The paper works with queer and feminist post-human materialist scholarship to understand the way young teen valleys' girls experienced ubiquitous feelings of fear, risk, vulnerability and violence. Longitudinal ethnographic research of girls (aged 12-15) living in an ex-mining semi-rural community suggests how girls are negotiating complex…

This paper focuses on an episode of play in a primary school playground in England, which featured a group of children re-enacting elements of the television talk show "The Jeremy Kyle Show". The episode is analysed in the light of work that has identified the key elements of the talk show genre and the children's play is examined…

In this article, we focus on the interaction in a Year 5 classroom where students fill in a "self-evaluation form" as a preparation for a forthcoming discussion on progress aiming at the production of an Individual Developmental Plan. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of fabrications and performativity, we understand this as an…

In concert with Singapore's ambitions of a global city well engineered to the human capital needs of the transnational knowledge economy, its schools in recent years have emphasized the teaching of critical thinking. Such efforts, however, are not without tensions and contradictions. Given that such a curricular ideal is underpinned by…

Drawing on post-structural and post-colonial conceptions of gender, this paper explores multiple student masculinities and femininities in the classrooms of four junior secondary schools in Botswana. These gendered identities, it is argued, are negotiated within broader institutional constraints that have been socio-historically produced. Such…

This article examines how a progressive, rural/small city community in the USA wrestles with race, racism, and school equity in the public arena of print media. It inquires into the tensions, limitations, and possibilities for race-conscious discourse in the face of both explicit racist hate speech and benevolent liberal race talk. Based on…

This article explores teachers' use of discourses of authenticity in relation to minoritised students, with a focus on the relationship between these discourses and "model minority" status. The paper aims to advance the critical thinking about "model minorities" in the education system in England by examining the diversity…

This paper analyses data from a longitudinal study which foregrounds the category of "place" to ask: How do new teachers learn to do their work, and how do they learn about the places and communities in which they begin teaching? Surveys and ethnographic interviews were carried out with 35 new teachers over a three-year period in a region of rural…

This paper argues for the importance of ethnography in the conduct of educational research and the ways in which it can threaten, in a good sense, the certainties and dominance of performativity. The paper uses the poetry of Emily Dickinson to signal the importance of indirection in the conduct of ethnographic work and, more specifically, the ways…

Based on fieldwork at a weekend Japanese language school in the USA in 2007-2009, this article illustrates the ways in which different regimes of government arise from an activity depending on meanings individuals invest in it. We examine how two students in the same classroom experienced two different regimes of government: one of a low-track…

In recent decades, under the mutually constitutive processes of neoliberal urbanization and globalization, Vancouver has radically transformed and become a serious contender for the title of "world-class city". Against the background of this socio-spatial force reconfiguring the city, I explore how the city's unique development of "mini…

The scene for this paper is set in the USA immediately post-9/11 when the meaning of nation shifted dramatically, in turn shaping Muslim American identity. I examine Muslim American undergraduate women's performance of immigrant, gendered, youthful, Muslim and American identities. The findings are framed within symbolic interactionist, Foucauldian…

This article examines the ethnocinematic research project "Cross-Marked: Sudanese Australian Young Women Talk Education", and its relationship to the evolving notion of public pedagogies. The project explores the potential of alternative pedagogies, which include popular culture, especially audiovisual forms, to engage teachers and learners with…

This ethnographic study captures the processes that led to change in an Australian public education system. The changes were driven by strong neo-liberal discourses which resulted in a shift from a shared understanding about leading educational change in schools by knowledge transfer to managing educational change as a process, in other words,…

The research reported here demonstrates the need for greater subtlety in the practice of policy than appears to be evident in many parts of the globe. Based upon an ethnographic study of school reform, this paper heeds Appadurai's call for those researching the "global diaspora of ideas" to pay attention to the contextual conventions governing…