This study reports on the dilemmas of practice experienced by a parent-school facilitator, Melanie, within a large urban school district. Melanie struggled to reconcile her commitment to families in her school with the demands placed on her by an administrative ideology that viewed families as adversaries. Her attempts to manage the conflicts…

This study examines Black student and parental perceptions of exclusionary practices of Black school principals. I ask why students and parents viewed two Black principals as contributing to abusive and exclusionary school environments that marginalized Black students. After a two-year ethnographic study, it was revealed that exclusionary…

Since the 1970s, schools have been characterized as loosely coupled systems, meaning that the teachers' work is weakly coordinated at the local level. Nonetheless, few studies have focused on the local variations of coordination modes, their sources and their nature. In this article, the process of local coordination of the teachers'…

In response to a literature that has paid limited attention to the complex representations of Cambodian students, this article investigated the ways in which Cambodian male youth were problematized in school through Discourses that presented them as apathetic students and/or gang members at one California high school. In this study, the ways in…

Even before withstanding one of the most devastating economic crises in American history, families living in poverty have battled a dominant discourse that labels them as lacking personal responsibility, initiative, and the ability to make "good" choices. This discourse is reflected in the parent-involvement mandates of the No Child Left…

By mixing up various writing genres, the author interweaves a hybrid narrative of a fable, her postcolonial feminist subjectivity, and her research. The narrative begins with Aesop's fable, "the Bat, the Bird, and the Beast." In the fable, a bat wants to be both a bird and a beast, but being neither, s/he is refused by both.…

In this study, I discuss the benefits of Black feminist caring (BFC) in educational leadership. I suggest that the ethic of care in educational leadership is a manifestation of strength when serving disadvantaged student populations. This article is based on a qualitative, exploratory, multicase study that examines the ethic of care in the…

Incorporating data from two years of ethnographic teacher-research, this article explores how a curriculum of "professionalism" resonates with teachers and students in a small New York City school of choice. Using the literature on Critical Whiteness Studies and philanthrocapitalism in the context of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's…

This article explores the processes of racialization imposed on Sa'moan youth through policy and practice in one urban, US school district and at one high school in particular. Specifically, I use the methodological practices of defamiliarization and counter-storytelling to examine the contradictory practices of racialization and the…

While black queer educators could conceivably play a critical role in disrupting black queer marginality in educational settings, relatively little is known about their experiences. Drawing upon findings from a broader qualitative study on black male teachers in an urban school district in the United States, this article explores how five black…

Early resistance theorists analyzed working class students' oppositional behavior at a time of high availability of viable jobs in manufacturing. They argued that oppositional behavior constituted a rejection of middle class culture motivated by an implicit understanding of the myth of meritocracy. But times have changed. This paper seeks to…

The tragedies of Columbine and September 11th led public schools to step up surveillance practices in urban schools--producing an environment with less freedom and more control. While students are aware of the seeming powerlessness they face at the hands of security guards and surveillance technologies, they are also engaged in developing new ways…

This article considers what resistance accomplishes for a peer group of young women of color attending an urban high school in 2001, and from a perspective 10 years later in 2011. Their resistance is deeply racial yet troubles categorical race, nurtures new solidarities through old ethnicities, and sustains a network with important material value…

This article explores youth resistance to urban public high schools that both inadvertently and by design push out students before graduation. The author details how youth experience the institutional production of school non-completion as a dialectic of humiliating ironies and dangerous dignities, a dialectic of school pushout. The author…

This paper outlines the methodological issues I faced during my research as a "returning native" in an English secondary school. The empirical research took the form of a three-year case study and used some ethnographic methods, as it comprised interviews carried out over a period of three academic years in the school in which I was once employed…