Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating The Social Challenges Of High School To Get An Education
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 5/19/2011
EAN 9780521182034, ISBN10: 0521182034
Paperback, 280 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
In American high schools, teenagers must navigate complex youth cultures that often prize being 'real' while punishing difference. Adults may view such social turbulence as a timeless, ultimately harmless rite of passage, but changes in American society are intensifying this rite and allowing its effects to cascade into adulthood. Integrating national statistics with interviews and observations from a single school, this book explores this phenomenon. It makes the case that recent macro-level trends, such as economic restructuring and technological change, mean that the social dynamics of high school can disrupt educational trajectories after high school; it looks at teenagers who do not fit in socially at school - including many who are obese or gay - to illustrate this phenomenon; and it crafts recommendations for parents, teachers and policy-makers about how to protect teenagers in trouble. The result is a story of adolescence that hits home with anyone who remembers high school.
Part I. High Schools as Contexts of Development
1. Pressures on teenagers and their schools
2. A day in the life
3. The two sides of high school
4. Updating and expanding our perspective
Part II. A Case Study of Social and Academic Experiences in High School
5. The stakes of social marginalization
6. Teenagers at particular risk
7. How teenagers know what they know and why it matters
8. Sources of resilience
Part III. Helping Teenagers Navigate High School
9. Solutions within schools
10. Looking to parents and other adults
11. In search of theory and action.