3.4.2 How might imbalances in power or economic opportunities, and peer group responses to those imbalances, be contributing to the puzzling situation?

No educator needs to be convinced of the importance of peer groups to students, especially for adolescent and young adult students. However, the emphasis here, reflecting emphases in the research literature, is on peer groups in relation to the power and economic structures of the larger society.

Classic studies in this tradition include the work of Bowles and Gintis (1976), who showed quantitatively that students are likely to remain in the same social class as their parents irrespective of the influence of schools, and Anyon (1981), who documented schools that provided very different formal and informal curricula for students of different social class backgrounds. See Sleeter (2001) for a compelling contemporary discussion of power and the educational system.

Although initial research focused on peer groups' relations to power and privilege based on social class, research now applies this perspective to gender, race, and age hierarchies (Levinson and Holland, 1996). Peer cultures may play a role in reproducing power and privilege imbalances that exist in the larger society, in challenging or resisting such imbalances, or in developing creative alternatives to such imbalances. (It is important to note that although this section emphasizes peer group responses, many of the research studies also examine ways in which individuals negotiate peer culture. This topic is the focus of question 3.5.)

Based on their multi-year study of women on two college campuses (one with primarily European American students and the other with primarily African American students) in the southern United States, Holland and Eisenhart (1990) argued that in both settings peer groups (rather than school authorities) were the primary vehicle for the transmission of the "culture of romance" from the larger society. In this cultural system students categorized women according to their physical attractiveness to men and women faced constant evaluation of their worth on the basis of their sexual appeal to men. This cultural system reproduced male privilege because women were valued primarily on their attractiveness to men (while men's prestige derived from the attention they received from women as well as their success at sports, politics and in other areas) and because men had more control over the process than women. Peer groups affected the women's academic performance, not directly, but indirectly. Most women saw schoolwork and the peer culture as making conflicting demands on them. "For a majority of the women, their developing interpretations of schoolwork, together with their unrewarding and disappointing academic experiences and the availability--not to mention the pressure--of the peer culture, led to a marginalization of or a failure to develop their ideas of themselves as having careers in the future" (Holland and Eisenhart, 1990, p. 200).

Other peer cultures are seen as resisting and offering challenges to the existing imbalances in power or economic opportunities. Willis (1977; 1981) argued in his classic study that resistance in school (i.e., subversion of school authority and disruption of classes) by the White working class "lads'" was partly a response to their awareness of societal economic imbalances. Ironically, their perspectives, resistance in school, and decisions to join their male relatives in working class jobs contributed to the reproduction of the existing social order. Eckert's (1989) classic study of social categories ("Jocks" and "Burnouts") and social class in a predominately European American suburban high school in Michigan showed how the school's institutional environment fostered the development of stereotypical categories of middle class and working class cultural values among students, which in turn reproduced existing social class differences.

Ogbu's (1974; 1993, 1995a; 2003; Ogbu & Simons, 1998) approach, which he has modified over time, examines the responses of "involuntary minorities" in the United States (e.g., African Americans and Native Americans) to imbalances in power and resources in society and school. He has argued that, in response to historical and current conditions of inequity, most students from involuntary minority groups develop oppositional stances toward school and a collective identity that is defined largely in opposition to white American identity.

The work of Fordham and Ogbu (1986) followed Ogbu's approach. Using data from a high school in Washington, D.C., they argued that many African American students in that school associated positive academic achievement with a White cultural identity, resulting in students reducing their effort at school in order not to be accused of "acting White." However, other work (i.e., Bergin & Cooks, 2002; Spencer, Noll, Stoltzfus, & Harpalani, 2001) in other settings presented a different picture. In interviews in several Midwestern schools, relatively high achieving African American and Mexican American students did not report avoiding academic achievement in order to avoid being accused of acting White (Bergin & Cooks, 2002). Studying African American students in a southeastern city, Spencer, Noll, Stoltzfus, & Harpalani (2001) found that high self esteem and high achievement goals were correlated with high Afrocentricity, not high Eurocentricity. These studies point to the need to avoid automatically generalizing from one study to your local population. For further explorations of the issue of academic achievement and student identities in high school see articles in "High school identity games" (1999), a theme issue of Anthropology and Education Quarterly.

Ogbu's (1974; 1993, 1995a; Ogbu & Simons, 1998) work also discussed the experiences and meanings of immigrant students (i.e., "voluntary minorities"). Ogbu asserted that immigrant students generally do better in school than involuntary minorities. He argued that this is because (1) they see their current economic and educational situation as better than that of their home country; (2) their "folk theory" of how to succeed emphasizes hard work and doing well in school; (3) they tend to trust mainstream-controlled institutions; and (4) they see cultural and language differences as barriers to overcome, with the result that they are willing to add some aspects of mainstream culture to their cultural repertoire in order to succeed in the U.S.

Ogbu's model points to some important variations among groups of ethnic and racial minority students in the U.S. However, his model has been criticized as being too deterministic and too simplistic. Gibson (1997) provided a useful summary and discussion of "complications" of Ogbu's immigrant/involuntary minority model. She pointed out that there is considerable diversity within both involuntary minorities and immigrants. Immigrants, for example, include economic immigrants, refugees, guest workers, undocumented workers, as well as "voluntary immigrants." Moreover, there are differences within immigrant groups based on patterns of assimilation, gender, and generation. Vincent (1997), for example, examined second generation Salvadoran students in an elementary school in Washington, DC. She argued that although these students shared their parents' belief that education is a means to get ahead in life, the students could over time come to hold meanings much more like those of involuntary minorities because their beliefs were in jeopardy of not being realized.

Another criticism of Ogbu's model from scholars (e.g., Gibson, 1997) and educators is that he ignores the influence of schools on students' experiences and meanings. For example, Charlotteaux (1996/1997) examined Latino students in two different school contexts in Washington, DC. She found no differences in school performance between voluntary and involuntary Latino minorities within the schools, but she did find differences across the schools, with one school (which offered an alternative to the traditional curriculum) having a more positive influence on their academic success and occupational aspirations.

Partly in response to deterministic models, other research (e.g., MacLeod, 1995; Mehan, Villanueva, Hubbard, & Lintz, 1996; Vincent, 1997) has emphasized variability in students' responses to their circumstances rather than automatic responses of reproduction or resistance. MacLeod (1995), for example, discussed two male peer groups who lived in the same housing project environment and had similar circumstances but who responded very differently to school. "The Hallway Hangers," a predominantly European American group, actively resisted the school and its ideology; "the Brothers," a predominantly African American group, operated within the school's norms. MacLeod identified family life and legal changes supporting equal opportunity as "mediators" that contributed to the groups' different responses.

D'Amato (1993) offered a different perspective on peer group influence in schools. In his work on Hawaiian students in pre-K through third grades, D'Amato argued that there is an inherent tension in schools between teachers' authority and that of peer groups and that peer-based resistance to school is a response to features of schooling (for example, its compulsory nature). He further argued that when students see school as a means to their future success in life (i.e., they have a "structural rationale" for school), they will comply with teachers' authority. However, when students do not have a structural rationale, the influence of the peer group becomes more important. For further exploration of this approach, see Gibson (2000), who applied D'Amato's framework to Punjabi and Mexican students in California schools and to students on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Success Stories & CIP Studies Related to Students' Experiences and Meanings from Outside School

Consider next question: 3.5
Gather information on this question: 4.4.2