Full Description
This timely volume critically examines the influence of compulsory education and high-pressure school environments on the mental well-being of adolescents, using a participatory approach to encourage a deeper understanding of adolescents' real-life experiences of contemporary learning and achievement in schools.
With specific focus on a prominent central London Sixth Form college alongside other educational contexts, the book uses in-depth ethnographic fieldwork to explore the paradox of schooling as synonymous with learning yet also with the associated mental health challenges that stem from this learning environment. Grounded in ethnographic and co-production methodologies, the chapters share the voices of the participants such as students, teachers, parents, and college leaders, while also offering a reflexive analysis of their lived experiences in the dual role of contributors and co-researchers. By deconstructing official definitions of mental health and juxtaposing them with the participants' interpretations and lived experiences, the book unravels the consequences of organizing education strictly to accord with narrow achievement metrics.
Forming an exciting and novel contribution to the growing literature produced in the school ethnography tradition, this book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of education research methods, mental health, education policy and more broadly, the philosophy of education. Parents and undergraduate students may also find the volume of use.
Contents
Contents
Endorsements
Preface
Key Terms and their Implications in Educational Policies
Acknowledgements
Part I: Education and Mental Health
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Quest for Formal Education—and My Quest!
Chapter 2: Problematizing Education and Mental Health: Discourses, Policies, and the Neoliberal Paradigm
Part II: Knowledge Co-Production and Early Findings
Chapter 3: Doing Co-Production of Knowledge through Participation and Ethnography in an Educational Setting
Chapter 4: Towards Generating Key Themes and Co-Producing Analysis
Chapter 5: Subject Positions and the Mental Health Spectrum: A Starting Orientation
Part III: Making Sense of Adolescent Struggles
Chapter 6: Responsibilisation and Adolescent Mental Health through Motivational Drivers
Chapter 7: Performance and Adolescent Mental Health under Neoliberalism
Chapter 8: Transition and Adolescent Mental Health in the Journey to University and Work
Part IV: Managing Uncertainty and Crafting Closure
Chapter 9: Conduct and Resistance as Determinants of Subjectivity and Mental Health
Chapter 10: Conclusion: So! Does Schooling Influence Mental Health?
Afterword: Conceptual, Methodological, and Practical Implications for Policy Engagement and Transdisciplinary Reach
Index
