Adolescent Cultures, School & Society – serie

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.

This book deals with one of the most urgent, damaging, and complex issues affecting young lives and contemporary society in general – the escalating high school dropout rate. Though against the wishes of teachers and school administrators, young people’s decision to leave school is usually made under circumstances that provide little time or space for discussion. This book provides a disturbing account of how students’ voices are over-ridden – lost in the imposition of curriculum and the rush to impose testing, accountability, and management regimes on schools. ‘Dropping Out’, Drifting Off, Being Excluded reveals the complex stories that surround identity formation in young lives and the «interactive trouble» as young people struggle to be heard within inhospitable schools and an equally unhelpful education system.

This book provides an interdisciplinary perspective on theory, research, and applications in human behavior change. Chapters from clinical, developmental, and community psychology and education are united by common principles and an emphasis on culture and context. The contributions of Roland Tharp to each of these fields are highlighted. The roles of parents, teachers, peers, families, schools, and neighborhoods are explored. Topics include behavior therapy, child development and culture, community programs, delinquency prevention, youth mentoring, instructional conversation, school reform, teacher professional development, and culturally relevant instruction. For each topic, new research challenges are identified. This volume is recommended for a variety of courses in psychology and education.

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.

Ethnicity Matters – Rethinking How Black, Hispanic, and Indian Students Prepare for and Succeed in College focuses on four model programs that are highly effective in preparing students from underrepresented groups for college and in supporting these students through baccalaureate degree completion. The four model programs serve students from those ethnic groups that face the most serious problems of underrepresentation in American higher education – African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians. What sets these four programs apart from most other minority college recruitment and retention efforts is that they are built on this premise: Ethnic identity plays an empowering role in educational achievement.

The Corporate Assault on Youth examines childhood as a social construction increasingly influenced by corporations and commercialism. Through case studies, critical analysis, and historical/philosophical research, the essays collected here expose the degree to which children are unwitting targets of marketing. With topics ranging from the presence of media branding in schools and school supplies to the subtler ways in which the public education system is influenced by corporate ideologies and purposes, this book draws much-needed attention to how educators, administrators, policymakers, parents, and children can become aware of, and counterbalance, the effects of the commercialism that is overwhelming students’ understanding of the world and their place within it.

This book – the finale in a trilogy by the authors – traces the way in which a number of disadvantaged schools and communities were able to move beyond deficit, victim-blaming and pathologizing approaches and access resources of trust, relationships, connectedness and hope. It describes how these Australian schools and communities were able to benefit from working with ‘street-level’ bureaucrats who had reinvented themselves around notions of socially just forms of capacity-building. The book provides a set of insights into what is possible from a critical engagement for school and community renewal perspective, by working with the resources that exist within disadvantaged contexts, even in damaging neoliberal policy times. Critically Engaged Learning breaks new and important ground across urgent and fractured boundaries.

This book – the finale in a trilogy by the authors – traces the way in which a number of disadvantaged schools and communities were able to move beyond deficit, victim-blaming and pathologizing approaches and access resources of trust, relationships, connectedness and hope. It describes how these Australian schools and communities were able to benefit from working with ‘street-level’ bureaucrats who had reinvented themselves around notions of socially just forms of capacity-building. The book provides a set of insights into what is possible from a critical engagement for school and community renewal perspective, by working with the resources that exist within disadvantaged contexts, even in damaging neoliberal policy times. Critically Engaged Learning breaks new and important ground across urgent and fractured boundaries.

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.

The chapters in this edited collection examine how the culture of masculinity intersects with issues of health, homophobia, and the suppression and silencing of anxieties about body image among men and boys. Examining the bodily dividends and trade-offs associated with male participation in physical activity is central to understanding how educators in particular might better engage all boys in healthy life practices, not only those privileged by muscularity and physicality. Contributions explore evidence of intimidation and body fears that is largely unheard and unexplored in locker rooms and classrooms. Introducing critical perspectives emerging from current evidence-based international research to shed light on curricular and policy initiatives aimed at producing healthy children, this book will powerfully inform and provoke discussion.

This book brings a unique, innovative and refreshing perspective to one of the most protracted issues affecting young lives – disengagement from schooling. Rather than continuing to blame young people, as most educational policies do, this book examines disengagement from the vantage point of the lives, experiences, interests and aspirations of the communities from which young people come, and within which they are embedded. It uses a narrative and representational approach that gives detailed insights into the wider context of poverty, class, power, relationships and identity. A major and defining hallmark of the book is the emphasis it places upon a number of ‘doings’, – including community voice, identity formation, critical work education and education policy – all of which provide a very different set of scripts with which to reinvent the institution of high school.

