Organizing identity: Adolescent responses to institutional discourse

Terri L Malek-Madani, Purdue University

Abstract

Public schools are sites which clearly produce and reproduce culture and ideology, as the rules and norms of a society become instilled in students through day-to-day interactions. Furthermore, it is through social interaction that individuals negotiate issues such as identity, status, power, and success. This study examines the communicative practices of a mid-western high school in an attempt to explicate the processes by which students become academic underachievers or failures regardless of individual ability, demographic profile, and personal history. Through critical analysis of ethnographic data—field notes, interviews, focus groups, and organizational artifacts—I conclude that the large, impersonal schools we have created to meet the needs of the economic market encourage processes of standardization and classification systems, disallowing the differences in individuals that make them valuable partners in dialogue. Though individual teachers attempt to engage individual and groups of students in triadic dialogue, much of the students' days are spent as students in an organization that uniformly positions them as minor, subordinate members. I further argue that the very human need for meaningful relationship, or true dialogue, provides a possible overarching link for furthering our understanding of the lives of American adolescents in our schools today. Further study is required, however, to determine the extent to which dialogue and monologue play in the lives of students of all backgrounds and achievement levels.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Babrow, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Communication|Social studies education

COinS