Browsing by Author "Wallace, Jennifer"

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    Costs and benefits : scholarship students’ reflective accounts of attending an elite secondary school
    (Elsevier, 2021) Feldman, Jennifer; Wallace, Jennifer
    Situated within the context of elite education, the empirical focus of this article is on the reflective accounts of former scholarship students from historically disadvantaged communities who attended elite secondary schools in South Africa. Drawing on studies of scholarship students in educational institutions, the article discusses the costs and benefits, as narrated by the students, of their experiences of elite schooling. While there exists a growing body of literature on elite education globally, there is limited research on elite schools in South Africa and scholarship students within these institutions. Thus, the key contribution of the article is the discussion provided on scholarship students in elite schools in South Africa and their experiences of assimilating into the incongruent terrain of the elite school context.
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    ‘Cultural capital in the wrong currency’: the reflective accounts of scholarship students attending elite secondary schools
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2021-07-21) Feldman, Jennifer; Wallace, Jennifer
    This article investigates the awarding of scholarships to students from historically disadvantaged communities to attend elite schools in South Africa. Specifically, the article analyses the narrated accounts of a sample of former scholarship recipients who reflect back on their experiences of entering an elite secondary school as scholarship students. Using Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital and symbolic violence to explain the interviewees’ experiences in the elite school space, the article shows that in the educational setting of post-apartheid South Africa, success in one part of an educational field does not necessarily equate to success in another. Further, providing students with the financial means to access elite education does not mean that they enter into the school contexts as ‘equal players’. As such, what the article highlights, is that the acceptance of a scholarship for students from historically disadvantaged communities, is far more complex and multi-layered than is anticipated by all stakeholders.