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.

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.

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.

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2012.Community Service Learning (CSL) is, potentially, the most powerful and far-reaching educational reform movement in recent memory. Yet, that potential has yet to be realized. One major reason for CSL’s limited success is found in its runaway conceptual confusion: in becoming everything to everyone, CSL has lost its philosophical bearings and, not surprisingly, its practical value. This study attempts to restore CSL’s philosophical bearings, arguing that there are particular understandings of its components that imply particular kinds of educational practices. In this philosophical clarification lies the hope that CSL can meet its immense potential as a transformative school and community practice. This book is a must-have for teachers, school administrators, educational scholars, and students who have an interest in making schools a vital community resource.

Pervasive Vulnerabilities explores the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of adolescent girls and boys and female teachers in order to expose the continuing persistence of sexual harassment in the United States. The book addresses the sexual double standard that continues to hold girls and women accountable for male sexual aggression, and demonstrates that this double standard still dismisses males who harass young women with a cavalier «boys will be boys» attitude, while castigating young women if they express an interest in sexual expression. It discusses issues of sexual harassment through four domains: its impact on women’s lives, sometimes long after high school; the perceptions of teachers who interact with adolescents; the experiences of young girls in middle and high school; and the behaviors and attitudes of young men in middle and high school. This book is critical reading for all pre-service and in-service teachers and is indispensable in classrooms devoted to the topic.

Although they are typically viewed as silent witnesses in schools during the worldwide infatuation with school reform, this book, in fact, reveals young people to be active agents with something worthwhile to say about their schooling and what might be done to make learning more exciting and relevant to their lives and aspirations. The authors foreground the stories of some 100 young informants from low socioeconomic backgrounds who had been repelled by school, but found their way back in to learning through alternative education programs that offered them a sense of direction, hope, and purpose – although they also presented them with some tensions and dilemmas. At a time when educational policies are bearing down heavily on schools through national testing regimes, accountability standards, and other repressive measures, it is refreshing to hear from young people about ways that schools can be made more humane and educationally rewarding places.

This book won the 2014 AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award.Illuminating hip-hop as an important cultural practice and a global social movement, this collaborative project highlights the emancipatory messages and cultural work generated by the organic intellectuals of global hip-hop. Contributors describe the social realities – globalization, migration, poverty, criminalization, and racism – youth are resisting through what we recognize as a decolonial cultural politic. The book contributes to current scholarship in multicultural education, seeking to understand the vilification of youth (of color) for the social problems created by a global system that benefits a small minority. In an age of corporate globalization, Hip-Hop(e) highlights the importance of research projects that link the production of educational scholarship with the cultural activities, everyday practice, and social concerns of global youth in order to ameliorate social, economic, and political problems that transcend national boundaries.

This book won the 2014 AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award.Illuminating hip-hop as an important cultural practice and a global social movement, this collaborative project highlights the emancipatory messages and cultural work generated by the organic intellectuals of global hip-hop. Contributors describe the social realities – globalization, migration, poverty, criminalization, and racism – youth are resisting through what we recognize as a decolonial cultural politic. The book contributes to current scholarship in multicultural education, seeking to understand the vilification of youth (of color) for the social problems created by a global system that benefits a small minority. In an age of corporate globalization, Hip-Hop(e) highlights the importance of research projects that link the production of educational scholarship with the cultural activities, everyday practice, and social concerns of global youth in order to ameliorate social, economic, and political problems that transcend national boundaries.

Invisible Girls is an examination of twenty-four at-risk adolescent girls’ writing practices in a Third Space setting located within a school but outside of the confines of a regular classroom. Through a description of the girls’ writing over a three-and-a-half-year period in this setting, Mellinee Lesley details phenomena that both support and suppress at-risk adolescent girls in their quest to achieve academic success through their writing practices. This book offers educators insights into teaching writing to adolescent girls who are falling through the cracks of the public education system in the United States. Much more attention needs to be given to the literacy practices and pedagogical needs of this considerable population of learners. As such, this book is poised to fill a void in the field of literacy for educators who want to prevent the intellectual abandonment of girls drifting invisibly along the corridors of schools.

