Intersections of National and Transnational Class Formations, Postcoloniality, and Globalization in Elite Schools: Project Updates

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

Elite secondary schools assist the most powerful social classes to maintain their social position. Their graduates go to the most esteemed universities and occupy highly influential positions across government, corporate and professional worlds. However, the research that demonstrates this has a national focus. Despite the explosion of interest in education, globalisation and postcoloniality (e.g. Epstein et al 2007; Apple et al 2005; McCarthy et al 2005), there is sparse research on the links between these schools, social class, and globalisation and colonialism/postcolonialism. We begin to rectify this absence. We offer illustrations of research on elite schools which takes seriously their relationship to global, and colonial/postcolonial processes and which looks at the formation of transnational as well as national elites in this multi-sited longitudinal global ethnography project.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Postcolonial Studies and Education

Papers

• Acts of Altruism in Elite Schools: A Global Class Performance? - Jane Edith Kenway, Monash University

• The Argonauts of Postcolonial Modernity: A Multisited Global Ethnography of Schools in Barbados - Cameron R. McCarthy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Elite Education in Singapore: The Reproduction of Transnational Elites in an Elite Independent School - Aaron Koh, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Class Warfare: Exploring Mechanisms of Produced Privilege via Elite U.S. Secondary Schools Inside the Press of the Global Economy - Lois Weis, University at Buffalo - SUNY