A critical knowledge, social constructionist orientation is taken to exploring the views of students attending high school in Ottawa, Ontario during the 1999/2000 school year, a period of controversial, much publicized school reform. Arguing that previous research has mostly neglected to directly ask students about their experiences of the education process, I review previous work concerning students' choices and structureagency relationships. Applying Goffman's (1961) description of the 'total' institution to the conditions of high school, I examine the viability of using participatory research methodology with student participants. Concluding that these institutional conditions render the theoretical participatory ideal unattainable, I develop, and evaluate throughout the research process, a multiple method approach that promotes opportunities for student collaboration. Four sources contribute study data: analysis of policy and media texts used as representations of the social context in which the students' actions occurred; quantitative and qualitative survey responses; in-depth qualitative interviews; and research and student collaborator observations. Results offer practical knowledge contributions concerning the processes students apply to choices and decisions about educational and career pathways and some provocative challenges to previous conceptualizations concerning adolescent students and structure-agency relations. I conclude that when students are allowed to tell their own story of the action, student-agents emerge as active, reflective information seekers, tapping multiple knowledge sources to assist in their decision-making. Often articulating shrewd perceptions about both the constraining and enabling aspects of formal education structures, they acted to accumulate and apply social and educational capital to improve their chances of success in the formal educational stakes and thus, the game of life.

background

Design for learning : reports submitted to the Joint Committee of the Toronto Board of Education and the University of Toronto

Citations

Getting an education: students' views on entering and exiting high school

Northrop Frye's Aestheticism and Moral Development.

English Studies in Canada, 1945–1991: A Handlist

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