The ‘Dead Ends’: Reconsidering place for school leaders

This qualitative study employs a framework that sits at the intersection of the overlapping fields of critical and human in order to examine the ways in which 42 Southern, middle school Students of Color who live in a high-poverty community known as the Dead Ends understand the significance of schoo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTheory in action Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 1 - 53
Main Authors Boske, Christa, Gershon, Walter, Benavente-McEnery, Lillian, Speights-Binet, Jennifer
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Fair Lawn Transformative Studies Institute 01.01.2019
Subjects
Case studies
Childhood
Classism
Community
Critical theory
Education
Educational administration
Educational leadership
Focus groups
Geodemographics
Human geography
Middle school students
Poverty
Public schools
Qualitative research
Schools
Social justice
Theory
United Kingdom > UK
New York
United States > US
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Summary:This qualitative study employs a framework that sits at the intersection of the overlapping fields of critical and human in order to examine the ways in which 42 Southern, middle school Students of Color who live in a high-poverty community known as the Dead Ends understand the significance of school as a meaningful place in their development. The case study approach had ethnographic tendencies in that we relied on community maps as a primary data source, conducted interviews, received written narratives from participants, conducted focus groups, utilized demographic data, and engaged in participant observation. Analysis of findings revealed students from the Dead Ends did not identify school as a significant place in either their maps or ecological conceptualizations of their lives. What emerges is a critical-place-oriented model to provide school communities with intellectual tools to examine multiple ways to interrupt uneven geographies and revisit the influence of childhood places.
ISSN:1937-0229
1937-0237
DOI:10.3798/tia.1937-0237.1901