Browsing by Subject "Social Class"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Choosing By Habitus: Multi-Case Study of Families & Schools in the Context of School Choice
    (2016-04) Madrid Miranda, Romina
    This qualitative multi-case study explores the dynamics among schools and families during the process of choosing a school through a social class lens and includes narrative data gathered from families and school professionals in four schools within one local commune of Chile. Findings illustrate that families and schools enacted social class through their habitus, Bourdieu’s concept of socialized norms or tendencies (and values) that guide behavior and thinking (Bourdieu, 1977). Three types of habitus emerge: historical, aspirational, and survival. In the case of families, habitus is expressed in the process of choosing a school. In the case of schools, staff members activate elements of their habitus in the ways they perceive and face the process of enrollment and recruitment of students. The study illuminates the ways in which social class moderates school choice by affecting not only families but also schools. Because schools have preferences in the type of families they seek and wish to retain, they reinforce the habitus of the families. The relationship between institutions and families points to the complex relationships among social class, social capital, identity, and educational institutions in a setting where choosing among different educational options is normative. Conclusions raise questions about; the role of habitus in the process of choosing a school, the influence of social class, through habitus, by impacting the ways families choose schools and schools recruit families; and the contribution of schools in social reproduction.
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    Social class and the written and unwritten rules of competitive college admissions: A comparative study of International Baccalaureate schools in Ecuador
    (2020-07) Bittencourt, Tiago
    In 2006, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education signed an agreement which sought to gradually introduce the International Baccalaureate’s (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) into as many of the country’s 1400 publicly funded secondary schools as possible. The initiative was premised on the belief that the quality of public education could be significantly improved if public school students had access to the education experiences and credentials which in Ecuador were historically restricted to private schools catering to affluent students. While subject to critique by several civil societies, the initiative generated a significant amount of enthusiasm and was widely perceived as an early indication that the public-private divide which marred the country’s educational system and cemented pervasive forms of inequality was finally being rectified. Undergirding the DP initiative is a crucial assumption; that increasing access to prestigious educational programs is an important and effective way of addressing inequality. However, as numerous scholars have shown, access alone is not enough to ensure equality and generate social mobility (see Apple, 1996; Aronowitz, 2003, 2008; Jack, 2018). Rather, an overt focus on access may ignore and even conceal the forms of advantage that are unevenly distributed within different segments of society (Tan, 2008). Issues ranging from the materiality of teaching and pedagogy (Vavrus & Salema, 2013) to the practices and “informed agency” of affluent parents and students (Brantlinger, 2003) are equally important and, if left unconsidered, can greatly diminish or even negate the promise a policy such as the DP initiative upholds. This dissertation interrogates this standing assumption by examining the social and cultural processes that produce and maintain inequality, and therefore interfere with the DP initiative’s stated intent. Through process-tracing and a multi-sited ethnography of a low-income public school and an affluent private school, I found that although sponsored by Ecuador’s Ministry of Education, the DP was not recognized as a valid credential for admission to local universities. Due to this existing policy disconnect, students from both schools strictly viewed the DP as a means of gaining access to universities abroad. As a result of this shared aspirational goal, it was possible to discern important differences in how students thought through and engaged with the application process for universities abroad. These differences highlighted the formative role of students’ familial backgrounds and institutional membership, suggesting that while access to DP allowed students to share similar desired goals, circumstances outside the confines of the classroom were more likely to determine whether these goals would indeed be accomplished. In sum, while public school students were encouraged to aspire to study abroad, they were not afforded the support or have the means to effectively engage with the required application and admission processes. The gradual realization that their dreams were likely to remain unfulfilled led students to experience to a mash of affects (Berlant, 2011) which included frustration, disengagement and acquiescence. These affective responses not only conflicted with the DP initiative’s intent of equalizing opportunity, but in many ways served to reinforce existing patterns and systems of inequality. The findings of this study are not intended to discredit the DP initiative – admonishing a seemingly well-intentioned policy is a common but often unfruitful endeavor. Moreover, given the study’s design, any assertion of representation would be misleading, and therefore the impulse for generalization should be significantly tempered. Rather it is to showcase the grounded productions and the ensuing shortcomings which limit and even counteract the policy’s intended goal of addressing social inequality and equalizing opportunity. While the study was envisioned as a direct response to a specific initiative, the emerging insights speak to issues of class culture and the “internationalization” (Knight, 2004; 2015) of public education. Specifically, it will address the relationship between social class and conceptions of “responsibility”, and instances of what Bourdieu (2007) terms as “capital conversion”.
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    Stories and Bodies: Reading and Writing White Femininity
    (2016-07) Coffee, Angela
    The histories and structures that undergird teachers’ positions in schools are deeply entrenched in colonial, racist, patriarchal and classist ways of being. The unique historical and political phenomenon of white women’s overwhelming presence in education has harnessed constructions of white femininity (as caring, innocent, and inherently good) to the colonial project of nation building. Tasked to legitimate and uphold hierarchies of power while remaining subservient to them, white women teachers have been disciplined and produced in particular ways. This contradiction lives in our bodies and through our stories. As a white woman teacher, I use critical autoethnography (Boylorn & Orbe, 2013) to engage with the question: What dangerous histories live in and through my schooled body? My study explores three important episodes in my relationship with teaching and learning and attempts to dynamically foreground different concerns (social class, race, and gender) in considering the entanglement of white femininity within them. This work illuminates the importance of stories and bodies in critical anti-racist work and uses stories as tools in intersectional analysis.