Being “Loud”: Identities-in-Practice in a Figured World of Achievement

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 1281-1317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Limarys Caraballo

Discourses of achievement often overlook the interdependence of classroom contexts, students’ identities, and academic performance. This narrative analysis explores how high-achieving students of color construct identities-in-practice in a diverse urban middle school. By documenting explicit moments in which students construct identities-in-practice such as being “loud,” which are positioned as incompatible with “being smart,” I argue that high-achieving lower income students of color are disproportionately regulated by achievement discourses that position White middle-class norms as neutral. This article documents tensions between what it takes to achieve academically and students’ raced, classed, and gendered identities in order to reframe educational equity based on a theoretical framing of identities and academic achievement as interrelated and highly contextual.

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siti Nor Syafiqah Mohammad ◽  
Mohd Nasir Masroom

Divorce not only affects the husband and wife, but can also interfere with the psychological development of the child and to some extent disrupting their academic performance. Despite this, not all children whose parents are divorced face academic difficulties. This study aims to explore the emotional states of high-achieving students whose parents are divorced, and how they dealt with these emotions. This qualitative study utilised semi-structured interviews conducted to five randomly selected respondents who were high-achieving students whose parents were divorced. Data were analysed using the narrative analysis approach. The results showed that majority of the respondents experience negative emotions such as sadness, anger, depressed and sense of loss. Nonetheless, they also experience positive emotions namely surrender, acceptance and gratitude. They are able to manage their emotions because of their strengths and the accessibility of support from parents and others. In conclusion, high-achieving students with divorced parents are capable of managing their emotions and achieve academic excellence with the support of parents and other people around them.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Enyu Zhou

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] College access is one of the most studied areas in higher education, and yet college enrollment rates remain problematically stratified by socioeconomic status (SES) (Baum, Ma, and Payea, 2013). Low-income high-achieving students apply to different sets of colleges compared to high-income high-achieving students. Most low-income highachievers do not apply to selective universities. The lack of information regarding the college application process, college cost and financial aid was a reason why low-income high-achieving students fail to apply to selective colleges (Hoxby and Avery, 2013; Hoxby and Turner, 2013). This study examined the relation between contact with college admissions representatives as a source of information and college choices by high school students. In particular, it focused on how these relations vary across the spectrum of SES and academic achievement groups. The sample for this study drawn from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This study used the Hossler and Gallagher (1987) three-stage college choice model, Perna's (2006a) multi-layer college choice model, and Tierney and Venegas' (2009) cultural ecological theory for its theoretical framework. This theoretical framework provided guidance to understand the relation between college information and college application behavior of high school students. Logistic regression, fixed effects, and propensity score weighting (PSW) models were used to examine the relation between contact with college admissions representatives and college application. These models by SES and academic achievement were also used to identify differential effects of contact with college representatives across SES and academic achievement. Overall interpretation of the results suggested that there was a positive relationship between contact with college admissions representatives and college application. Aligning with the literature, this study also found that students' demographic characteristics, academic preparedness and other information sources were strongly associated with the probability of college application. However, the influence of college representatives did not vary across SES and academic achievement significantly. Results of this study provided valuable insights on the role of college admissions representatives on college application, which can lead to better insights on improving college choice strategies for high school students. The study concluded with discussions and implications for theory, practice, and future research.


2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 (148) ◽  
pp. 75-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon L. Fries-Britt ◽  
Toyia K. Younger ◽  
Wendell D. Hall

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.J. Brown ◽  
S. White ◽  
N. Power

Using an educational data mining approach, first-year academic achievement of undergraduate nursing students, which included two compulsory courses in introductory human anatomy and physiology, was compared with achievement in a final semester course that transitioned students into the workplace. We hypothesized that students could be grouped according to their first-year academic achievement using a two-step cluster analysis method and that grades achieved in the human anatomy and physiology courses would be strong predictors of overall achievement. One cohort that graduated in 2014 ( n = 105) and one that graduated in 2015 ( n = 94) were analyzed separately, and for both cohorts, two groups were identified, these being “high achievers” (HIGH) and “low achievers” (LOW). Consistently, the anatomy and physiology courses were the strongest predictors of group assignment, such that a good grade in these was much more likely to put a student into a high-achieving group. Students in the HIGH groups also scored higher in the Transition to Nursing course when compared with students in the LOW groups. The higher predictor importance of the anatomy and physiology courses suggested that if a first-year grade-point average was calculated for students, an increased weighting should be attributed to these courses. Identifying high-achieving students based on first-year academic scores may be a useful method to predict future academic performance.


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