Educational under-achievement by a section of the Maori population is a persistent problem for New Zealand. This article is a theoretical examination of the practice and consequences of a culture-based curriculum that is promoted as the solution. We develop the argument that not only is the "cultural solution" at odds with the complex…

This article examines the effects of social capital on the likelihood of dropping out from the compulsory education system (Grades One through Eight) in Turkey. It focuses on the question of whether school-related social capital can provide the means to stay in school in the presence of risk factors such as socioeconomic status, race, or gender…

This article uses Chicago public school closings as a case study for the rise of mayoral control and the decline of democratic participation -- two common responses to stiff competition from global markets -- in urban public schools in the United States. In response to the 2013 Chicago decision to close 50 schools and move 30,000 students, this…

This paper uses Raymond Boudon's model of educational expansion to examine the relationship between education and social mobility, paying particular attention to post-compulsory education--an important site of social differentiation in England. The paper shows how Boudon focuses explicitly on the consequences of educational expansion, and…

This article explores how a small sample of working-class mothers encounters the field of education. In the management of family and their children's schooling, mothers bring to bear and replicate ways of knowing that are embodied, are historical and that offer many-sided insights into profoundly stratified societies. Here I draw on Bourdieu's…

The authors review "White middle class identities and urban schooling," by D. Reay, G. Crozier and D. James. This book focuses on the perspectives of white middle-class parents who make "against"-the-grain school choices for their children in urban England. It provides key insights into the dynamics of class practising that are played out in these…

In China, there is a growing group of "migrant children", who reside in the city but do not have full rights to access education. Many have been granted a chance to study in public schools after the policy change, but they continue to have lower educational outcomes than the local students. To understand the inequality, this paper examines the…

This article provides a vision of school disciplinary strategies as provided by childhood school memories of practicing or unemployed teachers. This narrative approach allows us to understand the school and its daily routines and rituals from an insiders' point of view, drawing upon the double perspective teachers employ when reflecting on their…

In this article, using data from ethnographic research, we try to present some glimpses of the way education is described as an experience and possibility "from below", by pupils who grow up and study in schools in the most segregated and territorially stigmatized suburbs on the outskirts of our major cities. What we feel they describe is an…

Based on interviews with and questionnaires completed by upper secondary school pupils (n = 27) from academic and vocational programmes, respectively, the present paper focuses on some of the social and individual conditions that precede the individual decision-making process in education transitions. The paper shows that an organic view of…

This paper analyses qualitative interviews conducted with Norwegian middle-class parents. It explores how a particular type of intimacy--an "enriching intimacy"--is produced as part of everyday parent-child interactions and considers the notion of the social self that spurs middle-class parents to seek this very type of intimacy with their child.…

The participation of children with disabilities in regular schools is too often the prerogative of education boards, who decide whether a child can learn within existing educational environments, rather than pressuring for systemic change and organization in school curricula that would grant the right of education to all children. This article…

This paper investigates what happened in one Australian primary school as part of the establishment, use and development of a computer laboratory over a period of two years. As part of a school renewal project, the computer laboratory was introduced as an "innovative" way to improve the skills of teachers and children in information and…

This article responds to criticisms, put forward by Harrison and Waller in this issue, of an earlier paper by Noble and Davies. In particular, we argue that our interpretation of earlier quantitative research is correct, that Harrison and Waller have misconstrued the purpose of our previous paper and the analysis it contains, and that they…

While research into educational inequalities emphasizes childhood socio-economic status, this study adds another dimension of status into the analysis; namely, the child's own social position among its peers. The aim was to examine whether socio-economic status and peer status can both be linked to educational transitions and, if so, whether they…