Situated within Toronto's expanding and increasingly segregated educational marketplace, this study examines how parents of students at one elite publicly funded specialized arts high school make meaning of their school choice decision. Utilizing a Neo-Marxist framework, I explore the role that material and symbolic resources play in making this school choice both available and exclusive. I conduct a critical discourse analysis of parent narratives to expose how they mobilize dominant discourses of the arts in order to produce the school as a good choice, and themselves as good parents. This research challenges dominant conceptions of the arts in education by showing how the arts are used to reinforce, obscure, and justify existing social hierarchies in school settings and society at large. This study further serves as an example of how arts education research can move beyond positivist conceptions of the arts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/42643 |
| Date | 20 November 2013 |
| Creators | Saifer, Adam |
| Contributors | Gaztambide-Fernandez, Ruben |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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