Lois Weis

Ideology, curriculum, and the new sociology of education : revisiting the work of Michael Apple

Introduction. Ideology, Curriculum, and the New Sociology of Education: Revisiting the Work of Michael Apple, Greg Dimitriadis, Lois Weis, and Cameron McCarthy Section One: Revisiting the New Sociology of Education 1. Retrieving the Ideological Past: Critical Sociology, Gender Theory and the School Curriculum 2. Social Class, School Knowledge, and the Hidden Curriculum: Re-Theorizing Reproduction 3. Schooling, Power, and the Exile of the Soul Section Two: Contemporary Theoretical Challenges 4. Riding Tensions Critically: Ideology, Power/Knowledge, and Curriculum Making 5. Are We Making Progress?: Ideology and Curriculum in the Age of No Child Left Behind 6. Teaching After the Market: From Commodity to Cosmopolitan Section Three: On Spaces of Possibility 7. Contesting Research Rearticulation and Thick Democracy as Political Projects of Method 8. [Re]visioning Knowledge, Politics, and Change: Educational Poetics 9. Situating Education: Michael Apples Scholarship and Political Commitment in the Brazilian Context. Afterword. Critical Education, Politics, and the Real World

“I've Slept in Clothes Long Enough”: Excavating the Sounds of Domestic Violence Among Women in the White Working Class

Here we listen to and analyze the voices of poor and working-class white women in Buffalo and Jersey City as they chronicle histories related to domestic violence. Although it was initially quite easy to distinguish between women living in what others have called “hard living” and “settled living” domestic scenes, we found that the amount of violence in these homes did not differ appreciably. Rather almost all of the poor and working-class white women and their families were negotiating lives disrupted by an inhospitable economy, and almost all of the women interviewed were also surviving within scenes of domestic violence that spanned generations. The distinction between the “settled lives” women and the “hard living” women may only be determined by whether or not the woman has exited from her violent home. School-related programs designed to promote discussion of these issues are considered.

In the Guise of STEM Education Reform Opportunity Structures and Outcomes in Inclusive STEM-Focused High Schools

In this article, we present findings from a three-year comparative longitudinal and ethnographic study of how schools in two cities, Buffalo and Denver, have taken up STEM education reform, including the idea of “inclusive STEM-focused schools,” to address weaknesses in urban high schools with majority low-income and minority students. Although introduced with great fanfare, the data indicate that well-meaning efforts toward expanding opportunities in STEM-focused schools for low-income underrepresented minorities quickly dissolved. We focus on mechanisms that seem to underlie this dissolution and consider its contributions to short- and long-term inequalities.

Imagining possibilities with and for contemporary youth: (re)writing and (re)visioning education today

Over the years, each of the authors has explored the lives of young people in a range of sites and settings, from community centers to schools and beyond. They have seen senses of self and community that exceed the narrow and debilitating categories into which they are so readily cast. In this article, they join forces in highlighting two key (though clearly not exhaustive) examples from their recent research ideas: first, black history and generational identity expressed through popular culture at a local community center in the US; and second, the important work done by women in an abstinence-based sex education program in an urban magnet school. Honoring what Maxine Greene (2000) calls the work of the imagination, they focus on the ways in which young people engage in a re-writing of self and future in distinct and overlapping ways.

Masculinity, Whiteness, and the New Economy: An Exploration of Privilege and Loss

This article takes up the varying ways in which white working-class men remake class and masculinity in the context of massive changes in the global economy. Situated in the northeast rust belt in the United States, the piece draws upon data gathered at two points in time—during the mens third year of secondary school in l985, and again when these same men reached the ages of 30–31. Data gathered via participant observation and indepth interviews in 1985 and a set of follow-up in-depth interviews in 2000–2001 suggest that it is the movement off the space of hegemonically constructed white working-class masculinity—that masculinity which emerged in relation to the old industrial economy— that now encourages “stable” working-class lives.

Without Dependence on Welfare for Life: Black Women in the Community College.

This paper extends my previous analysis of data gathered in a year-long ethnographic investigation of a community college (Weis, 1985). Here, gendered subjectivity is explored through three themes: (1) motivation for attending Urban College, (2) perceived behavior of women and men within the institution, and (3) academic outcomes. The paper closes by positing why black female culture takes the shape and form that it does, and why the community college fails to promote social mobility for black females.

Out of the Cupboard: kids, domestic violence, and schools

Abstract Drawing from two large‐scale ethnographic investigations in which we interview poor and working‐class white girls and women living in post‐industrial cities in the Northeastern US, we argue that violence of all sorts is deeply embedded inside poor and working‐class white communities, domestic violence in particular. The date reveal that children experience, witness and learn the rhythms by which their mothers, siblings and, perhaps, they are beaten. While in the US we have produced an enormous legal infrastructure of mandatory reporting, in the event of suspicion of child abuse, we have — as educators — defaulted to the law and not engaged a fully developed educational project through which to respond to the problem. Although deeply contested, a public space that is accessible to poor and working‐class youth and where abuse in the home may be discussed and analyzed may be schools, yet many educators do not deal with this issue at all.

On the Power of Separate Spaces: Teachers and Students Writing (Righting) Selves and Future

The debate on segregated and desegregated schools generally has been framed as an either-or matter, and in fact, legally, this has been the case. What we have not investigated to any great extent are programs within already desegregated schools that serve an identifiable population of students for the express purpose of cultural affirmation and advancement of the targeted group. In this article we provide data that attest to the potential power of such spaces, investigating a girls’ group in an urban magnet school and a homeroom set aside for Vietnamese students in a neighborhood-based urban comprehensive school. Using ethnographic data, we articulate both the power of such spaces and the contradictory impulses within such arrangements.

Gender, Masculinity and the New Economy

This paper examines the ‘remaking’ of white working class masculinities in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. It draws on ethnographic data gathered at two points in time in order to interrogate the relation of macro-economic and social relations on individual and group identities; to excavate the social psychological relations ‘between’ genders and races, as narrated by white working-class men; and to explore the nuanced variations among these men. Addressing theoretical, empirical and methodological issues associated with these studies, I argue that the remaking of the white working class can only be understood in relation to gendered constructions within itself, the construction of relevant ‘others’, as well as deep shifts in large social formations.

A Call for Civically Engaged Educational Policy-Related Scholarship

At a time when higher education is undergoing great challenges and diminished public support, the civically engaged university holds the promise of reclaiming the meaning and the purpose of higher education, where contributions toward promoting democratic public life through research and education become central institutional priorities. The civically engaged university that takes its scholarly leadership seriously is one that is committed to higher education as an institution within the public sphere and whose mission is to embrace difficult questions about our values and responsibilities, about our past, present, and future, about our differences and alternative worldviews, and about enhancing democracy and inclusion. This piece takes this charge seriously as the authors outline what educational scholarship should or could be as scholars move toward educational policy—related scholarship in the civically engaged university.