Mapping the educational experiences of working-class girls through and beyond compulsory education

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This fellowship aims to contribute to research-informed policy, practice and public debate around the class- and gender-based experiences of working-class girls during and after their time in compulsory education and to produce information and resources that are of use to practitioners and girls themselves. These aims will be achieved through the writing of academic papers, attending academic conferences, engaging with a diverse range of professional and non-academic audiences, and through creating useful, accessible tools in the form of a co-created guide and resources that will be made available on a bespoke project website. Working-class girls are often overlooked in educational research and policy-making. While young people's school-to-work transitions have been a major focus of youth and educational research for decades, the challenges facing girls and young women remain somewhat marginalised, as do their particular gender and class-based experiences. At the same time, the connections between school-based experiences and the directions and character of girls' post-school trajectories remain under-researched and under-theorised. This is especially true for those girls further marginalised in terms of class. Finally, discussions around the value of vocational education remain entrenched in ongoing debates which serve to construct many modes of vocational education such as beauty education as 'second class'. My recent doctoral study with working-class girls and young women engaged in beauty education uncovered the realities of these transitions out of compulsory education for working-class girls, and made visible the manifold ways in which their trajectories and experiences are not reflected in broader discussions on these issues. As such, working-class girls are underserved in academic and policy circles. I found that: a) negative school experiences were a key driver of post-school trajectories. Often leaving school was the goal, and beauty education was a way to achieve it.; b) although beauty education is heavily criticised from a range of perspectives, beauty students articulate a broad range of positive aspects of beauty education, including those relating to social capital, care and creativity; and c) in order to work with marginalised young people in a meaningful and co-creative way, participatory research methods must be mobilised. In my doctoral work and subsequent research projects I have used participatory creative feminist methods to achieve this. The primary aim of this fellowship is to share insights from my research and exchange knowledge with a range of audiences to: a) enhance understanding and raise critical awareness of the class and gender-based inequalities facing working-class girls; b) generate tools to help practitioners better support working-class girls' educational journeys, and c) engage a diverse range of professional and non-academic audiences to raise the profile of how class- and gender -based inequalities impact the school and post-school experiences of working-class girls. The fellowship will allow me to engage with research audiences through the presentation of conference papers and publications in peer-reviewed academic journals. In addition, public events will be organised to reach a wide range of non-academic audiences interested in the educational experiences of working-class girls.