Areas of Expertise:
- Social class issues in education
- Elite schooling and affluent youth
- Sociology of Education
- Curriculum Studies
Professor Howard’s research explores social class issues in education with a focus on privilege and elite education. In particular, he studies the relationship between identity development and advantages in order to form better understandings of how privilege works through the daily practices of privileged individuals and the structures, policies, and practices of their educational institutions.
Professor Howard’s current research focuses on what recent alumni of elite all-boys schools across the United States learned through their experiences at these schools.
The study is guided by the following questions: What lessons did alumni of elite all-boys schools learn through their educational experiences and how did these lessons shape their understandings of self and others? What lessons did they learn from their schooling experiences about gender and, more specifically, masculinity? How did these lessons ‘travel’ with them to college and other contexts of their lives? Howard is collaborating with his undergraduate students, who mostly come from class-privileged backgrounds, including several who attended elite all-boys schools, on this research project.
