Banking on education: Black, Canadian females and schooling

The experiences of Black females have received little attention in Canadian research on education. As a result, little is known about how Black females experience schooling, and even less is known about the specific challenges they face on account of their gender and its interconnection with race, class, immigrant status and other aspects of their identity. In this dissertation, I examine the schooling experiences of a group of young, Black, females of Caribbean descent. Through the use of anti-racism feminism and immigrant integration theories, I look at the relationship between their experiences of school and their understanding of their identity. I argue that the young women's negotiation of schooling is intimately linked to their understanding of their identity -- an understanding that is filtered through race and gendered lenses, and is a product of their status as Canadian children of immigrant, Caribbean parents, living in a multicultural society. The young women's understanding of their identity led to them to take a purposeful, strategic, and pragmatic approach to negotiating schooling processes and relationships. Recognizing that being female and Black can affect their future prospects, and that their immigrant parents came to Canada because of the opportunities it could offer them, their children, the young women approached school with a sense of purpose about what they wanted to achieve -educational success. As such, in their interactions with teachers and peers, they made choices that would not get in the way of the achievement of their goals.;My findings indicate that the young women bank on education, that is, they put their faith in education and believe that if they work hard they will achieve success. This expectation that they will get out what they put into education gives the young women a sense of comfort and security that they will secure the futures that they and their parents envision. In negotiating schooling, the young women took a strategic approach to relationships with peers, separating their academic and social lives and abandoning those relationships that would potentially derail their educational plans. Their relationships with teachers were based on the extent to which they saw teachers as willing to facilitate their educational success. As such they sought out those teachers whom they felt contributed to their success, and took advantage of the help that these teachers offered. They young women avoided or ignored teachers whom they thought did not contribute to their academic progress. Overall, their approach to school was grounded in an embrace of their parents' desire that they acquire "the most enabling resource that people can have" -- education.