Schooling as Uncertainty

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.

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).

Introduction Part I: Shaky Beginnings 1. Marital Misgivings 2. Spoons, Strikes, and Schooling Part II: Precarious Parenthood 3. A Difficult Delivery 4. Preventable Deaths Part III: Fallible Expertise 5. Questioning Dr. Spock 6: Questioning Corporal Punishment Part IV: AIDS and the Ordinariness of Crisis 7. Schooling, Sponsorship, and Social Contingency 8. The Burden of Care: Grandparents and the AIDS Crisis Part V: Policy Arbitrariness 9: Tripping on the Tenure Track 10. Aspirational Equality and the Precarity of Policy Part VI: The Social Life of Uncertainty 11. Speed Bumps on Lema Road 12. Gendered Contingencies Epilogue Glossary Acknowledgements References Index