Schooling as Uncertainty - by Frances Vavrus (Paperback)

About the Book

"In today's uncertain world, few beliefs remain as firmly entrenched as the optimistic view that more schooling will lead to a better life. Though this may be true in the aggregate, how do we explain the circumstances when schooling fails to produce certainty or even does us harm? Schooling as Uncertainty addresses this question by combining ethnography and memoir as it guides readers on a 30-year journey through fieldwork and familyhood in Tanzania and academic life in the USA. Using reflexive, longitudinal ethnographic research, the book examines how African youth, particularly young women, employ schooling in an attempt to counter the uncertainties of marriage, child rearing, employment, and HIV/AIDS. Adopting a narrative approach, Vavrus tells the story of how her life became entangled with a community on Mount Kilimanjaro and how she and they sought greater security through schooling and, to varying degrees, succeeded."

Book Synopsis

In today's uncertain world, few beliefs remain as firmly entrenched as the optimistic view that more schooling will lead to a better life. Though this may be true in the aggregate, how do we explain the circumstances when schooling fails to produce certainty or even does us harm? Schooling as Uncertainty addresses this question by combining ethnography and memoir as it guides readers on a 30-year journey through fieldwork and familyhood in Tanzania and academic life in the USA.
Using reflexive, longitudinal ethnographic research, the book examines how African youth, particularly young women, employ schooling in an attempt to counter the uncertainties of marriage, child rearing, employment, and HIV/AIDS. Adopting a narrative approach, Vavrus tells the story of how her life became entangled with a community on Mount Kilimanjaro and how she and they sought greater security through schooling and, to varying degrees, succeeded.

Review Quotes

"Fran Vavrus' book is an extraordinary exploration into education, family, and identity. The book showcases her skill as a researcher, the value of long-term reflection on one's own role in the context of international education, and the ways in which women's experiences can be ignored or hidden Her honesty in sharing vulnerable moments in her life, will be illuminating for people at varied points in their own journeys." --Supriya Baily, Associate Professor of International Education, George Mason University, USA

"Propelled by the author's 30 years of ethnographic experience and her willingness to explore the relationships that have shaped her work, this book provides a lyrical and powerful analysis of the ways that people try-and too often fail-to use formal schooling to make their lives more certain. Its is theoretically pathbreaking, analytically rich, and it asks the questions that need to be at the heart of our understanding of schooling around the world. This is a tour de force." --Nancy Kendall, Professor of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

"This book is a compelling and genre-bending exploration of (un)certainty in schooling, development, research, and life itself. Through careful analysis of data and lived experiences, Vavrus calls us to critically question our perceived entanglements with both individuals and institutions." --Matthew A.M. Thomas, Senior Lecturer of Comparative Education & Sociology of Education, The University of Sydney, Australia

"An unhesitatingly honest critical reflection on research, unfurled as braiding her own life, through marriage, children, and tenure, with the lives of the Tanzanian students she seeks to understand. In the meeting ground of academic discipline and community Frances Vavrus examines confronting, accepting, and domesticating uncertainty." --Joel Samoff, formerly Adjunct Professor of African Studies, Stanford University, USA

"This extraordinary book, at once raw and inspiring, invites readers into the life of one ethnographer and her engagement with a rural Tanzanian community and its school over almost three decades. Vavrus draws on her collected field notes from Tanzania and her own personal letters and journals to show us how schooling and its intersection with sexuality, child rearing, marriage, work, and public policy have changed over time in East Africa and North America. In an innovative combination of autobiography and ethnography, Vavrus invites us to both question - and celebrate - our precarious efforts to secure our own lives and livelihoods through schooling." --Karen Mundy, Professor of International and Comparative Education, University of Toronto, Canada

About the Author

Frances Vavrus is Professor of Comparative and International Development Education at the University of Minnesota, USA. She is Chair of the Joint ILO/UNESCO Committee on the Application of the Recommendations Concerning Teaching Personnel and the co-author of Rethinking Case Study Research (2017) and Teaching in Tension (2013).