Experiences of Academics from a Working-Class Heritage

Download or read book Experiences of Academics from a Working-Class Heritage written by Carole Binns and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a twist on the current discourse around ‘inclusivity’ and ‘widening participation’. Higher education is welcoming students from diverse educational, social, and economic backgrounds, and yet it predominantly employs middle-class academics. Conceptually, there appears, on at least these grounds alone, to be a cultural and class mismatch. This work discusses empirical interviews with tenured academics from a working-class heritage employed in one UK university. Interviewees talk candidly about their childhood backgrounds, their school experiences, and what happened to them after leaving compulsory education. They also reveal their experiences of university, both as students and academics from their early careers to the present day. This book will be of interest to an international audience that includes new and aspiring academics who come from a working-class background themselves. The multifaceted findings will also be relevant to established academics and students of sociology, education studies and social class.