School Worlds: An Ethnographic Study

An in-depth analysis of how social constituents of identity influence and are influenced by the processes of a specific social site—a school.

School Worlds addresses debates on:

• The role that a school plays in the construction of gender, social class and religious attitudes of its students

• The kind of interactions that take place in school settings due to the varied perceptions of these social identities

• The influence of peer relations and the manner in which gender differences are constituted, re-structured and sometimes overcome

The book focuses on the experiences of schooling through an ethnographic study of everyday life in a secondary school. It assesses classroom interactions amongst teachers and pupils as well as the non-classroom situations within the school space, highlighting the diversity in such spaces that help generate notions of identity.