Learner Identity Amid Figured Worlds: Constructing (In)competence at an Urban High School

Abstract

This article explores the figured world of learning at urban Oakcity High School, describing the learner identities that were available to students amid the practices, categories, discourses and interactions of this world. My aims are 2-fold and interconnected: (1) to reframe a taken-for-granted phenomenon—that students tend to do poorly at urban high schools serving low income students of color, and (2) to apply a situated perspective and the concepts of figured worlds and positional identities to the study of learning and identity at an urban high school, expanding the use of these concepts in educational research.