Miseducation: Inequality, Education, and the Working Classes

Mon 24 September 2018
17:00 – 19:00 

Canada Room & Council Chamber
Lanyon Building
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast, BT7 1NN

Speaker: Professor Diane Reay, University of Cambridge

Register to attend at https://tinyurl.com/socqub-reay

The seminar focusses on themes highlighted in a new book by Diane Reay, Miseducation: Inequality, Education, and the Working Classes (2017, Policy Press), which has reignited a discussion around this subject. The book draws on over 500 hundred qualitative interviews to critically analyse the endurance of class inequality in Education in the UK. 

Our teaching and research in the School of SSESW focus on questions of social justice, inequality and ‘making a social difference’. These principles are enshrined 

in Professor Reay’s work more broadly. The seminar will showcase the importance of Sociology, and the Sociological Imagination, in the pursuit of these principles, as they relate to the process of, as Professor Reay says, ‘thinking through class’ in relation to education, inequality and the effects of such inequality for the working classes in particular.  It may also prompt us to (re)consider the structural barriers and lived and felt realities that constitute the education experience for working class students, and how we might better widen their participation and attainment in a more rounded and meaningful way.    

This event will be of interest to professionals, practitioners and students at all levels in areas such as education, health, youth agencies, social work, early years, widening participation and higher and further education.

Dr Jonathan Heaney at j.heaney@qub.ac.uk

Book your place now