A school for our Community: Critically assessing discourses of marginality in the establishment of a Free School
- Submitting institution
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University of Derby
- Unit of assessment
- 23 - Education
- Output identifier
- 784120-1
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Youth Marginality in Britain: Contemporary Studies of Austerity
- Publisher
- Policy Press
- ISBN
- 9781447330547
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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https://policypress.co.uk/youth-marginality-in-britain
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter examines the ways in which the concept of community is imagined and applied in a Free School application, and the consequences of this for who is included and excluded from that imagined community as a result. It addresses the following research questions:
• How does a proposal for a Free School imagine community, spatially and symbolically?
• How does the application use an imagination of community to position the community as marginalised?
In order to address these questions the research focused on the establishment of a free school in the north east of England, chosen because local community responses to the proposal were polarised with the local authority leading opposition. The research was approached through a documentary analysis of the print culture supporting a free school application. These were identified as two key documents that were employed by the ‘Newtown’s Own Secondary School’ partnership in support of its application. Firstly, the ‘Approved Free School Application’, and the pre-opening ‘consultation document’. The ‘Approved Free School Application’ is the key document through which a free school application is made as it the evidence in this document that central government uses to approve or reject an application. Analysis focused on the discourses surrounding spatial and symbolic imaginations of community and the positioning of the ‘community’ as marginalised in relation to this imagination.
The research was also presented at a British Sociological regional conference on Educational (In)equalities: Towards an elite but not elitist society (2016)
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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