Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education

by Robert Crosnoe

Overview

In American high schools, teenagers must navigate complex youth cultures that often prize being “real” while punishing difference. Adults may view such social turbulence as a timeless, ultimately harmless rite of passage, but changes in American society are intensifying this rite and allowing its effects to cascade into adulthood. Integrating national statistics with interviews and observations from a single school, this book explores this phenomenon. It makes the case that recent macro-level trends, such as economic restructuring and technological change, mean that the social dynamics of high school can disrupt educational trajectories after high school; it looks at teenagers who do not fit in socially at school – including many who are obese or gay – to illustrate this phenomenon; and it crafts recommendations for parents, teachers, and policymakers about how to protect teenagers in trouble. The end result is a story of adolescence that hits home with anyone who remembers high school.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521182034
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/07/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robert Crosnoe is a professor in the Department of Sociology and (by courtesy) the Department of Psychology as well as a faculty research associate at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. His research focuses on the ways in which the educational pathways of children and adolescents are connected to their general health, development and personal relationships and how these connections can be leveraged to explain demographic inequalities in educational and socioeconomic attainment. This research has been funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and by young scholar awards from the William T. Grant Foundation and the Foundation for Child Development. Dr Crosnoe has published more than 70 books and articles in journals such as Developmental Psychology, Child Development, the American Educational Research Journal and the American Sociological Review. He has also won awards for early career research contributions from the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for the Study of Human Development and the Children and Youth Section of the American Sociological Association.

Table of Contents

Part I. High Schools as Contexts of Development: 1. Pressures on teenagers and their schools; 2. A day in the life; 3. The two sides of high school; 4. Updating and expanding our perspective; Part II. A Case Study of Social and Academic Experiences in High School: 5. The stakes of social marginalization; 6. Teenagers at particular risk; 7. How teenagers know what they know and why it matters; 8. Sources of resilience; Part III. Helping Teenagers Navigate High School: 9. Solutions within schools; 10. Looking to parents and other adults; 11. In search of theory and action.

Editorial Reviews

"....With bullying reaching a crisis level in U.S. schools, University of Texas at Austin sociologist Robert Crosnoe has completed one of the most comprehensive studies of the long-term effects on teenagers who say they don't fit in. His new book "Fitting In, Standing Out" (Cambridge University Press; April 2011) provides new and disturbing evidence that socially marginalized youth, including victims of bullying, are less likely to go to college, which can have major implications for their adult lives...."
—Michelle Bryant, UT-Austin Arts & Letters Magazine

From the Publisher