Elite Independent Schools Research Articles

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invisibilized Challenges of Black Girlhood in Elite Independent Schools

Background/Context: The experiences of Black girls navigating elite, predominantly white independent schools remain underresearched in the academy despite this issue being integral in disciplines such as sociology, education, and African American studies. Within such institutions, Black girls must navigate the duality of their privilege in having access to the highest quality and resourced education with the marginality of being a demographic minority within a space controlled by cultural elites. Purpose: This study investigates the experiences of Black girls in independent schools via the accounts of Black-woman-identifying alumni of such institutions. This study utilizes a Black feminist framework for understanding the often overlooked excess challenges that Black girls are forced to face. Research Design: Through qualitative semi-structured, conversational interviews with 13 Black women graduates of 10 Mid-Atlantic and New England boarding and day schools, this study explores how the graduates reflect on their experiences navigating elite schooling during formative adolescent years, decision-making processes, and management of Black girl identities within the exceedingly white and wealthy context of independent schools. Conclusions: Significant themes that emerged from the qualitative data generated by this study include feelings of rootlessness from Black and white communities, difficulty navigating a racialized and gendered social hierarchy, and heightened levels of social anxiety and self-consciousness about physical and ideological selves. Through a thematic retelling from those who have lived through the challenges and understand how they are presented in these contexts, the significance of this study’s exploration of Black girls in independent school is the (1) liberation of these historically marginalized voices and (2) potential to provide current school leaders a framework for how best to support their students.

‘This school is too diverse’: fragile feelings among white boys at elite independent schools

ABSTRACT As U.S. elite independent schools become more racially inclusive, white students may perceive a shift in their social position. Using qualitative data from school climate surveys at 10 such schools, 2014-2018, we explore how white adolescent boys experience these shifts emotionally. We find that a subset of particularly vocal white boys express key characteristics of white fragility and colorblind racism both in the negative feelings they report and the frames they use to explain race relations in their social worlds. Other boys, in contrast, show signs of a developing critical consciousness around race and racism in school. The findings underscore adolescence as a critical period for intervention on the developing perspectives and emotions of white boys. We conclude with a discussion of the necessity of a closer examination of how independent schools reckon with structures of whiteness in their culture as they attempt to engage in diversity and equity efforts.

Can Teacher Education Save Democracy?

Background/Context: Social scientists, policymakers, and commentators have long assumed that Western democracies enjoy relative stability because of deep commitments to a culture of democratic governance. But those commitments are quickly fading in almost every developed and developing democracy around the globe. In the same period in which support for democracy has declined, schools and teacher education programs have been pressured by “accountability” measures and economic austerity to focus on math and literacy achievement to the exclusion of nearly every other educational goal. These challenges to social cohesion and democratic governance highlight the need for young people to be exposed early on and throughout their educational pathways to the knowledge, skills, and dispositions consistent with democratic life. The narrowing of curricular goals, therefore, is a threat to the stability of democratic institutions. Purpose: This essay examines the potential of teacher education as a lever for change. How might teacher educators ensure that teachers are prepared to foster education that will sustain and strengthen democratic norms? If schools have an essential role to play in preparing students for informed engagement in civic and political life, how can we best prepare teachers to advance those goals? Research Design: This is an analytical essay drawing on recent empirical research on declining support for democratic values and on teachers’ civic engagement as well as conceptual work on democratic education goals. To illustrate the potential for teacher education to prepare teachers to engage students in political issues discussions, I draw on data from the first large-scale empirical study of what U.S. high school teachers currently do to prepare youth to understand economic inequality and its causes, effects, and possible remedies. The study included a teacher survey and follow-up interviews concerning teachers’ political ideology and civic and political engagement as well as classroom practice. The 2,750 teachers who participated in the survey are representative of U.S. public schools (and an additional segment of U.S. elite independent schools) in terms of student demographics and geographic location. We also conducted 150 follow-up interviews. Conclusions/Recommendations: I suggest that teacher education must move from reactive technocratic concerns for accountability and standardization to broader civic and civil commitments to the foundations of democratic community, pluralism, and relationship. Teacher education programs should consider ways to encourage new and experienced teachers to follow the news, engage in civil discourse with one another about topics of public concern, and participate in civic and political life. Moreover, teacher educators could work toward teaching the knowledge, skills, and dispositions associated with political and civic engagement.

Engaging boys in gender activism: issues of discomfort and emotion

ABSTRACT This paper examines activist spaces for gender justice within two elite independent schools situated in an affluent part of the USA. Drawing on student interview data gathered as part of a broader study that sought to identify new educative approaches to addressing gendered violence, the paper explores attempts at these schools to engage boys in such spaces. With reference to two activist stories, the paper highlights the driving concern for including boys in discussions of gender justice (and, in particular, sexual misconduct and assault) as about ensuring their comfort. This concern is critically examined in light of the necessity of discomfort as central to gender transformative work. The paper examines how the emotional intensities of this work can both close down and open up conversations about gender justice and argues the significance of finding ways to support boys to critically explore these intensities towards engaging them in gender activism.

The difficulties of ‘action’ in Youth Participatory Action Research: schoolifying YPAR in two elite settings

ABSTRACT This paper examines the possibilities and problematics of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) within two elite independent schools located in the USA. The data presented were gathered from broader research that sought to identify new educative approaches to supporting social justice in schools. The paper provides an account of two YPAR projects that focused on the contentious topics of (1) micro-aggressions and (2) boy–girl relationships. It draws attention to the difficulties these schools encountered with the ‘action’ component of YPAR. These difficulties were associated with key contextual factors in each school and led to inaction and a schoolification of youth research. In light of such factors, the paper draws attention to the necessity, but tensions, of schoolifying YPAR in order to maximize the generative possibilities of this form of research.

