Transition Education, Student Contestation and the Production of Meaning: possibilities and limitations of resistance theories

Abstract

One of the major developments within the sociology of education is the recovery of the role of human agency within what had previously been considered to be determining structures. This article looks at one aspect of such agency, namely the meaning production engaged in by a group of largely working‐class students within transition programmes in three secondary schools in New Zealand. Their contestual industry in receiving, reinterpreting, re‐creating and rejecting meanings provides valid spaces in which critical and conscientising education can occur. It is argued, however, that this same activity hardly warrants the optimism evident in contemporary educational discourse relating progressive change at the micro‐level of the school to changes in the larger social formation. Some of the factors which subvert the transformative potential of contestual and resistant activity are therefore explored.