Understanding Pupil Resistance
Description
Resistance is a legitimate response to tensions faced by pupils inside and outside of school. There are various explanations for pupil resistance, each of which alters depending upon the interaction of structure and agency within specific instances in particular points in time. International, national and local community structures, events, ideologies and practices are reproduced within schools and influence a young person's schooling experience. Resistance is context specific, volatile and dynamic. It manifests itself within the classroom and school setting in a multifaceted way because of the many inter-related factors that shape it. National and local community contexts, school features and individual teacher and pupil characteristics interact to contribute to the formation and manifestation of different patterns of resistance. Although influenced by macro and micro structures, pupils can and do inject agency; they are adept at working the school system and they manage structures to satisfy their own needs.
Ethnographic data collected from over 13 months of field work explores working class pupil resistance. It focuses on the daily lives of 22 young people from two comprehensive schools in Birmingham, England and one state-governed school in Sydney, Australia.
The book attempts to understand pupil resistance to mainstream schooling and its meaning in working-class communities and schools. It explores what pupil resistance looks like; how it is played out in the classroom and playground and how is it experienced by the teenagers themselves. A new range of resistances are analysed and used to show how girls' patterns of resistances have developed and changed. It shows that girls tend to be more aggressive in their tone, visibility and prominence in their resistance and that they tend to operate collectively to enforce more emancipatory powers against certain teachers and the school system.
This book tells the story of marginalised youth, the disadvantaged and disengaged, through their experiences and their words.
