![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
This article explores how conceptions of choice and visions of the future are constructed within the context of specialized arts programs in two Canadian public high schools. The authors consider how discourses of the arts are implicated in the way that possible futures are envisioned differently, delimiting the range of choices available to students. Their analysis shows how choices are unequally distributed and possible futures unequally constructed in ways that reinforce social class hierarchies. The discussion of the data is organized around the contrast in how three tropes—“the architect,” “the fifth year,” and “being lazy”—emerge in both school contexts in relationship to students’ futures. By illustrating how the arts operate in this process, the authors challenge the common assumption that arts programs have the inherent ability to transcend social structures in general and social class processes in particular. The authors conclude by considering the implications of their analysis for how notions of choice are understood in relationship to specialized arts programs.
References
Section:
|
Archbald, D. (1996). SES and demographic predictors of magnet school enrollment. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 2(3), 152-163. Google Scholar | |
|
Archbald, D. (2004). Magnet schools, and the liberation model: An empirical study. Sociology of Education, 77(4), 283-310. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Archer, L., Hutchings, M., Ross, A. (2003). Higher education and social class: Issues of exclusion and inclusions. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Google Scholar | |
|
Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the education market: The middle classes and social advantage. London: Routledge. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., Macrae, S. (2000). Choice, pathways, and transitions post-16: New youth, new economies in the global city. London: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Blau, J. R., Lamb, V. L., Stearns, E., Pellerin, L. (2001). Cosmopolitan environments and adolescents’ gains in social studies. Sociology of Education, 74(2), 121-138. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Brandl, J. (1998). Governance and educational quality. In Peterson, P., Hassel, B. (Eds.), Learning from school choice (pp. 55-82). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Google Scholar | |
|
Brannen, J., Nilsen, A. (2002). Young people’s time perspectives: From youth to adulthood. Sociology, 36(3), 513-537. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Carter, R. T., Goodwin, L. (1994). Racial identity and education. Review of Research in Education, 20, 291-336. Google Scholar | Abstract | ISI | |
|
Chubb, J., Moe, T. (1997). Politics, markets and equality in schools. In Shapira, R., Cookson, P. (Eds.), Autonomy and choice in context (pp. 203-248). New York, NY: Elsevier. Google Scholar | |
|
Clark, A., Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2004). Educating the artist of the future: Facing the challenge of public arts high schools. In Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Sears, J. (Eds.), Curriculum work as a public moral enterprise (pp. 49-58). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar | |
|
Coleman, J. (1992). Some points on choice in education. Sociology of Education, 64, 260-262. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Cookson, P. (1995). School choice: The struggle for the soul of American education. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Currie, D. H., Kelly, D., Pomerantz, S. (2007). Listening to girls: Discursive positioning and the construction of self. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(4), 377-400. Google Scholar | |
|
Curtis, B., Livingstone, D., Smaller, H. (1992). Stacking the deck: The streaming of working-class kids in Ontario schools. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: James Lorimer & Company. Google Scholar | |
|
Davis, J. (Ed.). (2001). Passion and industry: Schools that focus on the arts. Natick, MA: National Arts and Learning Foundation. Google Scholar | |
|
Davis, J. (2005). Framing education as art: The octopus has a good day. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Dehli, K. (1996). Travelling tales: Education reforms and parental “choice” in postmodern times. Journal of Education Policy, 11(1), 75-88. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
DeSena, J., Ansalone, G. (2009). Gentrification, schooling, and social inequality. Educational Research Quarterly, 33(1), 60-74. Google Scholar | |
|
Flanagan, C.A. (2008). Private anxieties and public hopes: The perils and promise of youth in the context of globalization. In Cole, J., Durham, D. (Eds.), Figuring the future: Globalization and the temporalities of children and youth (pp. 197-206). Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Gaskell, J., Binkley, N., Nicoll, C., McLaughlin, K. (1995). Arts as an equal partner: The story of Langley Fine Arts School. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Canadian Education Association. Google Scholar | |
|
Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2008). The artist in society: Understandings, expectations, and curriculum implications. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(3), 233-265. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2009). The best of the best: Becoming elite at American boarding school. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Google Scholar | |
|
Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (Ed.). (2010). Specialized arts programs in the Toronto District School Board: Exploratory case studies (Report of the Urban Arts High Schools Project, Phase 1: Exploratory Research 2007-2009: Technical Research Report). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Centre for Urban Schooling, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1807/30018 Google Scholar | |
|
Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Cairns, K., Kawashima, Y., Menna, L., VanderDussen, E. (2011). Portraiture as pedagogy: Learning research through the exploration of context and methodology. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 12(4), 1-29. Google Scholar | |
|
Gewirtz, S., Ball, S. J., Bowe, R. (1995). Markets, choice and equity in education. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Goldring, E., Smrekar, C. (2000). Magnet schools and the pursuit of racial balance. Education and Urban Society, 33(1), 17-35. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Gorard, S. (1999). “Well, that about wraps it up for school choice research”: A state of the art review. School Leadership & Management, 19(1), 25-47. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Gore, E. (2007). Talent knows no color: The history of an arts magnet high school. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Google Scholar | |
