Carole Leathwood

Bio: Carole Leathwood is an academic researcher from London Metropolitan University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Higher education & Social class. The author has an hindex of 21, co-authored 38 publications receiving 2430 citations. Previous affiliations of Carole Leathwood include University of North London.

Challenging Cultures? Student Conceptions of 'Belonging' and 'Isolation' at a Post-1992 University

Abstract: Academic culture is not uniformly accessed or experienced. Whilst financial constraints have a major impact on student entry and retention, students from 'non-traditional' backgrounds are also disadvantaged by institutional cultures that place them as 'other'. Individuals do not passively receive these cultural discourses, however, but actively engage with them and attempt to challenge them. This article explores such negotiations by looking at students' conceptions of 'belonging' and 'isolation' at a post-1992 university with a statistically high proportion of 'non-traditional' students in terms of class, maturity and ethnicity. It looks at: the extent to which such students can challenge their positioning as 'other' by choosing a university where they feel they can 'belong'; the extent to which institutional academic cultures work to constrain and disrupt such feelings of 'belonging'; the adoption of alternative discourses of the student-lecturer/student-institution relation, and the extent to which suc...

Graduates' employment and the discourse of employability: a critical analysis

Abstract: In a context of considerable changes in the labour market and higher education sector in the UK, a discourse of employability has become increasingly dominant. Universities are urged to ensure that...

Balancing paid work and studies: working (‐class) students in higher education

Abstract: Engagement in paid work during term‐time amongst undergraduates in England has increased in recent years, reflecting changes in both higher education funding and labour market policy. This article draws on research with students in a post‐1992 university to explore undergraduate students’ accounts of combining work and study during term‐time and the various strategies they employ in their attempts to balance the two. Many of the students in this study may be described as ‘non traditional’ entrants, and attention is paid to the ways in which students’ accounts reflect issues of social class. It is argued that the transfer of responsibility for funding university study from the state to the individual student and their families, and the lack of attention paid to the demands of term‐time work in higher education and institutional policy, risks reinforcing and exacerbating inequalities.

Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education: A Feminized Future?

Abstract: Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The feminization thesis Chapter 3: The global context: gender, feminization and higher education Chapter 4: Gender, participation and higher education in the UK Chapter 5: Institutional identities and representations of the university Chapter 6 : Student identities, femininities and masculinities Chapter 7: Academic identities and gendered work Chapter 8: Academic practices: Assessment, speaking and writing Chapter 9: Academic practices: Curriculum, knowledge and skills Chapter 10. Conclusions - re-visioning the academy

Research Policy and Academic Performativity: Compliance, Contestation and Complicity.

Abstract: Research, a major purpose of higher education, has become increasingly important in a context of global economic competitiveness. In this paper, we draw on data from email interviews with academics in Britain to explore responses to current research policy trends. Although the majority of academics expressed opposition to current policy developments, most were nevertheless complying with research imperatives. Informed by a Foucauldian conceptualisation of audit, feminist research on gendered performativity, and sociological and psycho-social theoretical resources on the affective, we discuss compliance, contestation and complicity in relation both to the data and to our own location as academics in this field.

Education at a Glance

Abstract: A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

"Fitting In" or "Standing Out": Working-Class Students in UK Higher Education.

Abstract: Drawing on case studies of 27 working-class students across four UK higher education institutions, this article attempts to develop a multilayered, sociological understanding of student identities that draws together social and academic aspects Working with a concept of student identity that combines the more specific notion of learner identity with more general understandings of how students are positioned in relation to their discipline, their peer group and the wider university, the article examines the influence of widely differing academic places and spaces on student identities Differences between institutions are conceptualised in terms of institutional habitus, and the article explores how the four different institutional habituses result in a range of experiences of fitting in and standing out in higher education For some this involves combining a sense of belonging in both middle-class higher education and working-class homes, while others only partially absorb a sense of themselves as students