Starting Anew:School Life And Peer Relations Of High School Graduates Who Retake College Entrance Examination

At the end of each year’s College Entrance Examination,some students may be able to enter their ideal college as they wish,but some students choose to "starting anew" and return to the high school classroom,in order to achieve the "college dream" next year.Drawing on theories such as Goffman’s total institution,stigma construction,dramaturgical performance,and role and self,this study explores the identity practices and peer interaction patterns of this group,revealing the construction mechanism of CEE remedial student identity under the multiple influences of the CEE system and social discourse,and exploring the peer interaction model that is highly characteristic of CEE remedial students,as well as its cultural complexity,in order to provide a new perspective for research on CEE remedial students in China.The study finds that:Firstly,the cultural interaction between CEE remedial students and the school is a confrontation between subjectivity and structure.The school imposes monitoring and restrictions on remedial students through its closed system design,while remedial students negotiate with the school’s structural system through a certain degree of subjectivity practice,resulting in a cultural interaction process between the school’s structural system design and the remedial students’ subjectivity practice.However,at the same time,remedial students will adopt some micro-level behavioral practices to help maintain their social self,which has gained greater freedom space after leaving high school.In addition,the "dislocation" of interpersonal relationships at the bottom of the school leads to the ambivalence of the school’s system,and the school defaults and compromises with it.Secondly,in the process of situational interaction with the school and the external society,remedial students undergo two changes in social identity,during which they perceive "differences" and construct "stigma" about themselves.Subsequently,remedial students adopt a series of strategies to manage and control self-information in order to maintain individual dignity,and their reflective subjective feelings about themselves will continue to exist in this process and be positioned by themselves,and the three identity positioning they generate will continuously affect remedial students’ perception and cognition of themselves.Thirdly,as individual performers,remedial students participate in the performance of the class drama and construct a dual life of the self in it.Remedial students participate in collective performances in the class drama to maintain the contextual definition that stabilizes the drama class structure.However,with the further differentiation of the drama class,they engage in practical activities belonging to different selves,and in order to maintain the stability of the drama class,the teacher,as an expert in performance,takes some measures to try to repair the relationship between remedial student performers.Nevertheless,these efforts are futile,and the remedial drama class disintegrates completely after the CEE.Finally,faced with enormous academic pressure,remedial students will adopt some strategies to show the distance between their roles in order to slow down the pace of their real lives.The three different strategies they choose reflect the role tension of remedial students as performers: they may deny the roles they played before remedial classes and constantly affirm the role of CEE remedial students through the correction of their previous roles;they may choose to invest themselves in another role through artistic creation,or they may adopt a kind of detachment strategy,which allows them to take a detached attitude towards their roles and achieve relief.This study used Goffman’s relevant theories to build a theoretical framework,which explored the process of the construction of the identity of the repeater students more comprehensively,revealing some cultural practice processes that repeater students experience when playing their roles.Based on the research findings,this study proposes suggestions for carrying out relevant practices at the macro and micro levels: First,localities and schools should respect and protect the right of students who choose to repeat a year to pursue better education.Second,the school should improve its own institutional arrangements at the level of system and management to properly guide students to set up future life ideals and goals.Third,parents and students should have a correct understanding of the learning in secondary schools and the college entrance examination,recognizing the inevitability and necessity of the deepening and development of quality education reform.This study also reflects on the research methods and research ethics throughout the implementation of the study.