Education Commons^™

Trailer Park Kids: An Ethnographic Study Of Identity Formation In An Affluent Suburban Middle School, Jeanne Marie Vanlaan

Wayne State University Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was determining influences behind identity formation, social reproduction, and resistance of students residing in a local manufactured home community and attending a suburban majority White, middle-and upper-middle class middle school. Narratives from participants were included to assist in disseminating intersecting lives of students (the trailer park kids) with their parents and teachers. The lives of the trailer park kids at home and at school were portrayed. Research before this study focused on similar themes, but unique was examination of effects on students attending school as a minority by social class standing and their place of …

Justice... Not Just Us: How One District-Level Social Justice-Oriented Transformative Leadership Team Addresses Marginalization And Oppression, Thomas Arnold Zook

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Our democracy depends upon an educated populace; thus, educators have an ethical and a moral obligation to provide equitable opportunities for all children to obtain an education “worth wanting” (Howe, 1997). Yet, too often the pleas of countless children yearning to be accepted go unnoticed. In the U.S., millions of students fail to realize similar academic success and social inclusion simply because of their (self or imposed) identification with a non-dominant identity group, and this can only be understood as institutionalized injustice. Often hiding in plain sight, marginalization and oppression take many forms, yet for their victims the results …