Constructing female identities : meaning making in an upper middle class youth culture / Amira Proweller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Proweller, Amira.

Series:

SUNY series, power, social identity, and education

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Teenage girls--Education (Secondary)--Social aspects--United States.

Middle class women--Education (Secondary)--United States.

Women--Socialization--United States.

Women--Identity.

Women--Socialization.

Middle class women.

Education, Secondary.

Teenage girls--Education (Secondary).

Social aspects.

Teenage girls.

United States.

Physical Description:

xi, 284 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [1998]

Summary:

Research conducted in schools over the past two decades has found that youth shape who they are in ways that do not simply mirror class, race, and gender discourses organizing life in schools. Instead, educators have learned that youth play active roles in shaping who they are on a daily basis, challenging dominant meanings and practices as they move through school. New insights in these directions now compel those in educational circles to talk differently about youth identity formation than they did nearly two decades ago. While sound research on male identity formation in educational contexts has illustrated boys' socialization processes in school, there still is much to learn about girls' social lives and meaning-making processes, particularly in the relatively unexplored arenas of private education and single-sex schooling.

Probing beneath the surface, this book explores one year in the lives of thirty-four adolescent girls in Best Academy, a historically elite, private, single-sex high school, as female students construct their identities in an educational context. Through the eyes of these students, we find that the private school is less of a homogenous and stable culture along class and race lines than educators have understood it to be.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-277) and index.

ISBN:

079143771X

0791437728

OCLC:

37457904