Patricia Phelan, Ann Locke Davidson and Hanh Cao Yu

New York; Teachers College Press, 1998. 

Reviewed by Hervé Varenne, 

Teachers College, Columbia University

This is a familiar framework, theoretically and politically. It takes us back to the dominant reading of John Dewey: individuals are different; institutions help or hinder students differentially; researchers must identify both the qualities of students as variables not to be tampered with and the qualities of institutions as variables to transform through reform. Specifically, the authors understand their task as one of "uncovering borders that prevent youth from optimal social, emotional, and academic growth" (p. 209). But what may be most familiar about the overall framework is somewhat paradoxical given an "overall goal" of providing "a clearer understanding of features in school and classroom environments that aid or impede students in making successful transitions"(p.4). The authors repeatedly emphasize the need to identify borders between identifiable groups and the dangers of transforming these borders into boundaries limiting interaction. And yet, one closes the book with no clear picture of what these borders actually were in the four schools under study. In the introduction, Phelan, Davidson, and Yu outline the borders they will mention (sociocultural, socioeconomic, psychosocial, linguistic, gender, heterosexism, and structural, p. 11-12), but the investigative focus is not placed on how these might work. Rather it is focused on types of personal management of various borders given differences in certain features of the students’ environment (specifically whether home and school are "congruent"). Reading this book for the promised "clearer understanding" of borders would be frustrating. The potential value of the book, and its originality, must lies in the drawing of the six types derived from the dual emphases on qualities and strategies.

The study is about "55 adolescents in four desegregated high schools in two urban school districts in California" (p. 4). The reader is told that "literally hundreds of hours were spent with these youths," including hours spent both following the students around on their school rounds for a few days, and interviewing them using an open-ended format. Most of the research time was spent in school. Though the authors mention the importance of family and neighborhood, examining these in any detail is not a priority. In other words, the research was designed 1) theoretically, to highlight the adolescents’ views as these can be verbalized to researchers; 2) rhetorically, to report these views through summarized narratives; 3) methodologically, to ensure that the greatest amount of variability within the sample was attained. In many ways, though the authors do not mention Glaser and Strauss (1967), their approach is most congruent with a postmodernized version of "grounded theory" where concepts and theories are derived from carefully analyzed observation, rather than from deductive thinking, but the results are expressed as stories rather than as formal hypotheses. In the vocabulary of grounded theory, Phelan, Davidson and Yu’s sample is theoretical (rather than random) leading to a grounded typology of "worlds and transitions." In their initial research (1991) the authors had identified four types of personal management of borders. Further observation and analysis led them to expand the typology to six types. The book itself however barely mentions these technical matters. It was written with educational practitioners in mind, and this must explain the much greater weight given to the illustrative case studies included on 160 out of the 209 pages of text. This presentation format makes for better reading but does not provide much guidance for a more theoretical or research-oriented reading.

I am thus somewhat uncertain about whether I am correct in my summary of the authors’ research as grounded theory for further testing through the more usual psychometric techniques. They appear to claim that they already have enough knowledge about the adolescents to suggest the direction that curriculum and pedagogical reform should take. This by itself might make more pressing a discussion of the adequacy of the types first, as well as that of the overall approach.

The authors’ goal was to simplify. Thus they classify 55 students into six types of personal management of borders: Type I Congruent Worlds/Smooth Transitions; Type II Different Worlds/Border Crossing Managed; Type III Different Worlds/Border Crossings Difficult; Type IV Different Worlds/Border Crossings Resisted; Type V Congruent Worlds/Border Crossings Resisted; and Type VI Different Worlds/Smooth Transitions (p. 14-15). Somewhat hidden behind this phrasing is a continuum of academic and social success as traditionally defined. The continuum emerges as one reads the case studies starting with Type I "Ryan Moore" ("the Ozzie and Harriets of the 1990s" p. 25) who ranks on top of every scale in his school to Type II "Trinh Lee" ("typifying the stereotypical high-achieving Asian student" p. 51), to Type III "Donna Carlyle" and, at the bottom of about every scale, Type IV "Sonia Gonzalez" ("who skips classes, does not do homework, and consequently fails the majority of her classes" p. 137). Types V and VI, the ones added late in the research process, are really variations of Types I and II, being illustrated first by a majority student "Robert Hirschman" who specifically refuses the school model, and then by the daughter of a prosperous internationally-oriented Filipino family. The dependent variable is always school success, eventually explained by the students’ handling of the borders. The methods for handling the borders is treated as independent variables–at least at the time of the study, in middle adolescence.

