scholarly journals Negotiating success or settling for less? : deconstructing the underachievement of Afro-Caribbean youth in Toronto high schools

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pasha Stennett
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Caribbean Students ◽  
The Social

The academic underachievement of students from the African Diaspora in Canadian schools is not a recent phenomenon. Afro-Caribbean students are reported to drop out of high schools in Toronto at disproportionate rates. To uncover the social forces that contribute to these problems this paper will examine Afro-Caribbean patterns of community formation and the issue of systemic racism in Canadian society operating as a barrier to academic success. At an even greater rate Portuguese youth are leaving school prematurely. But unlike with Afro-Caribbean students racism is not an issue. Rather for the majority of Portuguese students in Canada the reasons behind chronic underachievement are rooted in the current education system, which views immigrants as different and the source of their own failure. This paper uncovers the subtle forms of racism that many underestimate and the huge role it plays in dictating the lives of many youth from the Black community.

scholarly journals Negotiating success or settling for less? : deconstructing the underachievement of Afro-Caribbean youth in Toronto high schools

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pasha Stennett
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Caribbean Students ◽  
The Social

The academic underachievement of students from the African Diaspora in Canadian schools is not a recent phenomenon. Afro-Caribbean students are reported to drop out of high schools in Toronto at disproportionate rates. To uncover the social forces that contribute to these problems this paper will examine Afro-Caribbean patterns of community formation and the issue of systemic racism in Canadian society operating as a barrier to academic success. At an even greater rate Portuguese youth are leaving school prematurely. But unlike with Afro-Caribbean students racism is not an issue. Rather for the majority of Portuguese students in Canada the reasons behind chronic underachievement are rooted in the current education system, which views immigrants as different and the source of their own failure. This paper uncovers the subtle forms of racism that many underestimate and the huge role it plays in dictating the lives of many youth from the Black community.

Preparing Adolescents Attending Progressive and No-Excuses Urban Charter Schools to Analyze, Navigate, and Challenge Race and Class Inequality

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (12) ◽  
pp. 1-54
Author(s):  
Scott Seider ◽  
Daren Graves ◽  
Aaliyah El-Amin ◽  
Shelby Clark ◽  
Madora Soutter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Sociopolitical Development ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Social

Background/Context Sociopolitical development (SPD) refers to the processes by which an individual acquires the knowledge, skills, emotional faculties, and commitment to recognize and resist oppressive social forces. A growing body of scholarship has found that such sociopolitical capabilities are predictive in marginalized adolescents of a number of key outcomes, including resilience, academic achievement, and civic engagement. Many scholars have long argued that schools and educators have a central role to play in fostering the sociopolitical development of marginalized adolescents around issues of race and class inequality. Other scholars have investigated school-based practices for highlighting race and class inequality that include youth participatory-action research, critical literacy, and critical service-learning. Objective of Study The present study sought to add to the existing scholarship on schools as opportunity structures for sociopolitical development. Specifically, this study considered the role of two different schooling models in fostering adolescents’ ability to analyze, navigate, and challenge the social forces and institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Setting The six high schools participating in the present study were all urban charter public high schools located in five northeastern cities. All six schools served primarily low-income youth of color and articulated explicit goals around fostering students’ sociopolitical development. Three of these high schools were guided by progressive pedagogy and principles, and three were guided by no-excuses pedagogy and principles. Research Design The present study compared the sociopolitical development of adolescents attending progressive and no-excuses charter high schools through a mixed methods research design involving pre-post surveys, qualitative interviews with participating adolescents and teachers, and ethnographic field notes collected during observations at participating schools. Results On average, adolescents attending progressive high schools demonstrated more sig-nificant shifts in their ability to analyze the causes of racial inequality, but adolescents attending no-excuses high schools demonstrated more significant shifts in their sense of efficacy around navigating settings in which race and class inequality are prominent. Neither set of adolescents demonstrated significant shifts in their commitment to challenging the social forces or institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Conclusions Both progressive and no-excuses schools sought to foster adolescents’ commitment to challenging race and class inequality, but focused on different building blocks to do so. Further research is necessary to understand the pedagogy and practices that show promise in catalyzing adolescents’ analytic and navigational abilities into a powerful commitment to collective social action—the ultimate goal of sociopolitical development.

scholarly journals Gay-Straight Alliances in High Schools: Social Predictors of Early Adoption

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Fetner ◽  
Kristen Kush
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
High Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public High Schools ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Social Predictors ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
Early Adoption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Combining Data

In this paper, we examine the patterns of emergence of Gay-StraightAlliances in public high schools in the United States. Theseextracurricular student groups offer safe spaces, social support, andopportunities for activism to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queerand straight students. Combining data on various characteristics of publicschools and state anti-discrimination laws with organizational records onthe formation of Gay-Straight Alliance groups, we consider the conditionsunder which these groups are likely to form, as well as the social barriersto their formation. Using logistic regression and linear regressionanalysis, we isolate a number of characteristics common among those schoolsthat founded the first wave of Gay-Straight Alliances. We find that thelocation of schools, the number of students, region of the country, andsupport groups outside high schools are among those social forces thatpromoted the early adoption of Gay-Straight Alliances in public schools.

