Managing Symbolic and Social Boundaries: Student Strategies for Maintaining Academic Identities in the Context of Discriminatory Schooling Practices

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Making Bias Visible: Deconstructing Discriminatory Thinking and Practice in Education

Abstract

This paper investigates the interactional processes by which students from non-dominant groups develop academic identities within discriminatory institutions. It draws on an ethnographic study of an urban magnet school, focusing on discourse between three eighth-grade girls from non-dominant groups who all strive for high achievement. Findings include that students supported academic identities through strategically establishing symbolic boundaries between the academic content and the standards by which they were judged. Students also defined “acting white” in ways that enabled them to support their ethnoracial identities by rejecting aspects of the dominant culture that they disliked, rather than equating “white” with achievement. Overall, this study explores the ways in which students exercise agency as they develop symbolic boundaries to attain identity-related goals.

Authors

• Stacy I. Olitsky, Saint Joseph's University

• Markita Billups, Temple University