Interview and focus groups transcripts, school summaries and participants overview in six 11-19 co-educational comprehensive schools. This youth-centred study combines individual and group interviews with online forums and celebrity case studies and involves 144 young people in six English comprehensive schools. At the start of the school year, 24 participants per school, half in Year 10 (aged 14-15) and half in Year 12 (aged 16-17), will take part in group interviews. At the end of the school year 48 selected participants will take part in individual interviews. Between school visits, participants will be invited to join an online forum and there will be case studies of 12 celebrities who feature strongly in the group interviews. There are growing concerns in the UK that celebrity is impacting negatively on young people’s aspirations. This study builds on recent research suggesting that celebrity informs young people’s educational and career aspirations in complex ways. It is exploring how accounts of aspiration within celebrity shape young people’s imagined futures. The research questions are: (1) What discourses (powerful and conflicting social stories) of aspiration circulate in celebrity representations? (2) How do young people take-up these discourses in talking about their own aspirations? (3) How do discourses of aspiration in celebrity and young people’s take-up of these relate to social class and gender?

We used a multi-stage, mixed-method approach. We combined textual analysis of celebrity representations with empirical data from face-to-face group and individual interviews, and online forums to give young people a role in steering the research. Using group interviews and online forums allowed us to examine participants’' collective negotiation of meanings, alongside biographical narratives from one-to-one interviews, providing a rich, unique body of data. We conducted four group interviews per school with six participants in each lasting approximately 45 minutes. In group interviews we examined the shared negotiation of meanings around aspiration and celerity. We used an open, semi-structured approach to ensure that the research is led by young people’s meanings and practices, however we will use celebrity representations as prompts to encourage discussion on celebrity, achievable and desirable educational and career pathways, and connections between them. We also conducted a further 48 individual interviews (8 per school), lasting approximately 45 minutes to examine more closely their aspirations, engagement with celebrity, class and gender positions, and links between these.