Conceptual foundations for the development of J.G.Turner’s general sociological theory: Metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and analytical scheme

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Reznik
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Analytical Scheme ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

The article discusses the conceptual foundations of the development of the general sociological theory of J.G.Turner. These foundations are metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and an analytical scheme. Turner began to develop a general sociological theory with a synthesis of metatheoretical ideas of social forces and social selection. He formulated a synthetic metatheoretical statement: social forces cause selection pressures on individuals and force them to change the patterns of their social organization and create new types of sociocultural formations to survive under these pressures. Turner systematized the basic concepts of his theorizing with the allocation of micro-, meso- and macro-levels of social reality. On this basis, he substantiated a simple conceptual scheme of social dynamics. According to this scheme, the forces of macrosocial dynamics of the population, production, distribution, regulation and reproduction cause social evolution. These forces force individual and corporate actors to structurally adapt their communities in altered circumstances. Such adaptation helps to overcome or avoid the disintegration consequences of these forces. The initial stage of Turner's general theorizing is a kind of audit, modification, modernization and systematization of the conceptual apparatus of sociology. The initial results obtained became the basis for the development of his conception of the dynamics of functional selection in the social world.

Sentencing Policy as a Force for Social Cohesion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Henham
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Normative Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sentencing Policy

This chapter sets out the case for adopting a normative approach to conceptualizing the social reality of sentencing. It argues that policy-makers need to comprehend how sentencing is implicated in realizing state values and take greater account of the social forces that diminish the moral credibility of state sponsored punishment. The chapter reflects on the problems of relating social values to legal processes such as sentencing and argues that crude notions of ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ approaches to policy-making should be replaced by a process of contextualized policy-making. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for sentencing policy to reflect those moral attachments that bind citizens together in a relational or communitarian sense. It concludes by exploring these assertions in the light of the sentencing approach taken by the courts following the English riots of 2011.

History Teaching in Rural Areas: The University of Venda

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-23
Author(s):  
Alan Kirkaldy
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University

I would argue that history students should understand that the whole body of historical writing consists of interpretations of the past. They should be able to analyse a wide variety of texts and form their own opinions on a historical topic, and should be able to construct a coherent argument, using evidence to support their opinion. In doing so, they should be actively aware that their argument is no more “true” than that offered by any other historian. It is as much a product of their personal biography and the social formation in which they live as of the evidence used in its construction. Even this evidence is the product of other personal biographies and other social forces.

scholarly journals Le contrôle social dans la société canadienne du Régime français au XVIIIe siècle

Criminologie ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Lachance
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Xviiie Siècle ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Société Canadienne ◽  
Xviiie Siecle ◽  
Scattered Population ◽  
Low Rate ◽  
French Regime

The article examines certains aspects of the social control in Canadian society during the French régime in the xvmth century. Based on the finding that the number of cases that went before the king's court for certain types of crime was relatively small, the author concludes that social control was exercised more by the society itself than by its institutions. The justice apparatus had little control over the Canadian people as a whole, due to its lack of sufficient peace officers, the tremendous size of the country and its meagre and scattered population. It was the elite, as models anddefiners of the norms, and the family, as the principal instrument in the regulation of conduct, that played an important role in the social control of Canadian society. It was this system that enabled XViUth century Canada to maintain a very low rate of what we considered serious crimes.

Young adults who re‐enter Australian high schools and drop out again

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 405-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliette D.G. Goldman ◽  
Graham L. Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
High Schools ◽  
Drop Out

The Image of the Past and Economic Backwardness

1958 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Pepelasis
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Attachment ◽  
Japanese Economy ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Underdeveloped Countries ◽  
National Pride ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Romanticism ◽  
Developing System

Many underdeveloped countries have been increasingly demonstrating a strong sentiment of nationalism. This sentiment has found expression in, among other ways, glorification of past traditions and idealization of qualities in the native culture. Such romanticism, if it produces a solidarity and purposeful singlemindedness, can prove expedient for mobilizing social forces necessary to lead to economic change. However, in the process of buttressing national pride and consciousness and in programming for economic development, traditional values and some institutions of the predevelopment phase will be useful only if they are retained in general form. Thus, the Meiji revolution of Japan was successful in romanticizing some of the spirit of old Japan (Bushido) but, at the same time, it adopted the concrete substance of western institutions, which prepared the transformation of the Japanese economy into a developing system. But, if national romanticism is such that it leads to sterile and slavish imitation of anachronistic forms, national energy will be diverted to nativistic frivolity and waste. Such romantic attachment does not lead to the establishment of the social milieu necessary to developing and expanding institutions which will create the conditions for the take-off phase of the economy.

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