Invisible Girls is an examination of twenty-four at-risk adolescent girls’ writing practices in a Third Space setting located within a school but outside of the confines of a regular classroom. Through a description of the girls’ writing over a three-and-a-half-year period in this setting, Mellinee Lesley details phenomena that both support and suppress at-risk adolescent girls in their quest to achieve academic success through their writing practices. This book offers educators insights into teaching writing to adolescent girls who are falling through the cracks of the public education system in the United States. Much more attention needs to be given to the literacy practices and pedagogical needs of this considerable population of learners. As such, this book is poised to fill a void in the field of literacy for educators who want to prevent the intellectual abandonment of girls drifting invisibly along the corridors of schools.

Jonathan Kozol has been a leading educational critic and social activist since 1967 when Death at an Early Age, his book about racism in Boston’s schools, was published and won a National Book Award. Since then, Kozol has written eleven more books which focus on such issues as segregation in schools and society, poverty, inequitable school funding, effective teaching and curriculum choices that help create good citizens and good learners, teacher leadership in matters related to social justice, literacy, and homelessness. This book organizes Kozol’s texts by topic, analyzes his perspective and proposed solutions for the issue under review, and examines the contemporary status of those issues to determine the continuing relevance of Kozol’s ideas today. A Persistent Reformer is a critical read for pre-service and in-service teachers, graduate students, administrators, and anyone concerned about educational reform today.

Jonathan Kozol has been a leading educational critic and social activist since 1967 when Death at an Early Age, his book about racism in Boston’s schools, was published and won a National Book Award. Since then, Kozol has written eleven more books which focus on such issues as segregation in schools and society, poverty, inequitable school funding, effective teaching and curriculum choices that help create good citizens and good learners, teacher leadership in matters related to social justice, literacy, and homelessness. This book organizes Kozol’s texts by topic, analyzes his perspective and proposed solutions for the issue under review, and examines the contemporary status of those issues to determine the continuing relevance of Kozol’s ideas today. A Persistent Reformer is a critical read for pre-service and in-service teachers, graduate students, administrators, and anyone concerned about educational reform today.

Today’s colleges and universities face countless uncharted challenges and possibilities. They are often prized as national treasures, yet, in tough economic times, they are becoming a major focus of contestation and controversy. This richly comprehensive survey takes a frank look at both polarities of the puzzles of academe. Presenting multiple perspectives on a wide array of crucial issues, the book features realistic representations of students, faculty, curriculum, administration, and the socio-cultural conditions that shape higher education. The incisive essays are written by practitioners on the front lines of the academy’s battle to validate and sustain its core principles in a complex, rapidly evolving world. They afford valuable insights into the postsecondary scene for all who seek to nurture its development in these uncertain, troubled times. The text will appeal to students, faculty, administrators, student life professionals, and policymakers who shape human potential. In the end it will leave them with sobering thoughts about the present and future of higher education, an institution that still warrants their constant care and vigilance.

Today’s colleges and universities face countless uncharted challenges and possibilities. They are often prized as national treasures, yet, in tough economic times, they are becoming a major focus of contestation and controversy. This richly comprehensive survey takes a frank look at both polarities of the puzzles of academe. Presenting multiple perspectives on a wide array of crucial issues, the book features realistic representations of students, faculty, curriculum, administration, and the socio-cultural conditions that shape higher education. The incisive essays are written by practitioners on the front lines of the academy’s battle to validate and sustain its core principles in a complex, rapidly evolving world. They afford valuable insights into the postsecondary scene for all who seek to nurture its development in these uncertain, troubled times. The text will appeal to students, faculty, administrators, student life professionals, and policymakers who shape human potential. In the end it will leave them with sobering thoughts about the present and future of higher education, an institution that still warrants their constant care and vigilance.

Not a Stage! is written for teachers, students, and scholars interested in the academic, social, and emotional needs of young adolescents. It is unique because it actively resists basing the practice, research, and theory of young adolescent education on developmentalism and the developmental stage of young adolescence. The purpose of this book is to begin to reorient the discourse on young adolescent growth and change and in turn reconceptualize the education of young adolescents. The book infuses a contingent, recursive conception of adolescent growth and change into the discourse around young adolescence by making three pleas to those interested in the schooling of young adolescents: to move away from a developmentally responsive vision to a contingently and recursively relational vision; to move from «characterizing» young adolescenCE to «particularizing» young adolescenTS; and to move from a «sameness» curriculum to a «difference» curriculum.