‘The magical operations of separation’: English elite schools’ on-line geographies, internationalisation and functional isolation

Waters, Johanna; Brooks, Rachel

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.010

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…They are ubiquitous, pervasive and unavoidable entities. Schools are also distinctive places – ‘a bounded portion of geographical space within which certain rules apply and particular activities occur’ (Collins and Coleman, 2008: 282; see also Barker et al, 2010; Waters and Brooks, 2015). Little wonder, then, that scholarship on education has for so long prioritized the school as a unit of study and that the focus of much research on education concerns the learning that occurs within the four walls of the classroom or lecture theatre, confined to the school ground or university campus.…”

Section: Education and Institutional Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education unbound? Enlivening debates with a mobilities perspective on learning

Waters

2016

Progress in Human Geography

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This paper contributes to recent debates on the geographies of education. I argue that research in geography over the past decade has conceptualized education principally in terms of attachment to – and boundedness within – particular (often institutional) places and spaces. Yet a productive tension has emerged in contemporary scholarship around the competing concepts of mobilities and emplacement. The paper considers what the ‘mobilities turn’ offers for understanding geographies of education and learning, with a focus on ripple effects, structures and subject positionings. Four different but related bodies of work are identified that productively engage a notion of ‘mobilities’ to challenge bounded conceptions of education through their focus on (i) community and mobility; (ii) ‘alternative’ spaces of education; (iii) student mobilities; and (iv) embedded institutional capital and internationalization. Through the lens of mobilities, the paper advances research agendas within both geography (on ‘geographies of education’) and cognate disciplines (such as sociology and education).

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Section: Education and Institutional Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education unbound? Enlivening debates with a mobilities perspective on learning

Waters

2016

Progress in Human Geography

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“…Second, it illustrates a departure from the existing work geographies of alternative education, which focus on spaces that negotiate the boundaries between them and mainstream schools by projecting either a sense of openness (Kraftl, 2013) or separateness (Waters & Brooks, 2015). The case of Pioneer Academy offers covertness as another manifestation of alternative education spaces.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These strategies are aimed at fostering a connection between marginalised groups and their local communities with the intention that they will eventually integrate into mainstream society. Waters and Brooks (2015) complicate this integrative understanding of alternative education spaces by foregrounding the separateness deliberately maintained by English elite boarding schools through geographical and symbolic isolation. This distinguishes its students as being distinct from – and implicitly superior to – those of mainstream schools.…”

Section: Expanding the Scope Of Alternative Education Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, Pioneer Academy is hidden from the national educational landscape and aligns with neoliberal ideals of inculcating students with global cultural capital. Second, the scholarship signals that alternative education enables its students to change their social position by gaining cultural capital that would give them elite status (Waters & Brooks, 2015) or progress from their marginalised position and become better integrated with mainstream society (Kraftl, 2013). However, few studies explicitly focus on how the students' alternative cultural capital shapes their aspirations and (potential) life paths.…”

Section: Expanding the Scope Of Alternative Education Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Alternative education spaces and pathways: Insights from an international Christian school in China

Silva

Woods

Kong

2020

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The nascent scholarship on geographies of alternative education focuses on alternative education spaces, mostly located in the UK, that resist and/or negotiate neoliberal restructuring of education, some of which cater to socially marginalised groups. In contrast, through an ethnographic focus on an underground Christian international school in China, we examine an alternative education space that responds to parents' aspirations for their children to be inculcated with global cultural capital, Chinese values, and Christian beliefs. These aspirations are not fulfilled in mainstream state schools or international schools in China, but are demanded by parents looking for a “superior” set of skills for their children to navigate the increasingly neoliberal, and global, higher education and employment landscapes. The discussion reveals the incongruities in the school's claim to simultaneously instil global, local, and spiritual forms of cultural capital, which leads to two visions of the pathway to higher education. The paper expands the geographies of alternative education in three ways. First, it shows how international and faith‐based schools can provide alternative schooling. Second, it shows how the departure of alternative education spaces from their mainstream counterparts can reveal the inadequacies of the latter. Third, it draws attention to how the cultural capital inculcated through alternative education can lead to alternative international higher education pathways within and beyond China.

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“…In the context of rising global inequality and political ruptures, the last decade has seen renewed interest in sociological analyses of elite education (Maxwell and Aggleton 2015a; Van Zanten, Ball, and Darchy-Koechlin 2015). As well as more classic ethnographic modes of sociological analysis of elite formation through schooling (Khan 2011), the analysis of elite education has also taken a geographical turn (Koh and Kenway 2016;Kenway et al 2017;Waters and Brooks 2015;Larsson and Hultqvist 2018). However, these geographical analyses have not tended to examine how schools relate to specific broader regional geographies of place and regional geographies of class and economic inequality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From assisted places to free schools: subsidizing private schools for the Northern English middle classes

Gamsu

2020

British Journal of Sociology of Education

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This paper examines how the English educational state has consistently acted to support private schooling in areas where fee-paying schools would be otherwise financially unviable. Educational data on private school participation since the 2008 financial crisis reveals the stark regional divides between London and the SouthEast of England and the rest of the country. This analysis of contemporary trends is framed within a historical understanding of the spatial dualism of the English middle class in relation to education. The paper traces the policy lineages of the spatial logic of state subsidies for elite models of schooling in northern England, noting the continuity between Direct Grant grammar schools, the Assisted Places scheme and the recent conversion of private schools into state-funded academy or free schools. A review of applications from private schools to become free schools highlights, how differentiated local class structures affect the viability of elite education without state support.

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‘The magical operations of separation’: English elite schools’ on-line geographies, internationalisation and functional isolation

Cited by 13 publications

References 27 publications

Education unbound? Enlivening debates with a mobilities perspective on learning

Education unbound? Enlivening debates with a mobilities perspective on learning

Alternative education spaces and pathways: Insights from an international Christian school in China

From assisted places to free schools: subsidizing private schools for the Northern English middle classes

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