This article explores the figured world of learning at urban Oakcity High School, describing the learner identities that were available to students amid the practices, categories, discourses and interactions of this world. My aims are 2-fold and interconnected: (1) to reframe a taken-for-granted phenomenon—that students tend to do poorly at urban high schools serving low income students of color, and (2) to apply a situated perspective and the concepts of figured worlds and positional identities to the study of learning and identity at an urban high school, expanding the use of these concepts in educational research.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a Spencer/National Academy of Education Post-Doctoral Fellowship. I would like to thank Luis Urrieta, Thea Abu El-Haj and Kysa Nygreen for their comments on earlier versions of this article.
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Beth C. Rubin is an Assistant Professor in Graduate School of Education, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey 10 Seminary Place New Brunswick NJ 08901 USA
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Rubin, B.C. Learner Identity Amid Figured Worlds: Constructing (In)competence at an Urban High School. Urban Rev 39, 217–249 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-007-0044-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-007-0044-z