In Pursuit of the Good Life: High School Students’ Constructions of Morality and the Implications for Educational Leadership

In this interpretative study, the authors analyze the construction of three moral values in the context of inner-city high schools experiencing widespread poverty and racism. These values are trust, respect, and care. The authors demonstrate how the processes of social and discursive construction of morality differentially influence lived moral experiences for African American high school students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Differences are largely explained by the articulation of a strong African American tradition (racial-ethnic pride) in the magnet school, “City High.” By contrast, a profound lack of trust and respect for this tradition seems to hinder student voice and the pursuit of “moral equality” and access to quality public schooling in the comparative school, “Neighborhood High.”