Doctoral Dissertation Research: Negotiating social identities in an elite independent school

这项民族志研究将关注新英格兰预科寄宿学校中具有不同社会文化背景的学生如何作为精英教育机构的学生构建身份，以及种族、阶级和性别如何影响他们如何构建这些身份并协商文化边界。学校在围绕特定身份划定象征性界限方面发挥着至关重要的作用。但学生们不会简单地接受他们遇到的定义，也不会严格按照既定的界限行事。对这种动态互动的研究主要集中在公立学校和来自贫困家庭的学生身上。学者们很少考虑精英教育环境中的学生——包括来自特权背景的学生——如何体验他们的学校教育，以及他们可能以何种方式复制、抵制和/或重新定义他们现有的身份。为了观察学生如何在精英学校环境中构建和制定身份，将观察四种互动：正式学校活动中的互动，非正式学校环境中的互动，一对一访谈以及焦点小组参与者之间的互动。几种抽样策略将结合起来，以确定一组受访者，其中包括广泛的经验和背景。将采用四种互补的数据收集方法：参与式观察、学生问卷、深度叙述性访谈和焦点小组。数据将通过扎根理论和叙事分析策略进行分析。虽然一所学校的少数学生的经历很难一概而论，但这项研究将揭示宏观和微观的社会和文化过程。它将：1)增进我们对历史上曾为精英群体服务的学校学生的实际经历的理解；B)将我们对教育系统的看法扩展到主流公立学校之外，以包括这群精选学生的经历；c)考虑更大的文化关系和社会力量对学生在校经历的影响。本研究的广泛影响包括：本研究将引起教育学者以及更广泛的政策制定者和教育工作者（包括家长和教师）的兴趣。鉴于改善公立学校的紧迫性，尤其是针对弱势群体的公立学校，对精英学校缺乏兴趣是可以理解的，但在政策和理论辩论中存在严重的疏忽；为了不让任何一个孩子掉队，我们必须关注那些可能“领先”的人的经历。

This ethnographic study will focus on how students with different socio-cultural backgrounds at a New England preparatory boarding school construct identities as students of an elite educational institution, and how race, class, and gender influence how they construct these identities and negotiate cultural boundaries. Schools play a crucial role in drawing symbolic boundaries around specific identities. But students do not simply accept the definitions they encounter or behave strictly along established boundaries. Research into this dynamic interaction has focused primarily on public schools and on students from underprivileged backgrounds. Scholars have rarely considered how students in elite educational settings-including students from privileged backgrounds-experience their schooling and in what ways they may reproduce, resist, and/or redefine the repertoires of identity available to them. To observe how students construct and enact identities in an elite school setting, four kinds of interactions will be observed: interactions in official school activities, in informal school contexts, one-on-one interviews, and among participants in a focus group. Several sampling strategies will be combined to identify a group of respondents that includes a wide range of experiences and backgrounds. Four complementary methods of data collection will be employed: participant observation, a student questionnaire, in-depth narrative interviews, and focus groups. The data will be analyzed through grounded theory and narrative analysis strategies. While the experiences of a small number of students at one school can hardly be generalized, this study will shed light into both macro and micro social and cultural processes. It will: 1) improve our understanding of the actual experiences of students who attend schools that have historically served elite groups; b) expand our view of the educational system beyond mainstream public school settings to include the experiences of this select group of students; and c) consider the influence of larger cultural relationships and social forces on student experiences of school in general. The broader impacts of this research include the following: This research will be of interest to scholars of education as well as a broader audience of policymakers and educators, including parents and teachers. Given the urgency to improve public schools, particularly for disadvantaged groups, the lack of interest in elite schooling is an understandable yet critical oversight in policy and theoretical debates; in the interest of leaving no child behind, we must pay attention to the experiences of those who are, presumably, "ahead."