Finnegan, Fergal
(2012)
Welcome to the knowledge factory? A study of working class
experience, identity and learning in Irish Higher Education.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
This is a study of working class students’experience in Irish Higher Education. It is based on
eighty one in-depth interviews with fifty one students of all ages between 2007 and 2012
gathered longitudinally in three different institutions of Higher Education in the Republic of
Ireland. Using in-depth biographical interviews and grounded methods, within a critical and
egalitarian theoretical framework, the main aim of the research is to offer a ‘thick’ account of
working class students’ experience and, in particular, to document how they view and value
education.
The thesis analyses access and widening participation in Irish HE from the perspective of the
interviewees. It documents that tertiary education is very highly valued and examines why
this is the case through the participants’ life and learning stories. The research also explores
the impact institutional differentiation is having on access and participation. The data also
offer insight into the type of learning processes that are occuring in contemporary HE and
elaborates a theory of reflexive learning through the interviews. This is framed within a
critical synthesis of the work of Engestrom and Mezirow and a critique of the ‘reproduction
and resistance’ debate as well as drawing on recent sociological work on the role of education
in the making of contemporary biographies.
The participants’ biographical accounts offer insight into working class experience inside and
outside the walls of the university and the research suggests that shared experiences in
community, family and work gives rise to distinct patterns of class (dis)identification. Based
on the data and wideranging desk research-especially the work of Axel Honneth, Diane Reay,
Henri Lefebvre, Andrew Sayer and Pierre Bourdieu- the thesis outlines a conceptual
framework for analysing class inequality based on ownership, authority and legitimate
cultural capital within a theory of social space. Furthermore, the biographical accounts of
education and society gathered for the inquiry indicate that the politics of respect and
recognition are crucial to understanding contemporary working class experience. A key
argument of the thesis is that class analysis, social science and educational scholarship needs
to develop a more sophisticated set of theoretical tools for exploring the normative nature of
social practice and in particular the affective, embodied experience of class inequality inside
and outside education.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(PhD)
|
| Keywords: |
knowledge factory; working class; experience; identity; learning; Irish Higher Education; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Adult and Community Education |
| Item ID: |
6734 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
06 Jan 2016 15:09 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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