Intimidating/ory education

Abstract

This article draws on qualitative research undertaken in a further education college on access education. Fifteen in-depth interviews were carried out with participants, re-entering education through various programmes, including Return to Study and Access to Higher Education. The article focuses on a major theme emerging from their narratives about feelings of intimidation and inferiority in connection with their experiences of access education. The author explores such feelings within the context of a British history and cultural common sense in which working-class women have been constructed as inferior and even polluting. Furthermore, the author locates the access project within an institution founded on classist, racist and sexist traditions and examines the concept of ‘mass education’ from various discourse positions that position ‘non-standard’ students as illegitimate and inferior. The aim of the article is to reveal the ways that students are re/positioned by hegemonic discourses and the attempts of students and tutors to resist such discursive practices, creating oppositional spaces