In most ways, this work fits best within the tradition of work on school failure elaborated by John Ogbu (1998). It is work that goes beyond the simple "cultural difference" argument, even though there is a strong echo of this in that part of Phelan, Davidson and Yu’s typology that refers to "congruence" and in their coding of the two European-American students in their sample of being part of "congruent" worlds. All types of "difference" are illustrated through cases of Asian and Mexican-American students. That the two Asian students should also be used to illustrate how borders can be managed, clarifies the association with Ogbu, although weakly acknowledged. Like Ogbu, the authors attempt to place the actual source of the difficulties encountered by all the students in the organization of their relationship with the school. In their introduction and conclusion, they are very clear about their desire not to blame students for a diversity they hope schools will build upon rather than ignore or erase. They are particularly idealistic about the value of symbolized diversity for all students, including the most traditionally successful students.

In their writing practices, however, the authors subvert what may be their aim. Once again, the overall choice not to address theoretical issues directly, makes me somewhat uncertain of the stances they would take in a different writing style. It remains that Phelan, Davidson, and Yu end up spending so much time on the adolescents’ perspectives that one starts reading the case studies as illustration of ... illustrations of the types of personal management of borders. These types could easily become stereotypes in the hand of a careless reader. I am sure this is not what the authors intend but someone planning further research might be tempted to substantialize the types and, taking the school as a neutral ground for operational purposes, to "explain" differential success by reference to the types. Thus one is tempted to compare three successful students (one from the majority and two from "voluntary minorities" in Ogbu’s typology ¹) to the three unsuccessful students (one majority and two from more or less "involuntary" minorities) in terms of their strategies for dealing with the school. More fatefully, we are led to hypothesize that the issue for the last three types is not so much discrimination (because two-thirds of the types report discrimination) as the handling of discrimination: some minorities take it in stride, others do not . We are back with temperament as the proximate cause for school failure.

I am altogether sure this is not where the authors want to end. They certainly do not call for the kind of remedial programs that a specifically psychological analysis would produce. They call for a reform of curriculum and pedagogy to make it easier for all involved in schooling (students, teachers, administrators, researchers, etc.) to handle borders so that they are not transformed into boundaries.

Still, a major problem remains that the very desire of the authors to focus on the adolescents as agents exacerbate. This is a book about borders produced by social and cultural forces reproduced in the school organization and its interactional patterns. So the authors say in the more general parts of the book. It is also a book with little discussion of the schools attended by the students, of their communities, of the economic opportunities available to the students through their parents, etc. These things are mentioned, but only in passing and in altogether stereotyped fashion. One chapter summarizing each of the schools, along with some summary socio-demographics, would have been useful here. There is mention of the families of the students, but it is not clear that much analysis has been made of what the families might contribute besides some help with homework or the expression of general values about the importance of schooling. Above all, there is no sense given of the behavior of the students as they actually approach borders and transform them into boundaries.

This, then, is not a study in social organization or interaction. Instead it is a study that assumes social organization and interaction. An interactionist reading of the book is possible but difficult. Psychologists interested in new ways of understanding adolescent behavior in a symbolically diversified world are most likely to respond to the book. There are good reasons to think about variations in the management of all kinds of social borders. But one should realize that such investigations will not help much in understanding the nature of the borders, of the processes that transforms them into boundaries, or of the certainly diversified consequences of attempting crossings at various points. And so I am led once again to wonder about the wisdom of operationalizing a concern with "the natives’ point of view" as necessarily proceeding through a rhetorical highlighting of individual voices, recorded by a researcher, and used as a privileged (or more authoritative) entry into the world of any ‘native.’ I wonder whether we would not have learned more about the adolescents Phelan, Davidson and Yu spent so much time with, if they had discussed more about the architecture, social and otherwise, of the adolescents’ everyday life. This is not simply a matter of taste. Too much, eventually, is left to the imagination. There is a risk here that the authors do not quite face.

Still, there is much usefulness in laying out personal narratives for all of us to ponder. I have taken an academic look at a book that is clearly planned to do something else. I might not have used a perhaps overly harsh critical tone if the authors had not make a claim to scientific authority for their analysis. Teachers and others interested in schools, particularly those being trained, should find this book most profitable in that it provides an accessible accounts of matters they will surely encounter. I would certainly consider using Phelan, Davidson, and Yu’s book as a text in an introductory class..

References Quoted:

Glaser, Barney, and Anselm Strauss (1967) The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine.

Ogbu, John (1998) "Voluntary and involuntary minorities: A cultural_ecological theory of school performance with some implications for education." Anthropology and Education Quarterly 29: 155_188.

Phelan, Patricia, A.L. Davidson and H.T. Cao (1991) "Students' multiple worlds: Navigating the borders of amily, peer and school cultures." Anthropology and Education Quarterly 22: 224_250.

Footnote

¹In fact, the authors present four case studies of successful students. One of them is the daughter of European-American father and a Mexican mother.

PATRICIA PHELAN and ANN LOCKE DAVIDSON, Department of Education, University of Washington, Bothell.

HANH CAO YU, Social Policy Research Associates, Oakland, California.

December 17, 1999