Moving: A Memoir of Education and Social Mobility

"In Moving: A Memoir of Education and Social Mobility author Andy Hargreaves tells the story of his working-class roots, his education, and his experiences with social mobility. Beginning with his youth in the small working-class town of Accrington in Northern England and ending with his experiences at University, the author relates his journey through the education system and all that education has done for him. The author describes what it means to be working-class, his personal successes and failures,and the ways that education allowed him to lift himself out of poverty. However, he also describes the ways that many others were left behind and never given the chance to be socially mobile. The author believes that there are lessons that can be learnedfrom his experience of social mobility and that these lessons can be applied to society at large. In particular, educators can use these lessons to encourage and support students' social mobility and increase the number of students who can become socially mobile. These lessons can also be used to create schools that are kinder to working-class students and to students who are socially mobile. Readers will connect to the engaging, heart-felt story of the author's life and, through it, learn about the reality of social mobility, how it is experienced, and how it can be supported"--
Social mobility--the chance, through education, to achieve greater success compared to one's parents--is one of the most compelling issues of our time. In Moving, renowned professor, government adviser, and global change agent Andy Hargreaves shares candid, poignant and occasionally hilarious personal experiences of social mobility. Deeply revealing, emotionally direct, and intellectually insightful, the book begins in 1950s Northwest England and takes readers up to Hargreaves's university education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hargreaves openly shares how class movement has affected him throughout life, links his narrative to classic and contemporary research and realities, and calls on society to reverse the increasing levels of social immobility and inequity worldwide.Use this resource to inspire your work in increasing learning for every student:Learn, through the author's research and firsthand account, how issues surrounding mobility, equity, and education in the 20th century are still reflected in 21st-century life.Understand the obstacles of socially mobile students as they negotiate schoolwork, poverty, cultural collisions, and personal hardship. Witness how Hargreaves's experiences of testing, selection, ADHD, inspiring and uninspiring teaching, whole-child inclusion, and elitist exclusion are still alive and well in education today.Study three alternative scenarios for the future of social mobility that highlight the best ways to address both mobility and equity and to deal with the strains experienced by students who succeed in becoming mobile.Contents:Preface and AcknowledgmentsTable of ContentsAbout the AuthorChapter 1: Move On UpChapter 2: No One Likes Us; We Don't CareChapter 3: How the Light GetsChapter 4: End of EdenChapter 5: Worlds ApartChapter 6: Higher LovesChapter 7: The Full MontyChapter 8: The Bigger PictureIndexEndnotes