Reading Response #3

Take a look at the possible scholars and/or concepts/topics.  Then, choose either a scholar or a topic/concept and begin to explore them/it. You might find a quote or an article that piques your interest. Reading Response to:

Tuck, E. (2011). Humiliating ironies and dangerous dignities: A dialectic of school pushout. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 24(7), 817-827.

Tuck, E. (2012). Repatriating the GED: Urban youth and the alternative to a high school diploma. The High School Journal, 95(4), 4-18.

Tuck, E., & Yang, K. (2011). Youth resistance revisited: New theories of youth negotiations of educational injustices. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 24(5), 521-530.

I investigated the work of Eve Tuck, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Dr. Tuck employs Indigenous social thought to explore topics in urban education and Indigenous studies. She has written a book on youth who’ve been forced out of the traditional education system, Urban Youth and School Pushout (Routledge, 2012), and she has co-written or co-edited four other books. She has written over 20 peer-reviewed articles. I focused on articles she wrote about youth who leave school and the primary alternate educational route for them, the General Education Development certificate (GED).

In “Humiliating ironies and dangerous dignities: a dialectic of school pushout,” Dr. Tuck draws from research she conducted in 2006-08 in New York City. She interviewed youth who left school because they felt pressure to do so. Tuck explores the various complex reasons they chose to leave and theorizes that students adopt defiant postures and attitudes in response to degrading, dangerous or unhealthy situations at school. She calls their defiance dangerous dignity, and explores its value and the risks it poses to their peers, school staff members and themselves. In “Repatriating the GED: Urban youth and the alternative to a high school diploma,” Tuck investigates the GED as an alternative to high school education. She draws from the same research she conducted in New York and presents the GED as a viable option for students who feel pressure to leave school. She frames the GED’s viability in Indigenous theories of repatriation but also acknowledges a GED’s limited utility. In “Youth resistance revisited: new theories of youth negotiations of educational injustices,” Tuck and co-author K. Wayne Yang discuss four ways to conceptualize youth resistance and they explore issues those frameworks do not address. They go on to briefly describe research articles and stories by a number of other researchers who investigate youth resistance. The article is the introduction to a special edition of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education that focuses on youth resistance and its potential to inform education research.                

I’m interested in learning about the ways students feel unwelcome in schools. Schools are designed and managed in ways that reward certain types of students. But education is a right. And teachers are responsible for fostering atmospheres that are welcoming to the maximum number of students. Not all students are going to excel and many won’t be interested in the material teachers are required to present. But teachers can help uninterested students find ideas and materials that interest each of them, respectively. And teachers can help students feel welcome. I’m interested in learning about the experiences of students who feel pressure to leave school. I’d like to know how teachers can make them feel welcome. I’m also interested in the idea that there are, perhaps, some students who would do better outside of school. I plan to continue reading Eve Tuck’s work. I also plan to explore the work of her co-authors and the scholars who’ve cited her articles.