ABSTRACT
Chapter 11, ‘The Nature of Schoolwork and Its Relationship to Identity and Resistance’, uses ethnographic data such as interviews, observations and photos to consider the nature of the work that was provided by the school for its students and the links that this had with their futures. It shows that this had a significant impact on the formation of the students’ identities. The context in which the research was carried out provided a very interesting opportunity to compare the impact of differing approaches to school curricula on children. The chapter shows that the nature of the curriculum that a vocational group pursued was very different to that of students in mainstream groupings. The chapter goes on to examine how students’ perception of their schoolwork and the qualifications that they gain as a result impacts on the futures that the participants imagined for themselves.
