Resistance, communication, and community: how did former students from an independent Christian high school experience and understand their resistance to schooling?

Abstract

This thesis is a phenomenological, qualitative study of student resistance and seeks to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between community, communication, and resistance by exploring the social contexts that provide meaning to the resistant behaviours of six graduates of an independent Christian school. In doing so, this thesis takes a transactional perspective of resistance – a perspective that recognises students as having multiple and shifting identities, and schools as being complex, social settings which contextualises student resistant behaviours. Integral to this perspective is a communicative potential of resistance that can be used as a means of signalling, generating, and building dialogue among the various groups of people who make up the school community. This study suggest that school need to go beyond seeing resistance as purely an expression of political statements or an engagement in power struggles and consider how resistance can be a potential communicative act. Specifically, resistance signals a need for reflection and dialogue on the ways in which the ideals of that community are both intended and experienced.