Off limits: Virtual schools in an era of connection and inequality

Abstract

Using critical ethnographic methods, this dissertation study analyzes stakeholder experiences of virtual k-12 schools in the U.S. and their relation to patterns of marginalization in education and labor systems. Combining a focus on distributed labor in the platform economy with an understanding of schools as powerful conduits to well-being, anchors of community cohesion and growth, and sites of prolonged institutional violence, I posit that school digitization may provide an escape route for some from structural social harms, yet depending on its design and implementation, may also threaten to re-inscribe and extend existing hierarchies and create new challenges for social justice.