Trajectories

Trajectories: The Educational and Social Mobility of Educators from the Poor and Working Class, is a collection of mobility narratives of critical scholars in education from poor and working-class backgrounds. While Americans have long held deep-seated cultural beliefs in the capacity of schooling to level unequal playing fields, there has been little research on the psycho-social processes of social and educational mobility in the United States. Rising Up employs narrative research methodologies to interrogate the experiences of class border-crossing via success in school. This volume addresses two discourses within education: First, the experiences of those who have crossed class boundaries contribute to a deeper understanding of how social class functions in the United States. The narratives compiled in this volume explore class within the lives of young people on the margins, as identifies, ambition and achievement are constructed and negotiated in school. More specifically, the volume suggests new directions for policy and practice to counteract classism in schools and in the broader culture. As they write of the constraints that they circumvented to succeed against the odds, these authors complicate notions of opportunity as the inevitable reward for high achievement. As they write of agency and tenacity, they will illuminate cultural strengths that likely were invisible to teachers and peers. As critical scholars of education, the contributors to this volume speak specifically to ways in which teacher education can and should address issues of class.