Schooling responses to youth crime: building emotional capital

Abstract

This paper reports on a study into schooling responses to youth crime in south‐western Sydney, Australia. The project was a partnership between the New South Wales Department of Education and Training and the University of Western Sydney’s School of Education. Specifically, the paper analyses interviews with school leaders who were interested in understanding how to support young people constructed ‘at risk’ of engaging in criminal activity. A content analysis, drawing on the concept of ‘emotional capital’, revealed discourses of safety, hope, engagement, and justice and fairness in the narratives of participants. The various ways in which ‘emotion’ is operationalized in education is explored so that the nature of emotional capital and its class and gendered inflections are made clear. Emotional capital, as a theoretical framework, also provides new insights into the strategies used by school leaders and helps situate the experiences and interests of the participating principals and key staff in the schools in this study.

Keywords:

• youth crime
• inclusive schooling
• emotional capital
• school change
• educational leadership

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the University of Western Sydney for funding this research; and Eira Sproats, research assistant. The contributions of the anonymous reviewers strengthened this paper considerably.

Notes

1. Cowlishaw (2003, 108), discussing Indigenous communities and violence, uses the term ‘rescue’ to describe the prevailing ‘narcissistic desire, often muted and pressed into unconsciousness, to improve the Indigenous population’. She argues that the desire not to be ‘helped’ only creates further efforts on the part of others to create new ways to ‘understand, intervene and remedy’. The agency and resistance of Indigenous people is understood as chaotic and disorganized rather than a result of a the hidden injuries of race.