Educating for Futures in Marginalized Regions: A sociological framework for rethinking and researching aspirations

• Published in: Educational philosophy and theory Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 227 - 246
• Main Authors: Zipin, Lew, Sellar, Sam, Brennan, Marie, Gale, Trevor
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 23.02.2015; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Academic Aspiration; Appadurai; Appadurai (A); Aspiration; aspirations; Australia; Bourdieu; Bourdieu (P); Children with social disabilities; community study; Cultural Capital; curriculum and pedagogy; Disadvantaged; Disadvantaged Youth; Education; Educational philosophy; Educational Policy; Educational Sociology; Educational Theories; Foreign Countries; funds of knowledge; Funds of Knowledge (FoK) (Teaching method); Futures (of Society); Globalization; Human Capital; Ideology; Investment; Knowledge; Knowledge Economy; Logical Thinking; Low Income Groups; Marginality, Social; Philosophy; Social Theories; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomic Status; Student aspirations; Student Attitudes; Young adults; Youth; Australia
• ISSN: 0013-1857; 1469-5812; 1469-5812
• DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2013.839376

'Raising aspirations' for education among young people in low socioeconomic regions has become a widespread policy prescription for increasing human capital investment and economic competitiveness in so-called 'knowledge economies'. However, policy tends not to address difficult social, cultural, economic and political conditions for aspiring, based in structural changes associated with globalization. Drawing conceptually on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, Arjun Appadurai and authors in the Funds of Knowledge tradition, this article theorizes two logics for aspiring that are recognizable in research with young people and families: a doxic logic, grounded in populist-ideological mediations; and a habituated logic, grounded in biographic-historical legacies and embodied as habitus. A less tangible third 'logic' is also theorized: emergent senses of future potential, grounded in lived cultures, which hold possibility for imagining and pursuing alternative futures. The article offers a sociological framework for understanding aspirations as complex social-cultural phenomena, and for capacitating emergent and hopeful aspirations through school- and community-based research and dialogue.