Linda Irwin-DeVitis – författare

When talking about marginality and «otherness», one must always ask, marginal to what? Other to whom? Complex issues of identity construction have been the focus of research on students who, whether based on race, gender, class, or ability, define themselves or are defined as being on the margins of school life. Making Schools Work examines this question in its presentation of the results of a longitudinal study of academic achievement and pre-college enrichment. Discussions focus on how students construct their identities with regard to race because of the history of problems associated with race relations in educational settings. Using case studies and observational data, the book presents findings on a group of adolescents defined as «at risk» – inside, but on the margins of educational institutions.

In Mind Fields, Thomas J. Cottle argues that the period known as adolescence is essentially a social construct influenced greatly by popular culture. To understand young people, therefore, is to recognize how the very consciousness of adolescents is shaped by a culture, dominated by the entertainment industry, and the power of television and the computer, constantly urging them to turn away from the normal evolution of their personal and social lives. In this fundamentally distracting environment, young people explore their consciousness, sharing it with others, as well as form their sense of identity, all the while having these most inner experiences affected as much by the culture as by their own temperaments and personalities. It is the culture that determines the forms of recognition and independence, as well as intimacy and attachment that adolescents must learn. In the end, the author argues for the value of self-reflection as a critical ingredient of identity formation and a fundamental antidote to distracting cultural influences.

Voices from the Margins is an examination of the school experiences of twenty working-class students in vocational high schools. Recognizing the complexity and the significance of these school participants’ experiences enriches our understanding of the hierarchical distribution of power structures within schools. At the heart of the book are the words of the participants who took part in the phenomenological interview process. They talk frankly about their lives in school and reflect on the meanings that they drew from their experiences. What is truly remarkable about their stories is that the majority of the participants interviewed never gave up their struggles to overcome the barriers that were preventing them from attaining their rightful places within the school. By telling their stories they are informing us about what is happening to the disempowered in schools.

There is a profound and deepening crisis afflicting secondary schools in most parts of the world – but at its essence it is a crisis of a very different kind from the one portrayed by the media, the business community, politicians, and policy makers. Just what constitutes the crisis is highly problematic. What is being constructed for us through a concerted «conservative assault» and a «new authoritarianism» is one of failure by young people, their schools, and their teachers. But as with any moral panic, there are undisclosed interests and agenda operating, and they are not those of the people most directly affected, in this case young people.This book tackles those myths head-on. Through a multi-layered portrait analysis of young lives, adult lives, and school lives this book shows how schools, teachers, and young people are re-inventing themselves against the damaging prevailing educational policy discourses. Teachers are «in the middle» in all kinds of ways – they are a group who are continually being disparaged, pilloried, and denigrated by politicians and the media; they are caught in the shifting tectonic plates of capitalism as schools are increasingly required to do economic work; and they are continually mediating the emotional, social, and intellectual intersections between schools, society, classrooms, and young lives. Teachers in the Middle provides a critique as well as hope and possibility as schools engage pedagogically with the maelstrom in which they find themselves.

Written by a prominent array of scholars and practitioners, this book elucidates the complexities, contradictions, and confusion surrounding adolescence in American culture and education. For too long, harmful public myths and lies have portrayed teenagers as a principal cause of our nation’s social ills. Similar unfair charges have been lodged against America’s teachers and schools throughout our history. This book offers public counterpoints to those simplistic blaming-the-victim arguments. Instead, it traverses a more nuanced and realistic path toward uncovering the developmental, socio-cultural realities faced by today’s teenagers. It also provides rich pedagogical strategies, and educational wisdom for allowing adolescents to grow as worthy human beings. This important and timely book will appeal to preservice teachers, teacher educators, education and social service professionals, policymakers, and all those interested in bettering the lives of adolescents in this uncertain world.

As many young adults continue to disengage with learning each day, teachers and administrators struggle to find programming that re-engages secondary students with their schooling and communities. This book profiles one program that succeeds in doing so, and should serve as a model for others. In a Midwestern alternative school, three teachers built a curriculum around hands-on learning, restorative justice Talking Circles, and multicultural education, in the hopes that it would re-engage and inspire youth. Drawing on adult transformative learning theory, this book is an in-depth, qualitative study of the ways the program transformed adult and youth perceptions of trust, connections, schooling, and human rights. This book breaks down stereotypes about youth labeled «at-risk» and provides evidence that it is never too late to become passionate about learning.

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2012.Teaching History to Adolescents: A Quest for Relevance is an exploration of research, ideas, trends, and practices for educators who teach American history to adolescents from the middle grades through high school. Higher education faculty in history and professional education will also find the book germane to their work. Topics within the field of teaching history to adolescents include the use and misuse of history textbooks, implementing primary sources into lessons, subject matter selection, professional development, technology, and the issues of diversity and assessment as directly related to history. The book includes «The World of Practice» sections – contributions from practitioners on topics such as teaching history with comic books, student engagement with public history, using young adult non-fiction books, and the role of controversial topics in the history classroom.

