Subject choice as everyday accommodation/resistance: why students in England (still) choose the arts

Thomson, Patricia; Hall, Christine; Earl, Lexi; Geppert, Corinna

Abstract

High school students are expected to make choices about which subjects they study. These choices are not completely open but steered by what is on offer, previous achievement and conversations with teachers, family and friends; choices are patterned by class, gender, able-ness and race. We offer the perspective of subject choice as resistance. The paper use student focus group data from a three year study of the visual and performing arts in thirty schools in England. We show that students chose the arts not simply what it might do for them in the future, but also for what it provided for them in the everyday. We suggest that the quotidian is an important aspect of choice-making which, in the case of arts pedagogies, both accommodates the highly regulated norm but also offers a counter. This analysis points to avenues for further research on subject choice as well as providing important clues for school reform.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 13, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 24, 2018
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Sep 20, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 25, 2020
• Journal: Critical Studies in Education
• Print ISSN: 1750-8487
• Electronic ISSN: 1750-8495
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 545-560
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2018.1525754
• Keywords: arts education, subject choice, resistance, pedagogy, England
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1092945
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17508487.2018.1525754
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Studies in Education on [date of publication], available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17508487.2018.1525754