This group will explore dominant cultural narratives and popular depictions that present boarding school through romanticised visions of privilege, independence and opportunity.

As well as investigating how stories about boarding school shape public perception, policy, and individual identity, the group will centre marginalised voices and re-evaluate prevailing assumptions about the purpose and benefits of a patriarchal institutional education.

The REBALANCING NARRATIVES specialist group will have 3 sub-groups, each exploring different lines of enquiry:    

a) Women’s Voices
Focuses on the underrepresented experiences of women within patriarchal boarding school contexts. Topics will include gendered harm, identity formation, psychosocial wellbeing, and the effect on the developing female child who is required to conform to the male-oriented institutional system, whether in a single sex or co-ed setting.

b) Third Culture
Examines the complex experiences of children educated away from their country of origin. This group will explore themes around geographical displacement, cultural dislocation, identity fragmentation and the socio-emotional impact of global boarding patterns, exploring whether emerging testimonies of longer-term harm call into question the perceived advantages of selecting an overseas education.

c) The Compliant Voice
Explores how the fundamental need to belong, and expectations of conformity, loyalty and privilege might shape the child’s response to their own lived experience against the cultural narratives that underpin boarding school - even of in the face of cognitive dissonance. Drawing on diverse theories of culture, identity, relationships, and success, we will examine the factors influencing social acceptance, individual identity, and group behaviours within the boarding school system and wider society.