Who is the Good High School Student? By Greg Thompson

Case study research is a form of qualitative research that involves prolonged engagement at the site by the researcher (Bryce, 2002). Case study research is not in itself a clearly defined method (Bryce, 2002). Rather, it is “a way of bounding a variety of approaches to provide a detailed picture” so that the research is flexible, informative, and useful (Bryce, 2002, p. 51). This methodological approach allows a rich and detailed snapshot of the fluidity of experiences of power within institutions. Because case study research allows flexibility in devising data-collection methods, I believe it to be the most appropriate to unmask the normalising vision of the good student as it is produced, deployed, and contested at various school sites. Case study research as essentially “expansionist” research (Stake, 2000, p. 24); that is, the detailed data collected on a few sites open the issue to further enquiry. With the schools as the cases, I used varied methods and information-collecting strategies, and the data collected are richer as a result.

The case study researcher is an observer who uses observation as a tool to “probe deeply and to analyse intensively the multifarious phenomena that constitute the life cycle of the unit with a view to establishing generalisations about the wider population to which that unit belongs” (Cohen & Manion, 2003, p. 105). My concern is with the ways that commonsense notions, such as that of the good student, produce types of citizenry that may not be best suited to the challenges of the postcapitalist world—citizenry that is characteristically knowable, governable, disciplined, and self-monitoring.

The research was conducted at three coeducational schools. Selecting schools with diverse characteristics provided access to different intensities of movement as young people negotiate their trajectories in their respective schools. When examining the issue of power in schools, the literature tends to suggest that because most schools are basically structured in the same way, power should be largely articulated and experienced the same way. I investigated how the idea of the good student is produced, negotiated, and enacted at each of the three sites as a tool to determine what movement is possible for young people within these heavily regulated and controlled frames. Each site was examined over an extended