This paper explores the storylines of four student ballet dancers who attend a specialist performing arts secondary school and who, in differing ways, envisage futures which "look straight at ballet". When decisions about schooling intermingle with long-held imaginings of futures in ballet, thought is provoked about ways the young…

The paper argues that neo-liberal education policy has capitalized on a historical concern to care for the self, or the Greek "epimeleia heautou". We discuss "epimeleia heautou" in relation to education policies that emphasize greater choice in curriculum offerings, and in relation to school choice policies more generally.…

Based on interviews with eight adult immigrants to Montreal, this article explores how discourses from their cultures of origin interact with discourses in the host culture to influence the process of identity construction during their acculturation to the host society. Drawing on sociocultural theory and psychological concepts of identity…

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 article mobilizes story-telling to narrate my lived experience of teaching English as a minority academic in one Australian university. Positioning myself as living "in-between" two cultures and as an "Other", I tell my story of how I have been "racialized" and "Othered" because I do not look White, and my spoken English is distinctly…

This article presents a thread of discussion posted to a web-based forum in the context of a children's literature course in one teacher education program in the USA. Participants in the virtual discussion include three preservice elementary teachers and the course instructor (author) on the subject of bringing lesbian, gay, bisexual and…

In this conceptual piece, we examine media as a nexus of a traditional schooling pedagogy and performance pedagogy to make visible how their overlapping elements produce media's pervasive educative force but also to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of using media in educational contexts. Nexus analysis examines a fashion makeover…

In this study we interrogate the ways nutrition and health have become increasingly influential to children's everyday life practices and conceptualisations of food. We challenge the orthodoxy of meanings afforded to food that draw a distinct binary between "good"/"bad" or "healthy"/"unhealthy"; ideas widely promulgated in health texts, popular…

The paper is based on a research project that sought to understand schools' behaviour management strategies from the perspective of students who had the most experience of them. It focuses on the contrasting ways in which teacher and student subjectivities are framed and positioned within the discourse. It considers how student accounts were…

Academic disciplines in the school curriculum which engage explicitly with cultural identities pose a major dilemma for liberal, pluralist societies seeking to foster the dual imperatives of diversity education and social cohesion. This paper uses the case of Islam as school knowledge to analyse the relations between political stances and symbolic…

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 paper examines empirical data with regard to recent theorizing and conceptualizing of children's citizenship. It draws on a doctoral study where the author told social justice stories to one class of children aged five to six years to investigate the active citizenship that the stories set in motion. By imagining this action research study…

This paper examines the methodological dilemmas associated with analytical framing as an aspect of the research process. Doing qualitative research potentially changes a researcher--changes their sense of self, who they think they are, who they want to become. The paper examines the ethical dilemma of what that change might mean--for the project,…

This article draws on the work of Foucault to explore why students on a residential program talk about learning about themselves as if it were an epiphany and one of the most empowering aspects of the program. Foucault's schema of turning to the self suggests that the pleasure students experience at "discovering" themselves is a logical response…

The article draws on postcolonial and feminist theories, combined with critical reflection and autobiography, and argues for generating decolonizing texts as one way to write and reclaim home in a postcolonial world. Colonizers leave home to seek power and control elsewhere, and the colonized suffer loss of home as they know it. This dislocation…