Picture two very different schools: one, a federal Indian boarding school emphasizing vocational training, where few graduates attend college. The other – its neighbor – an overwhelmingly white, land-grant university.These two schools had little to no contact, until an innovative initiative turned things around. In the fall of 2000, the Flandreau Indian School began a reform effort, Success Academy, aimed at preparing all of its students for postsecondary education. Over the next decade South Dakota State University responded by committing 300 of its faculty and staff and $85,000 of its annual budget to opening the doors of higher education to Indian students who had previously been excluded.The traditional way of increasing college access for students of color is through remediation, that is, through attempting to «fix» those presumed to be unprepared for higher learning. What sets Success Academy apart is that the educators involved chose instead to «fix» both their institutions, institutions that were actually preventing Indian students from entering college. Throughout all aspects of Success Academy programming, students’ American Indian identities are affirmed, honored – and incorporated into school culture. Ethnicity matters in each and every aspect of Success Academy.

This book helps young black males, educators, policy makers, parents, and all other interested parties to understand the importance of education alongside athletic pursuits. In the world today, many young black males view athletic participation as the way to secure a successful future. Yet for the majority of them, dreams of playing professional sports rarely pan out. Many end up returning to a life of poverty as a result of the sports lure which deceives them and entices them to focus exclusively on athletic talent at the expense of their education. This book presents a social historical and critical deconstruction introducing readers to this sports lure, revealing what makes it so powerful in the lives of these youths. As Isabel Ann Dwornik documents, centuries-worth of racism in the United States is at the core of this phenomenon, which has affected the academic identity development of black male youths and has discouraged them from taking full advantage of their schooling.

This book helps young black males, educators, policy makers, parents, and all other interested parties to understand the importance of education alongside athletic pursuits. In the world today, many young black males view athletic participation as the way to secure a successful future. Yet for the majority of them, dreams of playing professional sports rarely pan out. Many end up returning to a life of poverty as a result of the sports lure which deceives them and entices them to focus exclusively on athletic talent at the expense of their education. This book presents a social historical and critical deconstruction introducing readers to this sports lure, revealing what makes it so powerful in the lives of these youths. As Isabel Ann Dwornik documents, centuries-worth of racism in the United States is at the core of this phenomenon, which has affected the academic identity development of black male youths and has discouraged them from taking full advantage of their schooling.

Living on the Edge: Rethinking Poverty, Class and Schooling, Second Edition confronts one of the most enduring and controversial issues in education—the nexus between poverty and underachievement. This topic stubbornly remains a key contemporary battleground in the struggle to raise standards. Living on the Edge maps and compares a number of competing explanations, critiques inadequate and deficit accounts and offers a more convincing and useful theory. The authors challenge the view that problems can be fixed by discrete initiatives, which in many instances are deeply rooted in deficit views of youth, families and communities. The book systematically interrogates a range of explanations based outside as well as inside schools. It draws upon positive examples of schools which are succeeding in engaging marginalized young people, providing worthwhile forms of learning and improving young lives. This second edition contains two expansive case studies that exemplify, explain and illustrate the themes coursing through the book. Living on the Edge's second edition remains a "must read" for anyone concerned about or implicated in the struggle for more socially just forms of education.

What is the adolescent's experience of amorous love? In seeking an answer to this question, Wendy Austin gathered descriptions from individuals who were in love as teenagers, explored literary texts, movies, and songs, and reflected on personal experience. To understand the influences that shape her own pre-understandings of love and that of her society, Austin examined the psychological research, reviewed the explanatory theories of scholars on love and revisited the great love stories that have survived across time to reveal four major descriptive themes – awakening, falling, possessing, and becoming. Adolescence has been called a time of rebirth; in considering the sentimental education of adolescents, Wendy Austin considers ways in which adults may attend this rebirth in a helpful way.

Promoting Academic Resilience in Multicultural America combines biographical sketches of resilient students, examples of effective programs designed to encourage resilience, recent research in the field, and their own experiences of resilient academics of color. The book illustrates exactly how academic success occurs within traditionally challenged learning environments. The authors focus most closely on the crucial transition between high school and college. The individuals spotlighted and programs outlined cross racial, gender, socioeconomic, and ethnic lines, and include African American, Hispanic, and white students. In part, the authors conclude that there are specific multidimensional protective factors that work collaboratively to enable the success of these exceptional students. It is the detailed exploration of these phenomena that lie at the heart of this work and that has the potential to help all children excel. Among other uses, this book could be a valuable addition to a college freshmen seminar series, a foundations of education course, a course on multiculturalism in America and/or any course focused on basic educational psychology.

Being Young and Homeless is an intimate portrayal of life on the street from the perspective of young people in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, and Guatemala City. Jeff Karabanow passionately portrays street youth experiences in various locales, highlighting reasons for entering street life, struggles to survive on the street, encounters with service providers, and for some, the street exiting process. This insightful book is relevant for students and practitioners of social work, sociology, social administration, and public policy.

In Whisper Writing three teenage girls share their stories about life as students, as young women with disabilities, and as minorities in a male-dominated special education school culture. Their stories are unique because of their disability label and the experiences that go along with such a label. Trapped in an artificial school culture created by educators, these girls have gained valuable insight about power and subordination both in and out of school. Their narratives, along with extensive observations and interviews with these students and their peers, will both stun and enlighten the reader, prompting questions about current school practices involving segregation, a curriculum of control, and the devaluing of students with disabilities – particularly those with behavior issues.