Extending Theories of College Access: A Critical Ethnography on the Organizational Habitus of College-Going in an Urban Catholic High School

• In Event: Structuring for Success in Private Education

Abstract

Through a critical ethnographic methodology, this study utilizes a P-20 lens in analyzing the organizational habitus of college in an urban Catholic high school in South Texas. The primary theoretical framework of this study is Bourdieuian Social Reproduction Theory, which supports the study’s impetus to demonstrate how social class may influence the college choice of students. One research question that will guide the study is as follows: 1.) What are the characteristics of the organizational habitus of college going in an urban Catholic high school that influence who goes to college and who goes where? Preliminary findings suggest that the college culture of a Catholic high school emphasizes broad access institutions and scholarship money as definitive of students’ postsecondary worth.

Author

• Paul Joseph Rodriguez, The University of Texas - San Antonio