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Anatomy of social interaction among low track students in an urban school in Singapore
Citation
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, 2006
Author
Masturah Ismail
Abstract
This paper provides an anatomy of how individual seatwork is appropriated by
students in a low track class in Singapore to enact „groupwork‟ as a counteractivity
to the norm. Using the theories of agency-structure dialectics and
contentious local practices, I argue that in their local struggles with structural
influences, students create their own practices using groupwork as a cultural
form to negotiate identity politics and hegemonic behavioral control at micro,
meso and macro levels. Classroom observation and interview data are analyzed
using qualitative methods (ethnographic and video discourse analysis) to reveal
the dynamics of social interactional practices as the at-risk students use their
identities-in-practice and agencies to position themselves heterogeneously
despite their being streamed into the same low ability space.
Date Issued
April 2006
Project
CRP 21/04 MO