ABSTRACT
This chapter presents occurrences of identity talk in the classroom. If the children were constructing anything around their identity as Travellers, construction of that identity should be discernible. The chapter focuses primarily on children’s categorisations of themselves and of the teachers. It provides an interpretative analysis of data from the overall study of life in St Donaf s, to identify how the children’s performance constitutes resistance. In class a number of discussions related to being Traveller. The chapter argues that official texts on Traveller education suffered from theoretical fixity, due to segregation at conceptual level. Practitioners and observers can suffer in the same way: separate provision can lead to over-estimating the difficulties of the group. The level of boundary-maintenance revealed in classroom interactions indicates that there was diffuse unease about the divide, and this unease sufficed to keep the accusation close to hand.
