Cultural Conflict and Resistance: The Importance of Space in Urban Schools

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02318.x
• Author: Alan R. Sadovnik,Aris Damadian Lindemans
• Date: 01 January 2011
• Published date: 01 January 2011

130 Public Administration Review • January | February 2011

Alan R. Sadovnik

Rutgers University–Newark

Aris Damadian Lindemans

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Maryann Dickar, Corridor Cultures: Mapping Student

Resistance at an Urban High School. (New York:

New York University Press, 2008). 212 pp. $65.00

(cloth), ISBN: 9780814720080; $22.00 (paper),

ISBN: 9780814720097.

“You mean, sometimes you ask for the pass when you

don’t have to go to the bathroom?” I asked, mock-

ing naiveté. . . . “Miss, sometimes we need to go, but

mostly, we just want to get out and be in the hall.”

C

orridor Cultures is a fascinating analysis of

an often-neglected aspect of school life: the

relationship between architectural space

and student and school cultures. Based on an inten-

sive multiyear ethnography in a small school within

one of New York City’s reorganized comprehensive

high schools, the author examines the ongoing ten-

sions between the student-dominated halls and the

teacher-dominated classrooms, as well as how the

corridors often become a synthesis of street and school

cultures.  rough an examination of spatial challenges

to teaching and learning, the book provides a some-

times sobering glimpse into the challenges of urban

education.

Maryann Dickar’s main argument is that school spaces

are constantly contested and “leaky,” bleeding into

one another in signif‌i cant ways as students and teach-

ers express multiple realities related to their dif‌f ering

roles in the academic enterprise. Her focus is on an

educational institution that she labels “Renaissance

High School,” one of three small schools within a

former racially segregated comprehensive public high

school in New York City, located in the heart of one

of the city’s largest Caribbean communities. Renais-

sance’s student population was 96 percent black and

4 percent Hispanic; the majority of students were

Cultural Conf‌l ict and Resistance:  e Importance of Space in

Urban Schools

Aris Damadian Lindemans is a

doctoral student at the New Jersey Institute

of Technology (NJIT), in the urban environ-

ment track of the PhD in urban systems, a

joint program with Rutgers University–

Newark and the University Medical and

Dental School of New Jersey. She has

master’s degrees in architecture and civil

engineering from NJIT.

E-mail: adamadian@gmail.com

Alan R. Sadovnik is a professor of

urban education, sociology, and public

affairs and codirector of the Institute on

Education Law and Policy and the Newark

Schools Research Collaborative at Rutgers

University–Newark. His publications include

Founding Mothers and Others: Women

Educational Leaders during the Progressive

Era, “Schools of Tomorrow,” Schools of

Today: What Happened to Progressive Edu-

cation,

and

Knowledge and Pedagogy: The

Sociology of Basil Bernstein,

all of which

received the American Educational Studies

Association Critics Choice Award.

E-mail: sadovnik@andromeda.rutgers.edu