Within the past decade, adolescents have become an increasingly scrutinized age group in the United States and abroad. The stereotypical image of youth and of adolescence by extension--as a boisterous embodiment of the "unruly" stage of life between childhood and adulthood--has long dominated discussions about definitions of and subsequent policy…

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…

Space counts in college. "Brown" and the many higher education cases leading to that important legal decision were about place: where Negro schoolchildren would be allowed to attend school or whether Black students could attend white law schools. The issue of place has also been contested in other college settings, such as whether institutions can…

This paper explores affirmative action as a social movement with two goals in mind: (a) to challenge dominant notions of higher education reform, while advancing a social movement perspective; and (b) to advance understanding of the role of collective action in supporting affirmative action in college admissions. The authors highlight ways in…

This policy analysis article examines how California State University-Long Beach, an institution where upward of 22,000 student applied for roughly 3,400 freshman slots and where the transfer class had to be reduced because of mandatory enrollment reductions, tested race-neutral admissions models in accordance with Proposition 209, which prohibits…

This study uses descriptive analyses of data from multiple sources to examine changes during the 1990s in the racial/ethnic stratification of college access and choice in Maryland and to explore state public policies that may have influenced changes in the demand for and supply of higher education for students of different racial/ethnic groups…

The organized political efforts to dismantle affirmative action programs resulted in both advantages and disadvantages in keeping the doors of higher education open to historically underrepresented students. The advantages included short-term solutions to underrepresentation such as developing alternative admission criteria for higher education.…

This article asserts that a scholarship of practice should emerge to improve day-to-day administrative practice in higher education. Six characteristics of professional practice in higher education strongly indicate such a need. The primary goals of scholarship of practice are to improve administrative practice in higher education and to develop a…