Abstract
The paper discusses factors impacting on boys’ educational aspirations at two case-study schools in urban Jamaica. It focuses on boys’ experience of their educational environment in relation to social, cultural and economic factors, which shapes the nature of their aspirations towards higher education. The study utilised Bourdieu’s notion of ‘capital’ grounded in a critical realist meta-theoretical framework, the narratives of the participants and the researcher’s experiential understanding as a participant observer to explore boys’ aspirations over a 12-month period. The findings from the study suggested that boys’ educational aspirations are complex and affected by their level of capital in relation to persistent narratives from family and the Jamaican Diaspora within high-income countries like the UK, the USA and Canada.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 5-25 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 26 Jul 2013 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2 Jan 2015 |
Keywords
- educational aspirations
- capital
- family
- Jamaican Diaspora
Access to Document
- Full-text PDF (accepted author manuscript)
This is the author accepted manuscript (AAM). The final published version (version of record) is available online via Taylor & Francis at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057925.2013.812426. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.