harnesses the semblance of meritocratic competition to legitimate its forms of distinction; and the broader impact of these processes.

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The Argonauts of postcolonial modernity: elite Barbadian schools in globalising circumstances

Cited by 8 publications

References 7 publications

Creating Cosmopolitan Subjects: The Role of Families and Private Schools in England

Creating Cosmopolitan Subjects: The Role of Families and Private Schools in England

Changing Spaces—The Reshaping of (Elite) Education Through Internationalisation

Elite and Private Education

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