The authors argue for closer collaboration between public schools and the public child welfare system, on behalf of children placed at risk, with respect to whether they will do as well in school as their abilities suggest they might, all else being equal. The need for closer collaboration is tied to two developments affecting schools and the…

In this chapter, the author offers a historical overview of constructions of risk in the context of schooling for nondominant groups and how communities have organized schooling in ways that support resiliency in the face of these risks. She discusses an expansive orientation to understanding how people learn to respond to risks that is rooted in…

Studies of race, class, and educational risk often proceed in an established but misleading order: First, race is defined as a trait given at birth and turned into trouble by prejudice and unequal conditions; then, class is defined as traits socialized into children with diminished socioeconomic opportunities; finally, risk is treated as the…

This article reviews educational literatures that should be relevant to helping individuals understand and improve the lot and life chances of girls and boys who are at risk in a global world. The authors began this review with a vignette from India, a country whose linguistic and ethnic diversity, whose international reputation for advances in…

A fundamental consideration in discourses on risk and schooling for primary and secondary school-age students focuses on gender inequalities in the classroom. Gender equity in education debates have raged for several decades and so remain an enduring concern of educators and researchers across the nation. However, educational research often…

The goal of this article is to examine different conceptions of identity and different processes of identity negotiation to make visible the implicit and explicit links between social practices and perceived risk, equity, and opportunities to learn for linguistically and culturally diverse students. The authors discuss analytic frameworks for the…

Deficit notions about the cognitive potential of individuals from nondominant communities have persisted in social science inquiry, particularly where literacy is concerned. The intellectual trails of current conflicting ideas about literacy can be traced in part to theories about the role of literacy in society. For example, the great divide…

The numbers of im/migrant children in schools have increased throughout the world. The principal receiving areas are North America, Western Europe, the Persian Gulf, Asia and the Pacific, and the Southern Cone of South America. In the United States, one out of every four children younger than the age of 8 lives in a family where at least one…

A series of transitions, from class to class, year to year and school to school, is integral to the education system in England. The transfer of pupils from primary to secondary education is an important stage of transition. Models for managing this transfer highlight different aspects of the experience, including social/pastoral integration,…

This article reports on the changing perceptions of the educational experiences of students as they move through the school system in one secondary school in south-west England. As part of a longitudinal study students were asked to express their thoughts and feelings about life in year 8, often considered a year in which little progress is made…

The study reported in this article examines primary teachers' understandings of thinking skills within the curriculum. All respondents were from primary schools within a local authority in central Scotland, and in total thirty-six schools were represented. Practitioners' perceptions were explored by analysing their quantitative responses to…

This article explores the behavioural strategies adopted by a sample of teachers in Japan. The data for the study came from a total of 298 Japanese students who were invited to evaluate teacher behaviour by using the Student's Teacher Evaluation Questionnaire. The sixteen-item questionnaire was adopted from Paisey (1975), who had conducted similar…

This article presents the findings from a sponsored research project funded by the Welsh Assembly Government on the effectiveness of the education welfare service in Wales. Findings were obtained from the use of three semi-structured questionnaires with local education authority and welfare service staff and with selected primary and secondary…

Many course evaluations, including those used in schools by OfStEd, colleges and universities, employ a number of scales as a means of evaluating various aspects of the educational experience of the student. It tends to be assumed that students consider the scales independently. This article argues that students are influenced by a "halo effect"…

The government's policy of inclusive education has received widespread support from educationalists and parents alike. The government argues that barriers to inclusion can be broken down with continuing professional development courses for teachers and by more effective multi-agency partnerships. It seems not to have considered how children's own…