Conscripts of Merit: How Class Context Mediates Narrative Membership and Learning at a Selective High School

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 14. Contemporary Dilemmas in K-12

Abstract

Cultural and institutional factors influence the ways students construct their identities as learners within schools. Using the case of a socioeconomically diverse, academically-selective school, I categorize the systems of moral order around students’ perceptions of proper ways of engaging with academic work and adjusting to new hierarchies of perceived merit. More than thirty hours of in-depth interviews and focus groups with students allowed me to study students’ attitudes toward learning, perceptions of intelligence and success as they connect to academic credentials, and placement within meritocratic hierarchies within the school environment and the world. Results reveal variation in student experience of learning with some experiences centering sustained mastery and others centering creativity and exploration, based on social class and differential interpretations of institutional narratives about proper behavior. Results also point to the importance of a combination of conceptual tools and close relationships with mentors in preventing disadvantaged students’ alienation from schooling. These findings underscore how scholars of inequality in education can be aided by the tools of moral and cultural sociology to understand institution-specific discourses in communities of learning.

Author

• Josephine Joan Barboriak, University of Chicago