Constructing Female Identities; Meaning Making in an Upper Middle Class Youth Culture
Research conducted in schools over the past two decades has found that youth shape who they are in ways that do not simply mirror class, race, and gender discourses organizing life in schools. Instead, educators have learned that youth play active roles in shaping who they are on a daily basis, challenging dominant meanings and practices as they move through school. New insights in these directions now compel those in educational circles to talk differently about youth identity formation than...
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Research conducted in schools over the past two decades has found that youth shape who they are in ways that do not simply mirror class, race, and gender discourses organizing life in schools. Instead, educators have learned that youth play active roles in shaping who they are on a daily basis, challenging dominant meanings and practices as they move through school. New insights in these directions now compel those in educational circles to talk differently about youth identity formation than they did nearly two decades ago. While sound research on male identity formation in educational contexts has illustrated boys' socialization processes in school, there still is much to learn about girls' social lives and meaning-making processes, particularly in the relatively unexplored arenas of private education and single-sex schooling.Probing beneath the surface, this book explores one year in the lives of thirty-four adolescent girls in Best Academy, a historically elite, private, single-sex high school, as female students construct their identities in an educational context. Through the eyes of these students, we find that the private school is less of a homogenous and stable culture along class and race lines than educators have understood it to be. Booknews Complementing the several recent studies of how boys take active roles in shaping their personal identities, Proweller (education, DePaul U.) explores one year in the lives of 34 adolescent girls at a historically elite, private, single-sex high school. She finds that the school is less homogeneous and stable along class and race lines than educationists have imagined; and that school officials and parents weave a story of complex and contradictory moments of meaning as the girls mold themselves into raced, classed, and gendered beings. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
AcknowledgmentsCh. 1Introduction1Ch. 2Inside Best Academy: Socialization in the Private Girls' School17Ch. 3Class Identities in the Borderlands61Ch. 4Race Identities in the Borderlands95Ch. 5On the Horizon/At the Frontier: Girls' Projections for the Future133Ch. 6Schooling Our Daughters165Ch. 7Conclusion: Repositioning Identities At/In the Center197Appendix: Methodology and Research Design209Notes235References253Index279
\ BooknewsComplementing the several recent studies of how boys take active roles in shaping their personal identities, Proweller (education, DePaul U.) explores one year in the lives of 34 adolescent girls at a historically elite, private, single-sex high school. She finds that the school is less homogeneous and stable along class and race lines than educationists have imagined; and that school officials and parents weave a story of complex and contradictory moments of meaning as the girls mold themselves into raced, classed, and gendered beings. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.\ \
