Western Australian Institute for Educational Research 41st Annual Research Forum at Murdoch University on Saturday 15 August Forum 2026 Abstracts Listed alphabetically by first author [ Invitation ] [ Program ] [Panel discussion] This page is updated as new abstract submissions are processed

Daddy wouldn't let me drive the BMW: Privilege, capitals and the elite schooling experience

Jen Featch
Murdoch University
Email: jenfeatch@gmailcom

Elite schooling is positioned in Australian education as a pathway to opportunity - institutions in which model citizens are incubated, while also functioning as a site for the reproduction of social inequality. In this presentation, I use autoethnography to critically examine my experiences of attending an elite private girls' school in Perth, Western Australia during the 1980s. This presentation is drawn from a paper of the same name, that is the first journal article within my doctoral thesis by compilation. In it, I use personal vignettes as sociological data to interrogate how privilege, belonging and exclusion have operated within elite schooling. The analysis is informed by Bourdieu's ideas of capital, habitus and symbolic violence, alongside sociological critiques of meritocracy and the neoliberal, normalisation of school choice. While access to cultural and institutional capital ultimately enabled my academic success(es), there are also deeply felt ethical contradictions of elite schooling - marginalisation within privilege, shame alongside advantage, class disavowal, and the everyday practices through which inequality is normalised and legitimised.

Methodologically, I position autoethnography as both a sociological and ethical research practice. I examine the un-asked for privileges of attending such a school that have emerged through the decades and consider ways in which this ongoing analysis can contribute towards a more critical, nuanced and conscious understanding of power and oppression, particularly in the education space. In choosing autoethnography for this narrative, I seek to situate my elite schooling experiences and subsequent emotions within a broader, sociological framework. I argue that sociological research has an ethical responsibility to interrogate privilege as well as disadvantage, including my own complicity within formalised systems of inequality. By making visible the ordinary, embodied workings of elite schooling, this work contributes to sociological understandings of education as a powerful mechanism through which inequality is reproduced and contested.

[Scheduling for this presentation]