Race, Sex, and Schooling: Social Location and Children's Experiences in Desegregated Classrooms. (Volumes I and II).

Although research has demonstrated that there are systematically different outcomes of education for persons of varying combined race and sex statuses, little work has explored micro-classroom processes which lead to such outcomes. This study examines the ways in which classroom social life recreates and maintains macro-societal status differences among persons of varying race-sex status groups. It explores classroom experiences over a six month period of 164 first grade children, enrolled in six desegregated classrooms, in teacher-student and in peer interactions. It examines the impact on these experiences of race of teacher, teacher expectations, racial proportions of students in the class, task structures or organization of instructional activities, and school and community milieu. The author completed from 20 to 30 hours of nonparticipant ethnographic observations in six first grades in working and middle-class communities. Three had white female teachers and three had black female teachers. Classroom events were recorded in time-sequential order. In addition, teachers were interviewed about academic and social skills of each child. The author talked informally with children and school staff, interviewed principals in depth, observed out-of-classroom school activities, and examined statistical and historical data about each school and community. The data give evidence that children experience classroom life in systematically different ways depending on their combined race-sex statuses. Teachers evaluate, track, and behave toward students in distinctive ways based on these ascribed statuses. Furthermore, different race-sex children show distinctive orientations toward teachers and peers. Classroom social life results from actions of both teachers and students. Classroom social processes differentially reinforce expectations and behaviors so that most children are encouraged to assume social roles thought appropriate for adults of their same race-sex group. Race of teacher has little impact on these patterns. Racial proportions of students, task structures, and community and school milieu modify slightly the classroom roles of particular children but do not eliminate the subtle, but powerful, channeling of most toward stereotypical roles. Classroom stratification processes are complex forms of institutional discrimination which transmit status distinctions based on race and sex from one generation to the next.Ph.D.Educational sociologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158644/1/8204663.pd