Identity, Agency and Social Institutions in Educational Ethnography

Geoff Troman|Bob Jeffrey|Geoffrey Walford

Emerald

This book can be opened with

Hardback

9780762311446

30 December 2004

$152.99

Description
Contents

The prime focus on the social processes of schooling within educational ethnography has tended to marginalise or eschew the importance of other 'informal' educational sites. Other social institutions, such as family, community, media and popular culture, work and prisons are salient arenas in which behaviours and lives are regulated. They all interrelate and are all implicated in the generation, management and development of social identities and the social and cultural reproduction of structures and relations. Individuals, though, are not merely shaped by these social institutions, their agency is evident in the way they creatively adapt and accommodate to the tensions and constraints of economic, educational and social policies. The maintenance of self in these situations requires identity work involving mediation, conflict, contestation and modes of resistance, which often contribute to a continual reconstruction of situations and contexts. This volume of "Studies in Educational Ethnography" focuses on identity and agency in a variety of social institutions in educational ethnography. The contributors explore these themes in a wide range of international contexts including: Belgium, Sweden, North America, South Africa and England. They demonstrate the capacity of educational ethnography to provide accounts of participants' perspectives and understandings to highlight the agency of educational subjects.

Series Preface. Introduction. (G. Troman). A Relational Approach on Children in the City: The Importance of Public Space, Non-Places and Ephemeral Relationships for Learning. (R. Soenen). The Construction of Identity on the Internet: A Study of Swedish Young People's Self-Presentation in a Web Community. (F. Moinian). God's Gypsy and God's Enforcer: The Educational Significance of Constructions of Motherhood and Mother-Daughter Relations. (J. Donnell Johnson). How Students, The Home and the School Mediate Issues Related on Home And School: A Dynamic Of Distance? (C. Hudson). An Ethnographic Study of Gender Differences: Racial Integration in South African Secondary Schools. (J. Klaas). Why Can't We Just Do Math? Exploring the Tensions Within the In-Between Space of a Culturally Responsive Curriculum. (J. Parker Webster, J. Lipka). New Aims and Old Problems in Swedish Schools: Flexibility, Freedom of Choice and Self-Reliance in Learning as Part of Social Reproduction. (M. Dovemark, D. Beach). Labs and the Quality of Learning in School Science: Schools, Labs and Creativity). (D. Beach). The Restructuring of Swedish Adult Education : The Involvement of Economists and Politicians in Education Policy. (M. Carlson). Through the Looking Glass and what Ethnography Finds There: Critical Insights into the New Deal for Young People's Voluntary Sector Option. (G. Mitchell). 'I Go To Get Away from the Cockroaches': Educentricity and the Politics of Education in Prisons. (A. Wilson). About the Authors.