Introduction: understanding the re-articulations of privilege over time and space

This special issue is based entirely on the research project called ‘Elite independent schools in globalising circumstances: a multi-sited global ethnography' and this opening essay introduces both the project and the essays to follow. It offers a justification for studying elite schools, elites and elitism and explains some of the project's guiding premises not the least being its deliberate departure from those studies of elite schools that are nation bound. It clarifies the project's emphasis on the complexities of elite formation and expression as they are caught up in changing modalities of globalisation over time and place.

"From the Top on Down It Is Systemic"

In order to better understand the socialization and (re)production of privilege, most especially gendered privilege, within elite independent schools it is important to examine the masculine performances of its students enacted through bullying as well as the masculine environments in which these enactments are produced. This paper will begin explicating the messages received and the representations shaped by Rockport’s hegemonic masculine curriculum and the embodiment of these dynamics through research on bullying conducted with students and faculty at an elite, single-sex independent boys school, Rockport. The data revealed that bullying between boys at Rockport helped to discipline and reproduce hegemonic masculine boundaries; it was as much an expression of Rockport’s culture as it was a vehicle for policing and reproducing its culture. However, not only were the boys within Rockport gendered, the faculty and even the institution itself was gendered. In this way, it was systemic, both students and faculty acted within this institutional culture and held and managed expectations about their gender.

The Public Schools Commission: ‘Impractical, Expensive and Harmful to Children’?

In the mid-1960s, the Labour government established a Commission to devise the best way of integrating Britain's elite independent schools with the state-financed school system. Despite—and because of—the left's scepticism of private education, the Commission faced enormous obstacles and their solution of state-subsidised boarding places was seen as unworkable, unaffordable and unpopular. Government papers help to explain the various reasons why the Commission's proposals were not implemented: in particular, the public schools were regarded as a low spending priority. The lack of reform is key to understanding the continuing importance of independent schools in the UK.

Peer Networks of African American Students in Independent Schools: Affirming Academic Success and Racial Identity

Analysis of qualitative data reveals that the formal and informal peer networks of African American students in predominantly White elite independent schools support these students' academic success, create opportunities for them to reaffirm their racial identities, and facilitate their adjustment to settings that are otherwise difficult for Blacks toit into. Contrasted to research showing that adopting academically successful behaviors leads Black students to being labeled as acting White, the sampled students made social gains within school when they were academically successful. However, this success did not result in full acceptance by African American peers outside the school. The authors conclude that the dynamics and ideologies of African American peer groups are more complex than prior research has suggested. INTRODUCTION A plethora of research documents the educational experiences of African American students. Early research in this area primarily focused on the failures of African American students to achieve at the same academic level as their White counterparts (Coleman et al., 1969; Jencks et al., 1972). More recently, the emphasis in research has shifted from studies of academic failure to studies of the factors that contribute to African American student success (Ladson-Billings, 1990; Lee, Winfield, & Wilson, 1991). Since the 1960s, increasing numbers of African American students have been enrolling in predominantly White elite independent schools known to prepare students for positions of power and leadership (Cookson & Persell, 1985). Much of the increase in enrollment can be attributed to the efforts of a number of organizations, including A Better Chance (ABC), Prep for Prep, Black Student Fund (BSF), and the Baltimore Educational Scholarship Trust (BEST), that have initiated and maintained the presence and participation of African American students in these schools (Cookson & Persell, 1991; Johnson & Anderson,1992). Additionally, the majority of these schools have enacted policies of nondiscrimination, and a growing number actively recruit minority students in their efforts to create more diverse student bodies on their campuses (Speede-Franklin, 1988). Despite these efforts, research shows that predominantly White elite independent schools, with their history of racial exclusion, are often places where African American students find it difficult to fit in (Brookins, 1988; Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 1991). Moreover, African American students in such institutions have frequently reported that they feel caught between two cultures and consequently doubly marginalized.' They have also indicated that often they feel alienated from the culture of the school and from their own parents and friends, particularly in boarding school environments (Cookson & Persell, 1991). This is not surprising, as NELS:88 data indicate that African American students at predominantly White elite independent schools have substantially fewer family economic resources relative to the school populations as a whole (Schneider & Shouse, 1992). Research also suggests that African American students at these institutions may have weaker social relationships with their teachers than do their peers at the schools, and that this lack of connection may affect their motivation and academic performance (Schneider & Shouse, 1992). Given these findings, it appears that the social bonds that African American students at predominantly White elite independent schools develop with each other may provide an important but as yet unexplored support network that could potentially contribute to their academic performance and sense of identity and belonging. Although African American students in such settings often form their own cliques and clubs (Cookson & Persell, 1991), the functions served by these peer networks are not clearly understood. Thus, the study presented here used qualitative interview data to explore the peer networks developed by African American students enrolled in predominantly White elite independent schools through the Baltimore Educational Scholarship Trust (BEST). …

The Reproduction of Class in Canada's Elite Independent Schools

Abstract The changing forms and processes of social reproduction undertaken by Canada's elite independent schools are examined. Ideology, values, recruitment, and socialization processes and mechanisms in the member schools of the Canadian Association of Independent Schools are analysed. The focus is on reproduction theory (both the reproduction of the structure of classes and the intergenerational reproduction of families). The various forms of reproduction are examined in relation to class, ethnicity and gender. All have undergone considerable change; while the schools have remained critical agents for the reproduction of elites in Canadian society, the rise of meritocratic ideology and recruitment have had a paradoxical effect.