The challenges for education systems of student disaffection in working-class schools are well known, but the implications of high levels of student optimism in the absence of the resources needed to support academic success have been less often considered. Through examination of the school experiences post-compulsory learners in Australia, this…

Participation in the national exams is a very difficult task for Greek lyceum students as their access to higher education is highly dependent on their performance in them. This paper focuses on the students' preparation for the national exams and especially their resort to out-of-school supportive lessons in relation to their socio-economic…

This article examines Asian women's experiences of belonging to communities of practice within higher education in Britain. The research explores the ways in which women engage in friendship and support networks, how they negotiate their identities and their experiences of being marginalised and "different". The research argues that Asian women…

This paper offers a reading of the Dovrat Report with the aim of assessing the convoluted and dialectical manifestations of the state--"the weak and the strong state"--in the era of global neo-liberalism. The Dovrat Report (Ministry Of Education 2005) includes a set of recommendations aiming to bring about structural and comprehensive changes in…

In the past 10 years, violence taking place in schools has entered both popular and academic discourse. Frequently, the term "school violence" is used as a catch-all concept to refer to disorder and disruption in schools, as well as the unruliness of contemporary youth. This is apparent not only in the North American context, but in highly…

The purpose of this paper is to identify common patterns in central authorities' steering of universities and the institutional power in neo-liberal higher education regimes. The paper examines the regulatory mechanisms of England and Japan through Foucault's idea of "governmentality" and utilises the concept of autonomy to identify the…

Over the past three decades educational research has provided an exciting and dynamic theoretical engagement with gender and sexuality. While acknowledging this contribution, this article is a conceptually-led exploration of a number of theoretical and methodological tensions contained within this research. More specifically, it argues that…

The era of New Labour government has witnessed unprecedented growth in inclusive education policies. There is, however, limited evidence that policies have increased disabled children's inclusion. This article explores reasons for this contradiction. Drawing on sociological insights, it is argued that New Labour policies on inclusive education…

Schools are a stabilising feature in the unsettled lives of refugee students. They provide safe spaces for new encounters, interactions and learning opportunities. They also deliver literacy, the key to educational success, post-school options, life choices, social participation and settlement. Currently Australian schools are poorly funded and…

The successful inclusion of minority ethnic pupils with sickle cell disorders (SCD) raises a number of challenges for educational systems. In England, local education authorities were important drivers for innovative responses to complex needs and the former Inner London Education Authority produced guidance in 1989 on SCD in schools. Local…

This paper examines the inexorable rise of "health" as regulative discourse, highlighting its class and cultural dimensions. With reference to the policy content of recent obesity reports, analysis suggests that contemporary concerns around obesity are but a modern variant of earlier eighteenth and nineteenth century child saving crusades whose…

Published in London between 1839 and 1852 and aligned with the commercial objectives of the New Zealand Company, the "New Zealand Journal" included letters from emigrants. This paper studies letters written by a small cohort of rural labourers who emigrated from Ham House in Surrey to Wellington in 1841. Following Dorothy Smith, I read them as…

Researching the intersection of class, race, gender, sexuality and disability raises many issues for educational research. Indeed, Maynard (2002, 33) has recently argued that "difference is one of the most significant, yet unresolved, issues for feminist and social thinking at the beginning of the twentieth century". This paper reviews some of the…

This article is concerned with the intersection between learning difficulties and social class. It also inevitably tells of the gender-class interface in relation to women's caring roles. I use the life story narratives of three mothers and a grandmother of a person with learning difficulties, together with concepts from Bourdieu, to explore the…

Following Edward Said's (2001) observations on traveling theories this paper considers the origins of inclusive education as a field of education research and policy that is in jeopardy of being undermined by its broadening popularity, institutional adoption and subsequent adaptations. Schools were not an invention for all and subsequently the…