The Ambiguities of Conformism: Academic Students in FE

Abstract

The paper examines the way in which some students in non-advanced further education (NAFE) make sense of and understand that experience. This is placed in the context of the current significance of NAFE. No general attempt is made to comprehend the total range of student orientations, but the paper ‘closes in’ on the experience of particular students. It adopts a qualitative approach, informed by the cultural studies tradition which asserts that we should take seriously what people say without losing sight of structural relations. This approach gives insights into both cultural productions and the specific forms that students utilise in making sense of their college experience. The cultural forms point back towards the school, forward to the world outside education, and draw on cultural resources of family, race, class and gender. It is part of the paper's project to discuss these cultural processes and consequently heavy reliance is placed upon material derived from student accounts. Student accounts concern cultural responses to educational experiences of college, forms of curriculum and teacher relations. Whilst within these responses lie moments of creativity there will also be continuities and disjunctures with other cultural forms. The paper focuses on so-called conformist students and illustrates the pre-emptive nature of such a description. Detailed consideration of students accounts reveals a more complex and contradictory picture. The paper stresses the significance of subjectivity in relation to cultural forms and argues that it is through these that we can grasp the connection between processes of ‘reproduction’, ‘resistance’ and ‘accommodation’.