'Who Cares?' Gender, care and secondary schooling: 'Accidental findings' from a seclusion unit

A breadth of research explores gendered professional identities, practices and spaces across a range of UK educational institutions (Barber, 2002, Murray, 2006, Ringrose, 2010, Warin, 2017). One focus has been on links between gender, care and education in early years settings and primary schools, although less attention has been given to caring within secondary schools (see Laurent, 2013, Gillies and Robinson, 2013 as important exceptions). Drawing upon qualitative research conducted in London within an in-school Seclusion Unit, this paper brings together a Lefebvrian conceptualisation of space with feminist theorisations of care to explore how the Unit (conceived as a space of control, discipline and punishment) also became an unlikely space of care. In doing so, the paper explores complex intersections between gender and care and how everyday caring practices in schools are inextricably linked to and embedded within broader institutional and spatial agendas and processes.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Barker, J. (2019), ‘Who cares?’ Gender, care and secondary schooling: ‘Accidental findings’ from a seclusion unit. Br Educ Res J, 45: 1279-1294. doi:10.1002/berj.3562, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3562. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions