How do excluded female adolescents make sense of their identities and what are the implications or school experience? : an interpretative phenomenological analysis

The aim of this research was to understand the lived experiences of school excluded female adolescents and how they made sense of their identities. Reviews of young women's experiences of being school excluded and how this mayor may not impact on the sense of self have highlighted an absence of qualitative studies in this area. This is of significance when considering the changes within education that through the introduction of academies and the White Paper may witness further diminishment of agency for young people in the face of school disciplinary systems. The notion of being female and gendered identity with the subsequent expectations of the female in conforming to educational structural norms was also of concern. This paper seeks to bridge the gap between gaining a deeper understanding of the female embodied self and how meaning is made of the self. A qualitative approach was chosen and three young women aged 15 to 16 years were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was utilised to analyse the transcripts individually and then across and between interviews to allow for cross case analysis. The three super-ordinate themes emerging were violence and aggression, comparison and being heard. The findings evidence that young women struggle to conform to the engendered norms of the schools' structures which include the policies, rules, cultural expectations and maintenance of norms which uphold and perpetuate institutionalised violence against the female. The young women in this research constantly compare themselves to others and identify that they are treated differently to their peers in the forms of inclusion, relational exclusion and violence experienced. There is little autonomy or redress of the violence experienced as the young women experience voicelessness, remaining unheard in their requests for help of the adults within educational institutions. The relationships with adults and peers alike are complex and to be afforded agency the young women need to speak, be heard and witnessed by the adults that surround them in the context of school and to exercise autonomy that is ultimately denied. 6EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo