Scholarly journal article summary #2

Justin Riray
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Scholarly Research Summary 2
Pakman7JR@hotmail.com
Word Count: 250


Student’ Resistance in the Classroom

Bracha Alpert
Beit Barl College, Israel


There has always been a subtle resistance among students in upper middle-class high school classrooms who work toward achieving academic success.

This attitude of resistance and compliance is seen as being influenced by a teaching approach that attributes superiority to academic school knowledge and that promotes a recitation style of classroom interaction.

This study was done on three high school English classes in which two of the three had students that showed resistance toward learning, while the third class was actively participating in the classroom.

Low-key participation was almost natural form of student behavior for the third room.

By incorporating students’ personal knowledge with the learning material, it comforts and invites students to learn and accept school.

The function of schools, according to reproduction theorists, is to reproduce the ideology of dominant groups by passing down knowledge and wisdom. In order to consume long-term information, students should feel comfortable and accepted.

The gap between instruction that attributes superiority to intellectual knowledge and the students’ adolescent world was reflected in the students’ interviews with the researcher.

One student reported that her teacher “shouldn’t be so much of a teacher.”


She felt that the teacher didn’t develop a genuine relationship with the students; it was all business and the teacher took too strong of an authoritative stance.

Making more room for personal expression and responsive classroom interaction combined with subject matter is key to bridging the gap between students and school.