ABSTRACT
This and the following two chapters draw on the GaP data to explore the accounts and perspectives of students about their pedagogic identities and the infl uences on these in their university. Similar to the academic staff discussed in the previous chapter, the students’ identity formations and experiences are framed by wider regulatory discourses of what is expected of them in contemporary higher education, mediated by the subject or disciplinary area. The individual is caught up in the complex sets of competing demands and expectations of the specifi c disciplinary context, the overarching and standardising frameworks of academic and research excellence and quality assurance, and the ethos, missions and strategic plans of different institutions with unequal status. This affects all academics and students but in different ways in a highly stratifi ed and competitive sector. Whilst we take an intersectional approach in our analysis, in this chapter we foreground social class and consider different perspectives across the different class locations as well as recognising the intersections of ‘race’ and gender. We draw on the ideas of Bourdieu and Bernstein to make sense of how social class plays out and shapes pedagogical identities and experiences. In Chapter six we foreground gender and in Chapter seven ‘race’.
