The simultaneous production of educational achievement and popularity: how do some pupils accomplish it?

Abstract

In spite of research showing that pupils—particularly boys—tend to experience tension between high academic achievement and popularity with peers at school, some pupils continue to maintain simultaneous production of both. This article focuses on a sample of 12–13 year‐old pupils, identified as high achieving and popular, to examine classroom subjectivities, with attention to their practices around gender and educational achievement. Data are drawn from a qualitative study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which involved observation of classes at nine different co‐educational state schools in England, and interviews with 71 high‐achieving pupils, including 22 that were identified as high achieving and popular. The study findings belie the notion that high‐achieving pupils necessarily jeopardise their social standing with classmates. However, it also demonstrates the importance of embodiment and even essential attributes in productions of subjectivity that successfully ‘balance’ popularity and achievement. Nevertheless, high‐achieving and popular pupils are shown to undertake significant identity work, employing particular gendered performances and practices in order to maintain this simultaneous production.

Notes

1. For exceptions, see, for example, Martino (1999), Mac an Ghaill (1994), Mac and Ghail and Redman (1997), and Swain (2002), who include groups of achieving boys in their typologies of schoolboy masculinity. The studies by Power et al. (1998) and Reay (2002, 2006) pay attention to schoolboy masculinity, social class and high achievement.

2. The project is titled ‘The Gender Subjectivities of High Achieving Pupils’.

3. Albeit we do not subscribe to the view that achievement should be conceived so narrowly (Francis & Skelton, 2005).

4. The exams taken by all pupils in England at the end of primary schooling (‘Key Stage 2’), aged 10–11.

5. The UK contains four different education systems (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland): this study was limited to England. The central government in London has no remit for education beyond England.

6. This involved all pupils undertaking a brief survey in which they were asked a range of indicative questions including ‘Which student do you most like in your class?’ ‘Which student would other people say is most popular?’, and ‘Which student would you most like to be like?’

7. Following findings concerning the importance of ‘embodied’ aspects such as fashionability and physical attractiveness in classroom relations (see, for example, Francis, 2000; Swain, 2002; Jackson, 2006), we had made efforts to record physical descriptions of pupils as part of our observational data, albeit experiencing tensions and ethical questions about our own constructions in doing so.

8. We use Bakhtin’s (1981) term ‘monological’ here to denote the production of stability and conformity to norms in performances of gender, although it is important to note that all performances of gender are actually dialogic and heteroglossic (1981), as they are inevitably riven with instability and contradiction, and a production of masculinity is in perpetual dialogue with its Other (femininity). Thus performances of gender as stable and ‘normal’ can be said to be ‘mythic’ representations, in the sense that they are representations via which society ratifies its account of gender. Elsewhere one of us (Francis, 2008) draws on Bakhtin’s concepts of monoglossia and heteroglossia in language, in application to the gender schema, arguing that society presents gender as monoglossic, but that this masks the heteroglossia of gender as it is performed by individual subjects.

9. i.e. ‘swot’, see Francis (forthcoming) for elaboration.

10. Our data support previous findings that teachers tend to find popular, high‐status pupils—particularly boys—appealing and entertaining (Francis, 2000). Teachers may seek to draw capital in the classroom from being seen to ‘bond’ with such pupils (Connolly, 1998; Skelton,2001); and research has pointed to the excluding consequences of such practices for other pupils.

11. We envisage this metaphor not simply applying to boys, as girls too may behave in such ways, and we do not through the metaphor seek to posit any intentionality on the part of players. However, the metaphor retains a masculinist resonance in our application here in reference to the ways in which ‘others’ are used as capital for sustaining popularity.

12. Albeit the under‐representation of minority ethnic pupils in our sample of high‐achieving pupils remains notable given the diverse nature of some of the school populations; see discussion in Methods section.