The real-alternative school paradox : a California continuation high school's struggle to be something different in a universe of real schools
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Though they serve upwards of 100,000 students in a given school year, California continuation high schools remain marginal to both educational research and practice. As California's primary dropout prevention response for "at-risk" high school youth, continuation high schools allow students acquired into persistent school failure a second chance at obtaining a high school diploma. They have served various functions throughout their one-hundred-year existence, but remain largely invisible, acting as convenient depositories for the problems created by an American schooling system rooted in competition and social sorting. My dissertation examines the paradoxical question of what it means to be a "real-alternative" school. It pursues answers via the presentation of an institutional history of the California continuation high school system, through theoretical examination of what it means—in the words of Mary Metz (1989)—to be and not be "real school, " and via a descriptive case study of Bridgeview High School, a continuation school whose staff attempts to balance the pull of being "real" with the promise of being "alternative" through the creation and practice of social justice inspired project-based learning. The study concludes with practical recommendations for educational researchers, state and district-level policymakers, and an impractical recommendation for teachers: to teach absurdly.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Beckham, Kyle |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Labaree, David F, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Labaree, David F, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Gordon, Leah N |
| Thesis advisor | McDermott, Ray (Raymond Patrick), 1946- |
| Degree committee member | Gordon, Leah N |
| Degree committee member | McDermott, Ray (Raymond Patrick), 1946- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Education. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kyle Beckham. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Education. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Kyle Beckham
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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