ABSTRACT
How would it feel to be a six-year-old at the school where a teacher posted comments on Facebook about their students being ‘thick’ and how ‘inbreeding’ must ‘damage brain development’? Or what would it be like if, day in and day out, based on your ethnicity or low income, you were expected to have a lesser educational future than your classmates? If the first two of these quotes seem extreme, what then of daily encounters of educational pessimism about your ability? These three quotes show up ongoing problems with education for disadvantaged students. Indeed, these problems tell a story which has ostensibly not changed for a long time. In order to develop a new perspective on experiences of educational disadvantage, we explore ways that feeling works to mark out, re-inscribe or facilitate change in the learning biographies and life stories of disadvantaged youth.