|
Graham, D. (1983). Schools for the arts. Education Canada, 23(2), 22-26. Google Scholar | |
|
Henderson, S., Holland, J., McGrellis, S., Sharpe, S., Thomson, R. (2006). Inventing adulthoods: A biographical approach to youth transitions. London: SAGE. Google Scholar | |
|
Kaufman, J., Gabler, J. (2004). Cultural capital and the extracurricular activities of girls and boys in the college attainment process. Poetics, 32(2), 145-168. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lareau, A. (2000). Home advantage: Social class and parental intervention in elementary education (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar | |
|
Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., Davis, J. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar | |
|
Leccardi, C. (2006). Redefining the future: Youthful biographical constructions in the 21st century. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 13, 37-48. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Levine-Rasky, C. (2008). Middle-classness and whiteness in parents’ responses to multiculturalism: A study of one school. Canadian Journal of Education, 31(2), 459-490. Google Scholar | |
|
Longley, L. (1999). Gaining the arts advantage—President’s committee on the arts and the humanities and arts education partnership. Washington, DC: President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Google Scholar | |
|
Luttrell, W. (2008). The two-in-oneness of class. In Weis, L. (Ed.), The way class works: Readings on school, family, and the economy (pp. 60-76). New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
McLeod, J. (2000). Subjectivity and schooling in a longitudinal study of secondary students. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21(4), 501-521. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
McLeod, J., Yates, L. (2006). Making modern lives: Subjectivity, schooling and social change. Albany: State University of New York Press. Google Scholar | |
|
McLeod, J., Yates, L. (2008). Class in the middle: Schooling, subjectivity, and social formation. In Weis, L. (Ed.), The way class works: Readings on school, family and the economy (pp. 347-362). New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Meeks, L., Meeks, W., Warren, C. (2000). Racial desegregation: Magnet schools, vouchers, privatization, and home schooling. Education and Urban Society, 33(1), 88-101. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Metz, M. H. (2003). Different by design: The context and character of three magnet schools. New York, NY: Teacher College Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Nathan, L. (2002). Through the lens of art. Educational Leadership, 60(2), 22-25. Google Scholar | |
|
Powell, A., Farrar, E., Cohen, D. (1985). The shopping mall high school: Winners and losers in the educational marketplace. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Google Scholar | |
|
Powers, J. M., Cookson, P. W. (1999). The politics of school choice research: Fact, fiction, and statistics. Educational Policy, 13(1), 104-122. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Reay, D., David, M., Ball, S. (2005). Degrees of choice: Social class, race and gender in higher education. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham Books. Google Scholar | |
|
Saporito, S. (2003). Private choices, public consequences: Magnet school choice and segregation by race and poverty. Social Problems, 50(2), 181-203. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Sellström, E., Bremberg, S. (2006). Is there a “school effect” on pupil outcomes? A review of multilevel studies. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60(2), 149-155. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | |
|
Sianou-Kyrgiou, E., Tsiplakides, I. (2011): Similar performance, but different choices: Social class and higher education choice in Greece. Studies in Higher Education, 36(1), 89-102. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Skeggs, B. (1997). Formations of class and gender: Becoming respectable. London: SAGE. Google Scholar | |
|
Smrekar, C., Goldring, E. (1999). School choice in urban America: Magnet schools and the pursuit of equity. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Stebbins, R. A. (2001). Exploratory research in the social sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Taylor, A. (2001). The politics of educational reform in Alberta. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Taylor, A. (2008). “You have to have that in your nature”: Understanding the trajectories of youth apprentices. Journal of Youth Studies, 11(4), 393-411. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Taylor, A., Mackay, J. (2008). Three decades of choice in Edmonton schools. Journal of Education Policy, 23(5), 549-566. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Taylor, A., Woollard, L. (2003). The risky business of choosing a school. Journal of Education Policy, 18(6), 617-635. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Undercofler, J. F. (1988). New policy issues for arts high schools. Design for Arts in Education, 89, 43-44. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Walkerdine, V., Lucey, H., Melody, J. (2001). Growing up girl: Psychosocial explorations of class and gender. London: Palgrave. Google Scholar | |
|
Welner, K., Oakes, J. (2008) Structuring curriculum: Technical, normative, and political considerations. In Connelly, M., He, M. F., Philion, J. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 91-121). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Wilson, B. (2001). Arts magnets and the transformation of schools and schooling. Education and Urban Society, 33(4), 366-387. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Yoon, E., Gulson, K. N. (2010): School choice in the stratilingual city of Vancouver. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(6), 703-718. Google Scholar | Crossref |
Author Biographies
Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández is an Associate Professor of the Arts in Education and Curriculum Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the social context of cultural production and on processes of identification in schools. He is the author of The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School (2009, Harvard University Press).
Elena VanderDussen has an M.A. in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on service as a context for individual and community learning in international education and development programs.
Kate Cairns is a postdoctoral fellow in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her primary areas of interest include feminist theory, sociology of education, cultural studies, and cultural geography. Kate’s doctoral research explored how rural youth envision futures in neo-liberal times.
