Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools PDF
Preview Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools
Making Spaces Citizenship and Difference in Schools Tuula Gordon, Janet Holland and Elina Lahelma Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools Also byTuula Gordon FEMINIST MOTHERS SINGLE WOMEN: On the Margins? UNRESOLVED DILEMMAS: Women, Workand the Familyin the United States, Europeandthe FormerSovietUnion (co-editorwithKaisa Kauppinen) DEMOCRACY INONE SCHOOL? Progressive Educationand Restructuring Also by[anet Holland THE MALEINTHE HEAD (with CarolineRamazanoglu, SueSharpeand RachelThomsoni • SEX,SENSIBILITYAND THE GENDERED BODY(co-editor withLisa Adkins) • SEXUALCULTURES(co-editor withfeffrey Weeks) DEBATESAND ISSUESIN FEMINIST RESEARCHAND PEDAGOGY (co-editorwith MaudBlair) IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY:Genderand the ExperienceofEducation (co-editor withMaudBlair) • From thesamepublishers Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools Tuula Gordon ProfessorofWomen's Studies andSoeialSeiences DepartmentofWomen'sStudies UniversityofTampere Ianet Holland ProfessorofSoeialResearchand DireetoroftheSoeialSeieneeResearchCentre FaeultyofHumanitiesandSoeialSeienee SouthBankUniversity, London and Elina Lahelma DepartmentofEdueation UniversityofHelsinki andSeniorFellow AeademyofFinland Consultant Editor:JaCampling FirstpublishedinGreat Britain2000by MACMILLANPRESS LTD Houndmills,Basingstoke,HampshireRG21 6XS and London Companiesand representativesthroughoutthe world Acataloguerecordfor this bookisavailablefrom the BritishLibrary. ISBN978-0-333-66441-4 ISBN978-0-230-28797-6(eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230287976 Firstpublishedinthe UnitedStatesofAmerica2000by ST.MARTIN'S PRESS, INe., Scholarlyand ReferenceDivision, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork, N.Y.10010 ISBN978-0-312-22619-0 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Makingspaces:citizenshipand difference inschools/ TuulaGordon,JanetHolland,and ElinaLahelma. p. cm. 1ncludesbibliographicalreferences(p. )and index. ISBN978-0-312-22619-0(cloth) I. Highschoolstudents- England- London- SocialconditionsCross -culturalstudies. 2. High schoolstudents- Finland- Helsinki- -SocialconditionsCross-culturalstudies. 3.Education,Secondary- -England-LondonCross-cultural studies. 4. Education,Secondary- -Finland-HelsinkiCross-cultural studies. 5.Sex differences in education- England- LondonCross-culturalstudies. 6.Sex differences ineducation- Finland- HelsinkiCross-culturalstudies. 1.Gordon.Tuula. 11. Holland.Janet. 111.Lahelma,Elina. LC208.4.M35 1999 306.43- DC21 99--29160 CIP ©TuulaGordon.JanetHollandand ElinaLahelma2000 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made withoutwrittenpennission. No paragraphofthis publicationmay be reproduced,copiedortransmittedsave with written pennission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and PatentsAct 1988, or underthe tenns ofany licence permitting limitedcopying issucd by the Copyright LicensingAgcncy,90TottenhamCourtRoad,LondonWIPOLP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecutionand civilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorshaveassertedtheirrightstobeidentifiedastheauthorsofthis workinaccordance with theCopyright,Designsand PatentsAct 1988. Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefrom fully managedandsustained forestsources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Do You Wanna Dance? 1 1 Individual Citizens 9 2 Space and Place for Markets: New Right and the Restructuring of Education 23 3 Curricula for Nations 36 4 lnvitation to the Dance: Exploring Everyday Life in Schools 52 5 One Two Three, OneTwo Three: the Official School 65 6 Stepping Here, SteppingThere: the Informal School 101 7 'Strictly Ballroorri': the Physical School and Space 136 8 'Twist and Shout': Bodies in the Physical School 165 9 Who are the Wallflowers? 192 Appendix: Methods in Use 204 Notes 209 References 214 Index 227 v Acknowledgements This book is one of the results of a Finnish-English research project entitled 'Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools - with Special Reference to Gender'. We are deeply indebted to the people whose observations and analyses we have used in this book. The Finnish research project consists of Pirkko Hynninen, Tuija Metso, Tarja Palmu, Tarja Tolonen, Tuula Gordon and Elina Lahelma. Pirkko, Tuija, Tarja and Tarja were each specialisingin a particulararea of the research, but sharing experience and data with us. The keen eyes, sharp observations and innovative Interpretations of these women havebeen irreplaceablefor theanalysiswhich wepresentin thisbook. Sinikka Aapola and jukka Lehtonen joined the Finnish research project later; their contribution to the analytic discussions in our meetings has been invaluable. The Finnish team has been helped by a number of people and we especially want to thank Päivi Haavisto Vuori, Marja Peltovuori, Marita Lampinen, Katariina Hakala and Sirpa Lappalainen. janet Holland had two able and committed researchers, each of whom worked with her, undertaking observations and interviews in one ofthe London schoolsand someanalysis. KayParkinson read and commented on the manuscript of this book. [anet's gratitude to Nicole Vitellone and Kay Parkinson is unbounded for their contri bution