Voices of Reason: Adolescents Talk About Their Futures Over Time

In their own words, ten diverse adolescents talk about their school experiences, family issues, societal problems and their own attempt to deal with social inequities. The book is also a study of future talk, as jointly constructed attempts by students at making sense of their educational and vocational goals and their own sense of where the education and guidance systems have helped or failed them. Using tools of discourse analysis developed for this study, Dr. Sachs presents a systematic way of looking at the construction of groundedness in social contexts, particularly how and how effectively adolescents construct their arguments for the choices they make.

The business of education touches many facets of society, and this study will be of interest to practitioners who wish to become qualitative researchers, for students in qualitative methods courses, and for middle and high school guidance sources including teachers and parents who want to better understand adolescents’ concerns. And it is a book for adolescents themselves who, in reading what their peers are saying, can reflect on their own sense of where they are currently and in which direction they want to go.