This article documents how the authors, two Chicana tenured professors from immigrant and working-class backgrounds, drew upon their graduate school experiences as resources for navigating the tenure track. They discuss lessons learned not in the official classroom but in other spaces inhabited by women of color. Such lessons included: networking…

In her 1995 article, "Sapphire Bound!", legal scholar Regina Austin calls for minority female scholars in the legal field to straightforwardly, unapologetically, and strategically use their intellectual pursuits to advocate on behalf of poor and working class minority women. Even though Austin is arguing from the perspective of a woman of color,…

Social mobility carries with it a sense of loss. To be socially mobile is to move from one place, economically, culturally, personally, to another. One consequence of that loss, sometimes, is immobility--a paralysis brought on by the violent, forceful, uncertain rush of social mobility itself. The immobility of fear, the feeling stuck, the not…

In this paper, the author describes his own understanding of the process on how he moved from being a working-class boy who experienced school as a digression from his real interest--sports--to someone who had made education his life work. In particular, he describes his own changing gender, race, and class identity within the context of an…

Explores the danger and promise inherent in grounding educational reform in "professionalizing" teaching. One author offers a Marxist critique as contributing to the oppression of the working class. Another argues that professionalizing teaching misconstrues "education" and "profession" and proposes a professionalism…

Investigated 40 working-class and 40 middle-class parents' beliefs about the meaning of schooling by conducting in-depth interviews. Results indicated that middle-class parents tended to value schooling more for the credentials schools offered, whereas working class parents tended to value schooling more for the learning opportunities (applied and…

This paper presents a narrative that explores the author's own life as a woman from a working class background who is now a professor. After situating her work in the small but growing research field about the intersection of social class and academics, the author presents her autobiography by providing a documentary through the three categories…

Reveals how the author's interpretation of the development of reformatories for girls underwent a revisionist transformation during her work with an alternative school for delinquent girls, which challenged her interpretation of the impact of reformatory life. Explores questions of positionality, i.e., gender inequality and African-American and…

In an effort to explore how racial and class oppressions intersect, the authors use their autobiographical narratives to depict cultural and experiential continuity and discontinuity in growing up white working class versus Chicano working class. They specifically focus on "racializing class" due to the ways class is often used as a copout by…

Examines the stresses and strengths that define daily negotiated life experiences for women who are poor or working-class and African-American in urban America. Interviews with individuals in these communities show that these women see themselves as constantly negotiating borders of home/family/life and, at the same time, constantly carry…

Examined how adolescent, working class, girls enrolled in an alternative high school for at-risk students anticipated their adult lives. Observation and interview data indicated that the range in plans for future work and family reflected tensions experienced between new possibilities presented by the school and more traditional values of family…