to the work, inspiration and friendship. Ianet would also like to thank the Finnish research team, and of course Tuula and Elina for bringing her into the project, and for being such excellent colleagues and collaborators. We are grateful to numerous people for many reasons, for example for enjoyable and useful discussions on joint interests or for commenting on our papers or parts of this book. We especially want to mention AnneLise Arnesen, Ilse Eriksson-Stjernberg, Mary Kehily, Leena Koski, Melanie Mauthner, Marjatta Saarnivaara, Hannu Simola and Rachel Thomson, and the members of the research network Gender and Education/EDDI in Finland. We also thankJo Campling for her encouragement and advice. During the research Tuula, Elina and janet have worked in the following institutions: the Department of Sociology and Department of Education at the University of Helsinki, the Department of vi Acknowledgements vii Women's Studies at the University of Tampere, the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education in London, the Open University, and the School of Education, Politics and Social Science at South Bank University, London. We would like to thankthe Academy of Finland for the major funding for this research. We were also funded by the Youth Research 2000 Programme (Finland), the Open University and South Bank University. We are grateful to all these institutionsfor materialsupportandto ourcolleagueswithinthemfor friendship and discussions. Most of all, we want to thank the teachers, students and other people at our research schools, City Park and Green Park in Helsinki, and Oak Grove and Woburn Hili in London. This research would not have been possible without their support, friendliness and tolerance for our continuing presence and endless questions. Lastbut not least, we wantto thank RobertAlbury, Dougie Gordon. Mikko Gordon, janne Gordon. Eero Lahelma, Anna Lahelma and Marja Lahelma for love and support. TUULA GORDON JANET HOLLAND EuNA LAHELMA Introduction: Do You Wanna Dance? When the research team in Finland concluded its main fieldwork periodin two schoolsin Helsinki, we thankedthe students and teach ers by singingwhat we cal!ed the 'ethnographers' song', with courtesy (and apologies) to Sting and Police (from the album Synchronicity, 1983): EveryBreath You Take (bySting)1 Everybreathyoutake everymoveyoumake everybondyoubreak every stepyoutake 1'11 bewatehingyou Everysingleday everywordyousay everygameyouplay every place youstay 1'11bewatehingyou Ohcan'tyousee youbelong tome Howmypoorheartaches with everystepyoutake Everymoveyoumake every rule youbteak everysmileyou[ake everyclaimyoustake we'l! bewatehingyou 2 MakingSpaces Everyday life at school is like a complicated dance with formal and improvised steps in a ballroom consisting of classrooms, halls, stair ways and corridors. Itisthe range ofthese steps thatwegazeat in this book. We examine them in order to explore the part played by the school in the production ofdifference, and in theconstruction ofciti zenship and otherness. In everyday processes and practices students are differentiated along several dimensions, notably gender, social dass and ethnicity. In the ethnography we explore practices in schools which seek to normalise school students from diverse social and cultural backgrounds through the notion of the abstract pupil. These processes of abstraction and differentiation have effects on the formation of subjectivities of those in schools. Weare interestedin the official andinformalprocessesoftheschool andthewayin whichthephysicalspace affects pedagogyandpractice; we also want to trace a 'curriculum of the body' (Lesko, 1988). Peter Woods (1990) notes that students entering a new school are intent to find a living space. He uses space metaphorically, but we want to ask specifically how school students make spaces for themselves; space and spatiality are our central concerns. Paraphrasing Philip Wexler (1992), who explores the process of 'becomingsomebody', we analyse how school students become somebodies somewhere. Whilst our main interestisin how studentsexerciseagencyin schools, wealso turn our attention to teachers. Bya comparative approach we mean that we compare and contrast processes in Britain and Finland, with illustrative references to the USA.2 We contextualise our study through a discussion of New Right politics and policies, education systems and the curriculum. By a crosscultural approach we refer to our interest in what constitutes 'a school', and in particular how space and embodiment are implicated there. Focus on space and embodiment have both been neglected in education research; basing our analysis on schooling in two countries and in four schools enables us to extract theoretical and analytical insights which are not completely context-bound. Historically schools have been expectedbothto confirm and to chal lenge social divisions; a continuous strand in educational thinking has emphasisedschools assitesofemancipation,andchannelsforadvancing social change (Davies, 1990; Green, 1990; Donald, 1992). Schools then are siteswith multiplelevelsand practices, some ofthem contradictory, and within them there are spaces for agency, negotiation, avoidance, opposition, and resistance. These spaces are limited, but significant in thecontextoftensionsbetweenemancipationand regulation.
The list of books you might like
