Being ‘the lowest’: models of identity and deficit discourse in vocational education

ABSTRACT This paper critically analyses and aims to denaturalise models of identity that circulate in discourse about vocational education in the Netherlands. It is argued that discourse about the vocational track is characterised by a pervasive focus on deficits, framing vocational education as unprestigious, and its students as unintelligent and insubordinate. The analysis focuses on three levels at which this model of identity circulates and is reproduced: it is rooted in the historical emergence of tracks in the Netherlands, is re-enforced throughout the educational trajectories of students in the vocational track, and is reproduced on the event level in routine interactions among students and teachers. The paper contributes to existing scholarship on the sociocultural and personal dimensions of tracking, which predominantly comes from studies based on survey and interview-based data, by building on data from ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation.