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…

Critical language awareness (CLA) has aimed to raise critical consciousness in language education about the social aspects of language use, and especially the relationship between language and power, and is considered to play a significant role in enabling learners to participate effectively in democratic citizenship within and beyond the…

This article explores the ways in which Mexican transmigrants in the USA discursively construct national identities in relation to the mediated message of a television advertisement for an English-language self-study program marketed to Spanish speakers, called "Ingles Sin Barreras." Using narrative analysis of the advertisement and critical…

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…

In this paper I present the "everydayness" of a particular group of young Muslim women and their families as they dance between a range of contradictory and shifting discourses. Through an analysis situated between the social and the cultural, the paper argues that as an "in-between" generation these young women are now part of communities who are…

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 paper examines literacy under-achievement and the limitations of gender-based literacy reforms grounded in essentialist notions of masculinity. It draws on qualitative case-study research conducted in one Ontario secondary school in a working-class community. It focuses on two grade 9 students and their teacher who participated in a larger…

This paper investigates the ways in which discourses of teacher accountability were negotiated by teachers within hearings held for the Australian Inquiry into Boys' Education. In the Inquiry context, dominant interpretative repertoires positioned teachers as obliged to "acknowledge', "address" and "actively respond" to an essentialised version of…

This paper is about how 9-11-year-old children, particularly girls, co-construct tomboy and girly-girl identities as oppositional positions. The paper sits within a theoretical framework in which I understand individual and collective masculinities and femininities as ways of "doing man/woman" or "doing boy/girl" that are constructed within local…

The Greek community in Melbourne, Australia, is large and has a long history in the city. It is diverse and associated with a range of cultural, social and political structures. It has strong transnational links and in many ways exemplifies "diasporic" in contradistinction to "migrant". This paper focuses on young people from this community,…

The "Shrek" films are a popular worldwide and economic success. Drawing on an analysis of the film as well as responses from undergraduate students enrolled in a children's literature course, we analyze "Shrek 2" as a teaching machine in which normative discourses of gender and sexuality circulate under the guise of "girl power". We argue that…

The women's movement in the 1970s and 1980s was a global phenomenon that achieved significant educational change. More analysis of how it developed and had an impact on education can inform our understanding of the possibilities for change today. This paper explores how the women's movement changed schooling in Vancouver in the 1970s, using a…

This paper examines the way lesbian identities are silenced in schools particularly through anti-lesbian harassment. Based on research with 30 self-identified lesbian teachers working across high schools in New South Wales, Australia, the discussion illustrates how various responses to anti-lesbian harassment silence the recognition of such…

Whenever gender violence and schooling have been the topic of South African research, the investigations focus on African boys in secondary schools. In contrast, this paper focuses on the ways in which violence is mobilized by African schoolgirls in a working-class primary school context. By drawing on selected elements of an ethnographic study of…

This paper considers globalisation from "below" by looking at young women in the context of their everyday lives. By focusing upon the cultures of youthful femininities, we aim to explore young women's relationship to the global and particularly the ways in which the products of a globalised media culture feature in their lives. In exploring young…