Student Resistance: How the Formal and Informal Organization of Classrooms Facilitate Everyday Forms of Student Defiance

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Abstract

Critical and resistance theorists propose that race and class backgrounds influence everyday forms of student resistance in schools. This article argues that the microsocial process of student defiance is less characterized by individual traits of race and class than by the formal and informal organizational characteristics of social settings. Using unique data on resistance in multiple schools and classrooms, this article finds that defiant behaviors arise when instructional formats give students access to public discourse and when students have advantaged social network relations. Social opportunities of tasks, coupled with political opportunities of networks, enable students to consistently undermine and redirect classroom affairs. The results suggest that resistant behavior is more the result of organizational features of social networks and instruction than “alienation” factors, and is therefore rectifiable through classroom management.

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